Astra 300

The Astra 300 was a Spanish semi-automatic pistol made by Astra Unceta from 1922 to 1946. It was developed in 1922 as a smaller version of the Astra 400 and first produced in Spain in 1922 or 1923. It was loaded from a stick magazine holding six or seven cartridges depending on the chambering, 7.65mm or 9mm, and measured 160 mm overall with a 98 mm barrel. Its first users were the Spanish prison administration in the 1920s, the Spanish Navy took it up in 1928, and through the 1930s it was mainly an army pistol. During the Spanish Civil War the Nationalists supplied it to the German Condor Legion, and between October 1941 and July 1944 about 85,000 were delivered from neutral Spain to Germany for the Wehrmacht. The Soviet Union bought a small number from the Spanish Republic in 1937 and 1938 and used richly trimmed examples as awards to pilots. The Astra 3000 largely replaced it in 1946.