World War II guns in a galaxy far, far away

“May the Fourth be with you!”

May the Force be with you! This article is published two days before May 4, or “May the Fourth,” also known as Star Wars Day. This informal day commemorates George Lucas’s creation of the original Star Wars movie in 1977, which took the world by storm, and the massive franchise that grew out of it.
 
We’d like to celebrate the day by offering an article in a somewhat lighter mood than our regular ones: World War II firearms that appeared in the films and TV series. Much of the original movie was shot at Elsetree Studios in England in 1977. The armorers of the prop department used many obsolete World War II surplus weapons since they were sold only for a fraction of their original price and were easy to obtain; some of these were “futurized” by the addition of various decorative bits called “greebles” and turned into energy weapons for use in a galaxy far, far away. Far too many weapons have been introduced into Star Wars since its inception to include it all in this article, so we'll stick to World War II guns and concentrate mostly on the original trilogy and some of the recent live-action series.
 
Perhaps the most recognizable Star Wars handgun is Han Solo’s “BlasTech DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol,” a C96 Mauser with extra bits. Originally designed in Germany in the 1890s, the “Broomhandle Mauser” was a semi-automatic pistol that saw combat in many wars. It was popular with British officers in the years before World War I, and many bought one out of his own pocket, including future Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In World War II, it saw use by both Germany and the Soviet Union. China also made heavy use of both important and domestically built C96s in their fight against the Japanese.

Most of the time you see Han’s gun in the first movie (Episode IV - A New Hope), it’s one of three blank-firing models with various modifications, including the muzzle of a German MG 81 machine gun, which was a derivative of the famous MG 34 and used on Luftwaffe aircraft. Another feature of these guns was a World War I-era German sniper scope. The company only had one of these scopes, so it always had to be transferred to whichever gun was being used for a scene.

The scene where Han draws his gun on Greedo in the Mos Eisley Cantina used a different, non-firing prop: this one had a Japanese hunting scope. In promotional materials, that specific gun also has the flash hider of a World War II M3 Grease Gun, a cheaper, lighter and less accurate follow-up to the Thompson submachine gun. (The Thompson Submachine Gun) It’s been claimed, however, that the flash hider was removed for filming the actual scene, as it made the gun hard to pull from its holster.

Speaking of Han’s and Greedo’s showdown, Greedo’s “DT-12” handgun is built from a Ruger Mk I. While the Ruger is not a World War II pistol, the Japanese Nambu series it was based on were.

After shooting was done on A New Hope, all guns were disassembled and returned to original configuration to comply with British firearm laws. As a result, you never see Harrison Ford holding any of the original props again. The only surviving DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol non-firing prop used by Harrison Ford in the first episode was sold for $1,057,500 at an auction a couple of years ago.
 
In the sequel The Empire Strikes Back, the scope is changed to an M19 brass azimuth-finding telescope sight that was used on Sherman tanks (The M4 Sherman); in Return of the Jedi, his gun was built based on a resin prop; in The Force Awakens, it’s based on a Mauser M712 Schnellfeuer machine pistol, which was developed from the C96. This change was probably because all guns in that film were based on airsoft replicas, and there were no available C96 airsofts at a reasonable price (since the price was driven up by Star Wars fans building their own versions of Han’s pistol).
 
The C96 also appears, dressed up as other weapons, in other Star Wars installments. Luke carries a Merr-Sonn Power 57 when first meeting Yoda on Dagobah, several Imperial officers are issued the Merr-Sonn Power 5 in A New Hope and the Andor series, and the sniper Fennec Shand uses a C96-derived pistol as her sidearm in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett series.

One of the most iconic, and notoriously inaccurate, firearms in the movies is the BlasTech E-11 blaster rifle, the standard issue blaster of the Imperial Stormtroopers. (They’re also used by Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia during their time on the Death Star.) They are based on the British Sterling submachine gun, more specifically the L2A3 version. The Sterling was built to replace the cheap but not very reliable Sten gun (The Sten Gun). While the Sterling was mainly a Cold War weapon, testing on it began in 1944, and is therefore technically a World War II gun. Among other modifications, the armorers of the first movie have mounted a Sherman tank gunsight on it and have removed the easily recognizable curved magazine.
 
One filming mistake in A New Hope is that some of the BlasTech E-11s can be seen ejecting blanks while firing, which is something an energy blaster probably shouldn’t be doing.

The “BlasTech DH-17” is seen wielded by Rebel troops in a variety of Star Wars installments starting with the very first one, and is also based on the Sterling, only more loosely. These were all nonfunctioning props with the receiver and the pistol grip based on Sterling casts. One interesting feature on them is the distinctive “scope.” This was, in fact, a Singlepoint occluded eye gunsight (OEG), a predecessor of modern red dot sights. You couldn’t look through the sight, as you would only see opaque blackness with a red dot in the middle. What you had to do was look “through” it with one eye while using your other eye to aim at your target, and you brain would superimpose the dot over what was in front of you. It was a very popular and futuristic invention in the 70s, saw use in Vietnam, and was even discussed in British Parliament.

Other BlasTech products used by Imperial Stormtroopers in multiple films and series are “DLT-19 heavy blaster rifle” and the “T-21 light repeating blaster." The former are some of Germany’s ubiquitous MG 34 general purpose machine guns from World War II, painted black and the barrel decorated with several rails – actually drawer runners bought in a hardware store.
 
The T-21 light repeating blaster is actually a British Lewis gun with some decorations, and the distinctive horizontal drum magazine removed. The real Lewis guns first saw service in World War I, and became the first machine gun to be mounted on an airplane. It was getting long in the tooth by World War II, but still saw some service, most notably with the Home Guard, in the Pacific, and as the Royal Navy’s standard close-range air defense weapon.

Yet another member of Star Wars’s ubiquitous BlasTech brand is the “A295”, used by Rebels during the defense of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. These props were cast from replicas built from the seminal Sturmgewehr 44, the German automatic rifle that’s often described as the first assault rifle in history, and which played a pivotal role in the evolution of small arms design. A very similar design later makes a return in The Mandalorian as the “A280C”, a weapon apparently often carried by New Republic X-wing pilots in the cockpit.

Star Wars guns are rarely based on World War II-era long rifles. One surprising exception is actually a very small weapon: the “CA-87 ion blaster” used by a diminutive Jawa to incapacitate R2-D2 in the first film. The gun was originally a Lee-Enfield Mk III*, but its barrel got shortened all the way down, and No.1 Mk I Cup Discharger (a rifle grenade launcher) was mounted on the end. The Lee-Enfield was the standard British service rifle from 1895 to 1957, and came in many different variants, with a total of over 17 million produced.

The prequel and sequel trilogies are not very interesting for our purposes, as most of the new weapons appearing are either based on airsoft models with no real gun counterparts, or are original designs.
 
Some other recent releases, however, seem to be making a return to adapted real-life weapons (if not always World War II ones). The iconic Luger P 08, a 1904 design that was still carried by German officers in World War II and became prized trophies for Allied soldiers, appears in the hands of local security forces in Andor, New Republic ship crewmen in The Mandalorian, and as Jyn Erso’s sidearm in the movie Rogue One.

On a non-firearm note, a Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife (The Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife), used by British Commandos, U.S. Army Rangers and other special units during World War II also makes an appearance in the same series with a slightly modified version of the famous knife attached to a rebel fighter’s belt in its sheath.

The Mandalorian series is particularly rich in new guns based on World War II weapons, possibly because its Spaghetti Western style and the plot, which focused on the backward fringe of civilization, was an obvious match for older, more primitive-looking technology. Various versions of the Ruger, previously the basis for Greedo’s sidearm, return in the hands of various no-gooders. The Japanese Nambu 14, one of the Nambu series the Ruger was based on, is Cara Dune’s personal sidearm.

Dune also uses the “M-32 light repeating blaster rifle,” first seen in the weapons locker of the Mandalorian’s ship, but later adopted by Dune for personal use. It’s a heavily modified British Bren gun, but the distinctive top-fed magazine is replaced by a double drum from a German MG 34, and a second barrel is added.

The ”DLT-20A laser rifle,” wielded by the bounty hunter droid IG-11, is a mix of the German Sturmgewehr 44 and the FG42 paratrooper rifle (The FG42 paratrooper rifle) with the addition of the barrel from the American .30 caliber Browning M1919A4. (The .30 Cal Browning)

Most recently, Star Wars has surprised us with yet another World War II weapon that made its way to a galaxy far, far away. This article was written shortly after the first few episodes of Andor Season 2 were aired, and we were pleased to spot a previously unattested World War weapon in Star Wars shows (it appeared only in the Star Wars Battlefront video game). In the first episode, a Range Trooper opens fire on a TIE fighter with a Smart Rocket Launcher,  which is clearly derived from the WWII American Bazooka (The Bazooka).

Finally, let us mention another non-firearm World War II reference from Star Wars. Germany’s iconic steel helmet, the Stahlhelm (The Stahlhelm), features in almost countless movies. Ironically, the Stahlhelm had inspired movie props which eventually ended up inspiring real-life equipment. A good example of this is Darth Vader’s iconic helmet, since his helmet was inspired partially by the Stahlhelm, and partially by feudal Japanese samurai helmets. On top of this, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein established a special paramilitary guard unit called the Fedayeen Saddam ("Saddam's Men of Sacrifice") in 1995. Since his son and the commander of the unit, Uday, was a Star Wars fan, the members of this organization ended up using Darth Vader-inspired, but ballistically useless helmets.