Post by CXM on Nov 24, 2021 13:26:44 GMT -5
This was posted years ago on the SIG forum by a German cop.
It has lots of information on guns used by the German police. Some of the guns discussed replaced the High Power in German police use.
I hope this will be of some use.
FWIW
Chuck
========================================================================================================================
Germany is now comprised of 16 federal Bundesländer (= states), who are responsible for fielding and funding their own police. Of these, 11 Bundesländer were part of former West Germany. After the german reunification in 1990, 5 new Bundesländer were made up from former East Germany.
In the late ‘70s, the west german Bundesländer made agreements for standardizing police equipment, i.e. radios and guns, operating procedures and uniforms. Due to these agreements, every new handgun model had to be certified as to be suitable for police use. Before that, west german police were mostly equipped with the traditional .32 caliber Walther PP and 9mm Walther P38/P1 pistols. From then on, new police handguns had to pass shooting, drop and endurance tests, and meet certain requirements (i.e. caliber 9mm Luger, 8 rounds minimum capacity, DA/SA action without manual safety but with decocker, size within 180mm length x 130mm height x 34mm width).
This caused Walther to further develop their tried and true P38/P1/P4 design to become the P5. J.P.Sauer & Sohn, who already produced the then new SIG P220 for the swiss army, chopped that gun to the required size and named it the P225/P6. Heckler & Koch came out with a (back then) new approach – the squeeze cocker P7.
The Walther P5 was adopted by the two south-western Bundesländer Rheinland-Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg, where the Walther company is located.
The Heckler & Koch P7 was adopted by Bayern in the south and Niedersachsen in northern Germany.
The SIG-Sauer P6 was adopted by most other Bundesländer (Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany where Sauer & Sohn is located in the city of Eckernförde, Hamburg, Bremen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Berlin), Zoll (federal customs), Bundesgrenzschutz (federal border guard, today renamed as the federal police = Bundespolizei) and the Bahnpolizei (railway police, today part of the federal police / Bundespolizei). The small Bundesland Saarland at the french border had adopted the Heckler & Koch P9S shortly before the agreements and kept these guns. The procurements of the new guns started around 1978/79.
The east german police (VoPo = Nationale Volkspolizei ~ “national people’s police”) had been centrally organized and equipped communist style, mainly with Suhl-produced “1001” PP-copies, Makarov pistols and polish wz63 submachine guns. After the german reunification in 1990 the police of the 5 new Bundesländer were trained and equipped according to western standards.
Now Sachsen adopted the Heckler & Koch P7, while Thüringen due to low funds kept their Makarovs. Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt chose SIG-Sauer guns (with Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern >don’t remember which of the two< going to the then still new P228 and the remaining two adopting the P6). When the new Heckler & Koch USP compact was certified with the safety/decocker changed to decocking only function, it was renamed as the P10 and adopted by Thüringen to replace their old Makarovs (I think I remember that Sachsen is replacing their P7s with P10s as well).
The certification agreements for new police handguns were modified lately to include some new tests and technical requirements, i.e. new guns being suitable for left and right hand use and allowing new trigger actions other than DA/SA: DAO as well as pre-cocked trigger actions such as Heckler & Koch LEM, Walther Quick Action and Glock Safe Action were newly approved.
Recently, more and more Bundesländer are looking for replacements for their aging stocks of police handguns. Niedersachsen adopted the Heckler & Koch P2000 with the V3 LEM trigger action and has now begun to slowly replace their P7s with the new P2000s. Baden-Württemberg replaced their Walther P5s with Heckler & Koch P2000 with V5 DAO trigger actions. Nordrhein-Westfalen is acquiring some 40+thousand Walther P99 pistols with DAO trigger actions, which is the reason for the recent “wave” of NW-marked surplus P6 pistols in the U.S.A.
As a Hamburg-cop there’s of course something I can say about our guns. Hamburg replaced their Walther PP pistols with SIG-Sauer P6s starting in 1979. All our P6s are stamped with production dates and Hamburg-possession marks. My own gun is marked 4/79. The “newest” Hamburg P6s I’ve seen so far bear markings from 1985 (and 1986 for some special training guns – more on this and the other marks in another post – with pics).
Some official numbers: As of 12/2004 the city of Hamburg (pop. 1,7 million, 6452 uniformed police officers, 1616 CID-officers and 554 officers of the Wasserschutzpolizei which is our “navy”, responsible for the harbour and the Elbe-river down to the North Sea) still had 8452 SIG-Sauer P6 pistols in its inventory. Add to this 552 Heckler & Koch MP5s. Not included in this list are small numbers of other guns, like some 40+ Walther P5Compacts for female officers with very small hands, some older .357 Mag. Smith & Wesson M19 revolvers with 2 ½”-barrels used by K9 officers or in certain plain clothes assignments, and the guns used by our “SWAT-teams” (LKA 24 Spezialeinheiten, formerly called “Mobiles Einsatzkommando”, their primary handgun is now a .357 Mag. L-frame stainless steel S&W-revolver with 4”-barrel, and of course as needed an assortment of other guns like SIG-Sauer P226s, Glock 26, MP5SD, HK33 etc.)
Hamburg has recently bought 550 Heckler & Koch P2000 pistols with V2 LEM trigger actions. These were used to re-equip the Wasserschutzpolizei. When Hamburg invited the arms companies to bid for this contract, only Walther and Heckler & Koch submitted bids – Sauer & Sohn were still busy fulfilling the huge french police orders (the french had ordered more than 200000 SIG-Sauer SP2022s). Heckler & Koch won this contract over Walther’s P99. The SIG-Sauer P250DCc had not been available or even certified then. As there are plans to replace the P6s in a few years from now, I’m quite curious what my next duty gun might be. That oughta be more than enough for one post…
In october 2006, I've posted this listing in SIGforum:
P1 = Bundeswehr Walther P38 in all its post war variants (always with aluminum frame and with or without the hexagonal steel frame reinforcement pin and thicker slide) police and army use, obsolescent, to be replaced by the P8 in german army use, no more police use at all.
P2 = SIG P210-4 with loaded chamber indicator and "D-" serial number prefix (5000 guns were made for the Bundesgrenzschutz/BGS = border patrol; major parts of the early BGS became the founders of the Bundeswehr, the rest evolved to become todays federal police = Bundespolizei); -long obsolete-
P3 = spanish Astra 600/43 (ordered towards the end of WWII; a first batch had been delivered to the Wehrmacht, the remaining batch was delivered and accepted after WWII by the new german government and the P3 designator was given) very limited initial army us; -long obsolete-
P4 = P38/P1 with 4" barrel, decocker only instead of the original decocker/safety and no loaded chamber indicator (and hence no slide cover plate) police use; -obsolete-
P5 = Walther P5, police use since late '70ies / early 80'ies in two south western german states (Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz) and in the "Koninglijke Rikspolitie" (= dutch royal police); obsolescent in Germany (currently to be replaced by Heckler & Koch P2000 variants)
P6 = SIG-Sauer P225, police use since the late 70'ies / early 80'ies in most german states that didn't issue the P5 or the P7, and some federal agencies such as the BGS and Zoll (= customs); obsolescent in some places (for example, the state Nordrhein-Westfalen currently replaces its P6 guns with 40+thousand Walther P99 pistols)
P7 = Heckler & Koch PSP, police use since the late 70'ies / early 80'ies in two german states (Niedersachsen, Bayern) and some special police forces, the Bundeswehr issues it to the military police (= "Feldjäger") on special assignments (personal protection teams, plain clothes assignments etc.) and aircraft-pilots; obsolescent in police use, is to be replaced by HK P10 in Bavaria and HK P2000 in Lower Saxony.
P8 = Heckler & Koch USP with Bundeswehr-specific modified safety/decocker and special dust-protected white magazine; current german army issue.
P9 = Heckler & Koch P9S, police use in the small state "Saarland", -obsolete-
P10 = Heckler & Koch USP compact with decocker only; police use in three german states - Bayern(Bavaria), Sachsen(Saxony) and Thüringen (Thuringia)
P11 = Heckler & Koch P11 underwater pistol firing special dart projectiles, very limited Bundeswehr use (with the german navy combat divers "Kampfschwimmer")
It has lots of information on guns used by the German police. Some of the guns discussed replaced the High Power in German police use.
I hope this will be of some use.
FWIW
Chuck
========================================================================================================================
Germany is now comprised of 16 federal Bundesländer (= states), who are responsible for fielding and funding their own police. Of these, 11 Bundesländer were part of former West Germany. After the german reunification in 1990, 5 new Bundesländer were made up from former East Germany.
In the late ‘70s, the west german Bundesländer made agreements for standardizing police equipment, i.e. radios and guns, operating procedures and uniforms. Due to these agreements, every new handgun model had to be certified as to be suitable for police use. Before that, west german police were mostly equipped with the traditional .32 caliber Walther PP and 9mm Walther P38/P1 pistols. From then on, new police handguns had to pass shooting, drop and endurance tests, and meet certain requirements (i.e. caliber 9mm Luger, 8 rounds minimum capacity, DA/SA action without manual safety but with decocker, size within 180mm length x 130mm height x 34mm width).
This caused Walther to further develop their tried and true P38/P1/P4 design to become the P5. J.P.Sauer & Sohn, who already produced the then new SIG P220 for the swiss army, chopped that gun to the required size and named it the P225/P6. Heckler & Koch came out with a (back then) new approach – the squeeze cocker P7.
The Walther P5 was adopted by the two south-western Bundesländer Rheinland-Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg, where the Walther company is located.
The Heckler & Koch P7 was adopted by Bayern in the south and Niedersachsen in northern Germany.
The SIG-Sauer P6 was adopted by most other Bundesländer (Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany where Sauer & Sohn is located in the city of Eckernförde, Hamburg, Bremen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Berlin), Zoll (federal customs), Bundesgrenzschutz (federal border guard, today renamed as the federal police = Bundespolizei) and the Bahnpolizei (railway police, today part of the federal police / Bundespolizei). The small Bundesland Saarland at the french border had adopted the Heckler & Koch P9S shortly before the agreements and kept these guns. The procurements of the new guns started around 1978/79.
The east german police (VoPo = Nationale Volkspolizei ~ “national people’s police”) had been centrally organized and equipped communist style, mainly with Suhl-produced “1001” PP-copies, Makarov pistols and polish wz63 submachine guns. After the german reunification in 1990 the police of the 5 new Bundesländer were trained and equipped according to western standards.
Now Sachsen adopted the Heckler & Koch P7, while Thüringen due to low funds kept their Makarovs. Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt chose SIG-Sauer guns (with Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern >don’t remember which of the two< going to the then still new P228 and the remaining two adopting the P6). When the new Heckler & Koch USP compact was certified with the safety/decocker changed to decocking only function, it was renamed as the P10 and adopted by Thüringen to replace their old Makarovs (I think I remember that Sachsen is replacing their P7s with P10s as well).
The certification agreements for new police handguns were modified lately to include some new tests and technical requirements, i.e. new guns being suitable for left and right hand use and allowing new trigger actions other than DA/SA: DAO as well as pre-cocked trigger actions such as Heckler & Koch LEM, Walther Quick Action and Glock Safe Action were newly approved.
Recently, more and more Bundesländer are looking for replacements for their aging stocks of police handguns. Niedersachsen adopted the Heckler & Koch P2000 with the V3 LEM trigger action and has now begun to slowly replace their P7s with the new P2000s. Baden-Württemberg replaced their Walther P5s with Heckler & Koch P2000 with V5 DAO trigger actions. Nordrhein-Westfalen is acquiring some 40+thousand Walther P99 pistols with DAO trigger actions, which is the reason for the recent “wave” of NW-marked surplus P6 pistols in the U.S.A.
As a Hamburg-cop there’s of course something I can say about our guns. Hamburg replaced their Walther PP pistols with SIG-Sauer P6s starting in 1979. All our P6s are stamped with production dates and Hamburg-possession marks. My own gun is marked 4/79. The “newest” Hamburg P6s I’ve seen so far bear markings from 1985 (and 1986 for some special training guns – more on this and the other marks in another post – with pics).
Some official numbers: As of 12/2004 the city of Hamburg (pop. 1,7 million, 6452 uniformed police officers, 1616 CID-officers and 554 officers of the Wasserschutzpolizei which is our “navy”, responsible for the harbour and the Elbe-river down to the North Sea) still had 8452 SIG-Sauer P6 pistols in its inventory. Add to this 552 Heckler & Koch MP5s. Not included in this list are small numbers of other guns, like some 40+ Walther P5Compacts for female officers with very small hands, some older .357 Mag. Smith & Wesson M19 revolvers with 2 ½”-barrels used by K9 officers or in certain plain clothes assignments, and the guns used by our “SWAT-teams” (LKA 24 Spezialeinheiten, formerly called “Mobiles Einsatzkommando”, their primary handgun is now a .357 Mag. L-frame stainless steel S&W-revolver with 4”-barrel, and of course as needed an assortment of other guns like SIG-Sauer P226s, Glock 26, MP5SD, HK33 etc.)
Hamburg has recently bought 550 Heckler & Koch P2000 pistols with V2 LEM trigger actions. These were used to re-equip the Wasserschutzpolizei. When Hamburg invited the arms companies to bid for this contract, only Walther and Heckler & Koch submitted bids – Sauer & Sohn were still busy fulfilling the huge french police orders (the french had ordered more than 200000 SIG-Sauer SP2022s). Heckler & Koch won this contract over Walther’s P99. The SIG-Sauer P250DCc had not been available or even certified then. As there are plans to replace the P6s in a few years from now, I’m quite curious what my next duty gun might be. That oughta be more than enough for one post…
In october 2006, I've posted this listing in SIGforum:
P1 = Bundeswehr Walther P38 in all its post war variants (always with aluminum frame and with or without the hexagonal steel frame reinforcement pin and thicker slide) police and army use, obsolescent, to be replaced by the P8 in german army use, no more police use at all.
P2 = SIG P210-4 with loaded chamber indicator and "D-" serial number prefix (5000 guns were made for the Bundesgrenzschutz/BGS = border patrol; major parts of the early BGS became the founders of the Bundeswehr, the rest evolved to become todays federal police = Bundespolizei); -long obsolete-
P3 = spanish Astra 600/43 (ordered towards the end of WWII; a first batch had been delivered to the Wehrmacht, the remaining batch was delivered and accepted after WWII by the new german government and the P3 designator was given) very limited initial army us; -long obsolete-
P4 = P38/P1 with 4" barrel, decocker only instead of the original decocker/safety and no loaded chamber indicator (and hence no slide cover plate) police use; -obsolete-
P5 = Walther P5, police use since late '70ies / early 80'ies in two south western german states (Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz) and in the "Koninglijke Rikspolitie" (= dutch royal police); obsolescent in Germany (currently to be replaced by Heckler & Koch P2000 variants)
P6 = SIG-Sauer P225, police use since the late 70'ies / early 80'ies in most german states that didn't issue the P5 or the P7, and some federal agencies such as the BGS and Zoll (= customs); obsolescent in some places (for example, the state Nordrhein-Westfalen currently replaces its P6 guns with 40+thousand Walther P99 pistols)
P7 = Heckler & Koch PSP, police use since the late 70'ies / early 80'ies in two german states (Niedersachsen, Bayern) and some special police forces, the Bundeswehr issues it to the military police (= "Feldjäger") on special assignments (personal protection teams, plain clothes assignments etc.) and aircraft-pilots; obsolescent in police use, is to be replaced by HK P10 in Bavaria and HK P2000 in Lower Saxony.
P8 = Heckler & Koch USP with Bundeswehr-specific modified safety/decocker and special dust-protected white magazine; current german army issue.
P9 = Heckler & Koch P9S, police use in the small state "Saarland", -obsolete-
P10 = Heckler & Koch USP compact with decocker only; police use in three german states - Bayern(Bavaria), Sachsen(Saxony) and Thüringen (Thuringia)
P11 = Heckler & Koch P11 underwater pistol firing special dart projectiles, very limited Bundeswehr use (with the german navy combat divers "Kampfschwimmer")
The SIG first generation "P" series have a few traps that are really a risk for people who don't know how to work on a SIG... one error you can make can actually make the gun unusable and possibly un-repairable!! We were told at SIG armorer class non certified people would void the warranty by even removing the grips... and in fact it is possible to mess up a SIG by removing the grips and being klutzy. That sort of stuff is easy enough to fix but unsettling to some. Parts for the older SIG pistols are getting scarce and it is a good idea to buy a back up stock of high mortality parts.