For a couple decades after World War Two, Walther survived on legacy designs – the PP/PPK and P38 (eventually made with an aluminum frame as the P4) primarily. In the 1970s they developed the P5 for German police use, and this was a reasonably successful pistol, but expensive and complex. Something more modern was needed to keep the company relevant in the market. The first attempt was an all-steel Browning style pistol, the P88. This was put into production, but was never very popular. Next was an attempt to recreate the PP in 9×19 with a locked breech, the PP90. This was a complete failure, never getting past prototype stage. And by this time the company was essentially bankrupt, and was put up for sale.
German airgun manufacturer Umarex came to the rescue, wanting to see a historic German company remain underGerman ownership. They purchased the firm, and a new R&D effort led to the release of the P99 in 1996. This was a truly cutting edge pistol at the time, with a polymer frame, interchangeable backstraps (the first production pistol of its type to have this feature), ambidextrous controls , and a remarkably good DA/SA striker firing system with a decocking button. With company manager Wulf-Heinz Pflaumer putting a preproduction example into the hands of James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in “Tomorrow Never Dies”, the gun got off to a hot start, and proved very successful, rescuing the company from financial disaster.
Over about 25 years of production it was licensed to several additional manufacturers (including S&W and Radom), made in a variety of colors, trigger styles, and calibers, and not finally discontinued until 2023.
The p99 also has a triple action trigger, too. When it’s in single action, pulling back on the slide slightly will send the trigger forward into it’s double action spot but leave the striker tentioned allowing for a long “safety” trigger that still retains the light single action trigger. If I’m not mistaken, this is what was later called the “anti-stress” mode seen on later P99as models. Truly one of the greatest handguns ever produced on my opinion, and one of my all time favorites
Very informative sharing… Thanks…
However…
P99 combined SA-DA Trigger model “AS” needs no decocking before take down… Lowering the take down latch causes the trigger bar to move a little forward and downward at rear as disconnecting from engagement of striker and lets the slide to go out freely.
Sorry…. Above post is rather confusable… If the gun remained on cocked mode decocking is necessary before take down…
Simply decocking the P99 AS will not get the double action sear out of path of striker underlug… Therefore… The designers had made the addition written above on trigger bar and take down latch to clear out of path of forwarding striker…
Sorry, but your second message is as cryptic to me as your first (with its 31 words sentence) was.
Jpeelen…
Thanks for your interest… Sorry to bore you…
Double action notch of P99 even the pistol is on uncocked mode, prevents the slide’s going out of the receiver… When the take down latch is lowered, it clears the striker way out… And… The important matter of this feature, some clones have not this ability…
Interesting pistol. The examples I’ve handled and shot have all been good, solid examples of late-stage Wundernine design and construction.
What’s interesting about it is the sheer convergence we’re witnessing on what fills the “pistol” role; so far as I can see, this really adds nothing major to the Glock-a-like school of pistol design/use. Which doesn’t render it useless, but it is interesting to observe over the course of my life how everyone was initially looking at the Glock all aghast and going “My gawd… The plastic, the plastic…”, and now…? Everything looks like a variation on the original Glock design.
I forget who the hell it was that Gaston Glock consulted with; same guy had something to do with the Caracal and a bunch of other designs. In a hundred years, whoever takes over for Othais is going to be digging through the patents and literature, tracing it all out as they try to figure out who’s really responsible for the designs…
It’s amusing to observe the same crap that played out with infantry rifles and revolvers, in real time and right in front of us. I hope someone is going to do a better job of documenting all this crap, or we’re going to be left with the same mess poor Othais has been going through with regards to revolver actions and designs…
Someone really ought to be taking notes from that whole thing, and at least making an attempt to help reduce the blood pressure for whoever it is, a hundred years hence. Document preservation and interviews of the proponents would be nice…
Wilhelm Bubits.
I can already tell from the paucity of actual documentation that there will be arguments over his and others contributions to Glock’s design. The story I got was that Gaston Glock went out and gathered up a bunch of European IPSC types, along with men like Bubits, and they all contributed to the design, at least in terms of “What a pistol should be”. The actual documents appear to be rather closely held, probably because Glock didn’t want to pay royalties on the IP.
I’ve heard some claim that George Nonte’s book on combat pistols served as a guide/source for inspiration, because the damn Glock is an almost perfect note-for-note rendition of a hypothetical “ideal combat pistol” that Nonte laid out in his book.
I nominate you to write the book(s). I volunteer to proofread your first draft(s).
When I win the lottery and can afford to spend a few years in Europe doing the research, I’ll make the plastic pistol volume the one I do immediately after the one on post-WWI German machinegunnery…
This is one of the tragedies of such things… The people who can see the need to research and preserve the information rarely have the resources to do so, and the ones with the resources don’t see the need.
Sorry, have you not read “Glock: the Rise of America’s Gun” by Paul Barrett? Doesn’t mention any of your names but does mention that Gaston G. perused every pistol patent in Europe (picked the right ones to copy) and consulted with Austrian army officers on what a modern pistol should be. Not that I question your sources. Would love to hear more on this.
Gaston Glock has some pretty “meh” early patents in which a consistent trigger pull is achieved by help of an additional spring that supports the DA trigger pull
The Beretta PX4 Type C, now discontinued, had a “constant trigger pull” that mimicked that of the striker fired guns. It was anchieved by making it only fire from half cock. https://youtu.be/JR-sZW5sQd0
What is the minimum number that a publisher will print? How much does it take in 2024 dollars to fund such a book?
Researchers live for controversy. Faultless documentation is kryptonite to academicians.
“doesn’t add anything”
You need to go back and learn what DA/SA means and how triggers work, if you think that
Was the P88 all-steel? The ones I have seen are alloy frames, right? I want an all-steel P88….
Thanks for this video. Didn’t realize the P99 pioneered replaceable back straps.
A P99QA was my first wonder nine because I was still in my “not a Glock” phase. Same reason I bought a vz58 instead of an AR. I’ve grown out of this. Mostly.
I liked it and it treated me pretty well. If more pistols had the paddle mag release I wouldn’t complain.
The downside was the grip texture and shape. I couldn’t lock it down for followup shots and it seemed to slide all over the place. User error was surely part of it but that dot texture didn’t help. I’ve since learned stippling isn’t that hard while fixing a less bad version of the same problem on the M&P 1.0s I replaced the P99 with.
Ian,
On the upside, thank you again for another great episode. On the downside I wasn’t feeling old enough already, so you had to go and remind me that a weapon which I once referred to as a “Wunder nine” is now an out of production curiosity.
Still the 80’s/90’s were a great time in handgun innovation. Thanks again for shining some light on this old beauty.
So which of the Caniks was a clone of this and was it any good?
The firing pin safety is deactivated by the trigger bar, not the polymer frame.
The P99 in its 3 basic variants was just as revolutionary at the time of its introduction as the P.38 once was. Ok, first of all the WALTHER “PP90” came to nothing, just as the further development of the WALTHER PP into the “M.P” (military pistol) in Parabellum 9×19 mm caliber, “Patrone 08”, did in 1931. This merely “pimped” PP was offered to the Reichswehr Weapons Office as a replacement for the expensive Luger-Parabellum P.08, which immediately rejected this pistol outright, although it functioned perfectly…
Ok, at the beginning of the 1990s the management at WALTHER was not exactly the best and so they tried their hand at a locked PP, so to speak. After the takeover by UMAREX, this was stopped immediately and the development of a new design began in 1994 in order to be able to offer something better to counter the already very successful SFP Glock17 with the then “P99”. In 1996 “the new one” was ready for the market. The most striking feature is the lack of an external hammer; the P99 has an internal hammer instead (like FN1903 and others; so only grandma was powdered…), which cannot catch on clothing. Externally, it thus resembles the SFP, which was considerably cheaper to manufacture than “classic” cock pistols at the time and therefore in the fast lane on the government market. The cocking status of the P99 can be recognized and felt by a red signal pin at the rear. The loading status of the P99 can be recognized by the extractor claw.
Its SA/DA trigger mechanism in three slightly different variants with a decocking button on top of the slide – for the police with the “AS” trigger mechanism (AntiStress) – made it an “object of desire” for many gun carriers and gun enthusiasts. It was introduced in five German federal states in different variants (approx. 70,000) and, following a Europe-wide tender, also in the Netherlands and Estonia (together approx. 55,000). The Dutch variant “Q-NL” was initially prone to malfunctions (no idea why), which were rectified from 2016 after a WALTHER recall.
Unfortunately, production of the P99 was discontinued in 2023; there is a “Final Edition P99 AS” with a TAN grip. I couldn’t resist ordering it today :-)) …
The predecessor P88: It was the first locked “Browning” in the development history of WALTHER, albeit in the European modified “BPS” system (Browning-Petter-SIG) with so-called “open locking claw”. With the abandonment of the broad-based system with swing bolt (P.38 / P1 / P4 / P5), the P88 was now issued as a tribute – in memory of the “P.38 issued 50 years ago”. It took part in US and German military tenders in the early / mid-1980s. It “flopped”; on the one hand because its revolutionary decocking system without manual safety was not yet accepted at the time and on the other hand because its precise “clockwork” mechanism was prone to malfunctions in heavy sandy soiling and frost, similar to the SIG P49 / 210. Seen in the light of day, the P88 had only one disadvantage that prevented its long-term market success: it was already almost twice as expensive as the comparable SIG-SAUER P220/226 when it was launched in 1987/88. The P88 is now highly sought after as a “Forgotten Weapon” all over the world and is – even used! – almost never traded for less than 1000 € / $. Incidentally, the Swiss SIG P75 / P220 and P88 were designed by the same manufacturer: Walther Ludwig, a Swabian and “by nature” a machine gun designer. He first worked for the Swiss SIG, where he was also involved in the development of variants of the sporting “210”, and later for WALTHER. He then went into business for himself and only built cutaway models… I was able to meet him in Günzburg in 2008 when he was very old.