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Category: All About Guns
Vintage bring-back firearms from World War II drive home the reality of the war better than anything else. Examples are available at a variety of price points.
Worlds Apart But Shrinking
We have a tough time comprehending the breadth of the Second World War today. During the course of the horrible conflict the world’s governments produced enough bullets to shoot everybody on the planet 40 times. We laid one landmine for every three humans. We built enough rifles to arm one-seventh of the world’s population. While the majority of those who actually served have passed on, many of their weapons remain to this day.
The Internet has revolutionized everything about our world. Previously folks with quirky hobbies might have thought themselves alone. Nowadays, however, a few mouse clicks can connect you with somebody on the other side of the world who shares your particular curious interests.
Fake animal noise competitions, conjuring art from magnetic VCR tape, extreme ironing wherein the participant irons clothes in exotic settings, and Hikaru Dorodango (compulsive dirt polishing) are all real things more than a couple of folks apparently do.
As it relates to collectible firearms, sites like gunbroker.com and gunsamerica.com are like nationwide gun shows running 24/7. The treasures they offer are like little history batteries.
A beater Arisaka Type 99 rifle can still be had for a couple hundred bucks. Such an artifact
will lend insight into the desperation of Japan at the end of WWII.
Arisaka Type 99 Rifles
Tests conducted by the NRA after the war showed the Arisaka action was stronger than any other bolt-action rifle fielded by a major combatant. Early Type 99 rifles were things of beauty, sporting such niceties as folding monopods, anti-aircraft sights and checkered safety knobs. Late-war last-ditch guns were horribly bodged-together affairs with wooden buttplates held in place by nails. The catalyst driving this sordid transformation was countless waves of B29 bombers.
Beater guns with ground-off mums can still be found for a couple hundred bucks. A Type 2 Paratrooper takedown version with matching numbers will set you back as much as a used car. However, a guy of modest means can still get into a genuine Japanese-surplus combat rifle for beans if he is patient and stalks his prey.
Sometimes you can happen upon a true gem. This high-mileage Type 99 sports a pair of .30-caliber bullet scars.
The Civilian Marksmanship Program
The CMP is a throwback to a previous era. Back when America was indeed a nation of riflemen, the government began this program to sell military surplus Infantry rifles and ammunition directly to the public. Back in the 1980s a really nice M1 Garand cost $165 through the CMP.
Like everything the government does, there is an onerous paperwork requirement. The details are available online. As I was pulling this article together much of the CMP inventory was depleted but they still had rifles starting at around $650. CMP guns do not have import marks and just drip with personality. Mine is fairly high mileage but sports an armorer’s repair to the upper handguard giving it special character. It also shoots like a dream.
If your checkbook can bear it, vintage subguns like this 1940-production Steyr MP40
are still available. This particular example was an online find years ago.
The Big Leagues
If you have really deep pockets there are yet available some of the most tantalizing WWII-era German machineguns. I acquired my own modest collection over a long period of time using the proceeds from my writing gig. I am blessed with a day job which feeds my family so I can fold my writing cash into guns.
The MP40 submachine gun is a personal favorite. Long, front-heavy, and fairly ungainly, this iconic German subgun nonetheless cycles at a sedate 500 rpm and is eminently controllable. I got mine years ago when it was just plain expensive. Now they are ludicrously thus. However, it’s not like they’re making any more. Classic machineguns are reliably good investments.
Not unlike a supermodel, my MG34 belt-fed machinegun is both beautiful and finicky. The MG34 was the world’s first true General Purpose Machinegun and the workmanship and complexity of the design must be seen to be appreciated. A recoil-operated gun wherein the fire selector is built into the trigger, the MG34 is a complicated beast indeed.
Spare parts and accessories are still available, as is a .308 conversion kit. Serious collectors can drop a fortune on period accessories for classic guns and the MG34 is worse than most in this regard. However, it all melts away when you settle in behind the monster and launch 50 of those finger-sized rounds downrange at 900 rpm.
Denouement
It has been said “The Germans fought for Hitler, the Japanese fought for the emperor, the British fought for their king, and the Americans fought for souvenirs.” Once the new wore off, many of these old bring-back guns were sold off to pay for diapers and baby formula. Lugers, Walthers, 1911s, Nambus, Enfields, Nagants, Thompsons and Stens are all still floating around out there waiting to be collected and revered.
Be patient, save your pennies, and strike when the opportunity arises. Quite literally anything is available, at a price.
The man lived on his rural farm on the outskirts of his tiny Mississippi town. His yard was meticulously maintained, and Old Glory fluttered quietly in the breeze from an imposing flagpole set in concrete. The flag didn’t stay out overnight…ever. It had been raised and lowered every day on this pole for more than half a century.
He was the very image of a good Christian man of character. He had served as a deacon in his church and teased a modest living out of the farmland that surrounded his modest three-bedroom home. He had raised his kids well and selflessly helped his neighbors. Now well into his eighties, he had agreed to spend an afternoon with me and my young son.
The man was soft-spoken as we nursed our iced tea and soaked up every word. He looked off into nothing as his mind wandered back to very different times. Though we sat in peace, security, and comfort, his memory took him somewhere else.
This unassuming man described being a 19-year-old Infantryman heading ashore in a Higgins boat on June 6, 1944. His destination was Omaha beach. It was about 1400 in the afternoon.
He charged terrified down the open ramp into the very bowels of hell. Wrecked equipment and shredded bodies littered the sand, surf, and shale. The smell of cordite, dirty smoke, ruptured bowels, and death pervaded everything. German mortar and artillery fire still slammed into the beach as well as the advances inland.
A Steep Learning Curve
The man survived the Longest Day to advance with the Allied vanguard. A product of the Mississippi backwoods and a survivor of the Great Depression, this tough teenager found that he had a knack for soldiering. When his company needed intelligence he and a fellow Southern redneck boy would slip off into the night looking for trouble. Sometimes they came back with a prisoner. Sometimes not. The man told me he got comfortable with a knife in the dark.
By late August the man and his buddies had taken the full measure of the enemy. The hard fighting through the bocage hedgerows had brought him face to face with the Nazi superman. He found the German Wehrmacht to be a hardened professional fighting force.
He called the Waffen SS “those Gestapo men.” Decades later his hatred for these fanatical racist lunatics modulated the timbre of his conversation. He told me unapologetically, “We didn’t take many of those Gestapo men prisoner.”
He explained that the SS frequently left a couple of snipers behind when the Germans finally abandoned a position of strategic importance. The carnage they inflicted made little difference in the grand scheme. They just dealt death whenever they could.
Kill or Be Killed
My buddy’s unit was tasked to seize Orly airport outside Paris. The Luftwaffe had used Orly as a fighter and bomber base throughout the occupation of France, and the Allied air forces had pounded it into rubble as a result. In August of 1944, however, the wrecked aerodrome was deceptively quiet.
The company commander called a tactical halt. My friend and his battle buddy crept around the periphery of the wrecked airport before ascending one of the taller structures for a proper vantage. Taking cover such that they could just peer over the edge of the roof they finally saw the two German snipers. Tucked into a pile of debris on the roof of a nearby structure the two SS sharpshooters were well-camouflaged and fixated on the approaches to the aerodrome. The two Germans had no idea that they had only moments to live.
Speaking in hushed whispers my buddy and his comrade estimated the range to their targets and adjusted the rear sights on their heavy M1 rifles to compensate. My friend called the man on the left and his counterpart oriented on the one on the right. On the soft count of three, both men squeezed their triggers.
Both rifles rolled back in recoil as their 152-grain M2 ball rounds covered the distance to the pair of German snipers at 2,800 feet per second. Both of the American grunts had grown up with guns, and they knew how to shoot. Each GI center-punched the coal-scuttle helmet of his respective SS target, killing them both instantly.
The Guns
In 1936 the United States military was woefully behind those of most other major powers. The Great Depression had ravaged the American economy, and a lack of attention to military readiness had taken a horrible toll on such stuff as tanks and combat aircraft. The gleaming exception was the M1 rifle. American troops entered WW2 with what General George Patton described as, “the finest battle implement ever devised.”
Designed by a Canadian-American inventor named John Cantius Garand (properly pronounced, I’m reliably told, so as to rhyme with “errand.”), the M1 was a .30-caliber, gas-operated, 8-shot, clip-fed, semiautomatic rifle. The weapon weighed 9.5 pounds and was 43.6 inches long. By the time the M1 reached US Army troops in 1937, production at Springfield Armory was ten rifles per day. Two years later output languished at 100 per day. By the end of the weapon’s massive production run, however, some 5.4 million had been made by four major manufacturers.
By modern standards, the M1 was heavy, cumbersome, and grossly overpowered. However, at the outset of the Second World War, the M1 was a wonder weapon. Ammunition was supplied in spring steel 8-round en-bloc clips that were pressed in place from above with the bolt locked to the rear.
En bloc simply means that the ammunition clip became part of the weapon’s action during firing. When loading the rifle, the operator pressed the clip down from above and snatched his thumb clear as the bolt automatically flew home. The clip was ejected out of the top of the action after the last round fired.
An M1 rifle cost Uncle Sam about $85 during the war. That’s about $1260 today. The M1 was rugged, accurate, and powerful. I have never spoken with a combat veteran who carried one who had anything but unvarnished praise for the piece.
The Rest of the Story
There was a still a great deal of fighting left to be done after my friend and his comrades cleared Orly airport. There is no telling how many lives these two young warriors saved just in this one exchange. However, the worst was yet to come.
The Ardennes Offensive has become known as the Battle of the Bulge from the vantage of comfortable hindsight. My buddy said at the time it was pure unfiltered chaos. German Army Group B led by Joachim Peiper and the 1st SS Panzer Division slashed deep into Allied territory, shredding American defenses and scattering combat units randomly among the detritus. The US response devolved into tiny packets of troops fighting for their lives. My pal found himself leading a handful of bedraggled survivors deep behind the German spearheads.
Otto Skorzeny’s Operation Greif involved the insertion of English-speaking Germans in American uniforms to sow confusion in Allied rear areas. The effect that had on the Allied defense was outsized beyond their pure numbers. Suddenly nobody trusted anybody they didn’t already know well, and jumpy sentries shot first and asked questions later.
After a protracted escape and evasion, my buddy’s motley band finally made it back to friendly lines exhausted and spent. The first sentry they encountered covered them with a BAR and demanded to know who won the World Series in a particular year. My buddy not so gently explained that he had no idea. He expounded that while the Yankees were comfortably enjoying their baseball he was out hunting opossums in the Mississippi swamps to keep his family from starving. The sentry let them pass.
My buddy rendered his professional opinion on all of the major US small arms. He explained that there was always only one M1. The M1 Carbine was simply the Carbine, and the M1A1 Thompson was always the Thompson. Nobody used the term Garand. The standard US Infantry rifle was always just called the M1.
He said for an entire year some part of his skin was touching that rifle. Awake, asleep, shaving, eating, or defecating, that weapon was always at arm’s reach. He said that the Carbine was an effective and handy combat tool, but that it did frequently require several shots to take a German soldier out of the fight. By contrast, he said that so long as you caught him center of mass, the M1 would put an enemy soldier down instantly every single time.
We went back to the man’s barn neatly populated with tractor components and the sundry detritus of a working farm. The open building smelled like motor oil, horse manure, and dirt. Hanging obscurely in the corner was a dusty German helmet, the faded SS runes still visible. There was a .30-caliber hole running cleanly in and out both sides. How do we make such men as these?
The patient resting quietly on the operating table before “surgery.” The Star PD was a trendsetter that is largely forgotten by today’s shooters, but it offers compact size and light weight in a major-caliber pistol.
Long before every firearms manufacturer under the sun offered a subcompact, polymer-framed or lightweight aluminum 1911-style pistol, there was a lone pioneer hailing from the Basque region of Spain.
Established in the gunmaking hub of Eibar, Star Bonifacio Echeverria, S.A. — known to most simply as Star — had a centuries-old regional heritage of ironworking and firearms. By the mid-20th century, Star had built a global reputation for producing robust, reliable and uniquely engineered semi-automatic pistols. While they drew clear ergonomic inspiration from John Browning’s legendary 1911 pistol, Star’s designs carved out their own distinct mechanical path, omitting the grip safety and simplifying the internal lockwork.
In 1975, Star caught lightning in a bottle with the introduction of the Model PD.
The final result of Brent and Roy’s efforts: from ugly duckling to modern two-tone belle of the ball!
Something New
Brainchild of firearms writer, designer and distributor Pete Dickey (hence the “PD” moniker, contrary to the popular rumor that it stood for “Police Department”), the gun was a minor miracle of mid-seventies engineering. By mating a shortened steel slide with a slim, featherweight aluminum alloy frame, Star created a six-plus-one-capacity .45 ACP that tips the scales at a mere 25 ounces. In an era when a defensive .45 meant packing a full-sized, all-steel Government Model or a slightly truncated Commander, the Star PD was a revelation. It single-handedly kicked off the modern trend toward micro-.45 carry guns.
However, light weight extracts a toll in physics. The great Colonel Jeff Cooper famously summed up the compact Spaniard with a classic piece of Cooper-esque prose, labeling the Star PD a gun to be “carried much, shot little.”
The Colonel wasn’t wrong. While very comfortable on the hip, shooting the lightweight PD can be downright painful even with modest target loads.
To keep the slide from battering the alloy frame to pieces, Star incorporated an internal plastic recoil buffer, which required replacing every thousand rounds or so. Cooper also suggested defensive-minded folks buy two: one to carry, and one to subject to the abuse of the practice range.
My Turn
Which brings us to my personal Star PD. It didn’t look like a classic piece of firearms history — it looked like a survivor of a pawn shop riot.
It was a beater, not exactly hopeless but not something to set the gun enthusiasts’ hearts aflutter. The slide was marred by rust pitting where it rested against decades of sweaty bodies, and it was witness to the generalized neglect that breaks a gun guy’s heart. Yet, underneath the shortcomings, the mechanical bones were solid. I decided it was time to transition this tired old Spaniard from a semi-neglected relic into a refined, reliable piece of working art.
The dreaded plunger, under which is a spring that is quite capable of launching it into low Earth orbit. Brent has a strong suspicion that the spring wasn’t OEM as it was strong enough to be used as the primary recoil spring!
Naturally, the project began with a lesson in humility. While first detail-stripping the slide to find the cause of a sticky thumb safety, I bypassed a fundamental rule of gunsmithing: when removing a thumb safety, keep your finger firmly over the plunger hole until the tension is safely captured.
If you don’t, the spring and plunger can immediately launch themselves into low Earth orbit, leaving you staring blankly at an empty workbench. Depending on the availability of spare parts, you might also question your life choices.
Once the rogue spring and plunger were successfully replaced by an order to Numrich Gun Parts — an inch-by-inch search of my office proved entirely fruitless — I packed up the pitted frame, the slide and the remaining shreds of my dignity for a visit to Roy Huntington’s shop. It was time to see if a little teamwork, some elbow grease and workshop alchemy could turn this neglected piece of Spanish iron into a bona fide prize.
The Star PD is a John Browning-pattern design but omits the grip safety. This made the gun lighter and (likely) less expensive to manufacture.
Beater to Basque Beauty
Once inside Roy’s shop, the very first order of business was defensive positioning. Having already contributed one plunger to the local ecosystem, Roy field-stripped the gun with extreme prejudice, immediately capturing every single component inside a secure plastic box. No rogue parts were escaping into the rafters this time.
With the Star down to its bare bones, we split the labor. Roy focused his efforts on slicking up the internal action, while I went to work on the exterior cosmetic triage. Armed with a few strips of emery cloth and copious oil, I began tackling the rust spots.
The pistol suffered from some fairly deep pitting on the slide, but we made a conscious decision not to try to completely eradicate every single crater. Taking the metal down far enough to erase the pits would have compromised the slide’s dimensions. Fortunately, a good finish has a way of masking minor character flaws.
Next, I fired up the bead blaster. I used it to strip the remaining factory anodizing cleanly off the aluminum frame, while simultaneously blowing away the old, dead bluing from the steel slide and small controls like the slide stop, magazine release and thumb safety.
The blue anodizing on the pistol frame melted away under bead blasting. The bare aluminum looks nice and also allows for easier inspection for frame cracking,
something Star PDs were noted for in earlier runs.
The high-speed beads worked surprisingly well on the frame. Aluminum anodizing can be anything from relatively soft to tougher than diamond, but the Star version came away cleanly and quickly. We decided to leave the raw aluminum frame entirely “in the white.” This gave the pistol a striking, modern two-tone effect that beautifully contrasted with what we had planned for the top end.
For the steel components — the slide, slide stop, magazine release, rear sight, barrel bushing, grip screws and safety — we turned to a bottle of Brownells Oxpho-Blue Creme formula.
To call this stuff magical is an understatement. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear the deep, rich blue-black finish came out of a professional hot-dip bluing tank. After four hand-rubbed coats and an oil wipe, the gun literally looked close to “factory.”
The Brownell’s Oxpho-Blue Creme formula looked great on the steel parts, especially the rear sight.
The sight was the worst-looking part of the gun and looked like it had been painted rather than blued.
After the Oxpho-Blue, it now matches the slide and other steel parts.
The deep blue-black finish of the Oxpho-Blue Creme helped hide the deeper rust pits that emery cloth couldn’t remove.
The photo makes it look worse than it appears in person. For a “beater” project gun, the result was nothing short of miraculous!
Roy noted that after trying everything on the market, the durability of the Oxpho-Blue Creme is nearly on par with that of a traditional hot bath.
For a project gun like this, it serves admirably without the hassle of shipping parts away. Let’s be honest: sending a heavily pitted Star PD out for a professional, high-end hot bluing job would be like giving a 1990 Honda Accord a hand-rubbed, twenty-coat custom paint job. You could do it, but is it really necessary? I think not.
There is, however, one minor humorous side effect to this chemical wizardry. When I later pulled the finished gun out of its sealed polymer carrying case, the aroma was unmistakable. It smelled much like a $6.99 drugstore “box perm.” Beauty always has a strong scent …
Someone had previously tried to smooth the feed ramp but took too much off the frame, leaving a lip between the frame and barrel that could cause nose-dive malfunctions. Roy smoothed it up “good enough” to work with all but the most-hollow of hollowpoints.
While I was finishing the finish, Roy addressed a mechanical issue on the feed ramp. A previous owner had clearly “worked on” the gun, smoothing the frame portion of the ramp so aggressively that they accidentally created a small lip right where the frame meets the barrel ramp.
This lip is a prime culprit for causing catastrophic nose-dive jams, though I couldn’t remember having too many malfunctions of any kind the last time I spent a day with the Star on the range. Roy carefully went to work with his files and stones, smoothing out the transition to ensure flawless, modern functionality.
The original grip panels were unfinished walnut. A quick application of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil
sealed them against grease and oil and made them look a bit dressier.
To round out the project, we took the original, somewhat drab unfinished walnut slab grip panels and gave them a fresh hit of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil. The Tru-Oil seals the raw wood, making it highly resistant to hand sweat, gun solvents, and everyday stains — plus it instantly brings out a gorgeous, rich grain that completely changes the gun’s personality.
A Classy Commuter
When we finally reassembled the Star, we stepped back to admire our handiwork.
Before we started, this was just another mundane, beat-up, 1911-pattern pistol —the exact kind of forgotten hardware you’d gloss over at a weekend gun show unless the price tag was absurdly cheap.
But with a little collaborative elbow grease, we (Roy, mostly) transformed it into a remarkably classy, eye-catching and easy-to-carry piece. Frankly, I was surprised by how easily the entire project came together, taking only one afternoon in Huntington’s shop. Asked for a comment for this story, Roy noted, “With a few simple tools and supplies (and the loan of a blasting cabinet), even Brent can do this!”
Indeed.
Close-up, you can see a couple of notable things: first, the differential hardening around the slide stop cut,
and second, the rough machining thereabout. The Star PD, like many older import guns, showed a remarkable
range of machine work quality.
Granted, our cosmetic alchemy didn’t alter the laws of physics; the PD is still just as punishing to shoot as ever. But as a packing gun? It would be tough to beat.
So, if you happen to stumble across an unloved Star PD for around $400, don’t walk away. Grab it, because it’s an interesting piece of CCW history and makes an absolute premier blank canvas for a fun, low-budget custom project. When you’re done, you’ll possess a decent, lightweight, hard-hitting carry pistol with a lot more soul than today’s standard plastic fantastic options.
Just keep your thumb over that darn plunger spring!