Norwegian Luger?
 

Greetings to all:
I have a modest collection of WW1 & WW2 firearms. All my guns are shooters, so my collection has few pristine examples. Because they run the gamut, I never get to acquire the in-depth knowledge that a person with a narrower focus gains (as you might imagine I participate in several forums). I just recently traded for a nice 1940 Mauser mfg. Luger. The condition is probably NRA very good to excellent. Paid only $500 for it so I don't think I got hurt too badly. It appears to have the original finish, although if it was refinished it was never buffed to death. It is marked 42 on the Toggle with no import marks and all matching parts, including the wooden grips, EXCEPT for the barrel. The 100mm barrel is completely unmarked except for a 3-letter code on the bottom rear. It is the letter "P", followed by the letter "E" over the letter "S". The "P" is larger in size than the "E" & "S". The story (there's always a story, isn't there?) is that these were taken by Norway and rebarreled for reasons unknown and put into police and military service there. This is probably not true, but I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would rebarrel a gun this nice. I figure one of you guys will recognize the P-E-S lettering and set me straight. Thanks for any info.

Welcome Robert, sounds like no matter what you got a good deal!

Welcome to the forum!!

:)

I have never heard of a marking like this Robert, but If I had to guess, I would say that it is probably an importer marking that was incomplete... Some importers don't want to stamp their mark real deep for fear of damaging the gun and others know that a real deep stamp will harm the value of the gun...

and I agree with Ed Tinker... you got a fine deal!

Anyway, that is my
http://boards.rennlist.com/lfupload/2cents.jpg

Being a Norwegian gun collector, I have seen Lugers rebarreled with Kongsberg arsenal barrels, I have an S/42 with a Kongsberg barrel. They usually have a P under the barrel, I have never seen any with the marking you describe. The blueing on these barrels is very good and very dark, almost black. We obtained literally tons of German guns as booty after the war, many of these were used by Norwegian forces for a long time - you may even still find some in low-priority units. As far as I know the police here never used Lugers, they preferred the smaller .32 caliber pistols like Walther PP, FN Browning M1910/22, Mauser HsC aso.

Balder

Thanks for the info, Balder. Maybe this is a Norwegian booty pistol after all. The "P" marking is twice as large as the "e/s" mark and is under the barrel close to the frame. Why do you think that the Norwegian army would re-barrel a Luger that was otherwise in fine condition?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by Robert W. Simms:
<strong>Why do you think that the Norwegian army would re-barrel a Luger that was otherwise in fine condition?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">One reason could be that the bore was trashed--pitted, corroded, etc.

--Dwight