Fake or real?

[Malcolm P.]

I have read several different posts and on websites about the Japanese Lugers. Assuming they are real, which I doubt, how did they end up in the Pacific? Germany and Japan had no real trade contacts by 1940 because of the war, so any shipments of Lugers to Japan are very doubtful. So where did these German Lugers come from?

One thing I suspect is that the Germans did get a test unit in the Pacific sometime after Pearl Harbor. There are scattered reports of Bf-109s shot down in the Pacific in 1942. I have heard a rumor of at least one German POW captured. But more interesting (and personally definitive to me) is my uncle who fought on Guaducanal. He witnessed a Bf-109 shootdown by Wildcats and the plane crashed near him. The markings were German and the instruments were in German.

Of course, if this Lugers originated with the Luftwaffe, then the Lugers should have the appropriate proofs, which I understand they did not. Still, if a test unit got to the South Pacific, then a few Mauser Army Lugers may have been on the trip. But until someone can say that Lugers were definitely shipped to Japan I believe these Lugers are essentially fraudulent fakes that were done to sucker Luger collectors looking for that one-of-a-kind in the late '50s or early '60s.