I shot 100 rounds of S&B 115gr FMJ Nontox followed by 100 rounds of Federal 9BPLE (115gr +P+). OK, so how does it shoot? Very well, or I had a very good day (or both). I bought three more used mags on the internet.
The pistol came in its original Walther box, with two mags, a manual & a cleaning rod. That also looks like my P1, which were grounds for concern because hollow points hang up regularly in that gun when chambering via the slide release.
The feed ramp is part of the frame, and the finish is gone there plus some dimples (I assume caused by impact of nose-diving rounds). The frame visually looks a lot like that of my Bundeswehr-surplus P1 (post-war alloy-framed P38, not to be confused with the CZ P-01 that I also own). Takedown is very simple via a lever, and it separates into just three assemblies – slide, barrel & frame. My 11 year old daughter can rack the slide, which is not true of most automatics. Everything operates very slick & smooth – slide operation, trigger in both DA & SA, decocker. The finish is pretty worn, but the gun doesn’t look beat up so I’m assuming holster wear. The slide is blued, the frame anodized and the controls look parked. The grips are hard plastic and wrap around the back of the frame. The alloy frame keeps the weight down, though (28 oz, about the same as my CZ P-01), and the grip is smaller around than any double stack. However, it is a pretty big gun for a single stack 9mm with a 3.5” barrel – similar in every dimension to a mid-sized Glock or my CZ P-01. The overall shape is pretty streamlined and racy (Google it for pictures). So, I suppose it was issued to German G-Men. My particular example is marked “BMI”, which research tells me is the German Ministry of the Interior and which includes the various Federal LE agencies.
The butt-type magazine release carries over from the P38, but is now recessed to preclude accidental activation (there was a slightly later P5 compact that had a Browning button style release). Magazines are 8 shot single-stack like the P38, and look very similar, but are not interchangeable. It has an alloy frame (as did post-war P38’s). There is a new safety feature in which the firing pin is rotated out of line with the hammer until you pull the trigger. It seems part of the government spec required that the weapon be safe to carry with a loaded chamber but no manipulation of a manual safety be required during the draw & fire (no doubt inspired by the nasty habits of the 70’s vintage “urban terrorists” – their attacks often featured producing weapons out of the blue & shooting people, especially cops & security guards of their targets). The P38’s slide-mounted safety/decocker is gone in favor of a frame-mounted combination slide release & decocker. The barrel is shortened from 5” to 3.5”, and the slide is no longer open-topped. The P5 was a derivative of Walther’s WWII-era P38, but with significant changes. So, the weapons that made the list were the Walther P5, SIG P6 (P225) and H&K P7. The Cold War-inspired “urban terrorism” Western Europe was experiencing in the 1970’s seems to have convinced authorities over there that their LEO’s needed up gunning. Before this, German cops apparently mostly packed blowback pocket pistols. Apparently, the German version of federalism is that the state LE agencies pick their own service pistols, but from a list determined by the federal government. By way of background, the P5 was Walther’s entry into a 1970’s West German police pistol selection process.
I recently picked up a used Walther P5, more or less on a whim, and finally got to shoot it today.