Why No sSgnificant British or French Auto-loading Pistols?

[barnbwt]

Both nations kind of had their fighting forces destroyed (utterly, in the case of France) in WWI, around the time semi autos became viable, and neither Nazified afterward to rebuild them forcibly with national will. France and England pioneered practical double action revolvers in useful black powder rounds at the latter half of the 1800's, which were superior to every semi auto up until the C96 (and those were massive/clunky) --hard to blame them for being skeptical when they had something that arguably worked.

TCB

 

[JWH321]

Up to just the past few years, the Brits and the French had no need for guns -- they had us. But I suspect the times are a-changing.

 

[oneounceload]

I used to wonder why there were no American made Browning Hi-Powers. I mean, Browning is an American company right?

Because Browning is basically a marketing company like Weatherby, Charles Daly and others. IIRC, the only gun they make is the Buckmark.

 

[OcelotZ3]

The MAB pistols from France are nice. But they are all older models, nothing recent that I know of.

 

[WestKentucky]

The French "peaceful"? The were second only to the British as militant 18th-20th century empire builders with noncontiguous colonies around the globe.

Among the cognoscenti the French are well know for their innovative firearm designs that have often led the way for other nation's designers. They had the first smokeless powder military rifle, they created the first modern artillery piece with the famous Model 1897 75mm cannon, and they provided a huge amount of the military equipment the weakling U.S. Army used to fight with during WWI. The U.S. was still relying on the French 75mm design into WWII.

Get some sleep then hit the history books.

Artillery, rifles, tactics, whatever...this thread is about autoloading handguns. Still waiting...and that's back to my original point...other friendly nations had already grown into the pistol manufacturing niche, so these particular countries focused elsewhere. Kinda like now where the Russians built a whole bunch of weapons that are in use by people all through war torn nations in africa and the middle east, but you don't see an RPG factory too often because they are already in good supply from russian surplus.

Change things around a bit though...a nation with tip top of the line uber modern super sophisticated weapons isn't likely to spend trillions on developing the next generation of something that they already are way ahead of the world in technology...unless your talking about the US and fighter jets....in an age where unmanned aviation is taking over.

 

[HankB]

Among the cognoscenti the French are well know for their innovative firearm designs that have often led the way for other nation's designers. They had the first smokeless powder military rifle, they created the first modern artillery piece with the famous Model 1897 75mm cannon, and they provided a huge amount of the military equipment the weakling U.S. Army used to fight with during WWI. The U.S. was still relying on the French 75mm design into WWII.

Valid points . . . but all of that can be undermined by uttering one word, whose meaning is well-known by the cognoscenti: Chauchat

Seriously, I've seen some French Manhurin stuff that looks pretty decent . . . but of course, the autopistols were German designs. Haven't personally examined a Manhurin revolver, but they're supposed to be good.

 

[WestKentucky]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Semi-automatic_pistols_of_France

Nothing to really get excited about.

 

[Redcoat3340]

At the time when autoloaders were overtaking wheel guns -- WWI -- both France and Great Britain were hard-pressed to make the most basic of weapons, the infantryman's rifle and artilleryman's cannon. (The Brits, for instance, had us make the Pattern 14 for them). Inventing and mass producing semi-auto pistols was way down on the list of needs: the French were buying all semi-auto pistols the Spanish could make and the Brits were satisfied with them big ole Webleys (and I think British officers could or had to supply their own personal small arms).

Methinks that after the war there was enough surplus so that new pistol development lagged (Browning developed the P35 in 1924ish, it wasn't produced 'till 1935ish. When the French did want a new semiauto...they put out a pretty universal RFP, lots of designs were submitted and Browning "won." But the gun was never made, the French changed their minds.

I guess this is the long way around to saying that England and France were apparently satisfied with buying from FN or other sources and local inventors couldn't or didn't develop anything as good as FN or S&W or Walther or Sig or Colt, or H&K or Beretta, etc.

There clearly was plenty of gun design talent in those countries...the Enfield was a pretty fair turnbolt, and the MAS was...hmmm...well....errr.....ahhh...maybe the French did lack gun design talent after all.

 

[Ignition Override]

Bought a French .380 PPK. today, my first PPK.

The OP's original comments did not seem to distinguish between design and manufacture. Without a doubt they used German equipment due to post-war restrictions inside West Germany.

Parts for most of the production run were manufactured inside France and usually assembled there. "Made In W. Germany" was inscribed on a large number of them after the finished guns were proofed/tested in Ulm an der Donau.
Those French seem to have done a fine job, and along with earlier "Manurhin" and Made in France versions, are considered as high a quality as those prev. manufactured in Zehlin.

It's convenient to try to forget that huge numbers of all-American S&W PPKs were recalled to the factory. S&W could have learned something many years ago from the Manurhin staff.

 

[Nom de Forum]

Valid points . . . but all of that can be undermined by uttering one word, whose meaning is well-known by the cognoscenti: Chauchat

Seriously, I've seen some French Manhurin stuff that looks pretty decent . . . but of course, the autopistols were German designs. Haven't personally examined a Manhurin revolver, but they're supposed to be good.

Chauchat undermined? Only the ones made for Americans in .30-06 where crap. Considering that there was nothing else available when it was fielded that was comparable its mediocre performance by today's standards was still sufficiently good to keep France and Belgium using it. The Chauchat has an undeserved bad reputation in the U.S. because of American experience with it and not that of the majority of users. It was no B.A.R. but then the B.A.R. had not been created when the Chauchat had already killed many thousands of enemy soldiers. The Chauchat was almost revolutionary in being a new type of infantry weapon.

 

[Nom de Forum]

..... and the MAS was...hmmm...well....errr.....ahhh...maybe the French did lack gun design talent after all.

Clearly you need to study French gun design and it's influence on the designers of other nations. While the French did little with semiauto pistols they did much with other arms that inspired the designers in other nations.

 

[Surculus]

Maybe I'm ignorant, but there doesn't seem to be any significant British or French auto-loading handguns on US the market.

In the US we have many quality Swiss, German, Czech, Russian, Polish, Italian, Austrian, S. African, Belgian, Brazilian, even Spain used to be a player in this market. Although admittedly the Russian guns are mostly surplus.

Neither country had a significant conception of the handgun as much more than a badge of rank in military usage, nor were they common features of their civilian society since before the invention of the revolver. Whereas the USA has had an abiding societal awareness of the desirability of handgun possession [note I did not indicate "need" or "ownership;" those are separate issues] leading to the US exporting revolvers the world over, and in turn importing semi-auto pistols in large numbers since they were invented, as well as developing our own varieties.

Ultimately, at the time that semi-auto handguns were proliferating and concerns for their manufacture were becoming established, England and France had bigger matters to attend to, and as a result, it was easier [in the case of England] to adopt the successful designs of others [BHP] and farm out their manufacture to other members of the empire [in far off Canuckistan, via John Inglis [sp?]] or in the case of France, waste a lot of time developing their own oddball designs to be built at one of the state-owned arsenals [Chaterrault, St. Etienne, & I forget the third, the "B" in MAB] because, you know, they're French & have to be "speshuul..." :banghead:

Seriously, the US lucked out: because of our peculiar societal development, we ended up w/ John Browning ["St. JMB", mechanical genius & patron saint of gunfire ] who developed the vast majority of successful semi-auto pistol designs once Borchardt, Luger & Mauser demonstrated that it was indeed possible to make a salable product. In the world of semi-auto handguns, pretty much everything since JMB's turn at the wheel has been mostly derivative of his designs [one of the reasons, JMB held Pederson in such high esteem is because he [JP] had come up with a pistol [the R51] that functioned on a principle that JMB apparently had never considered [& therefore had no patents covering it.]] CZ 75? Derivative. Glock? Derivative. And JMB, being the genius that he was, patented his designs in both the US [where he typically licensed production to Colt] and abroad [where he had a sweetheart deal with Fabrique National of Belgium, now FNH [FN Herstal.] So except for Soviet Russia [which did not respect patent law & stole vigorously from the West: the TT33? Derivative!] that largely wrapped up the market for the 1st half of the 20th century. And it all just follows on from there.

Your question seems simple at its face, but the reality is that the full answer is a detailed study of firearms history & economics of the 20th century. Get reading!

 

[Jim K]

Britain has almost totally banned possession of functioning handguns by its people, and effectively banned new production. There are no handgun makers in the UK today, AFAIK. Until recently, armed police were rare, and the police market that now exists is satisfied by imported handguns. After WWII, Webley designed a very attractive pistol in 9mm for the military, but it was rejected in favor of the BHP and even then the small UK civilian market would not have supported production. (Incidentally, it still retained the British favorite V type recoil spring rather than a coil spring!)

The French once had a thriving handgun market and exported arms. But EU restrictions have almost ended any large domestic market and exports have not been enough to keep any large-scale production facilities in business.

Jim

 

[Surculus]

I used to wonder why there were no American made Browning Hi-Powers. I mean, Browning is an American company right?

Because the "Browning High Power" ["Grand Puissance de Browning, modele 1935"] was wholly a product of FN in Belgium. JMB died in 1924 [maybe '26? Durn CRS...] while still working on the design, which was completed circa 1929 by his assistant @ FN, Dieudonne Saive [sp?] and of course, not really produced until after the worldwide Depression started dissipating in the mid-30s as the world started gearing up for the war on the horizon. If JMB had lived thru to complete its development, then it might have come out as the "Colt Wondernine" here in the States, but that's for the alternate time-line history fan boyz to argue about...

 

[Edarnold]

Neither country had a significant conception of the handgun as much more than a badge of rank in military usage, nor were they common features of their civilian society since before the invention of the revolver. Whereas the USA has had an abiding societal awareness of the desirability of handgun possession [note I did not indicate "need" or "ownership;" those are separate issues] leading to the US exporting revolvers the world over, and in turn importing semi-auto pistols in large numbers since they were invented, as well as developing our own varieties.



Ultimately, at the time that semi-auto handguns were proliferating and concerns for their manufacture were becoming established, England and France had bigger matters to attend to, and as a result, it was easier [in the case of England] to adopt the successful designs of others [BHP] and farm out their manufacture to other members of the empire [in far off Canuckistan, via John Inglis [sp?]] or in the case of France, waste a lot of time developing their own oddball designs to be built at one of the state-owned arsenals [Chaterrault, St. Etienne, & I forget the third, the "B" in MAB] because, you know, they're French & have to be "speshuul..." :banghead:



Seriously, the US lucked out: because of our peculiar societal development, we ended up w/ John Browning ["St. JMB", mechanical genius & patron saint of gunfire ] who developed the vast majority of successful semi-auto pistol designs once Borchardt, Luger & Mauser demonstrated that it was indeed possible to make a salable product. In the world of semi-auto handguns, pretty much everything since JMB's turn at the wheel has been mostly derivative of his designs [one of the reasons, JMB held Pederson in such high esteem is because he [JP] had come up with a pistol [the R51] that functioned on a principle that JMB apparently had never considered [& therefore had no patents covering it.]] CZ 75? Derivative. Glock? Derivative. And JMB, being the genius that he was, patented his designs in both the US [where he typically licensed production to Colt] and abroad [where he had a sweetheart deal with Fabrique National of Belgium, now FNH [FN Herstal.] So except for Soviet Russia [which did not respect patent law & stole vigorously from the West: the TT33? Derivative!] that largely wrapped up the market for the 1st half of the 20th century. And it all just follows on from there.



Your question seems simple at its face, but the reality is that the full answer is a detailed study of firearms history & economics of the 20th century. Get reading!

Hate to disagree with the worship at the altar of Mr. Browning, but if we take the 1911 as the exemplar of his influence on auto-pistol design, his contribution has faded with more modern designs. His dropping barrel locking into recesses in the slide continues dominant, though rotating barrel locking systems and the Walther dropping block have been successful. The locking link has been abandoned for the solid cam on every gun but the T33. The ever troublesome feed ramp has become part of the barrel, as it should have been. The barrel bushing, necessitated by the primitive machining techniques of his era, is replaced by the precisely machined solid slide. The loose recoil spring and it's odd plug now slides on a solid guide rod. The slide, loosely guided by a couple of contact points on the frame, is improved on by the Petter system, with the slide moving within the frame, as in the P210 and CZ75 and its clones. The single-action lock work, with it's awkward and dangerous manual safety, is abandoned on almost all modern pistols for SA/DA or 'safe-trigger' systems patterned on the Glock.

In short, in the century since JMB's iconic design, the design of auto pistols has moved on with innovations and improvements that render the old 'forty-five' obsolete. The continuing popularity of the 1911 in the US has to be put down to nostalgia, and the hero-worship of the estimable Mr. Browning. Good guns still, but not the most modern or the best available for practical use. To claim every pistol design since 'derivative' is like saying that automobile design since the Ford Model T is just a series of minor changes to a perfect model.

Of course, IMHO.

 

[Redcoat3340]

Great discussion, excellent points, and the kinds of "education" that makes this hobby so interesting. Thanks to the OP for starting it and thanks to everyone for broadening my horizons.
There's so much more firearms than,"Bang."

 

[khegglie]

^^^^

This should get interesting.....

 

[rondog]

I have a French-made MAB Model C in .32 acp. Hardly what I'd call a "significant" autoloader, but it is an autoloader, and it goes bang. Trigger is awful.

 

[kBob]

The French Replaced the 7.65mm M1935A and M1935S with the M1950 in 9x19mm. In my experience the M1950 was not a bad gun at all. I used several on a range working with French troops and teaching them to use the M1911A1. I was not wild about the safety, the gun is basically an enlarged 1935S and has that safety mounted high on the slide. Honestly I liked it better than the P38/P-1 though.

As a youth I lusted after the MAB P15 but fortunately never bought one in that extra magazine were all but impossible to find.

I have always wondered if Glock got a look at the little Le Franquis autos from between the wars for his trigger mechanism.

As has been mentioned though a German design the PP and PPk were made by the French and some insist many marked as Ulm/Do. are actually French production. The French police I encountered in 1975 were armed with Frcnh made PPk pistols.

-kBob

 

[Nom de Forum]

......I have always wondered if Glock got a look at the little Le Franquis autos from between the wars for his trigger mechanism.

-kBob

It could be he did and also took a look at the trigger of this Iver Johnson revolver.

http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/9320/10301565_1.jpg?v=8CDA0D40E938DD0

 

[Nakanokalronin]

The French police have a been using the Sig SP2022/Pro since 2002. The contract is up in 2022 hence the model name.

 

[AustinTX]

The slide, loosely guided by a couple of contact points on the frame, is improved on by the Petter system, with the slide moving within the frame, as in the P210 and CZ75 and its clones.

It is not important whether the slide moves inside or outside of the frame. The Swiss P210 is the most accurate production semi-auto ever produced because of the extremely high quality of materials used and the incredible precision with which it was manufactured, and not at all because of the orientation of its slide vis-a-vis the frame. The mechanical accuracy of a railed design is a function of operating clearances and rail length, not of rail orientation. It is possible to achieve equal measurements with either orientation.

 

[rondog]

Oh great. I'd never heard of a Swiss P-210, so I Googled it. Now I want one.

 

[Redcoat3340]

My only advice for anyone who wants a 210....bring money, lots of it. It's way beyond my budget.

 

[AustinTX]

Oh great. I'd never heard of a Swiss P-210, so I Googled it. Now I want one.

Haha. They're not cheap, as you now know, but they are incredible pistols, built to standards only matched by today's best custom builds. I would highly recommend getting a SIG P210 (Swiss) and not the recent-production SIG Sauer P210 (German). The latter is an excellent gun and it has a couple of appealing updates, like an American mag release and a beavertail to eliminate the hammer bite that afflicts some, but the Neuhausen guns were built to a different standard (harder and tougher steel alloys and considerably more precise tolerances).

Allow me to tempt you a bit further. And feel free to PM me with any questions about the different variants, etc. if I can be of any help.

SIG P210-6 Heavy Frame




SIG P49 (previously-issued Swiss military pistol; same as civilian P210-2)