The Vintage Ordinance FP45- Not a 'Liberating' experience!

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

As it turns out Vintage Ordinance makes a very accurate reproduction of the FP45 Liberator, a pistol designed in WW2 to distribute to resistance fighters behind enemy lines. The idea was they would use it to assassinate an enemy soldier and pick up a more useful gun. Oh, and it's a single-shot .45 ACP. It was meant to come with ten rounds (five of which can be stored in the butt,) a wooden dowel to eject the empties and a cartoon instruction sheet. The only real difference between the Vintage Ordinance FP45 and the originals is that the modern gun has to have a rifled barrel; the original was a smooth-bore. It's cool, and if you ever have a chance to fire one don't. It's painful; the gun weighs about a pound and with a fixed breech. Recoil is a thing.

Oh, and when it recoils the great big striker rebounds and pinches the web of your thumb bad enough to create a blood blister. Ouch.

retail is $520 for the gun, more for the kit that goes with it that reproduces they way it was intended to be distributed. Few of these were ever distributed and most were destroyed. Military commanders did not relish the idea of a post-war with hundreds of thousands of untraceable gun in random civilian hands.

I do not own this gun; it was loaned to me by a collector for a video.

 

[armoredman]

But if you only needed one round...there you are. I don't think there is any documentation of one ever being used for it's intended purpose, was there?
Neat piece of history.

 

[Gork10]

A guy at the club I shoot at had one. He handed it to me with 5 rounds of230 grain ball. After I shot it I handed him back the thing and 4 rounds. NOT a pleasant gun to shot. Down right hurts. Especially white my XXL size hands. It was one of the reproduction one's.

 

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

But if you only needed one round...there you are. I don't think there is any documentation of one ever being used for it's intended purpose, was there?
Neat piece of history.

I have heard some were deployed in the Philippines but haven't found any documentation of that. Still, is it really the sort of thing you'd want to admit after the fact?

 

[12Bravo20]

But if you only needed one round...there you are. I don't think there is any documentation of one ever being used for it's intended purpose, was there?
Neat piece of history.

I doubt very much that the French resistance took the time to document things like that. From my research it looks like only about 25,000 of the 500,000 Liberators made were actually dropped to the resistance in Europe. Now how many the Germans managed to capture when dropped is unknown. But it is probable safe to say that some were actually used as intended.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

The Version I Heard is none were ever dropped to Resistance forces. Read an account from Paris in the Spring of 1944, a German officer went for a walk, two teenagers slugged him, relieved him of his pistol. That probably happened more often. The FP-45 basically a government sanctioned mass produced zip gun.

 

[Jim Watson]

By then the British were sending Le Resistance STEN guns. Harder to hide but a lot more effective.

The military theorists are slow on the uptake, consider the Deer Gun of 1964.

 

[Riomouse911]

I have never fired a Liberator or clone, I have only seen them in museum displays.

All of the reviews I read over the years about these guns mirrors your experience. Cool bits of historical significance, but awful little guns to fire.

Stay safe.