The Mauser Parabellum and it’s test firing ammunition. Ammunition and ballistics, the basis of the existence of our club community, play an important role in the development of firearms that will eventually be used to fire that ammunition. That a round, even a standard round like the 9x19mm Parabellum and it’s forbearer the .30 Luger, known world wide, will not surrender itself without a struggle is shown in documents from the Mauser archives. At the end of the 1960s entrepreneurs saw several new markets for and old, classic pistol design: The Parabellum (or Luger) pistol. In the 1950s and 1960s the American consumer market was flooded with cheap military surplus firearms from Europe, annoying the major American arms produces. They feared that these importing activities would have negative effects on their own proceeds and they demanded that legislation to end the import of surplus military firearms was accepted. Interarms, one of the largest importers and distributors of surplus military firearms knew this all too well and decided not to wait for changes in legislation (which were passed in 1969). As early as in 1965, Interarms was in contact with companies like Carl Walther GmbH, Mauser-Werke AG in Germany and the Eidgn. Waffenfabrik in Bern, Switzerland. Discussed was the possibility to reproduce classic sales successes like the Walther P38, PP/K, the Mauser C96, K98, HSc and the Parabellum pistol, if needed even in the USA itself. The American import legislation influenced used guns, not new ones. After long negotiations, Mauser was prepared to take up the challenge and late 1969 the new Parabellum pistol was presented to the general public. We won’t mention that the first demos were actually camouflaged Swiss Model 06/29 Parabellums. Mauser bought a number of Parabellum pistols from the Swiss Eidg. Waffenfabrik, together with Swiss production drawings, sets of quality control and production tools and also received a copy of the design of an automated test firing machine. No doubt that the Mauser Parabellum would be based upon the Swiss design. 1 Swiss automated testfiring machine One of the most important aspects was to ensure that the Mauser Parabellum repeated correctly, since the pistol type with a toggle lock mechanism responds very critically on subtle changes in ammunition and it’s loads. This made selecting the correct reference ammunition very important indeed. During the first production years it became obvious that feeding issues became a continuing problem, especially with the .30 luger versions of the pistol. After analysis of several P08’s from DWM and Mauser pre-war production, the curve of the ‘frame ears’ of the Swiss 06/29 design differed from that of the original German design. The last thing that Mauser wanted to do is to design separate frames for both calibres, so they started to search for a compromise: a frame ear shape that would function in both 9x19mm and .30 luger versions. On the 5 th of January, 1970, Mr. Vorgrimler of Mauser’s development department writes about this: “Tests with the new uniform curve for .30 luger and 9mm are still in progress. The finished trials prove that by moving the curve 2mm towards the rear the problems will be solved. This also means that the existing frames 2 Vergelijking tussen de curves van de handgreep -oren cannot be altered and these will need to be used up for the .30 luger calibre. The new curve should become available around the end of January, 1970 after the tests with the required ammunitions have been finished. The ammunition in .30 luger from Hirtenberg has not arrived yet. The Genschow company does not produce .30 luger Parabellum ammunition at the moment.” The pistol development was also hampered by the mediocre quality of the magazines, produced by Hollandia (later by Metaalwarenfabriek Tilburg) in the Netherlands. Tests proved that especially with 9x19mm rounds the magazines tended to deform rapidly, causing feeding issues. During a 5000 shot endurance test of the 58 magazines used, 32 had fractured bottom pieces. The comment of Mr. Vorgrimler in 1968, after receiving the First batch of Dutch magazines: “On the 29th of October, 1969, 6 Hollandia magazines were handed to mr. Gehmlich, as instructed by manager Fleck. We can state that these magazines show relatively large differences in size and are completely unusable. The very important opening for the magazine catch is placed some 0.7mm lower than it should be… …the magazine springs don’t meet the requirements, are 50mm too short and don’t even come close to the required tension. Rather than making the part as described on the construction drawings, they made the magazine follower from the rear part of a rimfire hunting round. When a gunsmith, looking for a quick fix for a missing part, comes up with such a solution, he may be forgiven. But when an arms company like Mauser makes such a thing, we can only label it as ‘Junk’. This would never have happened in the past. Who gave them permission to implement these changes?” In 1970 a new lot of 10 magazines arrives, but these don’t satisfy Mr. Vorgrimler either. He comments: “The 10 magazines from Hollandia given to the development department show large failures in measurements and cannot be used without modifying them. The magazine lips of weak pressed metal will not survive very long. The Hollandia company wants to deliver new versions, made from pressed steel.” Mauser started testing internally with Remington ammunition. The large number of feeding issues, combined with variations in measurements quickly lead to the suspicion that the Remington ammunition was part of the problem. In February, 1971 a series of tests were executed using early production pistols in the .30 Luger calibre. 21 pistols were tested and on average each pistol fired some 280 rounds. The most common problems were related to the magazines, owing to the bad quality of those magazines, feeding issues as a result of the Remington ammunition used and the failure of the toggle to remain open after the last shot. In May, 1971 we see the results of a number of tests with early production pistols in the 9x19mm calibre. Tested were the pistols 1179, 1147, 1219, 1233 and 1223 (the official numbering of production pistols in 9x19mm Parabellum started at number 1152): 5th of May, 1971, pistol 1179: 50 shots, Remington and 50 shots, Winchester. 2 empty cases jammed in the chamber. 19th of May, 1971, pistol 1147: 50 shots, Remington and 50 shots, Winchester. No malfunctions. 25 th of May 1971, pistol 1219: 500 shots in total. 400 with Geco ammunition, 50 with Remington and 50 with Winchester. Toggle does not stay open with Geco ammunition 6 times, Once with Remington ammunition, one empty case jammed with Remington as well. 28th of May, 1971, pistol 1233: A Total of 5000 shots with Geco ammunition. 15 primer failures, 28 feeding failures, 17 jammed empty cases, toggle not fully closed 5 times, Toggle does not stay open after last shot 249 times. 2 broken extractors and 1 broken ejector spring. Of the 58 magazines, 32 bottom pieces broke and 7 additional problems developed. 28 th of May, 1971, pistol 1223: A total of 5000 shots with Geco ammunition. 13 feeding failures, 19 jammed empty cases, toggle does not stay open after last shot 301 times, toggle doesn’t close fully 9 times, 2 broken extractors, 1 broken ejector and 1 broken firing pin. We can see that with the 9x19mm Parabellum the influence of the ammunition was not as important. The problems are mainly caused by the holdopen device, an L-shaped hook that keeps the toggle open after the last shot has been fired. Since this hook is activated by the magazine, the most likely cause was the magazine itself. The ammunition problem itself was investigated together with the proof house in Ulm. Together with Ulm, Mauser started to search for useable reference ammunition. Tested were the .30 Luger rounds from Remington, Winchester, Norma, GeCo and the Swiss army and the 9x19mm rounds from Norma and the Swedish army. Using the original test reports and internal correspondence we can recreate this search relatively accurately. Mauser delivered reference ammunition to the Ulm proof house, after which Ulm fired 10 shots per brand and lot number, using a controlled environment. The average of these 10 shots delivered the gas pressure in bar, while the difference between the highest and lowest pressure readings was noted. In an internal Mauser report, dating from the 2nd of February, 1972, Otto Repa, then responsible for quality control, wrote: Parabellum test firing ammunition, calibre .30 luger: The following ammunition brands were shipped to the Ulm proof house: a. Remington, lot number S 16 S. The ammunition is not useable for testing. The average gas pressure is some 500 bar below the average operation pressure and shows deviations of +297 / -304 bar. The ammunition is so weak that the toggle does not open completely and the gun will not repeat. According to mr. Brehm some 13,000 rounds are in stock. The same applies to the following lot numbers: Remington S 14 S and S 11 S. b. Winchester, lot number 7658 DF 1. The average gas pressure of these rounds is some 2177 bar with deviations of +124 / -112 bar. This ammunition was fired without problems and gave good results, no doubt as result of the careful production. c. Norma, lot number 08915. The average gas pressure of these rounds is about 2515 bar and shows deviations of +128 / -411 bar. This ammunition functions some 25% above normal using pressure and shoots very high as a result (highest sight necessary).