Editing Luger pistol (section)

== Design details ==
[[File:Luger toggle action.svg|thumb|Luger toggle-lock action]]
[[File:Luger_cutaway.jpg|left|thumb|Cutaway drawing of the Luger pistol from Georg Luger's 1908 9mm patent.]]
[[File:Luger IMG 6761b.jpg|thumb|Toggle-lock action with the knee joint bent upwards]]

The Luger has a toggle-lock action that uses a jointed arm to lock, as opposed to the [[Pistol slide|slide]] actions of many other semi-automatic pistols, such as the [[M1911]]. After a round is fired, the barrel and toggle assembly travel roughly {{convert|0.5|in|mm|abbr=on|order=flip}} rearward due to recoil, both locked together at this point. The toggle strikes a cam built into the frame, causing the knee joint to hinge and the toggle and breech assembly to unlock. The barrel strikes the frame and stops its rearward movement, but the toggle assembly continues moving, bending the knee joint upwards, extracting the spent casing from the chamber, and ejecting it. The toggle and breech assembly then travel forward under spring tension and the next round is loaded from the magazine into the chamber. The entire sequence occurs in a fraction of a second and contributes to the above average mud resistance<ref>{{Citation|title=Mud Test: WW1 & WW2 P08 Luger|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_IeAaR5AmU|access-date=2019-08-06}}</ref> of the pistol.

This mechanism works well for higher-pressure cartridges, but cartridges loaded to a lower pressure can cause the pistol to malfunction because they do not generate enough recoil to work the action fully. This results in the breech block either not clearing the top cartridge of the magazine or becoming jammed open on the cartridge's base.<ref name="hogg">{{Cite book|last1=Hogg|first1=Ian|title=Military Small Arms of the 20th Century|last2=Weeks|first2=John|publisher=Krause Publications|year=2000|isbn=0-87341-824-7|edition=7th|location=Iola, Wisconsin}}</ref> This malfunction with under-powered cartridges does occur with Browning-type and other pistol designs as well, but the Luger is sensitive to cartridges other than the brass-cased ammunition that it was designed to use.<ref>Dunlap, Roy, ''Ordnance Went Up Front'', Stackpole Books (1948), p. 104</ref>

[[Submachine gun|Submachine guns]] were found to be effective in trench warfare during World War I, and experiments were conducted to convert various types of pistols to fully automatic machine pistols, including the P08. The Luger proved to have an excessive rate of fire in full-automatic mode, however, as did the [[Mauser C96]]. The [[Drum magazine|'snail drum']] [[Magazine (firearms)|magazine]] for the [[MP 18]], which was used by German [[Stormtroopers (Imperial Germany)|Stormtroopers]] towards the end of the war, was originally designed for the Artillery Luger.<ref name="Bishop 1998">{{cite encyclopedia|year=1998|title=MP 18 and MP28|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II|publisher=Orbis publishing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MuGsf0psjvcC&pg=PA258|editor-last=Bishop|editor-first=Chris|page=258|isbn=1586637622}}</ref>