The Walther P-38 is one of the most famous handguns to come out of WWII. The German-designed pistol was a very innovative design at the time and several of its design elements continue to be in use to this day, including its barrel locking system which is currently used in Beretta 92 style pistols among others. This airsoft is an older spring powered rendition of the P-38. Let's see how Maruzen did:

Appearance:

  There's a little background on how I ended up with this model. When I was first getting into airsoft around 1990, Daisy was making their own substandard but interesting line of airsofts in the US. I had several models as did my friends. I eventually broke one of my "SoftAir" guns and sent it in to Daisy to see if they could repair it. They said that since SoftAir guns had been discontinued, they didn't have the ability to repair the one I sent in. However, they were able to send me a replacement gun - the Maruzen P-38. Compared to the Daisy guns, the Maruzen is great appearance-wise. Everything on the gun looks well-proportioned and all the controls seem to be laid out faithfully. The only obvious discrepancy is the missing external hammer. Most of the gun is plastic with the slide stop, hammer, and safety being made from metal. What was really odd was the gun's:

Function:

  This gun is pretty sturdy due to its unique design, which I'll get to in a minute. It is a lot more solid than Daisy's guns, and in fact it feels more solid than many current spring guns. The reason is, it's hardly got any moving parts! This is a SINGLE SHOT airsoft gun. There is no removable magazine. Here's how it works:

  Step 1: Pull down on the gun's slide stop. This frees the slide which travels about half an inch to the rear. Step 2: Pull the slide all the way to the rear. It will sound and feel funny, but that's normal. Step 3: Rotate the "takedown lever" on the left side of the front of the frame. This causes the BB chamber to pop up out of the top of the barrel. Step 4: Load a BB into the chamber, press the chamber back into place. Step 5: Push the slide all the way forward, and the gun's ready to fire. Pushing the slide forward requires a lot more force than pulling back does, since pushing forward is what compresses the piston spring.

  Once all this work is done, you're ready to fire. The trigger pull is hard but fairly crisp. Once your shot is off, it's time to go through the entire process mentioned above to reload. This has got to be an old design considering the sophistication of modern airsoft guns. Also, the P-38 is less powerful than most modern spring guns.

Accuracy:

  The Maruzen Walther P-38 is fairly accurate. At ten yards, the pistol shot groups centered about three inches below the bullseye, but the group size was around eight inches across. This pistol doesn't appear to have any kind of hop-up system, and the separate barrel and chamber probably also detract from accuracy somewhat.

Overall Impressions:

  This is a nice looking pistol, but it's probably better suited to the display cabinet than it is to the battle field. A single-shot professional tournament would be incredibly challenging, but since single-shots are hard to find these days it would be hard to equip such a scenario.