Walther P5 Lang

Most people who handle a P5 never see one wearing a barrel like this. The P5 Lang takes the standard short-barreled service pistol and stretches the barrel out past the slide, leaving a length of exposed steel that runs ahead of the muzzle. It's an odd silhouette at first glance, and that's exactly why it stops collectors cold. Walther built very few of these, and this one carries an early production number low in the run.

The roots run back to the mid-1970s, when Walther reworked the locked-breech, recoil-operated action of the P38 into a more compact and modern package. The P5 kept that proven barrel-and-frame lockup, then added an aluminum alloy frame to shed weight and a firing pin safety system buried inside the slide. One quirk carried straight through to the Lang: the P5 ejects its spent cases to the left rather than the right, a layout almost no other service pistol of the era used.

What the long barrel actually buys you is sight radius and steadier handling. The front sight sits further out, the weight rides forward, and the gun settles between shots. The slide on this example shows the factory matte finish with light handling marks across the high edges, and the WALTHER banner, the P5 designation, and the Carl Walther Waffenfabrik Ulm/Do. address all read clean. The checkered black polymer grips are crisp, held by the single center screw Walther used on this frame.

The package is complete and that matters here. It comes in the original brown Walther box with a second magazine, the German-language Bedienungsanleitung manual, and the factory cleaning rod and paperwork. For a Walther collector chasing the corners of the P5 line, the Lang is the piece that almost never turns up, and rarely with its box and tools intact.