Walther P38

The Walther P38 is a German semi-automatic pistol adopted by the German military in 1938 as the intended successor to the older Luger P08, chambered, like the Luger, in 9mm Parabellum, but built around a simpler and more rugged locked-breech action that was cheaper and faster to manufacture at wartime scale than the Luger's toggle-lock mechanism. It was among the first military service pistols widely fielded with a double-action first-shot trigger, allowing a round to be carried safely in the chamber with the hammer down and fired with a single long trigger pull rather than requiring the hammer to be manually cocked first, a feature that influenced later postwar pistol designs well beyond Germany. Wartime supply shortages meant the P38 never fully replaced the Luger in German service before the end of the Second World War, but production and further development of the design continued in West Germany afterward, where it went on to arm the postwar Bundeswehr for decades.