FLZ - Mako (Novelty Patent, Twite)

FLZ - Mako (Novelty Patent, Twite) 

With thanks to John G.

He said on the airgunbbs.com:

"[This pistol] dates to the 1920’s and was made by Langenhan. It was advertised in Germany as the “Mako Novelty Patent” air pistol, and in the UK by Clyde Bell as the “Twite”. It seems to be a very rare pistol and I know of only a handful in collections. A very nice boxed example is pictured in the Gallery here:  https://forum.vintageairgunsgallery....ite/#post-1504
This is from a Clyde Bell catalogue:

The cocking mechanism can be understood from the following pictures. The barrel is pushed into the cylinder until the piston engages with the sear, as in the second picture. The barrel is then pulled back out when it can be broken against a retaining spring detent and the dart or pellet is inserted, as in the third picture. The barrel is then closed and the gun is ready to fire.

The cocking principle has a lot in common with the Hubertus, except that with the Hubertus the pellet can be inserted into the breech before the barrel is returned. It raises the question, did this pistol inspire Jung when he developed his Hubertus?

The spring is quite strong and requires your full weight when cocking by pushing the barrel against floor. It has about the same power as a Gat but is more accurate to shoot.

One of the reasons I have been looking for one of these pistols is that I have owned an odd pistol for the past 20 years which Is clearly an early smaller version, and I wanted to put the two together. This earlier version, which seems to be the only known example, is shown here below the later model. It is in a rather tatty state but does work. Although no catalogue pictures of this specific version are known, one very similar is pictured in a 1907 German catalogue, and differs only in the barrel being rotated to load the pellet rather than broken. So if the design was around as early as 1907, then from a timing point of view it is quite feasible that Jung could have used it as a basis for his Hubertus design."