A Dash of the Old;
A Pinch of the New

In my opinion, for the last century, Walther has excelled at designing pistols that handled exceptionally well and were no bigger than they needed to be. Compared to the rectangular forms of typical auto-loading pistols, and especially the utilitarian GLOCK, Walthers seem sculpted and graceful. Aesthetics aside, this ergonomic sculpting is a factor in how Walthers perform. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the difference is like sword fighting with a slim rapier vs. a broadsword or batting on the ball field with a Louisville Slugger vs. a piece of two-by-four, but I’d argue that few pistol makers have matched Walthers for their natural feel. The Walther PD380 carries on this tradition.

As a hammer-fired, single-action/double-action design, the PD380 is a throwback to the PP and PPK pistols that made Fritz Walther hugely successful in the late 1930s. However, the PD380 thumb safety lever, like that on the .22LR Walther P22, functions differently than those classics.

For starters, the PD380 and P22 have an ambidextrous safety with thumb levers on both sides of the slide. More significantly, they don’t safely drop the hammer over a loaded chamber on their own. They only block the hammer from striking the firing pin. That means that to carry the PD380 or P22 with a loaded chamber, ready to instantly fire that first shot in double-action mode, you’re going to have to manually lower the cocked hammer with your thumb with the safety on, and afterward switch it to firing position. The hammer is serrated to reduce the chance of it slipping from under your thumb. If it does slip, the safety physically holds off the hammer from striking the firing pin. This is why I’d never try to lower the hammer over a loaded chamber without first engaging the safety.

Compact Features

On the outside, the PD380 resembles the blessed offspring of a marriage between the new 9mm Walther PDP series and the old .22LR P22 series. In size, the PD380 is close to the P22 but a half-inch taller at 5.15″. Like the P22, its magazines have a pinky-rest floorplate for consistent grip placement and improved control and ambidextrous European style, dual paddle magazine release levers on the bottom of the triggerguard. I find the paddle release preferable to the button style on smaller handguns intended for self-defense because they eliminate the possibility of accidentally dropping the magazine while shooting.

In overall appearance, the PD380 looks like a hammer-fired mini-PDP with that model’s slim, almost wasp-waisted slide with deep, broad, SuperTerrain Serrations at the front and rear. It has the same easily customizable GLOCK mounting pattern, plastic, three-dot sights, the rear being precision adjustable for windage and elevation. The PD380 has the PDP’s tetrahedral-shaped Performance Duty Grip Texture, too, with subtle finger grooves and a pronounced thumb self on each side. Like the P22, those finger grooves continue through the front strap. The PD380 nestles my average-sized hand perfectly with no room to spare. Larger hands will probably find it cramped.

Size Factors

If your hands aren’t too big, the compact Walther PD380 is at the lower edge of practical shootability. It doesn’t sacrifice grip ergonomics on the altar of deep concealment like the 10-round magazine, .380 ACP GLOCK 28, which is about an inch shorter than the PD380.

Using the popular GLOCK pistol line as a frame of reference, the 9-round magazine Walther PD380 falls between the deep concealment GLOCK 28 and the compact but still easy-to-handle 15-round magazine, .380 ACP GLOCK 25. The latter is the size of the compact 9mm GLOCK 19 and, in my opinion, unnecessarily big for a .380 ACP pistol. Both the GLOCK 25 and the PD380 are the same 1.25″ thickness across the grip, but the Walther is slightly taller by 0.10″ thanks to its pinky rest magazine extension and adjustable rear sight. At  6.56″ long, it’s notably shorter in overall length by 0.86″. At 20.8 oz., it’s two ounces lighter than the GLOCK 25. Its slide is 0.945″ thick and, though only 0.055″ narrower than the GLOCK’s, is considerably leaner because of the sculpting

Compact Shooting

On the range, I found the PD380 shot well for a pocket gun. It’s no Hamerli target pistol, of course, but shooting from a Caldwell Pistolero rest at 25 yards, in single-action mode, with four different brands of ammunition, the overall average of my five-shot groups was only 4.2″. The pistol only has a 3.7″ barrel, and about 0.70″ of that is chamber and throat. It had no provision for mounting an optic, but the “iron” sights proved excellent for target work.

The most accurate load I tested was HSM Ammunition’s 100-grain copper-plated round-nose flat-point bullet. They averaged groups of 3.19″ and velocities of 955 feet-per-second. Black Hills Ammunition 60-grain HoneyBadger, a premium self-defense round, averaged groups of 3.92″ and velocities of 1,154 fps. It has a solid copper bullet whose tip looks like the front of a Philips screwdriver. Rather than expand on contact with flesh, the fluted point acts like a highway snowplow, violently displacing tissue outward from the bullet nose. Being solid copper, it does an excellent job penetrating barriers, too. Unlike a conventional hollow point, heavy clothing will not negate the HoneyBadger bullet’s destructive potential. Hornady’s Critical Defense 90-grain FTX JHP bullet averaged groups measuring 5.37″ with a velocity of 966 FPS. The unique FTX is the only .380 ACP JHP I’ve found that reliably expands in flesh after penetrating heavy clothing and the only one I will use in this caliber. The bullet cavity is filled with a soft, flexible plug with the exterior copper jacket star crimped over it. This allows it to penetrate heavy clothing without clogging up the cavity. Instead, the plug is driven into the cavity, causing it to expand.

Shooting rapid fire at seven yards range with a standing, two-hand hold and beginning with double-action mode, my first five-shot string showed a tight 1.88″ cluster of four shots and a single round 5″ higher and 8.5″ to the right of the cluster. The wayward shot was my first double-action round. With practice I was able to reel in that first shot and tighten my five-shot groups to 2.74″. The light recoil of the .380 ACP allowed me to get back on target faster than I would have with a 9mm or heavier caliber.

The PD380 demonstrated excellent reliability with no functional issues during testing. The two-stage, single-action trigger pull took 5.5 lbs. to break after taking up the free travel. The double-action pull measured 10 lbs. through its smooth, long arc. Being a locked action, racking the PD380’s slide to chamber a round took minimal effort.

Other Observations

A curiously antiquated characteristic of the PD380 is its lack of a thumb-operated slide release button. Like thePP/PPK, the PD380 slide locks open on the magazine follower after the last round is fired and won’t return to battery with an empty magazine in place. To return the slide to battery, the empty magazine must be removed or replaced with a loaded magazine, at which point the slide can be released by pulling it back slightly and letting it go to slam closed under spring pressure. This makes the process of getting an empty PD380 back in action somewhat more time-consuming than it is for most other modern auto-loading pistols since the off-hand must replace the magazine and draw back the locked slide. I regard self-defense handguns as an exit strategy. As such, the speed of magazine changes isn’t my highest concern since I only plan to use it as a means to remove myself to someplace where a gunfight isn’t going on.

I also found the absence of a double-column magazine a bit perplexing. The single-stack PD380 magazine is excellent with its stainless steel body and bullet-shaped witness holes for every round, but it only holds nine rounds. Granted, that is one round more than the older Walther CCP .380 ACP striker-fired pistol, but with all the space inside the polymer grip frame, it seems to me an opportunity was missed to make the PD380 a standout in its class like Beretta’s 1970s vintage,13-round magazine, Model 84. That pistol is still produced and copied today.

MSRP on the PD380 is $449, but the actual online retail looks to be $400, which puts it $100 under the online retail for the .380 ACP GLOCK 25 or 28. Despite somewhat of a loosey-goosey feel, in the barrel-to-slide and slide-to-frame fit, the PD380 shot respectably and reliably.

Field stripping it, I could see it was made with modern, efficient production methods. There are lots of precision stamped sheet metal parts, something Walther pioneered before World War II with the military P-38 pistol. Also evident were a surprisingly large number of metal injection molding (MIM) parts, MIM is ideal for making small, complex, parts like the Walther’s magazine release paddles and take down latch, which would otherwise take huge amounts of machine time to cut from bar stock. MIM is a very expensive process set up and suggests to me a commitment to the design. Walther Arms carry a lifetime warranty on parts and workmanship, so while I was surprised to see MIM used to make critical parts like the sear components, hammer, slide guides and barrel trunnion, I wasn’t worried about their durability. Firearms engineering trends have favored this type of construction and material selection now for several decades, while the manufacturing processes themselves have matured, allowing for higher quality production. The PD380 is an example of how far those manufacturing processes have come.

For more info: WaltherArms.com

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