Īs a military sidearm, the pistols saw service in various colonial wars, as well as World War I, The Estonian War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, and World War II. The Mauser C96 pistol was also extremely popular with British officers at the time and purchased privately by many of them numbers were supplied to Westley Richards in the UK for this purpose, although its popularity with the British military had waned by the onset of World War I. Within a year of its introduction, the C96 had been sold not only to governments, but also commercially for resale to civilians and individual military officers. Īpproximately 1 million C96 pistols were manufactured by Mauser alone, with the number produced in Spain and China being large but unknown due to the loss, non-existence, or poor upkeep of production records from those countries. The Mauser C96, with its shoulder stock, long barrel and high-velocity cartridge, had superior range and better penetration than most other standard pistols the 7.63x25mm Mauser cartridge was the highest velocity commercially manufactured pistol cartridge in existence until the advent of the. The grip's distinctive appearance earned the gun the nickname "Broomhandle" in the English-speaking world, and in China the C96 was nicknamed the "box cannon" ( Chinese: 盒子炮 pinyin: hézipào) because of both its square-shaped internal magazine and the fact it could be holstered in its wooden box-like detachable stock. The main distinctive identifying characteristics of the C96 are the integral box magazine in front of the trigger, the long barrel, the wooden shoulder stock which can double as a holster or carrying case, and a grip shaped like the handle of a broom.
Unlicensed copies of the gun were also manufactured in Spain and China in the first half of the 20th century. The Mauser C96 ( Construktion 96) is a semi-automatic pistol that was originally produced by German arms manufacturer Mauser from 1896 to 1937. V-notch rear tangent sight adjustable up to 1000 meters, inverted V front sight Second Boer War, Xinhai Revolution, World War I, Anglo-Irish War, Finnish Civil War, Mexican Revolution, Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, Chinese Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam Warįeederle brothers (Fidel, Friedrich, and Josef)Ħ, 10 or 20-round integral or detachable magazine 40-round detachable magazines were also made Semi-automatic pistol, Machine Pistol (M712 Schnellfeuer) "Red 9" Mauser C96 (9 mm Parabellum) with stock