Author: Grumpy
There’s something special about military surplus firearms. Unlike modern reproductions, these guns have a story to tell. They were built for war or police service, carried by people who relied on them, and somehow survived long enough to find their way into the hands of today’s collectors. Every holster mark and every worn edge hints at a history we’ll probably never know.
They have a soul that modern new guns don’t. I have a running list of older guns I’d love to own, and the Beretta Model 1934 has been on it for years. Thanks to a banging deal at AIM Surplus this is an easy one to check off of that list.
The Beretta 1934 Origin
Originally adopted by the Italian military in 1934, the compact Beretta pistol served throughout World War II and earned a reputation for reliability and durability. It was basically a slightly beefed up version of the Model 1931 chambered in 9mm Corto, better known in the United States as .380 ACP. During the war it was used by Italy, Germany, Romania, and to lesser degree Finland.
The Model 1934 was a simple blowback design that was a favorite trophy amongst Allied troops. The 1934 remained in production long after the war ended. It continued to serve with Italian military units as well as police organizations including the Polizia di Stato, Carabinieri, and Guardia di Finanza into the 1980’s. As a result, many of the surplus pistols reaching American shores today aren’t wartime bring-backs at all, but postwar police pistols that spent decades riding in duty holsters before finally being retired.
A Surprisingly Affordable Collectible
My example came from AIM Surplus, which currently lists Very Good condition pistols for $239.99. The company also offers less expensive X Grade pistols that show additional cosmetic wear but are described as mechanically functional. For a firearm with this much history behind it, I found the price surprisingly reasonable.
My pistol is a 1948 production gun that arrived in very good condition. Finish wear appears to be around 80 percent, the lockup is tight, and the bore retains strong, well-defined rifling. That’s impressive for a service pistol that’s approaching its eightieth birthday. The pistol is discreetly import stamped underneath the trigger guard.
As often happens with surplus firearms, buying the pistol was only the beginning. I found myself digging through my Beretta reference books to learn more about its history. After brushing up on that I hunted down two original spare magazines on eBay after AIM sold out, and located a postwar green canvas flap holster to complete the package. Women like to accessorize their outfits; I like to accessorize my guns.
Built for Service
The Model 1934 was made at a time when military sidearms were expected to be rugged, simple, and dependable. At the time, the European school of thought was that handguns were more a badge of rank than a fighting tool, so the compact size and low-powered round were considered completely adequate for military use.
The 1934 is an all-steel blowback pistol with a 3.5-inch barrel and weighs 1.54 pounds. It uses the open slide that Beretta became famous for and that you still see in the 92 series pistols today. The 1934 has a blued finish and comes with black plastic grips. There were a few grip variations used over the years. A lanyard ring is also mounted on the bottom-left portion of the frame.
The magazine capacity is 7 rounds, and it uses a heel-mounted magazine release. Sights are fixed and tiny by today’s standards. The trigger is single action only and acceptable without being exceptional.
The rotating safety on the left side of the frame allows for cocked and locked carry, although I’m not sure if Beretta ever recommended that. It works fine, but you need to break your firing grip to engage or disengage it. You can also use the safety to hold the slide open manually. The short tang makes hammer bite a real thing if your grip rides too high, even with my medium-sized hands.
None of those characteristics surprised me. In fact, they’re part of the pistol’s character. This wasn’t designed to compete with today’s concealed carry handguns. It was designed nearly ninety years ago as a dependable military sidearm, and that’s exactly what it feels like. Even it is a little small by American standards.
On the Range
History is fascinating, but I didn’t buy this Beretta simply to admire it in the gun safe. I wanted to know what it was like to actually shoot. Over the course of my range sessions, I fired CCI Blazer FMJ and Federal Punch ammunition purchased from AIM Surplus, along with Remington jacketed hollow points that I already had on hand.
I suspected the Remington load would feed okay because of its rounded bullet profile. I wasn’t nearly as confident about the more aggressive Federal Punch ammunition.
As it turned out, the little Beretta wasn’t picky. It fed all three loads flawlessly without a single malfunction. That’s noteworthy considering the pistol was designed decades before modern defensive hollow points became common.
Accuracy proved to be about what I expected from a military pistol of this vintage. My pistol consistently grouped between 3½ and 4 inches at 15 yards, with groups opening to roughly pie plate size at 25 yards.
The Remington hollow points edged out the other two loads for accuracy, although not by a dramatic margin. It also prints consistently low and left. Some of that may be due to the heavy trigger which averaged a touch over 10 pounds on my Lyman trigger pull gauge.
Recoil was surprisingly soft thanks to the all steel construction and the guide rod below the barrel allowing for a lower bore access. Small autos aren’t always fun to shoot but the 1934 was generally pleasant. Once I adjusted my grip to minimize the hammer bite at least.
Reloads are sticky with the heel-mounted mag release. The 1934 locks open on an empty magazine, but the slide drops when you pull the mag out. You are working against the spring of the heel-mounted mag release when you’re both pulling an empty mag and inserting a fresh one. You certainly aren’t going to eject a magazine by accident with one of these, though. Rapid reloads were not something that European militaries of the time, or European police departments later, were too concerned about.
More Than a Defensive Pistol
Could someone still carry a Beretta Model 1934 for personal protection? Probably. Mine proved completely reliable with both ball ammunition and modern hollow points, and its practical accuracy is certainly adequate for the distances at which these kind of handguns are typically used. But I don’t think that’s why someone should buy one.
Modern defensive pistols offer better sights, higher capacity, and improved ergonomics They’re generally a lot more comfortable to shoot too. There’s no doubt that a modern .380 like the Ruger Security 380, Springfield Hellcat, or Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 2.0 are better tools for everyday carry. The Beretta offers something different though, the opportunity to own and experience a genuine piece of history.
Affordable, Shootable History
Instead of sitting in a museum, this pistol can still be taken to the range, loaded, fired, and appreciated. Just like generations of Italian soldiers and police officers have done. There’s a world of difference between simply owning a historic firearm and actually experiencing one. The Beretta Model 1934 allows you to do both. The price is reasonable enough that you shouldn’t be afraid to shoot it, as you might with a historic piece that costs thousands of dollars.
Beretta reportedly designed these pistols with a service life approaching one hundred years. Whether that’s entirely accurate or not, my 1948 example gives every indication of getting there. The lockup remains tight, the rifling is excellent, and after nearly eight decades it still functions with the same reliability its designers intended. With reasonable care, I see no reason this little pistol won’t still be around for my grandchildren to appreciate someday.
At only $239.99 from AIM Surplus, the Beretta Model 1934 is an affordable opportunity to preserve, shoot, and enjoy a genuine piece of firearms history. To me, that’s worth far more than simply looking at one in a museum display case.
It is difficult to appreciate the scope of World War 2. We modern folk simply have no frame of reference. It was death, tragedy, and destruction on a scale beyond our imagining.
Sixteen million Americans served. More than 400,000 died. Roughly one in every forty American troops who answered the call never came home. One in forty. That’s what it cost to ensure that our world would be free from Nazi death camps, Japanese genocides, and Aryan supermen.
Table of contents
Hidden Treasures In Words
Thanks to Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Stephen Ambrose, we captured many of those priceless stories before it was too late. Their inspiration drove folks across the country to pin Grandpa down and insist that he tell his stories from the war while he still could. I chased those tales myself at every opportunity. What I discovered was poignant beyond my capacity adequately to describe.
So many of those great old guys were reluctant to revisit that world. However, whenever I saw an old WW2 vet in the clinic I would gently ask. What I got in return for those innocent queries was simply amazing.
One old gentleman ran a local hardware store before he retired. If you saw him in church or walking down the street you wouldn’t give him a passing thought. He looked like everybody’s grandfather—bald and slightly stooped with a shuffling gait. However, back in 1944 this guy was an absolute beast.
The Humanity of Total War
My buddy flew B-17 Flying Fortresses in Europe. He did his twenty-five missions and rotated home. He once mentioned that he had designs on an exceptionally attractive young lady in town before the war. He explained that another boy in his class fancied her, too. The girl chose the other suitor. My buddy then said matter-of-factly, “That other guy became a pilot as well. He flew P-38 Lightnings in the Pacific. He died fighting the Japanese.”
There was no emotion to the statement. It was simply a fact. This kid he went to high school with was blown to pieces in the skies over some forgotten South Pacific island, and he was just gone. That was the world in which he lived.
I once asked this man to tell me about his most memorable mission. He said he was in a low formation over Italy when somebody screwed up. The upper bomb group dropped their ordnance, and one errant five hundred pounder struck his Fort just ahead of the cockpit. The bomb did not explode, but it tore the nose off of his airplane, taking his bombardier and nose gunner with it. These were two of his closest friends in the world, and they died horribly five feet in front of his face. He wrestled with the mangled airplane for two interminable hours before landing it safely back at base. He told me this story as though he was describing the weather. There was no bravado or pride. He was simply relating facts.
Connections of Words
I sat mesmerized with him and a dozen or more others, all of whom came to see me for medical care. In my mind’s eye I tried to visualize the scene—the sounds, the smells, and the fear. In each case I’m sure my efforts were woefully inadequate. Some emotions are so intense they just don’t translate well into words.
World War 2 was the first of humanity’s countless scraps to be thoroughly documented. All involved knew what they were doing would be studied, dissected, and potentially venerated for generations to come. Cameras were bulky and awkward by modern standards, but they were still available.
Personal Connection
My wife’s grandfather fought in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He dropped out of school in ninth grade to feed his family during the Depression, but he was a mechanical savant. He took a nice German camera off of a captured Wehrmacht officer and found undeveloped film in his Battalion S2 Intelligence section. He improvised a darkroom using an Army raincoat and a red lens flashlight and carefully cut the film by hand to fit his liberated camera. He scored a few chemicals and processed his own negatives the same way. After he died we found a shoebox full of little pictures he had taken during the war. They were all intriguing, but he had never been willing to explain the details. Regardless, these images offer some fascinating insights into what his life was really like during those long years of combat in Europe.
There are literally countless images to have come from WW2. Some were arcane or tedious. Others, like the raising of the flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, were quite literally iconic. Each one tells a story. This story that follows was particularly compelling.
The Plane
July 22, 1944, was a Friday. 1LT James Knarr and his gunner, SSG Charles Reichley, were up early to preflight their Douglas A-20G-25 Havoc medium bomber. Theirs was one of a dozen Havocs assigned to the 387th Bombardment Squadron of the 312th Bombardment Group. They were slated to attack a sprawling Japanese seaplane station and barge depot on the island of Kokas in the South Pacific. Their aircraft was loaded with 115 kg bombs optimized for attacking small ships in the harbor.
The Douglas A-20 Havoc was not as well-known as were the B-17 Flying Fortresses or B-24 Liberators. It even took a back seat to twin-engine medium bombers like the B-25 Mitchell and B-26 Marauder. However, the A-20 was a potent and effective ground attack platform.
First flown in January of 1939, the A-20 was designed from the outset as an attack plane. It was powered by a pair of 14-cylinder Pratt and Whitney R-2600-7 Twin Cyclone radial engines, each producing 1,700 horsepower. By war’s end some 7,478 airframes had rolled off the lines.
Technical Details
By 1944, the G-model A-20 was being used in the Pacific for low-level attacks against Japanese shipping. Under these conditions the bombardier and his vaunted Norden bomb sight were superfluous. As a result, these Havocs had their noses fared over and the bombardier position replaced with half a dozen Browning .50-caliber machineguns. The typical attack profile involved approaching a target at wavetop level and then skipping bombs into the sides of Japanese ships all the while sleeting the decks with massed machinegun fire. The Havoc was remarkably effective in this role.
Without the bombardier, the typical crew of the Havoc was just the single pilot and a top turret gunner. With the assistance of their crew chief, 1LT Knarr and SSG Reichley made their mount ready for the day’s mission. Everything about the plane was armed, fueled, and in order.
The Mission
The approach to the target was unremarkable. The weather was perfect, and visibility was unrestricted. The limitless blue of the South Seas skies formed a placid backdrop to the unfettered carnage that was soon to come.
CPT Jack Klein was flight lead. 2LT Melvin Kapson was piloting the second ship. 1LT Knarr’s Havoc, tail number 43-9432, was third. The Havocs delivered their bombs just as they had been trained to do, raining death and destruction down on the Japanese barges and crews held at anchor in the harbor. However, by the time the attack planes turned on their egress the Japanese defenders had found their wits. Before they had a chance to close their bomb bay doors, the Japanese antiaircraft guns were clawing up toward them.
The formation was tight by design. Flying close meant concentrating firepower and shock effect. This also got the attacking aircraft in and out quickly, minimizing their exposure to ground fire. However, it still wasn’t fast enough.
Tragedy
One burst of antiaircraft fire connected with 1LT Knarr’s starboard engine. Both big radials were firewalled during the attack. 1LT Knarr was coaxing every bit of power out of the plants and every scrap of speed out of the plane. Suddenly the number 2 engine sputtered and died streaming oil. The big 11-foot, 3-inch propeller briefly windmilled.
In such close quarters and at such low altitude, there was just no time. 1LT Knarr was unable to get the prop feathered before the big plane began to roll. The ten-ton medium bomber snapped to the right, its wingtip contacting the smooth azure waters of the bay. In a literal instant, what had previously been a state-of-the-art attack plane manned by a pair of American aircrewmen was transformed into 20,000 pounds of debris. And just like that, 1LT Knarr and SSG Reichley were dead, literally pulverized in the impact.
Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words
CPT Klein had been taking photos of the mission. His camera was remarkably advanced for the time and was capable of sequential frames. As luck would have it, his images captured the final seconds of 1LT Knarr’s airplane. The sequence became one of the most compelling of the war.
52,173 Americans died in aerial combat in WW2. Many fighter pilots like my friend’s high school classmate perished alone in the rarefied upper atmosphere. Others died as part of a crew with their friends by their sides to the last. The vast majority perished in anonymity, their sacrifice memorialized by nothing more than a heartfelt letter to loved ones from heartbroken friends or overwrought commanders. However, 1LT Knarr and SSG Reichley had their final moments immortalized. Even some eight decades later, those haunting images move me to my core.
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