[Flashpoint]

In my Drawing II class the professor had us go to the museum and find something we liked. So I wondered around and ended up in the WWII section and found a little single shot .45 called the "Liberator". The Liberator was a top secrete project of the US, they were manufactured by GM and about a million of them was dropped into Nazi occupied Europe. Before the guns were dropped, they had instructions and ammo stuffed into the grip, sadly most of the gun ended up in the English Channel. It looked like the "Liberator" was made mainly from stamped steel, a very rough stamped steel.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-4/148376/gun45.JPG

The drawing is better than the picture shows, my camera sucks:(

Here is a link with more info than what the little sign at the museum had on it. The Liberator on the site has a trigger guard that the one at the museum didn't have.



http://usgi1911.tripod.com/liberator/

[BluesBear]

You mean one of these?
http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=965483

[Virtus]

There was a short segment on the Liberator pistol on Mail Call a while back. If I remember correctly, they were churning them off the assembly line at a rate of one every 8 seconds. With that rate, it actually took longer to load than to manufacture. They were horribly inaccurate and meant for extremely close ranges, in other words, right up next to the targeted German soldier. They did the job, though. Quite an interesting piece of history.

[armoredman]

American Shooter actually had a segment on the Liberator, and showed a brave man frining one several times. I saw one for sale a few years back - thing cost a dollar to make - but they wanted $400 for it!:eek:

[BluesBear]

They were smooth bored and single shot with an absolutely HORRIBLE trigger pull. The instructions were drawings with no words. Ejection was facilitated with a wooden dowel.
The gun had only one purpose and that was to kill an axis soldier and commandier his weapon and ammunition.

[P95Carry]

Flashpoint ... pretty fair effort .... here is another version .. slightly cropped and converted to gray scale ... could also apply a mild sepia tone to this too to give some ''oldness'' feel.

I think this now looks tho more like your pencil sketch probably should.


http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=965858

[Flashpoint]

I don't know why I didn't think of that, but at 1AM I'm not real good at thinking:p . Since looking at the picture on the web I've realized that I made the barrel a little too long and the grip a little too wide, but I was in a hurry. None the less it's a interesting little piece.

FP-45s were produced at a rate of one every 6.6 seconds. Since it takes 10 seconds to load and fire the FP-45, it was the only pistol in history that took less time to manufacture than fire!

This is the quote from the artical in the link.

[BHPshooter]

Nice job, Flashpoint! I'm quite flattered to be mentioned so prominently.

Liberators are awesome guns -- not in design or operation, but in strategic principle. I'd like to see one in person someday.

Very nice work. ;)

Wes

[natedog]

A member of some resistance group, be it in France, Belgium, Holland, etc. would take one of these and walk up to a Nazi soldier. He would ask for the time, or perhaps a smoke. When the soldier was distracted, the Liberator was produced, and single shot between the eyes would take down the soldier. The Resistance member would take the Germans' K98 or MP40, grenades, etc. When enough Resistance members had gotten together armed, they could commandeer a truck, (and/or) perhaps an MG-42, and start becoming a threat.

[Unisaw]

IIRC, the American Shooter show said that it takes longer to reload a Liberator than it took for GM to manufacture one.

[The_Antibubba]

Does anyone know how many Liberators were used for their intended purpose? I've never seen any numbers, and I'm curious as to how useful the program turned out to be.

[BluesBear]

While they might have produced one every 6.6 seconds it spend longer than that on the assembly line.

Just because Ford rolls a pickup truck off the line every 12 minutes doesn't mean it only takes 12 minutes to build one.