Tag Archives: walther pp

Paging Mr. Bond: The PPK in .32 is Back (and it finally works)

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Walther has reached into the vault to bring back one of its most classic designs, now refined and ready for a new century. Like a spy in from the Cold, the PPK in .32 ACP has returned unexpectedly, and we have the debrief.

The background of the gun is well established. In a nutshell, Fritz Walter, the heir to the famed Carl Walther rifle works, moved in the early 1900s to expand the company into handguns with a line of simple blowback pocket pistols to compete with models like the Colt Vest Pocket and Pieper Bayard. Moving to more advanced designs using a workable single-action/double-action trigger system by the 1920s, the Polizei Pistole, or PP series, soon became a smash hit, despite it being twice as much as the company’s earlier models.

While not the first DA/SA handgun on the market, the PP was much more successful, and soon an abbreviated version pitched as a detective’s gun, the Polizei Pistole Kriminal, hit the catalog in 1930. With a 3.25-inch barrel and offerings in not only .32 ACP (the original PP’s bread and butter) but also spicier .380 ACP, which was then and still is seen as big medicine for European LE types, the sleek, almost Art Deco, PPK soon filled holsters and desk drawers.

The Walther PP/PPK has some serious history to it. (All Photos: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

A huge driver for the gun came from pop culture. While the Walther PP series appeared on screen in films as early as 1938, it was the James Bond film franchise that kicked the pistol into the stratosphere. Sean Connery’s Agent 007 was first issued a Walther in 1962’s “Dr. No” to replace his favored .25 ACP Beretta.

It would continue as his standard through his six-film run and go on to be picked up off and on by successive generations of Bonds.

The pistol is iconic, and in many cases can be a work of art, as shown here at the Walther factory in Ulm, Germany.

By 2013, with the market demand for the .32 waning in favor of the .380, Walther put the models chambered in the smaller caliber to bed.

Now, with improvements in bullet and propellant design leading to the resurgence of 9mm over .40 caliber, and .380 seen as the new 9mm, and .32 seen as the new .380, the stubby little round is much more popular these days.

So, it should be no surprise that Walther is bringing the “old” caliber back for both the PPK and the PPK/S, in stainless and black variants. We have been testing one for the past couple of months.

More in my column at Guns.com.

New Walther 6-Pack

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Walther this week is bringing back some vaunted iconic pistol models with a modern twist as well as debuting several new models.

The announcement comes as part of the company’s TEQ (Trigger, Ergonomics, and Quality) Fest, a national event celebrating the brand’s “commitment to performance and engaging customers across the country.” ​The event will highlight a half dozen new handgun models.

The new guns include the compensated PDP PRO-X Parker Mountain Machine; the PDP F-Series PRO which includes an aluminum magwell and Dynamic Performance Trigger; a return of the original Police Pistol (PP) in both .380 and .32 ACP; the very Bond-like PPK/S SD in .32 ACP, which will be the first in the PPK family to ship with factory threaded barrels; the PDP PRO-E, and the WMP SD, which is the only factory threaded-barrel semi-auto .22 Magnum handgun on the market.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Q Approved: The 7.65 PPK Returns

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When the Walther PPK was introduced in 1931, billed as a smaller version of the company’s PP series meant for use by plain-clothed detectives (the PPK stands for Polizei Pistole Kriminal), it was in chambered in 7.65x17mm Browning Short, which we know over here on this side of the Atlantic as John Browning’s .32 ACP.
This was soon augmented with variants offered in .380 ACP and, by 2013, Walther discontinued the .32 version of both the PPK and PPK/S.

Some 31 years after the PPK was introduced, MI6 armorer Major Boothroyd, or Q, would famously issue CDR James Bond, RN, one in lieu of his .25 ACP Beretta, describing it as: “Walther PPK. 7.65mm with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window.”

Now, with improvements in bullet and propellant design leading to the resurgence of 9mm over .40 caliber, and .380 seen as the new 9mm, and .32 seen as the new .380, the stubby little round is much more popular these days.
And so, it should be no surprise that Walther is bringing the “old” caliber back for both the PPK and the PPK/S, in both stainless and black variants. All models have the classic Walther styling coupled with a hammer drop decocking safety, fixed sights, and a wave cut atop the slide to reduce glare.

The standard PPK, which is shorter at a pocketable 3.8 inches high, has a 7+1 shot capacity while the taller (4.3 inches high) PPK/S has an 8+1 capacity. All models share the same 3.3-inch barrel length and 6.1-inch overall length.

The Walther that isn’t a Walther while at the same time it was more Walther than others

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I love Walther PP, PPK, and PPK/s models and have several. For example, I give you my favorite circa 1974 PPK/s with period Zebrawood grips by Malibu’s Jean St. Henri.

However, despite the Ulm, West Germany rollmarks, the gun above was made in France by Manurhin. Whomp, whomp.

With that being said, check out this gun from mid-1950s East Germany:

The above is a Zella-Mehlis P1001-0, with “fake” ac-code stamps. It was essentially a Walther PP that was made by Germans in Germany on Walther’s old machinery and often included left-over WWII-era parts.

But it’s not a Walther…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Is that a 9mm in your pocket? 1986 edition

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While there is a number of very handy and downright pocketable little 9mm pistols today, back in the mid-1980s, Detonics was the main name in the game.

Super compact semi-auto pistols at the time were far from a radical concept, as guns like the assorted Browning Baby and Colt Vest Pocket had been on the market since the 1900s. However, they were more on the pipsqueak level, chambered in .25 ACP. Larger format pistols like the Walther PP/PPK brought .32 ACP and .380 ACP to the table, but if you wanted something with a bit more ballistic performance, you had to cash in your savings bonds and go for a Semmerling or an ASP, both of which were in extremely limited, almost underground, production.

Enter the Detonics Pocket 9.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Circa 1974 Walther PPK/s, You Say?

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Drink in this PPK/S that was brought into the country by Interarms while Jerry Ford was in office. A Manurhin-produced gun with Walther of West Germany rollmarks and the antler/stag stamp of the Ulm proof house, it is marked “9mm kurz,” which of course is .380ACP over here.

For reference, the blade is a German Puma Medici swing guard from the same era. I’m a sucker for pairing guns and knives. 

Today, tested with a good defense load and a modern holster, this gun could still clock in for EDC as needed.

One thing for sure, when visiting the range, the PPK continues to turn heads and sparks interest. Although it has very small sights, they are workable, and the gun is almost surprisingly accurate– surely due to its fixed barrel design.

Guns like these are not only collectible, shootable, and useable, but are a great device for bringing new people into the shooting community. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “I always wanted to shoot one of those,” when the old Walther comes out of the safe for a breath of fresh air.

Visiting with Boothroyd

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As I’ve covered in the past, Sean Connery’s on-screen main piece while holding down the Bond gig across seven installments was a Walther PP/PPK.

One of the most famous of these was the “origin gun” used in 1962’s Dr. No, where M, assisted by Major Boothroyd (in a nod by Fleming to a real British firearms guru), pulls Bond’s pipsqueak Beretta 418 in .25AC (“nice and light, for a lad’s handbag”) for the much more powerful .32ACP Walther (insert modern ballistic snobs having a heart attack right about here).

Of course, the movie kinda screwed it up and used a Beretta M1934 in 9mm Corto and a Walther in .380ACP to recreate the scene from the novel, but still…

Said pistola, SN19174A as confirmed by Bapty prop house– who provided weaponry for every Bond film from Dr. No through To Die Another Day— is up for auction at Julien’s next month.

The bid is already up to $37K.

The briefly rebooted Walther Taschen Pistole

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Walther, originally located in Zella-Mehlis, Germany, was founded in 1886– back when Kaiser Willy was on the throne. After spending the first quarter-century of their existence crafting highly accurate schuetzen competition rifles, Fritz Walther returned to the company from an apprenticeship at DWM, home of the Luger pistol, and, seeing the industry was rapidly moving to produce then-novel semi-auto pistols, urged the older Walther to move in that direction as well.

This led to a flurry of new patents for small, blowback-action semi-autos handguns with fixed barrels and the steady production of little popguns from the Walther Model 1 in 1908 through the Model 9 in 1940. Thus:

Fast forward to the 1960s and Walther, after losing their Zella-Mehlis factory to the Soviets– who transported it to the East to make Walther PPs, err Makarov PMs– set up a new plant in West Germany. Their first German-made product after the move (as the PP/PPK and P-38 were being cranked out in France) was a throwback to Fritz’s little pocket pistols, or taschen pistole.

The Walther TP:

Only produced for about a decade, the Walther TP was “retro” even when it was introduced in the 1960s.

More in my column at Guns.com.