[Mark]

This pistol is from the first production at Mauser, I acquired it at the recent Rock Island auction. There were many problems with rejected P38's, from Mauser, in the very begining. Only 700 guns were accepted into service by the military in December of 1942. The problem was so severe that the 15,000 leftover bfy 42 coded slides had to be assembled onto accepted pistols in 1943. It is not known the serial numbers of the accepted guns in 1942 however only the first several hundred guns will have any small parts marked e/135. The first 25 guns will have all the small parts marked e/135.

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[Mauper]

Mark---Would it be correct to say the very first pistols made with the E/135 on the small parts were also marked BYF43? Buxton states in his book that all known BYF42 pistols were in the '43 serial range.

 

[Mark]

Mauper,

Buxton states that 700 pistols were accepted into military service in December of 1942, there was a very high rejection percentage at that time. We do not know which guns were accepted in 1942, Buxton speculates that they might not have even had serial numbers on them! I find this hard to believe. The first thousand or so of these guns have some small parts marked e/135, the first 25 had all the small parts marked e/135.

There is a number of byf 43 slides mixed in with the byf 42 serial number range, I would think these were "fixes" for the rejected guns. Most of the 15,000 or so byf 42 marked guns were assembled in 1943.

Mark

 

[Mark]

Gentlemen,

I stand corrected! Orv has informed me that not all of the first 25 guns had e/135 on the small parts. According to his excellent records, only 3 of the guns reported in that range have e/135 on the small parts. Number 15 does not!

Mark

 

[Jan C Still]

Mark
Excellent photographs and presentation of a rare Mauser P38.
Jan

 

[Joop van de Kant]

Mark,

You are right. My byf 42 # 2104 has only e/135 on the main parts, plus trigger bar and magazine. But then it has something special, because the Heeresamt proof (eagle/swastika) is missing on the slide. I posted pics of that (and the rough inside tooling of the slide) on the P38 forum.
Nice P38 you have, and very rare!