dogtown tom
Member
Close....but not exactly right.Toforo
Actually, this was anticipated by the manufacturers...
So much, in fact, that they knew the german war machine would USE the FN/Browning/Hi-Power factories to support the german war machine. And that's exactly what happened....
They stayed in operation as long as possible and when it became inevitable and the german invasion became imminent, all of the engineering designs were moved to Canada so they wouldn't fall in german hands.
In addition - they also took much of the equipment from the factories, put it on ships, and sent it all to England and Canada where they were up and running fast enough to continue to provide weapons to the Allies for the remainder of WWII...
The Allies DID spirit FN management and some engineers away to Canada, but very little designs and absolutely no machinery made it to Canada. The Inglis design was pretty darned crude compared to even wartime FN HP's.
The John Inglis Co. of Toronto produced a version of the Hi Power for the Allies at the same time the FN plant in Belgium was churning them out for their German occupiers.
FN has enjoyed a looooong relationship with the US military as a manufacturer of almost every firearm from the Ma Duece to the M16.