ac44 P.38

Finally got around to picking this up. This is the ac44 that goes with the 42 1940 98k and 1918 DWM Luger my newly made friend the 101st vet brought back. Originally had given him my mint 1916 dated 1911 Colt rig for the Luger and 98k. About a week later he told me he also had this for me and had his friend text me a few pictures.

Pretty clean and definitely a good shooter. No holster and only one mag. The mag that came with it is completely unmarked aside from jvd, which if I'm reading correctly would be correct as a spare mag for an ac44 gun. I just need to find a P.38v e/359 marked mag to go with it. I did have a West German P.38 mag from 1958 in my parts box from when I had a P1.

Here's the West German magazine I had on hand. Both fed reliably with no issues for all 100 rounds I fired.

I personally wouldn’t be shooting it. They have an inherent flaw that can cause the slide to crack. A guy here cracked a nice gun last year.

The gun looks nice, cool bonus is FN made e/140 frame. It’s a known trend but a neat variation.

CanadianAR said:

I personally wouldn’t be shooting it. They have an inherent flaw that can cause the slide to crack. A guy here cracked a nice gun last year.

The gun looks nice, cool bonus is FN made e/140 frame. It’s a known trend but a neat variation.

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+1, I cracked the slide on my HP long time ago firing hot ammo, if you are going to shoot it only shoot very mild reloads.

CanadianAR said:

I personally wouldn’t be shooting it. They have an inherent flaw that can cause the slide to crack. A guy here cracked a nice gun last year.

The gun looks nice, cool bonus is FN made e/140 frame. It’s a known trend but a neat variation.

Click to expand...

I'm aware of that, i had an ac45 and still have a byf 44 that both have countless thousands of rounds through them with no issues. I did have a 1985 P1 that cracked the slide, replaced that and around 600 rounds later blew the top and side of the chamber out.

Ive never really felt any concern shooting my WWII P38s, I replace the springs and stay with standard 115gr loads and have never encountered a problem. The two failures I've encountered in the last 10 years at my club however were both tied to shooting +P ammunition which both shooters denied using when they showed me the guns. But a look at their ammo boxes on the bench told a different story. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the failures we see can be traced back to the use of +P ammunition or somebody not replacing the springs but the shooters wont admit their error.

Then again i have a low number 1909 dated 03 Springfield that I've owned for 13 years and in that time have shot it in 85 of my clubs CMP matches so 85 matches times 69 rounds is over 5,000 rounds. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Looks like you also have an FN frame.

opps someone already stated that. Im not sure but I think the FN frame guns were around 10000.00 made ?

Tdarmo said:

opps someone already stated that. Im not sure but I think the FN frame guns were around 10000.00 made ?

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I feel like i remember reading that they show up in the H block