POTD: PPK With More Ks – The Mythical Walther KPK
Sam.S 09.02.22
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a Walther prototype. Yes, another Walther. This super neat and extremely rare pistol is a Walther KPK. The KPK may look very similar to the Walther PPK because, well it sort of is one. The Walther KPK was engineered toward the end of World War Two with the intention that it would be issued to German troops who were in need of a small, lightweight, and handy pistol. This resulted in around ten examples called the Walther KPK. It featured an aluminum frame and the slide was squared off and engaged in order to shroud and bob the hammer.
“The unique aspects of this pistol is that it uses a unique duraluminum frame so that it is very light in weight and Walther eliminated the traditional safety/decocker lever on the slide so that it has a very slim/narrow profile making it easy to conceal in your pocket, while still retaining the tried and true Walther PPK frame design along with the side mounted magazine release button. The pistol also still functions in both the single and double action mode. Although this pistol looks like it is a hammerless design, in actuality the slide has been lengthened approximately 3/8 of an inch to simply conceal the hammer, making this a very simple engineering design change which could have been easily incorporated into production had the war not ended. As noted this super rare pistol was a true prototype pistol that carries no serial number, and is marked with only the “Walther Banner” and “KPK” markings on the left side of the slide, and a single “Eagle/N” Nazi Commercial proof mark over the chamber area of the barrel. The magazine is a standard all blued version marked with only, “WALTHER” inside a banner over “PPK 7,65mm” on the lower left side. The slide and frame have mixed finishes; with the frame, slide and barrel still in the original Walther factory “in the white” unblued/unanodized finish with the remaining small parts having an all blue finish, indicating those were just pulled from regular commercial production. This is probably one of the rarest if not the rarest original World War II Nazi small caliber pistols in existence.”
Lot 1343: Extremely Rare Prototype Walther Model Kpk Semi-Automatic Pistol –. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved September 1, 2022, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/60/1343/extremely-rare-prototype-walther-model-kpk-semiautomatic-pistol.
