Thanks!

Indeed it is. The man I bought it from got it from the family of the veteran who brought it back.

Thank you for the suggestion but I think I’ll refer you to forgotten weapon’s video on the device: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/frmjecyEl7zTqJs.html He actually got ahold of one and made a far better video than I ever could!

@@MilitariaReviewed oh wow, ANOTHER great channel - thank you! 😎👍

Nice! What year and manufacturer is yours?

@@MilitariaReviewed it's a 1942 Erma!

Good stuff, same as mine.

I paid $300 for mine and you can generally expect to find them in the $300-500 range depending on manufacturer/condition/year of production.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree with you. Of course aluminum is softer than steel, but flare guns aren’t getting thrown around like a rifle would. I would argue that the weight savings brought about by using aluminum more than makes up for it being a little more prone to denting. I’ve never encountered a 34 with worn out locking surfaces. Norway used old 34s until fairly recently and they held up fine. Curious as to where you got that from. I have also fired mine a good bit and while there is increased recoil due to the low weight, it isn’t uncomfortable to shoot. They were definitely expensive which is of course why production switched to the 42.

The lp42 and SPSh44 came about because of wartime necessity. I have no doubt Germany would have continued to manufacture 34s if the cost and materials were not a factor. I have seen lp42 and SPSh44 with wobbly barrels and cracked welds. Now was it necessary to make the lp34 as nice as it was to begin with? No, probably not. Like you said the lp42 shoots a flare just as well, and how long can you expect any flare gun to last in wartime anyway? But I still believe that the 34 was the best ever made, regardless of wether or not it should have been made that way to begin with.

Sorry for the rant, you brought up an interesting point that I enjoyed thinking about!

Hi again, i understand the mindset you have, i had the same opinion aswell, ive changed hands with alot of lp34 and seen even more. The conclusions ive reached are based on personal experience and my amateur studying of german war industry&history aswell as my personal knowledge of mashining and toolmaking. The issiues the lp34 has are entirely the fault of the aluminium alloy. The lp34 started out as a steel pistol and in that regard it was extremely good and well made as the steel was heat treated at appropriate places and its weight counterbalanced its high bore-axis making it a very pleasent shooter. And it was nearly impossible to break, and if it did it could be fixed by a skilled gunsmith

The duraluminium material was made by the aircraft industry and the decision to make lp34's out of it was done by some military buerocrat not the original desingers and you can see that clearly in the way it wears out over time, if you dry fire it the hole for the firing pin will boulge and get out of shape and it has no way of replacing it, on the barrel pivot you can deform the frame if you dont hold the barrel when opening and the barrel locking lug gets worn out over time this is because on the original steel desing those things werent a problem but in an attempt to save on time and to not stall production as this was the period of rapid militarisation the nesesary adjustments were intencionaly not made. And this resulted in the problems ive listed. And instead of retooling their factories the german army solved the mentioned issiues with the lp42. You can see that the east&west germans themselfs admited to this by themself in the post-war flare guns where both attempted to ressurect the lp34 desing In west germany it was the lp1, lp2&lp3 The lp1 was a identical copy of the lp34 with the addition of the steel reinforced barrel, lp2 beefed up the front bit where the barrel pivots and the lp3 was almost a completly new desing with a steel-lined barrel and thicker frame aswell as the possibility of replacing the firing pin witch was also moved from the hammer to the frame. I had personaly seen lp34's with barrels that rattled and frames that were cracked on the front aswell as one that had the firing pin hole so deformed that the firing pin accualy missed the percusion cap on the flare round