Who can say?
That P-38 could have been mismatched from birth or later in the barracks during cleaning. It is possible a U.S. G.I. disassembled it and possibly along with other P-38s and it got put back together with the wrong slide. Remember, U.S. military small arms do not have the matching numbers so commonly used in Europe. I worked with a guy who was a WWII vet and he told that in post war Germany, he saw a lot of G.I.s that were injured while playing with captured small arms. It got so bad that his company commander gathered up all the Lugers, Mauser Broomhandles and P-38s he could find and removed them from the company area. All the best...
Gil
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