The screwy thing is, the Germans were making sporting guns right up until nearly the end of the war. Someone who regularly posts on this site has a gun with a proof date of October 44 - a very nice gun, too. (Consider, for a second, how many sporting guns US manufacturers made during the war, how much sporting ammunition, and so forth. "Next to none" would be a good place to start. A fair argument can be made that, had the Germans mobilized their economy early on the way we did, the world would be a very different place today.) It's conceivable that it was a pilot's issue gun (nothing is impossible) but I'd be more likely to believe it was made for a pilot as a sporting arm and the story got garbled in the intervening 65+ years.
Dave, the factory/company the Nazis took over was the Simson (no "p") operation. They were furious that Jews, the Simsons, were making a lot of their Lugers. BSW stood for Berlin-Suhler-Waffenfabrik.
The key is going to be an analysis of the marks and, for that, we could use pictures.
Last edited by Dave in Maine; 09/24/11 09:19 AM.
