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Like all Lugers, the Krieghoff has an immediately-identifiable profile.

Prior to WWII, Germany put three relief grooves in the firing pin to let the pressure from a pierced primer go past the firing pin instead of driving it as a piston backwards. The Finns drilled a hole in the bottom of the breechblock into the firing pin area to bleed gas off in their guns.

A grouping of unfinished Krieghoff Luger parts from the bench of master gunsmith Frank Kaltenpoth.

The 9mm Parabellum cartridge has always presented problems for gun designers because its tapered case can give uneven pressures in an automatic. The tapered case grips the chamber and if there is dirt in the vicinity, the tapered case wedges in it and jams instead of pushing it forward into the chamber as a straight case does. As a result, no 9mm Parabellum can function reliably with a rough or dirty chamber. The 9mm Parabellum also has a high chamber pressure of 36,000 psi, which can rise into the low 40,000 psi range if a bullet is bumped and set back into the case. This is not the sort of pressure the light Borchardt toggle liked and, remember, it was not beefed up in mass when it became the Luger.