Rear Pistol

Anyone ever hear of a Catron 9mm pistol…?

My friend found a single stack 9mm stainless steel pistol in his aunt’s attic. It must have been belonged to the previous home owner. On the side it states “Catron”, “9 mm”, “Military and Police” and no serial # (manufactured without it). It has a fixed barrel and there is no play when you rack the slide. When retracting the slide only the rear portion of the slide moves in order to cycle the cartridge. It is missing the magazine and what would appear to be the safety. Has anyone ever heard of this pistol. If so, we need to see if we can get parts for it and try to determine it’s value.
It is definately “Catron”. Possibly polished nickel. Magazine release is the same as a Walther p-38.

There was firearms designer named Russell M. Catron that made the “Catron” pistols, it would probably fit your description as that in the 1940′s when he would have designed it, a serial number was not yet required. They also used their own proprietary 9mm Catron cartridge. Good luck on finding a magazine, you would probably be better off reverse engineering something else to fit it. This is definitely an oddball. Possibly since you say it resembles a P-38, if you had a magazine for one laying around, you could try to fit one in it.

I did read somewhere that Mr. Catron did experiment a little with automatic pistols, you may want to do a functions check on it to make sure it is semi-auto.

tokarev pistol canted rear sight