[George]

Dear Friends:

Can anyone identify what type of shoulder this is. I have gone over the holster and can not find any markings. The leather in extremely soft. It would appear to be for a P38 as my 1943 Byf fits perfectly.

The holster has very light wear marking where the lanyard on a P38 of the left grip panel made a mark on the holster. Also there are wear marks when the rear corner of the frame & hammer have marked the holster. So my guess its for a P38, just wondering is pre or post war.

Any info would be much appreciate.

Regards,

George


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[runner]

I am by no means a holster expert, but I have two holsters very similar to yours and in researching have found the following.
ALthough there is some limited photo evidence of Military use of shoulder holsters by the Germans in WWll, the lack of standardization in type, and the lack of any historical record of official goverment or military purcurement indicate that they were privately purchased items. The limited pictorial evidence of war time use, and the relative abundance of these holsters, gives rise to the speculation that most are of post war manufacture with occupation GIs being the primary market. I tend to favor that theory, one of my holsters has an obvious resemblence to the US WWll shoulder holster for the 1911 and even uses some hardware that was probably robbed from one of these holsters. The 1911 shoulder holster would have been a style well known to US troops and it would be easy for an occupation soldier having acquired a P-38, to take it to a local saddle or leather shop, perhaps with a US holster as a pattern, and said, "I will give you two packs of cigarettes if you make me a holster like this for my P-38". I started into the collecting hobby with K98 rifles. There are lots of good quality sporters floating around that were made in Germany in the immeadiate post war era from salvaged military parts for barter to the occupation army. To rifle collectors these are commonly refered to as "cigarette Mausers". I have one myself made from a prewar Polish receiver, mated to a WWll German military barrel turned down to sporter contour, a custom stock, fitted with a claw mount scope of WWl vintage, recycling at its best!