Walther PPK/S SD: The REAL James Bond Pistol?

If you’ve read a James Bond novel or watched the movies, you probably know that he’s used all sorts of firearms, but he’s best known for toting one specific pistol: A Walther PPK. And now, Walther has released a new version of that pistol that might be the pistol that James Bond would actually carry since it’s easily suppressed. Behold, the Walther PPK/S SD, complete with threaded barrel!

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A familiar layout

Walther is not re-inventing the wheel here, nor is it re-inventing the PPK. At its base, this is the same double-action semi-auto blowback-operated pistol they’ve sold for generations. Earlier this year, they re-introduced the PPK and PPK/s models in .32 ACP, and that’s the basic pistol you’re getting here. While many American shooters have seen the PPK chambered in .380, the .32 ACP configuration was the first version of the pistol that saw widespread use across Europe, starting all the way back in 1929.

While there have been many famous users and owners of the PPK over the decades, fictional spy James Bond has probably done more promotion for the pistol than any real-life user. Agent 007 started using the pistol when author Ian Fleming was told the .25-caliber Beretta that Bond originally toted was too wimpy a handgun; Fleming then introduced the PPK to the original book series with a rather laughable description of its supposedly devastating firepower.

In retrospect, perhaps Bond should have used a snubnosed magnum revolver, if he really wanted “delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window.” But .32 ACP has certainly done a lot of dirty work over the years. The trouble with the PPK itself was, its barrel design made it very hard to attach a suppressor. Unless you had a gadget-building genius (like Q) working for you, your PPK was very much a standard pea-shooter with no silencer capability.