Tag Archives: mauser .32

Mauser’s last pistol: The sophisticated yet simple HSc

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You may know Mauser’s excellent and enduring bolt-action rifles (or at least their properties which have been copied worldwide since the 1880s), but their pistols are less known. Further, their elegant “Hahn Selbstspanner Pistole,” or HSc, is a working piece of art.

Why was it made?

In the mid-1930s Mauser, long the go-to rifle maker in the world, didn’t have much to offer in the handgun category. Sure, at the turn of the Century their Broomhandle C96 and Luger P08 guns were seen as innovative and their M1910/14/34 pocket pistols were nice, but all of the above were increasingly dated and surpassed by more modern guns such as competitor Walther’s excellent PP/PPK line as well as their looming MP/AP pistol which became the vaunted P-38 (although Mauser ironically made some 323,000 P-38s under contract in WWII).

Facing block obsolescence, especially in the realm of sidearms for issue to police and military officers, Mauser hitched its handgun hopes to the new HSc.

hsc via imgur

Read more in my column at Firearms Talk

The “other” Mauser handguns: the Model 1910 and 1914 pocket pistols

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The Mauser brothers and their company, the famous Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken A.G. (DWM) concern, was perhaps the world’s premier bolt-action rifle makers for decades and armed the military of their own country and dozens of others with their rifles. They also made millions of pistols, the best know of these being the Luger series and the C96 “Broomhandle” Mauser. Then there was the much smaller and often forgotten “other” pistols.

Why were they made?

DWM had come out strong in the full-sized military pistol market by 1908, with their 7.63x25mm, 7.62x21mm (.30 caliber Luger) and 9mm C96 and P08 offerings. These guns were even sold with extended magazines, extra length barrels, and buttstocks, which in effect could turn them into carbines for cavalry and artillery use. However, they were lacking a smaller pocket and vest style gun that could be carried by gentlemen who desired such additional protection of their person and by staff officers who likely only needed a pistol as a badge of honor– not for a firefight.

That’s where the Mauser M1910/14/34 pistols came in.

1914 mauser poster

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk