Vintage gun pinup No.1

1948-vintage Polish-made Pistolet TT, aka "Tokarev".

Imported by Tennessee Guns in Knoxville, this Tokarev is one of the relative few that bear the "FB Radom" logo rather than the "Circle 11" Warsaw Pact country code for Poland. (Only those made in '48 and '49 had the former.) The Tokarev, designated Wz48 by the Poles, remained the standard Polish military sidearm into the '60s, when it was replaced by the P-64, which was a PPK-esque pistol chambered for the 9mm Makarov cartridge.

Other than the serial number and year of manufacture atop the slide, the small proofs in the triggerguard area, and the serial number on the left rear of the frame, these guns are devoid of markings. They also show a level of fit and finish unusual in a mid-Cold-War Warsaw Pact firearm.




LEFT: Polish Wz48 Tokarev. Photo by Oleg Volk.








As an interesting aside on the perils of believing everything you read, in a sidebar in the second edition of the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms, gunwriter Charlie Cutshaw praises the Polish Tokarev as the most comfortable variant to shoot, stating that the Poles had equipped theirs with thumbrest grips and a manual safety. This is untrue, as the crude manual safety (which only blocks the trigger) and the thumbrest grip were retrofitted by the importer in order to gain enough "points" to be importable under the handgun provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968; the pistols originally had flat grips and no manual safety. The embarrassing sidebar disappeared in the third edition of the Standard Catalog, but the description still lists the Polish Tok as a "Polish copy with manual safety", and Cutshaw's sidebar is repeated almost verbatim elsewhere on the 'net. Don't believe everything you read.

Webley & Scott Pistol Self-Loading .455 Mk.I N: The "other" .455 Webley

Webley & Scott is a company famous for their revolvers. The top-break Webley is as much an icon of the British Empire as the Colt Peacemaker is of the Old West. What many are not aware of is that Webley also manufactured autoloading pistols, beginning with an attempt to interest the British army in one 'way back in 1905. That attempt failed, and Webley contented themselves with turning out a line of pocket autoloaders before making another attempt at a military contract with a new .455 caliber self-loader in 1913.

ABOVE: Webley & Scott Pistol Self-Loading .455 Mark I N
Photo by Oleg Volk.

Not at all a common find, these pistols were used by the Royal Navy during the Great War, as well as being fielded in small numbers by the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Horse Artillery. The RN discontinued their use shortly after the end of WWII, and many made their way through the usual surplus channels to the US, but their small numbers ensured that they would never be a common sight, even on the collecting scene. When one came into the shop as a box of parts and was revived by Shannon, such a rare beastie naturally caused a bit of a stir. Standing around with my gunsmith and a gentleman from one of the more active firearms importers, with probably sixty years in the gun biz between the three of us, not one of us could recollect having seen one in the steel before.

I had to have it.

Unusually heavy, yet with an awkward grip angle, the pistol points like you're holding a t-square and may be the homeliest non-Japanese handgun I've ever seen. Oddly for a gun so rare, repro grips are available, and Triple-K has catalogued magazines. Cartridge cases can be made by trimming .45 Colt brass to length, turning the rim down somewhat (the .455 Webley Automatic is a semi-rimmed cartridge) and machining an extractor groove. The barrel rides in two angled mortises in the frame, and locks up very much like a SIG: a squared shoulder atop the chamber mating into the ejection port atop the slide. Everything is intricately machined from big chunks of steel and fitted together to a fare-thee-well.

Other odd features abound: The lockwork is assembled to the grip safety, and the whole mechanism pivots when the grip is squeezed. The pistol has dual ejectors, as well as two different methods of disconnecting (should one fail, the gun won't run away.) The recoil spring is a massive v-spring under the right-hand grip panel ("If the recoil spring breaks, you don't know me," said my gunsmith.) The slide stop is activated not by the magazine follower, but by the absence of a cartridge in the feedway. You don't need an empty magazine in the gun for the slide to lock back, it knows when it's empty. (I think that's a little presumptuous of it, but that's just me...) The drift-adjustable rear sight has little micrometer hashmarks to help line things up. All in all, a piece satisfying both in its historical provenance and in its mechanical quirkiness; I couldn't be happier to add one to the museum.

Values on these things are all over the map, but a firing example would seem to be at least an $800-$1000 proposition pretty much regardless of finish. The much rarer Royal Horse Artillery model, with its exotic rear sight and slotted for a shoulder stock, commands prices well north of $2k on the infrequent occasions when one comes up for sale.

Radom ViS wz.35: The last horse pistol.

While it's common to imagine that cavalry went the way of the Eohippus some time in the muddy Spring of 1915, it just isn't true. Most all of the major military powers retained cavalry formations into the WWII years. Russia and Japan both made extensive use of mounted troops, and the last United States Army cavalry charge was made in January 1942 in the Phillipines by three platoons of the 26th Cavalry.

Since the days of the Sixteenth Century caracole, the pistol has been the traditional sidearm of the mounted soldier, and pistols designed as such are frequently easy to tell from their "badge-of-rank" kin. As far back as the days of the percussion revolver, the Colt Navy had a .36" bore, while the Colt Army, a cavalryman's weapon and expected to be able to kill a horse, was a .44. Cavalry pistols tended to be large, accurate, and often slotted to accept a shoulder stock, so as to allow them to double as a pseudo-carbine.

ABOVE: ViS wz.35 Radom, photo by Oleg Volk

Poland's cavalry had long been emulated in Europe, and as the newly-reconstituted nation built up an army after WWI, they searched for a domestically produced sidearm to equip their cavalry troopers. In 1935 a design by Wilniewczyc and Skrzypinski was settled on and, dubbed the ViS wz.35, was adopted by the Army that year. It was made at the Radom plant with the assistance of Fabrique Nationale engineers working under contract, and offered an interesting blend of familiar Colt/Browning features with some new touches.

LEFT: Radom disassembled, showing its Browning heritage.
Photo by Oleg Volk

The trigger was a sliding affair, similar to that used on many Browning designs, and the grip safety would be familiar to any user of Colt pistols. The barrel, while operating on the familiar Browning tilting-barrel short recoil system, used a cammed lug under the breech end to effect unlocking, rather than the more usual swinging link; this feature was shared with the FN GP35 "High Power" pistol that was making its debut the same year, and seems to point to a certain amount of Fabrique Nationale influence. The gun was chambered in the by-now-ubiquitous 9x19mm Parabellum, and was fed from an eight-round single column magazine. It had a butt slotted to accept a shoulder stock, and was provided with a decocker so that the trooper could more safely return it to his holster with one hand than if he was trying to control the fall of the hammer with his thumb while astride a possibly skittish mount.


RIGHT: "S"-rune on barrel lug, indicating contract manufacture for Waffen SS, most likely by inmates at Mauthausen.
Photo by Oleg Volk.





After Poland was overrun by the German and Soviet invasion of 1939, the Radom plant fell in the German -occupied half of the country and the Poles were soon forced to churn out arms for their conquerors, who called it the Pistole 645(p). The wz.35 was a common issue weapon to the Waffen SS, and as that force grew, the pistol was simplified in manufacture so as to keep up with demand. Polished bluing was replaced by a brushed finish that got rougher as the war went on; the slot for the shoulder stock disappeared; finally the frame-mounted takedown catch was deleted. Late-war guns produced by Steyr using slave labor are wretched indeed, with extremely coarse finishes and crude wooden slabs for grips.

In 1945 the Radom plant was destroyed by the invading Russians; it was a sad ending for the last horse pistol. As a footnote, though, a limited run of replica (reissue?) Radoms were produced by a revived Radom in 1997; excellent examples can command price tags of almost four figures; good originals seem to be bringing anywhere from $450 for a sad-looking wartime piece to over $2,000 for a nice pre-war "Polish Eagle" (well over $2k if that Polish Eagle has German Waffenamt proofs.) The pistols are a joy to shoot and spare parts, while difficult to find, are not impossibly so. They make a worthy addition to any collection.

Filipino blacksmith revolver: Fruit of a ban.

On the island of Cebu in the Philippines, village gunsmiths have been turning out home made firearms for over a century now. Working from factory-built guns as exemplars, these shadetree artisans can manufacture weapons that are often astonishing in their sophistication.

Some years back, a gentleman approached me wanting to sell a Smith & Wesson revolver, having heard I was a collector. From across the room it appeared to be a pre-War I-frame .38 Regulation Police. Closer examination proved it to be nothing of the sort. He was desparate to sell, needing money and not being especially fond of guns, but I was short on cash, and not especially eager to buy. I explained to him that for starters, the gun wasn't even really a S&W, and that even if it was an actual Regulation Police, it would barely be worth the $225 he wanted, given its condition.

He left, but returned a couple days later, having no doubt shopped the gun around, and asked for $200. As we talked, the Tale of the Gun was told:

His dad had fought in the China-Burma-India Theater during WWII, and eventually relieved a Japanese fighting man of this handgun. Knowing that Japanese officers were frequently responsible for providing their own sidearms, the story smacked of plausibility. Lord knows that the Imperial Japanese Army had spent some time in the Philippines, where this arm could have been acquired. The soft, fleece-lined leather holster, complete with five cartridge loops on the front, was certainly nicely made enough and, given the prevalence of American and British arms in SE Asia, the .38 S&W-slash-.380/200 chambering also made sense. Where writing would have been on an actual Smith, there was greeking, and the grip medallions had twining crescents and scimitars, shaped into something like the traditional S&W monogram.

In the end, I figured the holster was worth $25, the gun $75, and the story $100, and so I bought it. It sits next to my real pre-War .38 Regulation Police, a cold steel reminder of a dangerous place, a dangerous time, and the skills of the no doubt long-dead craftsman who made it from raw steel with nought but simple tools, his own hands, and lots and lots of talent and ingenuity.