[quote]Originally posted by Roadkill:
<strong>Same results with me, but the factor is a true militarily developed gun versus a commercial one. A military weapon must be reliable under all conditions, mass produceable, reasonably affordable, accurate for combat use, and idiot proof. The P38 meets all these stipulations, the luger only one. The P38 is a true combat pistol, developed for that purpose and extensively used.
rk</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't quite agree with everything you've put forth here. The Luger was developed with the specific intent of military sales. The extensive efforts to attract military sales are a matter of record and our own Army not only expressed interest in them but purchased a thousand of them for field testing. The Army later tested Lugers in larger calibers but ultimately purchased the model 1911. In the days when the revolver was still king, no semi-auto pistol was going to be accepted without extensive testing. It was necessary to sell the pistol commercially to offset costs of development. Still, Georg Luger and DWM always had their ambitions of selling the Luger to as many military services as possible. The 9mm chambering was the direct result of military demand.
I cannot recall ever having read that the German Army was disappointed in the performance of the Luger on the battlefield. It served well in the trenches of WW1; conditions that certainly ranked high among the worse conditions ever experienced by armies. It was accurate, produced in mass and obviously affordable. The basic strip-down and field cleaning is as close to idiot-proof as can be gotten.... easier than our own 1911 in my opinion and I can strip a 1911 as quickly as most and faster than many. The Luger, when stripped for cleaning, has six parts on the table. The 1911 has eight. There's no chance of a Luger part flying off to never-never land while being reassembled and that can't be said for the 1911. (This isn't an attack on the 1911 as I'd take it over any other pistol for combat. It's simply a comparison.)
As I see it, two very important factors influenced the German military to adopt a new handgun. The first was the limited Luger production capability of the arms makers in Germany from the end of the war into the mid-1930's when it was decided to look for an alternative. Following WW1, only Simpson was authorized to produce Lugers for the German military. I believe that the Erfurt machinery was obtained by Simpson for that purpose. DWM/BKW/Mauser didn't do much until the mid-1930's and were the only one capable of large output. It wasn't enough to equip the rapidly expanding military.
The second condition was the need to conserve materials while producing an arm that was cheaper, quicker and easier to make. It was likely just as easy to tool up for a new design with the advantages it offered as it would have been to re-tool new factories to produce the Luger. The resulting P-38 changed considerably from it's early internal striker design to the external hammer model that was finally adopted. The early commercial HP's were very nicely done and tolerances were kept much tighter than the war-production guns that followed. I'm not certain that the P-38 suffered from loose fit as much by design as from the demands of war production. Possibly both reasons played a part.
I won't argue that the P-38 wasn't the better combat pistol. There is no question that it clearly was. I do contend, however, that the Luger met all of your combat pistol conditions reasonably well at the time it was used for that purpose. It was the leading edge of combat pistol technology 100 years ago and I wouldn't feel that I was at any serious disadvantage if I had to carry one today. As the first semi-auto pistol adopted by a major power, it had a remarkably long life as a military pistol. Technology and new, improved designs overtook the old gal but she needn't hang her head in shame. She did her job quite well.
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