FP-45 Liberator
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The FP-45 Liberator is a
handgun A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun, long barreled gun (i.e., carbine, rifle, shotgun, submachine gun, or machine gun) which typically is intended to be held by both hands and br ...
manufactured by the United States military during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
for use by resistance forces in occupied territories. The ''Liberator'' was never issued to American or other Allied troops, and there are few documented instances of the weapon being used for its intended purpose; this was compounded by the intended recipientsirregulars and resistance fightersrarely keeping detailed records due to the inherent risks if the records were captured by the enemy. Few FP-45 pistols were distributed as intended, and most were destroyed by Allied forces after the war.


Project history

The concept was suggested by a Polish military attaché in March 1942. The project was assigned to the US Army Joint Psychological Warfare Committee and was designed for the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
two months later by George Hyde of the Inland Manufacturing Division of the
General Motors Corporation General Motors Company (GM) is an American multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing four automobile brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, ...
in
Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 137,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Dayton metro ...
. Production was undertaken by General Motors Guide Lamp Division to avoid conflicting priorities with Inland Division production of the
M1 carbine The M1 carbine (formally the United States carbine, caliber .30, M1) is a lightweight semi-automatic carbine chambered in the .30 carbine (7.62×33mm) cartridge that was issued to the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War, and t ...
. The army designated the weapon the ''Flare Projector Caliber .45'' hence the designation FP-45. This was done to disguise the fact that a pistol was being mass-produced. The original engineering drawings labeled the
barrel A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden stave (wood), staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers ...
as "tube", the trigger as "yoke", the
firing pin A firing pin or striker is a part of the firing mechanism of a firearm that impacts the primer in the base of a cartridge and causes it to fire. In firearms terminology, a striker is a particular type of firing pin where a compressed sprin ...
as "control rod", and the trigger guard as "spanner". The Guide Lamp Division plant in
Anderson, Indiana Anderson is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Indiana, United States. The population was 54,788 at the 2020 census. It is named after Chief William Anderson. The city is the headquarters of the Church of God and its Anderson ...
assembled a million of these guns. The ''Liberator'' project took about six months from conception to the end of production with about 11 weeks of actual manufacturing time, done by 300 workers.


Design

The FP-45 was a crude,
single-shot In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have ...
pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly
mass-produced Mass production, also known as mass production, series production, series manufacture, or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. ...
. It had just 23 largely stamped and turned
steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...
parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired the
.45 ACP The .45 ACP ( Automatic Colt Pistol), also known as .45 Auto, .45 Automatic, or 11.43×23mm is a rimless straight-walled handgun cartridge designed by John Moses Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic pistol. After su ...
pistol cartridge from an unrifled barrel. Due to this limitation, it was intended for short-range use, . Its maximum effective range was only about . At longer range, the bullet would begin to tumble and stray off course. The original delivered cost for the FP-45 was USD$2.10/unit (), lending it the nickname "Woolworth pistol". Five rounds of ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip.


Wartime use

The ''Liberator'' was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden
dowel The dowel is a cylindrical shape made of wood, plastic, or metal. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is long and called a ''dowel rod'', which are often cut into shorter ''dowel pins''. Dowels are commonly used as structural reinforceme ...
to remove the empty cartridge case, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form showing how to load and fire the weapon. The ''Liberator'' was a crude and clumsy weapon, never intended for front-line service. It was originally intended as an
insurgency weapon Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...
to be mass-dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter was to recover the gun, sneak up on an
Axis An axis (: axes) may refer to: Mathematics *A specific line (often a directed line) that plays an important role in some contexts. In particular: ** Coordinate axis of a coordinate system *** ''x''-axis, ''y''-axis, ''z''-axis, common names ...
occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons. It was manufactured under the "FP" prefix and referred to in official documentation as a "
Flare pistol A flare gun, also known as a Very pistol or signal pistol, is a large-bore handgun that discharges flares, blanks and smoke. The flare gun is typically used to produce a distress signal. Types The most common type of flare gun is a Very (so ...
". The pistol was valued as much for its
psychological warfare Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations ( MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
effect as its actual field performance. It was believed that if vast quantities of these handguns could be delivered into Axis-occupied territory, it would have a devastating effect on the
morale Morale ( , ) is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal, particularly in the face of opposition or hardship. Morale is often referenced by authority figures as a generic value judgment of the willpower, ...
of occupying troops. The plan was to drop them in such great quantities that occupying forces could never capture or recover all of them. It was hoped that the thought of thousands of these unrecovered weapons potentially in the hands of the citizens of occupied countries would have a deleterious effect on enemy morale. General
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
's staff never saw the practicality in mass dropping the ''Liberator'' over occupied Europe, and authorized distribution of fewer than 25,000 of the half million FP-45 pistols shipped to Great Britain for the French resistance. Generals
Joseph Stilwell Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (19 March 1883 – 12 October 1946) was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India theater during World War II. Stilwell was appointed as Chief of Staff for Chiang Kai-shek, the Chine ...
and
Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American general who served as a top commander during World War II and the Korean War, achieving the rank of General of the Army (United States), General of the Army. He served with dis ...
were similarly unenthusiastic about the other half of the pistols scheduled for shipment to the Pacific. The Army then turned 450,000 ''Liberators'' over to the
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...
(OSS), which preferred to supply Resistance fighters in both theatres with more effective weapons whenever possible. French use of the FP-45 remains undocumented, however, a first-hand account of an assassination with an FP-45 exists from German military policeman Niklaus Lange. He claimed that there were thousands in circulation in occupied France. The OSS did distribute a few to Greek resistance forces in 1944. Most of the pistols shipped to Britain were undistributed, and later dumped at sea or melted for scrap metal. One hundred thousand FP-45 pistols were shipped to China in 1943, but the number actually distributed remains unknown. A few were distributed to the Philippine Commonwealth Army,
Philippine Constabulary The Philippine Constabulary (PC; , ''HPP''; ) was a gendarmerie-type military police force of the Philippines from 1901 to 1991, and the predecessor to the Philippine National Police. It was created by the Insular Government, American occupat ...
, and resistance fighters.


See also

* Deer gun, a Liberator-style handgun tested during the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
* Liberator, a 3D printed handgun (2013)


References


External links


The Liberator Pistol
at JustGuns.com
The Liberator instruction sheet



''The Liberator Pistol'', by Ralph Hagan

FP-45 Liberator Pistol
Forgotten Weapons Forgotten Weapons is a website and channel appearing on YouTube, Utreon, Full30 and Floatplane, created and presented by Ian McCollum. Forgotten Weapons covers the history of antique, obscure, and historically important firearms. Videos Forgo ...
{{Authority control Derringers Insurgency weapons World War II firearms of the United States Pistols of the United States Single-shot pistols Madison County, Indiana History of Dayton, Ohio General Motors .45 ACP firearms Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1942