Steyr Hahn Variants

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian I'm here today The Rock Island auction company I'm looking at some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming June of 2016 regional auction one of the cool things that I can do when I visit a place like this is take a look at a wide variety of different versions of a gun and that's what we're doing today we are taking a look at four of the ultimately six different very slight versions very slight variances of the Steyr model of 1912 also known as the Steyr Han now this was a pistol that was developed obviously its tire the exact designer is a bit unsure the patents for this pistol were actually taken out in the name of the Steyr factory it's thought that Carroll Conca was probably involved in the design that certainly bears the hallmarks of some of his other guns really this is kind of a if you want to think about it this way it's a combination of the 1907 Roth's tire with its rotating locking mechanism and the Colt early Colt 1903 coiled spring system so this was used this is actually a remarkably durable good despite its somewhat ungainly appearance combat pistol that was adopted in 1914 as the model of 1912 by the austro-hungarian military and it was their standard self-loading sidearm through World War one they did in fact actually make a full auto version of it with an extended magazine in 1916 those are very very scarce I obviously don't have one here today the vast majority of these were simply made in this configuration as standard self-loading pistols they were made in nine-millimeter steyr calibre which is nine by twenty three ammunition for them it's available today it's also not that difficult to hand out one of the interesting features of this gun is that it does not use a detachable magazine instead it actually feeds from the top using stripper clips has an eight round capacity and the reason for these stripper clips was basically that most of the malfunctions in a semi-automatic pistol are the fault of a bad magazine and so waited to prevent that from ever happening is to just build the magazine into the gun and reload it from the top and that's what the Austrian military wanted to go for so that's what steyr did for them now this purpose 250 and maybe three hundred and thirteen thousand of these made in total production ended at the end of World War one that was it and they started production started in 1911 in fact you'll notice that one of these has actually marked the model of 1911 despite the fact that it is the model of 1912 for the austro-hungarian military so in addition to the austro-hungarian military which ordered the vast majority of these pistols they were also purchased by the military of Chile and also by the military of Romania now it's interesting that Romania's was a customer of the styrofoam because when Romania entered World War one it was not on the side of the Central Powers so we'll get to that in just a moment these were also ordered in a couple of small batches by the Bavarian military obviously an offshoot or a subcategory of the German military but contrary to what some people might expect these were never really used in other than that Bavarian order they were not used by the German military in World War one just the austro-hungarians now in World War two the Germans did convert a lot of these guns to nine millimetre parabellum this was done from 1941 through 1944 it was actually done for the Austrian police date all right we'll start with a standard Austrian pistol these are by far the most common type and so that'll let us get a feel for what the markings are supposed to look like you'll find the serial number in two locations on the outside of the gun here on the frame and up here on the slide and of course they ought to be the same if they're not someone's messed with the gun you'll find a four digit number with a single letter suffix that's a pretty common method of sterilizing these pistols or serializing any military pistol they would go from 1 to 9999 of each letter an increment to the next ABC etc so P indicates what like the 15th or 16th sequence of 10,000 guns now it's a little bit faint on this particular example but up here you'll see the marked steyr for the manufacturing location and steyr is the only manufacturing location for these and then the date of manufacture so this is a somewhat late gun because a lot of these were being made very early in the war it's a 1916 manufacturer on the other side of the frame right here above the trigger you'll find the Austrian military proof mark that's a WN and then an eagle crest and the year of proofing which typically is going to be the same as the Europe manufacturer and it is here this is a 1916 gun now in contrast to the standard Austrian guns the the closest thing we have are going to be the Bavarian contract guns I don't have an example of that here to show you however it's almost identical to the Austrian guns the Bavarian purchases all have Austrian military proof marks the only way you'll be able to tell the difference is that the serial number is four numerals without a letter suffix so in addition the Bavarian guns were ordered in 1916 and 1918 so if in doubt check the date if it's not one of those two it's something other than a Bavarian pistol that's what you'll find there now contrasting with the next type I do have to show you that would be a Chilean pistol this was adopted as the model of 1911 and these were manufactured in 1912 and 1913 you'll find right there on the side of the slide those markings you'll find the serial number in the same place of course and it's the same type of serial number you will also find a Chilean crest on the side of the gun right there on the slide this is a particularly nice example of that crest on the right you will find the slide mark edge receipt though that Chile which is Chilean army notice that there is no Austrian proof mark because these obviously didn't go through the Austrian military in total the Chileans ordered about 5000 of these pistols so they're pretty rare actually you'll find them in this country because a lot of them were imported into the US but in in the grand scheme of things they're actually pretty scarce guns so next up we have the Romanian contract these were adopted as the model of 1912 is you can see right there and instead of that Chilean crest these have a crown Romanian crown on them Romania ordered about 12,000 of these guns they again have the same style of serializing and you can see that these are are marked steyr and the date of manufacture so production of these started in 1913 they were also obviously produced in 1914 on the other side where we normally would expect to find the Austrian proof mark we will instead find a Romanian military proof mark right there above the trigger nothing printed back here on the slide now Romania did in fact enter the war on the side of the Allies not the Central Powers and when they did so obviously the Steyr company stopped shipping them pistols not not a good move at that point the pistols that were left over that had been earmarked for the Romanian contract were in fact turned over and used for used by the Austrian military now when it comes to original production Styron's there is one other batch that I don't have an example of and that is a commercial gun not a whole lot were made but there were some that were made and sold on the commercial market the way you can distinguish those is instead of just saying steyr up here they're going to have the full name of the company which is going to sound something like austere rakesh of often fabrics Tyre m1911 nine-millimeter so a full extended code of legend up on the slide like I said those are quite scarce and I don't have one here to show you I do however have one of what's probably considered the most desirable of the staion variants and that is one of the pistols converted for Austrian police use during world war ii now contrary to common belief these were not done for the German military they weren't done for the SS they were just done for Austrian police and there are a number of markings on here that we can take a look at so so these were not new guns these these conversions were done on existing Austrian military pistols that were still in in military inventory interestingly there have at least been a couple that have been found that we're done on Bavarian contract pistols how they got into this batch isn't really all that well-known but some of them snuck in one way or another anyway because these were originally Austrian military they will all still have Austrian military proofs this one was originally proofed in 1914 and you will see back here this little Eagle and swastika with an L that's a police proof mark or a police acceptance mark now on the other side of the pistol we have a bunch of other stuff we have our steyr 1914 marking that would denote that like we saw from the the military proof it was originally made in 1914 we then have an eagle n here and that's a German proof mark because when these were rebelled they then had to be reproved to ensure that the new barrels were of good quality so you'll find the Eagle n as well as that Eagle swastika L on the other side here's our original serial number this has not been changed as part of the conversion process this would be the original Austrian serial number and then probably the easiest single distinctive bit is this oh eight marking on the slide this was done to indicate the nine millimetre parabellum caliber change the reason they used a eight is because the German military adopted the pistol Oh eight the Luger in nine millimetre parabellum so that Oh 8 references the adoption date of the cartridge it's important to note that there are no markings on the top of the barrel that designated as a nine Parabellum barrel as opposed to a nine styrofoam here's one of our other guns you'll see in both cases the top of the barrel is completely unmarked however on the Parabellum conversions there are markings on the inside so it's important if you're looking to get one of these that you pull the barrel and take a look to make sure that it's actually the correct barrel so I guess I'm going to show you disassembly of these because it's pretty darn easy we're going to start with this latch up at the front it's got a little spring-loaded tab you will find these put in right side up and upside down they kind of work either way what you want to do either way is pushed tab to the center and then you can push it push the whole wedge through pull it out the other side this one is quite stiff you'll notice it does have a little arrow on it hopefully to guide you in reassembly and we pull this little locking wedge completely out this is the part that's similar to the early colt automatic pistols once that South what that actually does is it crosses between the two sides of the slide and it holds the recoil spring here so now that that's out there's nothing forcing the recoil string to act on the slide and I can pull the slide right off the top you'll see that the recoil spring is now sitting here uncompressed and not being used at this point the barrel literally just lifts off the frame it's just sitting in a pair of lugs like that and when the pistol operates it goes forward and backward and rotates obviously as it comes back and rotates and these two lugs rotate out of alignment with the slide the barrel then stops the slide continues going and that's how it cycles anyway this is a pretty small marking but it's on the rear most lug of the barrel you will have the serial number of the pistol and that Eagle and German proof mark so in this case get it right side up one one one seven right there and our Eagle n so this is in fact the correct converted nine millimetre parabellum barrel thanks for watching guys I hope you enjoyed the video it's always cool to get a chance to look at them side by side a bunch of different varieties like we have here today so hopefully you learned something about the Steyr hans and if you would like to add one or all of these to your own collection take a look at the description text below you'll find links there to each one of the catalog pages for these pistols a bunch of them are in fact batched with other guns and if you're looking for a start on make sure to search the catalogue on your own as well because there are a bunch more examples I only needed one of each for this video so check it out thanks for watching you you

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 119,384

Rating: 4.9659824 out of 5

Keywords: steyr, hahn, 1911, 1912, m1912, chile, chilean, crown, crest, romania, romanian, bavaria, bavarian, austria, austrian, austro-hungarian empire, ww1, wwi, world war 1, world war i, great war, sidearm, rotating barrel, 9mm Steyr, 9x23, police, conversion, P08, 9x19, 08

Id: rE54WtVrJ9A

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016