East German Manufactured P38

[Wilhelm]

We finish up tonight with the barrel and locking block, both of which are East German made. Like just about everything else, the parts are almost devoid of markings. On the bottom of the barrel, we find a Crown/N mark and the number "853":



This is accepted by collectors as a date, August (eighth month) of 1953. You'll also see this Crown/N with a three digit date code on newly made P08 barrels.





The only other mark on the barrel is the serial number:







Up at the muzzle is a rather crudely struck index mark showing that it was zeroed, most likely at 25 meters:







There are no anti-glare lines machined into the rear of the sight, just some rough machining lines:





Like the rest of the pistol, the barrel exhibits plenty of machining marks:



However, the bore appears to be as well done as any I have seen, WWII vintage or West German Postwar issue.



Two last pictures of the barrel showing the step from the barrel proper to the barrel block. The barrel and barrel block are clearly machined from one block of steel and not two separate parts as someone I found on another site believes.











And now, we come to the last part we need to take a look at, the locking block. Although I've read that some of the locks on N series pistols seem to have scrubbed and reused locks, that does not seem to be the case here. As this is a critical part that must be very precisely fitted, it appears that great care was put into its manufacture as it is finely machined. The only markings on it are the last two digits of the serial number.

















Well, that's it. To my knowledge, this is now the most documented (online at least) East German produced P38. Although it is believed that only 121 were made (N1000-N1120), I have never seen any official East German document that says this to be so. For all I know, they could have made 50,000 but N1120 is the highest number found to date. Additionally, as of this writing, only about 30 have been cataloged. Of those, one has a cracked slide and at least four have had incorrect slides installed over the decades. That leaves just 25 floating around in proper, matched configuration. So, until more are found, that makes this little guy one of the least encountered P38's ever made. No wonder it took me decades to finally stumble across one!



I hope you all enjoyed this writeup and I hope you learned something. If any of you has one of these and you'd like to lend it to me for comparison, contact me and I'll gladly do another write up comparing it to this one part by part. The DDR made P38 is one of the most enigmatic P38's ever made and I think it would be beneficial and productive to the hobby to well document every one we can find. Thank you for your time. Mom, you made me who I am. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.