any walther P38 is a good walther, just avoid the abused ones, make sure the double 6.5 pound springs are good, and dont use any +p in it and you should be fine
and if you must it probably wouldnt be a bad idea to change out the recoil springs for something stronger, maybe 8.5 on either side to match that of the springs on most .40 calls.
as the slide cracking thing was because they were using 9mm nato, basically hotrodded ammo along the lines of the +p if not higher and the beretta 92 has had the slide thickened for exactly the same problem with the nato ammo.
Namely on the brigadeer model and with the P38 you can tell if its one of those with the thickened slide from the slide serrations, if they're only behind the safety, not infront like on the normal model plus the Hex pin.
not to mention the area over the top strap is thicker from the look of it
and by the way they did make some of the early P1's with a steel frame and they were made around 59 I believe, I forget what particular mark tells you what year they were made.
actually I think it may be on slide itself with a simple two digit number on the side next to the german eagle.
and they did also make a blued version of the P1 with the typical walther blue job on it and I think they usually go for about a 100 more than the others.
basically this whole slide and frame crack thing is overblown, its like the model 19 mag with the 125 grain super loads moving at 1500 plus wearing down the forcing cone and breaking them, just avoid the nato like ammo and go for the 147 grain fbi load if your worried about stopping power
I mean hell thats on par with .38 special's 158 grain load plus an extra 200 fps with the normal load of 9mm, not even counting the +p version of it.
that should be MORE than enough even with ball ammo like the gun is designed to take, might need a little feeding ramp work to feed hollowpoints if you want to go with that as they were rigged with ball ammo in mind.
