Had one my father brought back from WWII, a 1913 Erfurt, but it was stolen in a burglary in 1981.

Pretty neat design, as a kid I always marveled at how cool - and easy - it was to take down into its individual parts. The trigger is a classic example of the German engineering mind - "I can make that with more moving parts than you can!"

I remember recoil and muzzle jump seemed to be high but the last time I shot it was as a teenager and not all that experienced with centerfire autos. It was accurate enough for can shooting but the bore was pitted badly due to using corrosive ammo and not cleaning it properly. My Dad liked it a lot and preferred carrying it during and after the war over his issued .45 Auto - he went over to Europe in November 1944 and didn't get home until sometime in 1946. Said he couldn't hit a barn door with the .45 but was pretty good with the Luger. He had a custom leather holster made for him by a released Polish POW but that went somewhere decades ago.

We would go to North Carolina every year to visit the old family farms and one day my dad and his brothers got together to do a little shooting at my Grandmother's place (his mother). They put up a couple of targets on the side of a small wooden storage shed and fired at those. He used the Luger and his brothers used some type of .38 revolver, this was in the late 50's so most likely a S&W M&P or Colt Police Positive. Anyway, they didn't stop to think that those shed walls wouldn't stop a 9mm FMJ bullet one bit so Dad ended up putting a bunch of holes in all of my Grandmother's big metal wash tubs and pails and such that were stored inside. She was pretty pissed at him for that. wink

Something in the trigger linkage broke or malfunctioned sometime after I last shot it in the late 60's and it wouldn't fire anymore so we just put it away, then some effing burglar got it some years later.


Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery.
Hit the target, all else is twaddle!