135 years of innovation from the Walter family
Soviet-Polish intelligence officer Hans Kloss has always been very convincing. Especially with such a pistol in hand!
She is not afraid of the cold for her family, because her whole family is dressed in double clothes.
Proverbs 31:21
Proverbs 31:21
Weapon and firms. And it so happened that for many centuries areas with rich ore deposits were centers for the production of firearms. This was also the region around Suhl and Zell-Melis in Thuringia. At first, modest, unknown blacksmiths worked there, but over time, whole factories grew out of their forges. This is how the ancestors of the Walter family began. One of them was August Theodor Walter, who married the granddaughter of the well-respected rifle manufacturer Gustav Wilhelm Pistor of Asbach-Schmalkalden. And it was their son, Karl Wilhelm Freund Walter, who laid the foundation for the Walther company. He was born in 1858 and began production of rifles in 1886. In addition, he also produced hunting rifles and target shooting rifles with a Martini system. And although the 28-year-old boy had very little equipment and tools, production gradually grew, and the quality of the products was quite at the level of that time.
Founder of the company: Karl Wilhelm Freund Walter (1858-1915)
Karl Walter's wife also came from a family of arms manufacturers. Well, she gave birth to her husband five sons: Fritz, Georg, Wilhelm, Erich and Lothar. The first three went to work for their parents' company, Erich made a career in business, and Lothar trained in the manufacture of tools and dies. That is, there was someone to continue, the business brought in income, and as a result, in 1903, on the Katzenbuckel hill in Zella-Mehlis, the Walter family built a small factory. The company was renamed "Karl Walter Waffenfabrik".
Fritz Walter was particularly interested in the idea of self-loading pistols, which he learned about while studying in Berlin, which at that time was a famous center for their manufacture. He wrote to his father several times and in the end managed to convince him that the future belongs to them and that forces should be concentrated in this sector. And now in 1908, when Fritz returned home, he and his father made a prototype of their first such pistol chambered for 6,35 mm caliber cartridge number 1. They received a patent for it in June 1911, after which they immediately launched it in production.
Pistol "Walter" 1908 First model. Caliber .25. Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol is seen from the right. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
Diagram of a model 1908. Photo by Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
This pistol was followed by others, until in 1920 the series ended with the release of "Model 9". Then in the fall of 1921, a self-loading rifle was launched on the market, and in 1932 the company developed several double-barreled shotguns, which were immediately followed by small-bore rifles. When Karl Walter died in 1915, it was Fritz who took over the company as seniority.
"Walter". Second model. Caliber .25. Right view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol. Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
Then the assortment of their products was expanded due to the production of ... adding machines - that was how calculators were called at that time. During the 1920s, these small desktop machines with the WALTHER brand could be found in offices around the world. At the same time, Fritz Walter continued to develop the firearms sector. Remembering history with the Mauser, he specifically encouraged his employees to take initiative in this area. And this policy has borne fruit. So, engineer Walter Rim in 1937 proposed gas and signal pistols called "Perfect". Then the story took a rather interesting turn. In 1972, Walter Rim founded his own company "Umarex", widely known today for the production of pneumatic weapons. And in 1993 Umarex Sportwaffen GmbH & Co. KG bought Carl Walther GmbH, keeping production under the Walther brand. Such is the collision.
Fritz Walter
Well, Fritz Walter in 1929 released his famous PP ("police pistol"), which was recognized all over the world. The compact design of the PPK (“criminal police pistol”) appeared two years later. Both models with a double action trigger have proven themselves to be impeccable from the outset. Moreover, after the Second World War, they were not produced for some time, but then already in the 60s, the Walter company resumed their production, and they have been produced since that time until now. In particular, PPK is produced in two versions - "PPK" and "PPK / S" chambered for 9x17 mm, and in small-bore version "PPK / S .22" chambered for .22 Long Rifle.
"Walter". Fourth model. Caliber .25. Right view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol. Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The scheme of "Walter" of the fourth model. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
Interestingly, in 1974, the British Royal Army's artillery corps purchased about 3000 Walther PP pistols of precisely .22 caliber for the Ulster Defense Regiment as personal weapons for soldiers outside of service for self-defense. At the same time, they were covered with a varnish called "Sankorit", which turned out to be extremely toxic and after that was no longer used.
"Walter". Eighth model. Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol. Right view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
But the Walther pistols of the RR and RRK models, purchased for the OGPU-NKVD in the first half of the 1930s, had a caliber of 7,65 mm. Marshal Budyonny had such a pistol. By the way, Stalin's wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva shot herself with a Walther. During a search, the ousted head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov found two such pistols and two more Browning pistols.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva
The NKVD operatives had less Browning after all. However, it is known that Browning's weapon was preferred by both Lavrenty Beria and Joseph Stalin to everyone else, although our leader also had a Walther. However, the Browning, unlike the Walters, were not bought abroad, since the tsarist government had acquired a lot of Browning M1903 and M1906 for its police even before the revolution.
By the way, the "Walther" RRK 32 ACP / 7.65 mm is also remembered by the fact that Adolf Hitler also shot himself with such a pistol ...
Model PP 1935 Pistol PP 9 × 17 mm Short /. 380 ACP). Length 173 mm. Barrel length 96 mm. Weight 690 g. Bullet speed 256 m / s. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
Model PP 7.65 × 17 mm Browning SR / .32 ACP. Length 173 mm. Barrel length 96 mm. Weight 715 g. Bullet speed 320 m / s. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
"Walter" PPK .32 was also used by Kim Jae Kyu to assassinate South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee. And it was the Walther PPK pistol that Ian Fleming armed his indestructible super agent James Bond with. First, Fleming gave Bond a Beretta 418 .25 pistol, but already in Doctor No, on the advice of firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd, he re-armed his hero with a Walther. In the film, it is referred to as the PPK, but in fact the pistol Sean Connery was using was a PP model.
By the way, the actor Jack Lord, who played Felix Leiter in "Doctor No", also had a "Walther", moreover, gilded and with ivory grips, which was presented to him by his friend ... Elvis Presley. Presley himself had a silver PPK with the words “TCB” (“take care of business”) written on it.
1948 PP model, Royal Arsenal, Leeds
1972 PP model, Royal Arsenal, Leeds
Only the military sector remained, where the Walter company decided to infiltrate with a 9-mm pistol RM ("army pistol"). But the military did not like it. They felt that the 9mm cartridge was too large for a free bolt action. They needed a lockable breech. And "Walter" made such a pistol AR ("army pistol"), but he did not like it either, as it had a hidden trigger. And the military wanted to have a pistol with an open trigger to see at a glance whether the weapon was cocked or not. This is how HP appeared - the "gun of the armed forces", in which the company took into account all the wishes of the customer. As a result, it was he who became the legendary P38 model.
P38 pistol, produced in 1940. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
It was adopted by the Wehrmacht under the designation "Pistole'38". Locking the barrel in the P38 was carried out using a wedge placed under the barrel. When fired, the barrel and bolt casing coupled together were retracted back until the locking wedge detached from the barrel and disengaged the bolt casing and barrel. After that, the barrel returned under the action of the spring back, and the bolt by inertia still continued to move and only then it went forward, sequentially removing the next cartridge from the store and locking the chamber. The double-acting trigger mechanism was borrowed from the PP pistol. A safety lock blocked the hammer, allowing the hammer to turn safely. The striker was released only when the trigger was pulled. Thus, the pistol could be carried quite safely, and at the same time it was constantly ready to fire.
Diagram of the P38 pistol device. Drawing from the book by K. Shant "Small arms" ("Omega", 2003)
The main consumers of the P38 were tankers of the newly created tank parts.
German tankmen with Walthers P38. Drawing by Johnny Shumate.
During the Anschluss of Austria and the occupation of Czechoslovakia, they were all already armed with these weapons.
Two thousand of these pistols were sold to Sweden in 1939, where they were put into service under the name P / 39. By the beginning of World War II, the rest of the troops had just begun to receive these weapons.
One more shot with "Walter" from the series "Bet More Than Life" ...
The soldiers liked the P38. In battle, he proved to be very reliable, convenient and suitable for various tasks. The trigger pull was smooth and accurate. Moving parts have proven to be able to handle contamination, which is common in combat. When the German army faced the Russian frosts, it turned out that the weapon grease was freezing, so in winter it was decided to clean the weapon, but not grease it. The P38 was able to withstand such a test, and, in contrast to the other samples of such a carefully made German weapon, which required lubrication for the normal operation of moving parts.
However, the P38 was never able to completely replace the Luger. The Germans needed a lot of such pistols.
Since Walther could not supply it in the quantities required by the German army, the Artillery Armaments Directorate decided that the P38 should also be produced by Mauser in Oberndorf and Spriverk in Berlin-Spandau. Nevertheless, by the end of the war, Walter had delivered about half (580) of the 000 million P1,2 pistols produced by that time.
And then there were May 8 and 9 and the end of all production and entrepreneurship of the company "Walter". A thin folder with drawings and rights to more than 80 patents is all that Fritz Walter was able to save from the shocks of war. History repeated itself: Fritz Walter, like his father before him, was left with nothing. However, he still had documents in his hands. That is, he had something to start with. The core of the new venture was a small shoe repair shop ... and it was there that the Walter company was born again. Production sites for office equipment were soon established in Niederstozingen and Gerstetten. Already in April 1949, the employees celebrated the release of the 1000th calculating machine. But for Fritz Walter, the income he received meant only one thing, namely that he could again devote his time to his favorite business - the production of weapons, which again began in Ulm. By the end of 1950, the first 100 air guns were ready for shipment to customers. For the difficult post-war years, this was a real breakthrough.
His next step was a new version of the still popular PP / PPK and P38 pistols. The latter, called the P1, became the standard pistol of the new German armed forces. Other pistols were developed: TP, TPH, PP-Super, P5 and finally the P88. The company also began to produce long guns - hunting and sporting guns of various types. The production of small bore rifles, such as the KKS and KKM series, began in 1953. In December 1966, Fritz Walter died and his son Karl-Heinz took over the reins of the company.
Karl-Heinz Walter
The new director expanded the range of sporting weapons and relocated the main production facility to Ulm. In 1969 the Walther GSP pistol was released. This small bore sports pistol continues the success of the OSP rapid-fire pistol of a similar design that has been on the market since 1961. The GSP became arguably the most used small bore match pistol in the world, and has held that status for a long time. Another "discovery" of the company was the KK-Match rifle, which performed especially well at the Olympic Games. In Montreal (1976) Lanny Basham used it to win the gold medal for the United States in three-position shooting, and Malcolm Cooper won gold for the United Kingdom in two consecutive Olympics (1984 in Los Angeles and 1988 in Seoul) ... On November 2, 1983, Karl-Heinz Walter died suddenly, leaving the company in the hands of his nephew Hans Fahr, the last member of this family.
Post-war pistol РР РDM ("Police of Munich"). Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol. Right view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
Disassembled pistol. It is clearly very similar to something, but what is it?
In 1992, there was no longer a member of the founding family in the management of this century-old company, and the Austrian company Steyr-Mannlicher was ready to acquire it. However, in the spring of 1993, two prominent figures in the German arms industry intervened and saved the day. Wolf Heinz Pflaumer and Franz Vonisch, managing partners of the Umarex Group, based in Arnsberg, acquired the Karl Walter company, keeping it for Germany.
RRK pistol diagram. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
In 1993, Arnsberg had a solid financial position and became the world's leading supplier of gas pistols. When the directors Wolf-Heinz Pflaumer and Franz Vonisch took over the Ulm plant, they made a promise to employees that gave them all a sigh of relief: all profits Umarex had made in the previous year would be invested directly in Walter, which allowed them with optimism look them into the future.
RRK pistol with holster. Caliber 7,65 mm (.32ACP). Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
Having received numerous licenses from manufacturers of well-known firearms, Umarex began to make copies of famous models with a gas shot, which could be sold without permission. By acquiring Walter, the company was finally able to produce the best-selling Walter PPK with the original logo.
RRK of the Israeli secret service. Right view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
The same pistol. Left view. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
So, having gone through several difficult years, the company "Walter" returned to business - and to the place where it has traditionally been one of the strongest "players": in the production of pistols. At IWA in 1996, she surprised the industry by introducing a completely new large bore pistol with a polymer frame instead of the traditional frame made of steel or light metal. At the same time, Pflaumer and Vonisch managed to hire Horst Vespa, technical director of Steyr-Mannlicher, as the new chief designer, and they did not fail. The Walter P99, developed by him, was a truly revolutionary pistol: it had a shockless system with a shutter release lever and adjustable triggers. The latter feature was to be especially attractive to future customers with large order volumes: they could choose between a double or single acting system, a partial pre-cocking system and only a double acting system. The P99 also featured innovative ergonomic features: a 16-round magazine with a double feed line only 26 mm wide, interchangeable grip pads for different hand sizes and a practical double-sided magazine release lever integrated into the trigger guard.
Modification of the P99QA with a metal shutter. Photo Alain Daubresse www.littlegun.be
In addition, the company regained its status as a leader in shooting sports. An important role in this was played by the line of pneumatic PCP rifles - Walther LG300 rifles and the KK300 small-bore rifle.
"Walter" PP, L47A1 - in service with the British Air Force and the Royal navy... Overall length 175 mm. Barrel length 98 mm. Weight 680 g. Caliber 7,65 mm. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
In 2006, Walter was able to acquire the trademarks of the Swiss sports weapons manufacturer Hammerli. Founded almost 150 years ago in 1863, the company has become a joint stock corporation since 1947 and has changed hands several times. "Walter" and "Hammerli" had connections that go back many decades. For example, after the war, it was a Swiss company that produced the Walther Olympia sports pistol under license, since the production of firearms was then prohibited in Germany. Now the products with the Hammerli mark have been produced by the Walter company. Today it is the AR20 Air Rifle and the AP20 Air Pistol, addressed to beginners and gun clubs looking for high quality sporting guns at a reasonable price.
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