Back in the 90s when handguns was legal for competition shooters in the UK,a colleague of mine had a "Grey Ghost" P38. According to historical sources, these were assembled by the French with leftover parts at the end of WW2

Back when pistol shooting was still legal, in the UK, I used to shoot 22LR pistol, one night at club a local gun dealer offered me a 22 single shot pistol made by Jurek. I could not afford it, sadly. I hope it went overseas and was not scrapped in the pistol ban post Dunblane.

It is fascinating that while the 1911 tilting barrel design is still by far the most common mechanism for modern handguns, the Walther P38's locking block actually had some good influence, too. Most famously, the Beretta 92FS/M9 uses the P38's locking block operating mechanism. Hell, it's very visually similar to the P38 if you simply extended the P38's slide all the way to the end.

When you think you've seen everything Webley, then Jonathan says "look what I've got" 😁. Excellent video!

1:27 "A lot of borders changed at the end of the first world war and we'll leave it at that." Holy understatement, batman!

Thanks very much, Jonathan and team. This is one Webley I've never seen before, but I did own and shoot a P38 for a while. In engineering there is an old saying, "if it ain't broke, fix it until it is". I wonder if this design is an example of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good, by overcompensating for minor disadvantages of the P38. In particular, the use of a Browning style lock-up would remove the inherent tendency of P38 (and later Beretta) slides to crack in service. By 1951, Beretta had already produced their first P38 variant. However, I doubt that there would have been much enthusiasm in the British military establishment for the adoption of foreign made (or designed) pistols. Canadian made Brownings would have been just about acceptable I guess.

No scooters in this mans shed. Rocker all the way. ❤😁 from the USA. 👍

I realised the similarities with the P38 when guessing the Webley by Jurek, but I thought it was sort of coincidental and not a direct copy. Nice to hear more about it! Edit: You mention the long service life. My father carried the p-38 in the Norwegian army in 1976-77 as an electrician and medic. Then in the 1980s the remaining Kongsberg 1914s, Husqvarna, Lahti, Luger and p38s were replaced with Glock p80s!

One of my favourite episodes of WITW. Really interesting background information, and such a fascinating artifact in and of itself.

I mean, the P38 itself has a stupidly heavy DA trigger. I can't imagine a 32lbs one, that's mental.

Unfortunately this looks to be a classic example of the better being the enemy of the good. The P38 was solid enough, the "improvements" made only made things more complicated for both good and bad results. Also over 20 extra parts is a demonstration of an engineer who never learnt the KISS principle. Or did and just ignored it. Fascinating to see, as always.

Good stuff! Thank you and take care

Thankyou Johnathan. I did read that Jurek eventually finished the design only to have the army requirements changed to "and a high capacity magazine" at which point he threw up his hands and gave up.

With the Browning high power in the army, we found you could release the magazine safety with your finger, or trip the hammer sear, so you didn't have to put the magazine back in to fire the action after unloading.

Finally. I've learned what that gun is called.

Always a pleasant surprise when yall upload thank you again!

Jonathan: "What is this weapons?" Some guy from the back of the audience: "A gun!"

Best looking handgun never made!

Maybe one of these days I'll be able to make a trip across the pond for a visit. There are many places in Europe I'd love to visit

I have a peculiar, late-war mashup of a P-38, with a finished, proofed, but completely blank/unmarked, Walther HP (commercial) slide on an AC-45 frame. It's the oddities that tend to have the most interesting histories.

Those grips look phenomenal.

Excellent, thank you

28 minutes? Yes please.

Good work Jonathan! I really appreciate your effort and consideration, and consistency in making these videos! 🙂 keep it up, from the manufacturer of the high power 🇨🇦

Fantastic presentation.

It's a pretty recent change, but this is (arguably) not the last Webley Pistol Since 2020 Webley & Scott have been producing, in India, pistols for the Indian market

I see a pistol called Jurek I know "yeah, the Polish engineer involved 100%"

Please do a video on the early 1980s Stirling .38/.357 revolver. I got a chance to shoot one (briefly) in an abandoned train tunnel in Wiltshire back then.

A truly wonderful channel.

I love seeing this stuff. It's why I'm here, really. There are people that want the latest and greatest iteration of a firearm. Others value the earliest prototypes of the model. I understand those that occupy either end of that spectrum. But I think that both sides can agree that their interests can converge at serial #2. Thank you for showing this to me.

I have a Webley pellet pistol, Don't know much about it except it's old, a old man gave it to my brother in the 50s so it probably older than that 🤔✌

Good video and information.

Cool video. Now that you've done a video on a German pistol copied by a Polish designer, maybe you could do a video about a Polish pistol that was manufactured by the Germans - the Radom VIS 35. JAT

1st rule of thumb is If your going to copy something you make it better not worse

At the mention of Webley one imediatly thinks of the revolver.

The world's most deadly grip exerciser

I used to work in a shooting range in cape town where they had reloading equipment that I was allowed to use almost infinitely. During the quiet time I used to reload hundreds of rounds for the old p38 that was the ranges self defence pistol. It never malfunctioned and I simply don't know why they discontinued production

That a heavier trigger than the Philippines Colt. 😳🤯 Awesomely interesting pistol today! All that juicy history is why C&Rsenal episodes are an hour long. 🤣

One very small correction. It's Marian and not Marion :)

I do enjoy collecting the early Webley automatics!

I remember watching one of Forgotten Weapons videos on the 1907 US Trials pistols and one of the entrants had a similar slide locking lug design but, if I recall correctly, it was manually cammed into engagement by the shooter instead of the more sensible arrangement here, probably for patent reasons given the time period.

Jurek had a workshop ij G'ham later on and made some lovely sliding block single shot target pistols - mainly in 22lr - but there may have been some 38spl. I fired one as a young fellow - and have always wanted one since.

It's a shame there are only two ever made , I'd love to take a Jurek out to my range and give it a side by side shooting comparison with my P-38 . I am also curious to see if the fit and finish is as good as my Webley Mk4.

Wonder that they didn't put the mainspring on an arm under the side plate like the 1913 Webley Self Loader?

in Canada we only replaced the Hi Power in 2022 i used it in service i liked it i'm certainly a Hi Power fan, but i really like the P38 its a very visually appealing weapon only shot one once but it shot pretty damn well, just relocate the spring to the grip and you have a pretty nice pistol on your hands

Good overview of the Webley. Doc Jurek admired the P38 but was adamant it was flawed. (btw he insisted he was a doctor of chemistry). Testing after the war showed P38 slide cracking with UK 2Z ammo plus there was no way the British would adopt a German gun at that time, the over engineered slide lock up was included to strengthen that area. Shooters of a certain age will remember his different models of single shot target pistols, I had a .22 Jurek rifle, with an ambidextrous bolt of another 0unique design.

That Webley is like a Bentley motor car. A bit of polished wood makes all the difference

Hi Mr. Ferguson! 3 minutes in and I already love the story behind it. That trigger is a very interesting thing, slightly funny. I don't know why but the first thing that came to my mind was draw weights of longbows from Mary Rose, lol. I must have seen some documentary lately.

I was just wondering, early in the video, how it would do with a steady load of MK2z ammunition, then you addressed that. Cool. I know some of my own 9mms don't much like 'Zed' cartridges in that they get hot quickly and the recoil is somewhat stouter than some commercial loads. Then again, some of my pistols don't seem to care and don't get too hot after a dozen quick rounds. So on this pistol, if I am understanding your demonstration, if the gun is loaded with a round in the chamber and the magazine is removed, then there is no way of unloading the gun until a magazine is reinserted. On my pistols to unload I remove the magazine, then clear the chamber. This can't be done on this gun if the hammer is locked in the down position. I don't like that. Clearing the chamber, then removing the magazine sets the stage for an accidental re-chambering before the magazine is removed. I have seen UDs happen from that when people do that in companies and units where the gun is turned in at the end of a shift. Polish P64s can have similar trigger pulls (for a different reason) although the highest I have seen so far was 27 pounds. Thinner steel in the Jurek;s mainspring might lighten that trigger pull. Of course lightening the mainspring will probably also increase felt recoil when firing Mk2z ammunition as the slide will recoil a little faster then. The requirement to be able to handle a steady diet of Mk2z ammunition probably had a lot to do with why the mainspring is so stiff. I am curious why Mr. Jurek did not double stack the magazine at least somewhat. Even 10 or 11 rounds would have been a more marketable improvement. All in all, it is an interesting pistol.

I have seen lots of videos on craft produced copies, but this is the first time I see a legit Walther BrowningsBrowningsBrownings one.

Thank you, Sir. Could we see a direct comparison between the P38 and the Beretta 92? Cheers!

Dr Jurek was one of those annoying competitors who, if four minutes was allowed for the string, he would be firing his last shot at three minutes fifty, regardless of how many other people were rolling their eyes and tapping their watches.

"Webley Hi Power" is an appropriate name considering it looks like the result of a love affair between the Walther P38 and the Browning Hi-Power.

I liked the browning i carried one on duty as armskote storeman in the Army, i also carried one for a year or two as a ppw but as a ppw was a bit awkward to carry in the summer months , then we carried wathers 22 ppk and 9mm p5 wich i though was and excellent weapon

They never stopped loading RG 9mm ball to Mk II Z specs. It will fracture the slide on a Browning L9 at the extractor cut out in the end. Fortunately this causes a failure to feed rather than anything drastic. It's probably worth having the slide on any broad arrow stamped HPs in your collection x-rayed if you intend to live fire them.

Walther P-38 and Beretta 92 series pistols have a tendency for the slide to crack at the locking wedge engagement area where the slide is thin. That may be a reason for going to the Browning locking system in this pistol.

Interesting firearm and possibly not one I'll be able to find one to add to my P38 collection! Question, the magazine looks very similar to the P38 one, are they interchangeable?

Thank you very much, this is a fantastic presentation of a subject I previously knew nothing about. I love learning new things about firearms history and design. Keep up the good work! 👍

you have the best job in the Realm

I wonder whether it would be possible to attach a lanyard to the hammer loop hole and use the action of raising the arm to cock the hammer with each shot if necessary.

A combination of well known features... P38 overall shape and recoil spring system, TT33 hammer and grips, Browning locking system. Still, the modified Browning/Petter/Glock locking action is much simpler.

I had a pair of CZ50 pistols and they were the heaviest DA trigger I've ever experienced. I wasn't able to get a good trigger weight reading on those. The SA trigger (hammer cocked) on the CZ50 was still heavy but with a much shorter travel and about half the weight of trigger cocking. I wasn't able to find your review of the CZ50. Odd--the CZ75 has a very good trigger in either mode of fire.

Please make a video about the Brunswick rifle? It is a underrated rifle.

1300 feet per second is about 200 feet per second faster than most 9mm loads, thats a significant difference. To put it inot perspective for those not fluent in bullet speed. (Asuuming its the speed out of regular pistole barrels)

It's a lovely looking weapon, shame about the flaws.

32lb double action trigger pull?! That's almost comical.

When it comes to life and death scenarios, humans go with what works the bestest cheapest.

If you remove the front section of the barrel it kinda looks like the scout’s pistol from team fortress 2

P-38's like their fodder a little hot too😎

So, not only does the safety not decock it, so one has to pull the trigger to decock it, but you *have* to have the magazine inserted to do this. So you cannot clear the pistol amd ease springs without taking two actions that increase the chances the user will screw up and cause an Unintended Loud Noise. Yeah, I gave away a pistol *specifically because* of this issue. It's bad enough in a Browning High Power, but you don't expect a single action pistol to have a decocker (sorry, Radom), and at least you know you have the pistol in the "fire" setting before doing this (which discourages dumb privates from thinking, "Oh, it's on safe, so I can snap the trigger with it pointed at my buddy!") As for the trigger pull, that's worse than my surplus Polish P-64, which I measured (using a *fish* scale, as it was far beyond the limits of my trigger scale) at 26 lbs in double action and 3.5 lbs on single (which resulted in an unintended double fire the first time I shot it, as my finger slapped the lightweight SA trigger during recoil after healing on that Magilla Gorilla DA trigger pull. Huh... I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that the British Army didn't jump all over this. 😆

Grip panel Release similar to TT33

You can still own a pistol in .22 calibre in Ireland but you have to be a member of a pistol shooting club and jump through a number of other hoops, it's expensive too get one but it's possible and I don't see anything wrong with someone owning a pistol for competition shooting.

9mm 2z haven't heard that since Dunblain handgun ban, must travel up and have a Gander around the collection.

@JonathanFerguson if you could conceal carry today, which handgun would you choose?

9:35 Considering that on-screen text corrections can often get missed by people who are primarily listening while doing other things; I think such a relatively major correction would have justified rerecording that segment lol

I find that to be very elegant in appearance.

Possibly just my eyes misreading the images, but is there a little greater angle to the grip on the Jurek, the P38 is such a natural pointer but this appears even more so

It is interesting how both the US and the UK wanted to adopt a version of the P38 post war,(the Americans developed the Smith and Wesson Model 39). I assume this was due to the DA/SA design, yet both models were rejected by models already in service.

1st also love watching these vids keep it up

12:30 I have small hands. I would love a grip like that on a pistol.

Yes, but will it _blend?_

the infamous webley

Jonathan, I'm a Brit that lives in the US. I just picked up a Webley MK1 with Navy markings but it's really odd. It has a threaded barrel which looks like it's original to the gun and the barrel is completely smooth, no rifling what-so-ever. I can't find another example like this anywhere else online or in books. I posted in all my usual military surplus group and a few people said they had actually owned that exact pistol before but couldn't find anything on it either. Any help? Looks like it was possibly used for flares?

A question. Ignoring the commercial effects of there being no safeguarding of intellectual property, if current designs of pistols (or rifles for that matter) were unaffected by patents and could just use whatever design worked best what difference would that make to current designs? Would we just have "the" pistol, "the" carbine and "the" rifle for any particular use (because the best designs were obvious to everyone) or would there still be a wide diversity of designs for particular uses?

Interestingly There is a Polish Wikipedia page for Marian Jurek but not an English one.

If the brit p38 DIDNT have that 32lb pull, then there'd be NO safety mechanism 🤣

If the barrel on the jurek was flush to the slide it would look a bit like a walther ppk or a P5

Is there a half cock function to this design that could make it "safe" with a round chambered somewhat like a Tokarev 33 ?

Were the magazines interchangeable between the two designs? The grip looks great for small hands, but not the trigger pull weight.

32 pound trigger?! The NYPD's mandatory heavy trigger, which causes them to hit everything but criminals, is "only" 15 pounds.

So you'd carry this loaded chamber, cocked with the safety on then, due to that horrendous double action trigger pull.

How many of the Webley Jurek pistols were made?

17:55 Ah, the Universal Disassembly Tool! 😀 26:20 I wonder why they didn't try to improve the design using the imput from this trial. Double action mechanism seems to be a significant enough advantage over Browning HP (although FN apparently thought otherwise), with luck Webley could've won the contract, if FN would have played by the rules, of course.

It's a Marian, not Marion.

Brit inventory: Pistol, 9MM, Walther Stolen. Mk I of course.

When you can see the tension in your hand through a glove, you know it's a heavy trigger. Yikes. Beautiful gun, but yikes.

Honest question, are there any other British-made/British designed pistols besides this?

Its still legal to iwn and shoot pistoks in the UK

Error in description section - not "Marion" (that is a british female name if i am not mistaken) but "MariAn" ;) Thanks for vid.

He was from Walsall? 🤣