Fellows, yesterday's message wasn't well thought out and I assure you that I'm "metric literate". My first thought upon reading RK's message was "Gosh... an Artillery varient that I'm not familiar with. How did that happen?" I knew that the standard Artillery barrel was 200mm as Frank has correctly pointed out. My own Artillery Lugers measure exactly that from closed breech face to muzzle.
After reading RK's post again, I've reached the conclusion that the author of the article he quoted did exactly as I did and multiplied 8 inches by 25.4mm and ASSUMED that 203mm was correct for the Artillery barrels. Note that he says the guns were issued to Fortress and Artillery troops. *IF* I had thought about it for a minute, I'd have realized what he had done. I'm embarrassed to have not realized that immediately.
The Treaty of Versailles limited pistols to a bullet no larger than 8mm and a barrel length not to exceed 100mm. Datig, on page 129 of his book, correctly gives 98mm as the length of barrel the Germans decided to manufacture for the Luger but incorrectly gives that as 3 5/8 inches. It should be 3 7/8 inches. (My own 1920 "commercial" Erfurt .30 barrel is exactly 98mm in length.)
Walker (Red-faced in GA)
|