A few years ago a tragedy befell a friend of mine. Mike’s Aunt had passed and he was the recipient of her estate because she had no children. In years past Mike told me about his uncle’s captured P-38 and Nazi battle flag. Once Mike and his wife and Linda started going through his aunt’s house he came upon the P-38 and the battle flag.
I have never been squeamish about Nazi items. Having been to Germany, England, France and Czechoslovakia I have visited many museums here and there with examples of Nazi items and they have never bothered me. While holding that flag it started to freak me out like I could feel the evil from the flag. I gave him the flag back real quick.
Mike then handed me the P-38. This P-38 was taken from a German Officer that Mike’s uncle captured during the battle of the bulge. He also took his boots which the officer was more apprehensive about surrendering vs the surrendering of his pistol. He then asked me to take it and shoot it and tell him what I thought of it. I then took it home, took it apart, reassembled it and shot it.
I was very impressed by the piece of history that I was encharged with. Upon getting home with said weapon I played with it for a bit and figured out how to take it apart. According to mike his uncle had only put a few rounds through it, and kept it clean and oiled. This was very evident during disassembly and from my judgement it looked like there was less than 500 rounds through this 60+ year old weapon. There was hardly any receiver wear on the bluing, very little holster wear, and the parts looked like they just came from the factory.
Surprisingly the operating system of the P-38 is basically a scaled down version of the beretta M-9/92 operating system. it also utilizes a breach block as the locking system. Sights are a blade front and dovetail rear sight and can be fired either double or single action. When I took it on the range I fired from 15 yards and was able to shoot a approximately a 3 inch group on a 6 inch dot. I must also state because of the age of the weapon I utilized a 110g bullet.
After returning this pistol to Mike I wanted one!!!! Before returning it to mike I had texted him some pics of his pistol on my wall with other members of my collection. The actual reason was that I was building him a presentation case for the pistol and was biding for time to finish under the cover that I was stealing it.
I started searching for a P-38 at the local gun shows and shops. Also surfing on-line through various C&R shops until I got an E-mail notice from J&G sales (jgsales.com) on their new items and there it was. $500+ and it was mine.
Of course I had to compare it to Mikes.
Above is Mike's P-38, and below is mine from J&G Sales. The only differences that I could find was the hammers are different, and the grip coloration are different. The captured pistol is in better shape as far as wear on the parts. Other than the importation information inscribed on the front of the pistol grip on the J&G sales pistol they have all the same markings. A minor difference should be noted. On the slide there are 3 proof marks. First is a german eagle over a 165, then a german eagle over a swastika then on the right is another eagle over another 165. The difference below instead of 165 the numbers are 88.
One other thing that made me quite happy was the fact that the pistol that I bought had matching numbers on the Barrell, Slide and Receiver. I could have picked up one at a gun show a lot sooner but the pistol had 3 different serial numbers, or basically parts from 3 different weapons.
I have taken this pistol out and shot it a few times. Starting with 110g bullets and working to 124gr Hydrashoks. However I have not been able to replicate a 3 inch shot group at 15 yards with 100gr ball. The best I have been able to do is 4 with an average of 4.5.
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