Mauser Broomhandle C96 Pistol
Regarding Mr Berkemeyer’s query about a five-shot Mauser Broomhandle (C96) pistol in Letters, Nov/dec 2021, I must start by mentioning that Mauser never made five-shot C96 pistols – only six-shot, ten-shot and 20-shot.
Given that the six-shot and 10-shot pistols are easy to confuse, I can mention the following. In March 1897, Wilcken & Ackermann, a Lourenço Marques based firm, applied for a permit to take with them to Pretoria “two C96 pistols of the 10-shot, one of the six-shot and one of the 20-shot pattern with 500 cartridges”. The permit was issued on 28 March, and on 8 April Commandant-general Piet Joubert was informed that the pistols were due to arrive in May 1897. The consignment arrived on 21 May and Wilcken & Ackermann planned to proceed to Pretoria to demonstrate the pistols. The trials took place on 11 June 1897, with Mr Ackermann in attendance.
What happened to the four pistols thereafter is not recorded, but it is possible that they were left with the ZAR government and that the 6-shot pistol and possibly some of the others could have been acquired by a Boer Officer or other officials. As a result of this trial, an order was placed by the ZAR in February 1898 for 100 pistols. These arrived in Lourenço Marques in May 1898. A further 30 were purchased late in 1899. All 130 were 10-shot pistols – the first 100 being Cone Hammers and the last 30 most probably of the later Large Ring or Large Ring Slabside pistols.
Of interest, as mass production of the C96 only began in the European spring of 1897, it is likely that the pistols used for the demonstration would have been pre-production examples and would most probably have been made in the Mauser tool room on a semi-production basis. These pre-production examples had a very distinctive step in the barrel ahead of the chamber, as well as many other minor differences, compared to the standard Cone Hammer pistols.
Production of six-shot C96s was phased out by 1899 (with very few having been made), thus the pistol in question could also have been privately purchased through the trade. – Ron Bester, Free State