Walther PPK/S SD Plus
SilencerCo Spectre 9
Spy Life…
Do you remember when you graduated from High School and your momma made you write all those execrable thank you notes? An example might be, “Thank you so much, Aunt Gertrude, for the check for $20. I will use it to buy books and food when I get to college. Your thoughtful gift will keep me from eventually dying ignorant and homeless.” Then you went out and blew it on beer. In my case, that would be Winchester White Box 9mm ball.
Well, we all need to take a moment and pen a quick note of thanks to the Walther gun company. Retro everything is all the rage these days and Walther maintains a robust presence in that space. In addition to releasing the classic long-barreled PP pistol in both .32 and .380, their product catalog now also includes what they call the PPK/S SD. This is the standard .32ACP PPK/S with an extended threaded barrel from the factory.
When I first heard the news, I knew this was going to be special. As I hefted the gun, I’m fairly sure I could hear that timeless 007 guitar riff in the background. When equipped with a properly scaled sound suppressor, the resulting package is cool enough to transform Boy George into Steve McQueen.
Dark And Stormy Night
Bond kept to the shadows across the street from the One Palácio da Anunciada Hotel in Lisbon. The cold rain came down in sheets, tracking down his muscular back like some malevolent burrowing creature. However, the man’s time with the 22nd SAS had rendered him immune to discomfort.
His mark was one Bohdan Svoboda. Svoboda was rich. Proper money … billions with a B. Born and raised in the Czech Republic, Svoboda had accumulated his ill-gotten wealth the good old-fashioned way — drugs, weapons and white slavery covered his ample hotel tab. Then he supplied guns to the wrong group of psychopaths and Whitehall decided he must die. A secure tasker trickled down to MI6 and now James Bond stood motionless in the rain outside of a 5-star hotel in the Portuguese capital.
A glance at his OMEGA Seamaster showed it was time. Bohdan Svoboda was nothing if not predictable. Tonight, that predictability would cost him his life.
007 slipped into an alleyway and discreetly retrieved his PPK/S SD from its chamois shoulder rig. He missed his old Beretta, but M had been quite explicit. Regardless, the trim little Walther had grown on him. With his left hand, Bond produced his SilencerCo Spectre sound suppressor. Considering that SPECTRE was the overarching organization that had put Svoboda atop his dark empire in the first place, Bond felt it somehow fitting this tiny little Spectre can would help take him off it.
007 threaded the trim little cylinder in place and slid the rig into the ample pocket of his Crombie coat. His right hand firmly wrapped around the grip of the pistol, he made his way purposefully across the street and into the palatial lobby. He would use the stairs, knock on the door claiming to be room service, liquidate the former Spetsnaz bodyguard and have Bohdan Svoboda approaching room temperature within the quarter hour. With the wind at his back, he could be back in London by dawn. He might even ring up Moneypenny for brunch at the Savoy. That thought brought a smile.
The Man
James Bond. 007. License to kill. A spy created by a spy. Ian Fleming based his fictitious undercover operative on his own espionage work during World War II. He took the name from an obscure real-world British ornithologist. In so doing, the esteemed novelist crafted the coolest human being ever to walk the earth.
Across 25 movies, James Bond has saved the world, gotten the girl and looked fabulous doing it. Part of that was wardrobe and some meticulously crafted dialogue. However, a big piece of 007’s inimitably suave persona was that remarkable little gun. The Walther PPK is as much a part of the Bond ethos as is the Aston Martin Vanquish and his exploding pen.
The Weapon
“Walther PPK. 7.65 mil with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window. Takes a Brausch silencer with little reduction in muzzle velocity. The American CIA swear by them.”
These lyrically inaccurate but undeniably mesmerizing words were uttered by MI6 Quartermaster “Q” as he issued Bond his new Walther PPK service pistol in Dr. No. In previous books, Bond had packed a tiny little Beretta 418 pocket pistol in .25 ACP. Fleming had 007 inexplicably “skeletonize” the 418 by removing the grips.
An astute reader and firearms enthusiast named Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote Fleming, suggesting the diminutive 418 was really more of a lady’s gun. He opined that perhaps Fleming should consider the Walther PPK instead. A friendship ensued. In the subsequent novel, Bond’s little Beretta snags on his waistband and quite nearly gets him killed. 007’s boss, “M” subsequently insists he pack a PPK. In the novels, Q’s real name is Major Geoffrey Boothroyd.
It’s A Brave New World
There’s no such thing as a Brausch silencer. Never has been, never will be. Fleming just hallucinated that out of the ether. Likewise, the 7.65x17SR (.32 ACP on this side of the pond) bears little semblance to a brick. However, it sure made for some compelling verbiage.
I freely admit I am smitten with all things Bond. Casino Royale is my favorite film, with Thunderball running a close second. Monty Norman’s distinctive 007 guitar solo in E Minor is the ringtone on my smartphone. A Bond-themed image of me being silly headlines my Facebook page. My first serious concealed carry gun was a stainless Walther PPK/S in .380ACP. Every now and then, I still slip into my minimalist Galco shoulder rig and pack a PPK underneath a light jacket when I’m feeling extra awesome. Trust me, the Bond magic is real.
Over the decades, I have accumulated an embarrassing collection of Bond guns. That includes the Walther P99, the S&W Model 29 as used in Live and Let Die, and even a suppressed HK UMP9 like the one seen in the closing sequence of Casino Royale. That catalog also naturally includes the obligatory PP and PPK. However, the golden ring was always the silencer. Mounting a sound suppressor to a Walther PPK is actually strikingly difficult.
The Problem
First contrived by Carl Walther back in 1929, the original PP was a direct blowback pocket gun with a single-action/double-action trigger and a fixed barrel. Two years later, in 1931, Walther released the PPK. PPK stands for Polizeipistole Kriminal or “Police Pistol Criminal.” This was a reference to the Kriminalamt crime
investigation office. There is a spurious assumption the “K” means kurz or “short” in German. However, early Walther advertising materials clearly stated Kriminal.
The subsequent PPK was an abbreviated version of the original. However, the blowback design meant the barrel was reliably fixed — like pressed into the frame. Getting that thing out without destroying it requires some proper talent.
Some small shops have pulled it off, but the conversion is both difficult and expensive. You either have to press out the barrel and replace it or somehow thread the tube in situ and use an adaptor. Now, Walther does it for us from scratch.
Technical Details
Briefly, the PPK was too small to make the cut for importation under the 1968 Gun Control Act. However, that only affected imports. You could still make almost any handgun you wanted in the U.S. As these guns were produced in West Germany at the time, the answer was the PPK/S.
Walther engineers extended the grip slightly to accommodate a longer magazine that held one more round. The end result was more comfortable while offering the obvious higher magazine capacity. In this state, it also met the importation criteria mandated by the 1968 GCA. The Walther PPK/S was history’s sole example of a gun control law actually making a firearm better.
Now fast forward some 56 years. Today, Walther has a sprawling 225,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Arkansas that produces these guns domestically. Previously, your options were the standard PPK or the PPK/S in either blued or stainless finishes, all chambered for .380 ACP. Now, those same pistols can be had in .32 ACP as well. The same goes for their new PPs. The .32-caliber SD versions include that threaded barrel. Curiously, the barrel incorporates an extended thread adaptor that must be removed to allow the gun to be disassembled.
Hold On To Your Butts
This is about to get pretty epic. My next chore was to find an appropriate sound suppressor. At 3.9 oz. and a paltry 4.76″ long, the SilencerCo Spectre 9 was the obvious choice.
The Spectre 9 is a welded, all-titanium design that is rated for use on full-auto 9mm subguns. Compact, indestructible and surprisingly effective, the Spectre 9 complements the diminutive PPK/S both functionally and aesthetically. As the barrel is fixed, you don’t need a Nielsen device for reliable operation.
Titanium is shockingly difficult to weld, but SilencerCo has broken that code. Titanium is what makes the Spectre 9 seem so anorexic. The combination is concealable, delightfully efficient and movie-grade cool.
Trigger Time
Standard velocity 9mm Para is naturally supersonic. The 9mm sound-suppressed combat pistols are subsequently invariably loud. By contrast, those tiny little .32 ACP rounds are just delightfully stealthy.
I have been searching for this very gun my entire adult life. This is the suppressed centerfire pistol you can actually shoot comfortably without muffs. Mating the new PPK/S SD with the state-of-the-art SilencerCo Spectre 9 rendered me giddy.
The .32 ACP through the Spectre 9 is legit hearing safe. Precious few centerfire handgun suppressors can really make that claim. The .32 ACP is not the world’s most effective manstopper. It is, however, arguably the sexiest handgun I have ever fired, and that’s saying a lot.
The double-action trigger pull is measured in short tons, but recoil with the can in place is not real. The single-action trigger is quite nice, so follow-up shots are both smooth and fast. If I had a truckload of .32 ACP ammo, I could shoot this gun until I starved to death.
So, are you really awesome enough to own this thing? I queried my wife. Tragically, she said I probably wasn’t. However, even if your day job does not involve liquidating bloodthirsty terrorists, that doesn’t mean you can’t equip yourself just in case. This new sound-suppressed Walther PPK/S might not get you dates with supermodels or the keys to an Aston Martin DB5, but it is hands down the next best thing, all at a fraction of the price. MSRP for the stainless gun is $1,199. The suppressor is $879.
For more info: WaltherArms.com, SilencerCo.com
