There is only one thing wrong with those stories about how they were dropped to the French resistance, used to kill Germans to get their guns, stored for use against the Russians, and so forth. Never happened!
As far as I can determine none, as in NONE, were ever used in Europe, dropped or otherwise. The French resistance was supplied by air, but with much more effective weapons (STENS, Enfield revolvers, and No. 4 rifles). A few seem to have been distributed in the Pacific area, but there is only one (suspect) report of any use against the Japanese. Other reports are of use by local police after the war until they could get better weapons.
The whole idea came from a fiction story, and was not very realistic. The idea that a good French housewife, out to buy her baguette, would find the gun and immediately turn into a wrathful Jeanne d'Arc, slaying Germans right and left, has to be one of the sillier ideas of WWII. Most legends say the guns were not parachuted, simply dropped. If that had been true, I am sure that a Frenchman or a Dane or a Belgian would have been more concerned about the hole in his roof than with using the silly little gun that made it.
They were the subject of a some inter-agency haggling, mainly of the "you take them, no you take them" variety, as no one really wanted them or had any realistic idea how to use them.
Jim
As far as I can determine none, as in NONE, were ever used in Europe, dropped or otherwise. The French resistance was supplied by air, but with much more effective weapons (STENS, Enfield revolvers, and No. 4 rifles). A few seem to have been distributed in the Pacific area, but there is only one (suspect) report of any use against the Japanese. Other reports are of use by local police after the war until they could get better weapons.
The whole idea came from a fiction story, and was not very realistic. The idea that a good French housewife, out to buy her baguette, would find the gun and immediately turn into a wrathful Jeanne d'Arc, slaying Germans right and left, has to be one of the sillier ideas of WWII. Most legends say the guns were not parachuted, simply dropped. If that had been true, I am sure that a Frenchman or a Dane or a Belgian would have been more concerned about the hole in his roof than with using the silly little gun that made it.
They were the subject of a some inter-agency haggling, mainly of the "you take them, no you take them" variety, as no one really wanted them or had any realistic idea how to use them.
Jim
