Forgotten Sig: P239, the redheaded step-child.
Sig-Sauer makes, for the most part, world-class handguns. Some say the company reached its zenith with the hammer-fired P220/226 pistol family. The series began with the P220, a single stack gun chambered in 9mm and later .45 ACP and 10mm Auto. The P220 descended from the single-action P210 first adopted by the Swiss army.
Sig took the P210’s best features and added a Walther-style double-action/single-action trigger system to enhance operational safety. They went one better, though, when they replaced Walther’s problematic slide-mounted decocker/safety lever with a frame-mounted decocker. Sig’s clever decocker just lowered the hammer on a live round, but once the lever is released it leaves the pistol ready to fire with a pull on the double-action trigger. The gun in this condition is as safe as any double-action revolver.
This eliminated the chance an operator would leave the decocker in the “safe” position and then forget to disengage the safety in an emergency. Unlike a 1911, the Walther-type safety is not intuitive and people have been caught out when they, as Jeff Cooper used to put it, “Left their dingus down.”
Once Sig ramped up the P220 design into the double-stack, high-capacity, 9mm P226, police agencies and armed forces around the world bought them as fast as Sig could ship them. Notable P226 end users: the British SAS, the U.S. Navy SEALs, and the FBI. Additional models based on the P226, such as the P228 and P229, followed over the years.
Sig had a winning franchise on their hands. Then in 1996 they did something quite odd. They more or less scaled down the P220 with its single-stack magazine into what at the time constituted a sub-compact and dubbed it the P239.
The P239, however, shared only the P220’s design philosophy. It had few parts in common with any other Sig pistol. It has a unique frame, slide, barrel, and magazine, for instance. Sig marketed the P239 as the ideal solution for plain clothes police officers, and as an off-duty carry gun for uniformed officers issued the P226. This made sense as someone familiar with the P226 would have no problems operating a P239 under stress as the controls are identical.
Great idea–bad time. The P239 just never caught on in the market. The gun world had moved on. Not long after the P239’s introduction, the civilian carry market exploded. Sig’s little redheaded step-child drowned in a sea filled with ultra-compact double-stack 9mm guns. By 2018, Sig yielded to the inevitable and pulled the gun from its catalogue.
The P239 is still a remarkable gun, however. In our newest video, we explore the P239’s virtues and take it for a walk at the range. Here’s your chance to meet this wonderful forgotten Sig.
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