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How common were Mauser pistols among common soldats?


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Earlier versions of DoD were more realistic on that count. IIRC, only machinegunners and snipers had them. Now everyone carries one, for gameplay reasons.

Regulations tends to vary from one army to the next, and in the case of WWII, from one month/year to the next. I'd say the official distribution of handguns was restricted to officers, MP and crews, while picking one up on the battlefield was common practice. Bringing a personnal pistol/revolver is also a common occurence, like 101st troopers prior to D-Day.

For specific TO&E though, which is what your question is all about, I can't say smile.gif .

Cheers

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Mauser pistol? Do you mean that ungainly pre-WWI contraption, the broomhandle Mauser 1896? I was under the impression that that pistol was long obsolete by WWII, though occassionally showing up because so many had been made for the Great War. One confusing bit of info - the classic 'Luger' was also a Mauser product so mention of 'Mauser' in the text wouldn't necessarily mean the model 1896.

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Juju's small arms mod, of course, shows all three. The Mauser is useful to make sure you've got the mod working correctly because you can tell without looking closely whether it's been installed or not. But I was under the impression that it was a bit of an antique by WWII, and that most officers were armed with Walthers. There were a few Lugers around, and they are very popular in movies with German villains because you can tell at a glance that the weapon is too foreign to be a Browning.

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My dad, who landed at Utah beach on D-Day with the 90th ID, picked up a couple of 9mm broomhandle Mausers when he captured a medic and a sergeant in France near Metz. Both weapons are in excellent condition, and even included the wooden holster which attached to the butt of the pistol to act as a shoulder stock. The only deterioration is the inside of the muzzles. According to dad, the materiels used in making primers in Germany at the time were highly corrosive, and it definitely shows.

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Interesting. But I wonder if 'Atlantic Wall' weaponry would be equivalent to standard-issue German weaponry. The Atlantic Wall also had a fair number of French gun emplacements! German arms inventories could be quite a hodge-podge of scrounged and obsolescent equipment sometimes.

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Nah, by the time the Normandy landings took place, all quality German equipment had been shipped to the eastern front.

Yeah... I just figured it myself that there was some sort of Luger / Mauser connection, although I previously thought it was by a different manufacturer. And no, I definitely didn't mean the broomhandle models. Quite a clunky sidearm that'd make, eh? ;)

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The smaller Mauser HSC 7.65 model was used by ranking officers but probably not as often as the Walther PPK. Would not think that too many of these guns ended up in the hands of the common soldier.

The broomhandle did crop up from time to time, sometimes in its full auto version which had a detachable 20 round box mag and much too high of a rate of fire. The ammo for the 7.62 version is interchangable with the ammo used by the PPSH submachinegun (although the Soviet round is loaded a little hotter).

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The P-38 was the intended replacement for the P-08 (Luger) but like the replacement of the MG-34, there was never enough to go around and the two served concurrently to the end of the war.

I thought the Mauser was associated with artillery units.

There was also an "artillery Luger" with an 8 inch barrel (I think!) as opposed to the normal 4 inch Luger?

[ January 20, 2005, 05:21 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

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