Luger Tooling Sets

[Dwight Gruber]

In response to a justifiable complaint of an excessively off-topic digression in another discussion, I have moved it to this new thread.

Originally posted by azlaw
So, where are the toolings sets now? Is any set still intact?

Thats a good question. I may not get it entirely right here--I'm sure others will jump in and correct me--but here's the general history.

DWM--this tooling went to Mauser in 1930. Some of it was pretty worn and Mauser made modifications to the production stream, both no doubt necessitating new tooling elements. In 1938 the P-38 was accepted as the "other" standard German service sidearm, and in 1941 German military orders for the P-08 ceased. Some of the machines at Mauser for manufacturing the P-08 were converted to P-38 production.

The French destroyed the Mauser factory works in Oberndorf after WWII. Disposition of the machine tooling is unknown (at least to me), but as a WAG I'd guess it was scrapped.

ERFURT--The Erfurt rifle factory was shut down at the end of WWI. In 1922 Simson Suhl was given the government contract to refurbish P-08, and in 1925 was selected as the exclusive contractor of the P-08 for the Reichswehr. Simson acquired the Erfurt production tooling for these purposes.

In 1933 Simson was seized by the German government and broken up into several smaller arms manufacturing companies. When Krieghoff won the contract to manufacture P-08 for the Luftwaffe, it was offered the tooling from Simson. Krieghoff determined that the tooling was in too poor condition for manufacture, and so used it as patterns to create their own tooling. Disposition of the Erfurt/Simson tool set is unknown.

After WWII the great German arms-making nexus of Suhl and Zella-Mehlis ended up in the East German zone. This included such companies as Krieghoff and C.G. Haenel, which became the factory V.E.B. Ernst Th�¤lmann.

V.E.B. Ernst Th�¤lmann was responsible for reworking P-08 for the East German Volkspolizei, and in 1953 manufactured at least 100 (serial number reports imply more) new Pistole 08, presumably as a test run to determine the practicability of resuming production. It is assumed that at least part of this tooling came from Krieghoff. Its disposition is unknown.

WAFFENFABRIK BERN The original military contract for the Pistole Parabellum was ordered by Switzerland in 1900. DWM supplied Parabellums to the Swiss until the outbreak of the war in 1914. At that time Switzerland created their own tooling in Bern, and manufactured their own Lugers until 1947; in 1949 the Parabellum was replaced as the Swiss service pistol.

In 1965 Waffenfabrik Bern manufactured a prototype Parabellum for a proposed venture with Interarmco in the US to restart commercial Luger manufacture, but the contract was given to Mauser in Germany. Mauser acquired the Bern tooling, but eventually created their own tooling for actual manufacture which began in 1970 and ceased a few years later.

Disposition of both of these tooling sets has not been reported, but somebody at Mauser--Dr. Rolf Gminder, for example--probably knows.

--Dwight