Bead front and automatic folding notch rear sights, with a set of claw bases integrated into the rib, "NIMROD GEWEHRFABRIK, SUHL" on the right barrel and "AUG. LUNEBURG, KIEL" on the left, "KRUPP-LAUFSTAHL" on the undersides, and "7x57 R" on the rifle barrel. The receiver is finely casehardened with light floral and scroll engraving, with a hammer-blocking safety lever on the left side (firing position marked "FREI" on the frame), 3 indicator pins on top, and a barrel selector on the tang. The stock is finely checkered, with a raised cheekpiece and a serrated horn buttplate. The underside of the stock behind the wrist bears a silver plate, inscribed "Dem Seehelden/Gunther Prien/mit Waidmannsheil/auf allen Wegen!/10.7.40 (signature)" (The Sea Hero Guenther Prein, with huntsman's greetings on all lanes and byways). Born in January of 1908 in Osterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Prien first went to sea as a merchant sailor, working his way up from a basic seaman to the officer's ranks. While he passed the license tests to be a sea captain, like many Germans he found himself on the wrong end of the Great Depression. Unemployed and angry, he joined the Nazi Party in 1932, becoming an officer in the Reichs Labor Service before applying to the Reichsmarine. Serving briefly with the surface fleet, Prien took a posting to the submarine fleet; though illegal under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, a combination of weak enforcement and the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 essentially let them get away with it. Participating in two combat patrols during the Spanish Civil War, Prien rose through the ranks, making Kapitaenleutnant (Captain-Lieutenant) in 1939. Commanding U-47 on multiple patrols, Prien's total score was 8 damaged and 30 sunk commercial ships, 1 damaged and 1 sunk warships. The sunk warship was the feat that earned him his nickname and his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The HMS Royal Oak, a WWI vintage Revenge-Class battleship, was anchored at Scapa Flow when U-47 slipped through the British defenses and sent it to the bottom, with 833 out of 1,234 hands lost. Using an attack plan personally formulated by Karl Doenitz (then Commander of Submarines, later Chief of the Kriegsmarine and final Fuehrer of Nazi Germany), Prien threaded his boat between the small island of Lamb Holm and the Orkney Mainland and was forced to run on the surface through block ships to enter the anchorage. Once inside, he made 3 attack runs, scoring 4 total torpedo hits on the Royal Oak; the first was mistaken by the crew for an inadvertent detonation of flammable stores, but the near simultaneous strike of the final 3 put the Royal Oak down in about 13 minutes. While the loss of Royal Oak was of minimal strategic impact, the fact that a German skipper penetrated Scapa Flow was a massive blow to Royal Navy morale and an even greater boon to the Germans. Although the defenses had been allowed to erode between the wars, Scapa Flow's reputation as a Royal Navy stronghold made the infiltration a painful embarrassment and forced a crash upgrade program of the anchorage's defenses. For the Germans, it was years overdue vengeance for the internment and scuttling of the Imperial High Seas Fleet at the end of World War I. Returning home, Prien became an overnight celebrity, hailed as "Der Stier von Scapa Flow" (The Bull of Scapa Flow). He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which was among the highest awards granted in Nazi Germany, prior to the "July 20" assassination plot the presentation was personally made by Hitler himself, and Prien was the first U-Boat man to receive the award. Returning to work (and earning the Oak Leaves for the Knight's Cross in the process, the first Kriegsmarine recipient), Prien and U-47 made their last known contact via radio just before 5:00 AM on March 7th, 1941 between the UK and Iceland. Theories vary wildly on what happened, but no hard evidence is known. The ship was presumed lost with all hands. Ironically, the loss of Prien was as much a black eye for Germany as his hit on Royal Oak was for the British; the Kriegsmarine sat on the news for over two months, while no less than Winston Churchill announced the loss of the Bull in the House of Commons. In spite of his relatively short war career, Prien still managed to rank among the Kriegsmarine's top 10 U-Boat aces, with over 200,000 gross register tons sunk. The date on the presentation plate, July 10, 1940, falls between Prien's receipt of the Knight's Cross and the Oak Leaves and also corresponds to a period between U-47's 6th and 7th sea patrols. The signature at the end of the plate has not been identified, though the nature of the weapon and the markings ("Waidmann's Heil!" being a traditional salute to a successful trip afield) suggests a fellow hunter. Included with the lot is a photocopy of an article from the Spring 2010 edition of "Der Waffenschmied" (The Weaponsmith, journal of the German Gun Collector's Association), which discusses this particular Drilling; while the article is not signed, it is attributed by the consignor to Dietrich Apel, one of the editors of the magazine, veteran gunsmith and founder of the GGCA.

Excellent, with 95% of the original blue finish and 97% case colors on the frame. Two notable dents are present, one on the left barrel towards the muzzle, the other on the trigger guard, interfering with the operation of the front set trigger, along with some mild wear and handling marks. The exceptionally fine original wood shows some light scattered dents and scuffs. An interesting historic World War II presentation piece for the famous U-47 U-Boat Commander Guenther Prien.