Category: All About Guns
The German military did not actually adopt the Mauser C96 “broom handle” before World War One. It was the first really successful semiauto pistol, but the German military chose the Luger instead, in 1908. However, as World War One continued, the German military realized it was going to be seriously short of handguns. The P08 Luger was a slow and expensive gun to produce, and so Germany went looking for alternatives. They would adopt a variety of .32 ACP caliber simple blowback pistols as substitute standards, but also took a new look at the C96. While the design was quite complex, Mauser still had all the tooling set up to produce them, and deliveries could begin relatively quickly.
In July 1917 the German military placed a contract for 200,000 C96 pistols, specifying that they be chambered for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge, instead of the 7.63mm Mauser cartridge the gun was originally designed for. In order to prevent ammunition mixups (as many existing 7.63mm Mausers had been brought into service as well) the new guns were to have large “9” numerals engraved in their grip and painted red – hence the colloquial name of the guns as “Red Nines”. The first deliveries were made in January of 1918, and would continue until the end of the war. Mauser was unable to completely fill the contract, and only about 95,000 were delivered by the end of the war, although production did continue post-war. These pistols are numbered in a new series starting at “1”, unrelated to the serial numbers of commercial Mauser pistols. Some, but not all, have a Prussian eagle marking on the front of the magazine. Total production after the war continued into the low 140,000 range.
The guns were all shipped with wooden holster/stock units and leather rigs to hold the pistol, holster, spare magazine spring and floor plate, and cleaning rod. The stocks were numbered to match the guns, and do not have the strap staple that was used on other commercial C96 stocks.
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WTF is this?
THE PISTOLA CON CARICATO: 18-SHOT REVOLVER, 3 SHOTS AT A TIME
The early 20th century saw a lot of experimentation in the firearms department after the adoption of smokeless powder completely redefined the cartridge and the guns that fired them. In a time when armories raced to develop reliable and dependable automatic weapons one Italian manufacturer held out with a tried-and-true design. The revolver. But this revolver isn’t like anything else you’ve probably seen.
The Pistola Con Caricato (upwards-loading pistol) is that revolver. Complete with three barrels and 18 chambers, for all its appeal it is somewhat of a mystery gun. Chambered in .25 ACP we know it had to have been made during the 20th century, as the cartridge wasn’t developed until 1905. We also don’t know if it is double-action, although that technology had certainly cemented itself by that time.
We do know that the gun had five operating modes. It has a selector that allows the shooter to fire from the first, second, or third chamber only as well as fire all three chambers at once. People can go on at length about the .25 ACP and its stopping power, but three at once is nothing to laugh at. And the selector also acted as a safety, being able to disable all three firing pins.
Another impressive feature of the Pistola Con Caricato was that it loaded from two-piece moon clips. Or at least, the Pistola Con Caricato equivalent. (The first true moon clip was developed for the M1917 revolver in 1917.) The Pistola Con Caricato sandwiches its rounds between a holding plate and a short segment of cylinder. The gun must have been a quick loader with 18 rounds that just drop in and it’s top-break design.
While .25 ACP is, generally speaking now, a pocket pistol cartridge, this revolver would be hard to tuck away, even with a good holster. It would have been a fascinating service piece if it had ever taken off. Clearly, it didn’t. You can see more photos on the Horst Held Antiques website or the Interesting Firearms section of (we’re not joking) Vince’s Worthwhile Website.
We have to think something similar could be made today, and maybe even in .380 ACP, so long as it managed to not fire more than one bullet per pull of the trigger (the ATF was invented sometime after 1905 as well). Heizer Arms, what’s your next project?
Of course you could not pay me enough to go to South Africa today. What with all the problems that they are having now. Which is a pity as I always wanted to test myself against a Cape Buffalo. But I guess that’s the way God acts. Grumpy
