Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Turns out this overlooked French nine-shooter actually saw its fair share of trenches back in the day. Designed by some cats called Manufacture d’armes de Bayonne (or MAB for short), their Model D auto-pistol hit the scene in 1933. Now this slick number took cues from Belgium’s fine FN Brownings but kicked things up a notch for the gendarmes and infantrymen of the era. Packing nine rounds of .32 or .380 into a sturdy grip frame, the Model D won hearts from Casablanca to the Maginot Line. Heck, even the Wehrmacht snatched up over 100,000 when they rolled into Paris, keeping MAB’s Bayonne factory humming for the Reich. But after liberation, production fired right back up for another 40 years. Beyond equipping les flics and the Legion, you’d even see Dutch and German cops packing surplus Model Ds into the 1950s.
“Manufacturer: Bayonne Manufacture D’armes
Model: Mab D
Type: Pistol
Gauge: 7.65 mm auto
Barrel: 4 inch round
Finish: blue
Grip: plastic”
Lot 6525: Two Nazi Marked French Semi-Automatic Pistols – B) M.A.B. Model D Pistol. (n.d.-bs). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved December 7, 2023, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/1034/6525/two-nazi-marked-french-semi-automatic-pistols.
