Memories of Lozère: a curious pistol for the Resistance: the FP-45 Liberator

Pistolet Liberator. User Staxringold.

This weekly column is written by Jean-Marie Gazagne.

The FP-45 Liberator is a pistol manufactured by the United States Army during World War II for use by resistance forces in occupied territories. The Army named the weapon the Flare Projector Caliber .45. The Liberator project lasted approximately 6 months from design to production, with approximately 11 weeks of manufacturing from June to August 1942.

Oblong Bullets

The production of this weapon was 1,600,000. The single-shot weapon was crude, designed to be the cheapest and easiest to manufacture for mass production. The weapon made extensive use of stamped steel parts that were cheap. The weapon was chambered for the 11.43 mm pistol cartridge and had a smoothbore barrel. Due to the latter feature, the effective range was only about 8 m. In reality, the true effective range is closer to 3 m. Beyond this range, the 45 ACP's oblong bullet (designed for a rifled barrel) began to spin in a front-to-back direction and lost accuracy and effectiveness.

Psychological warfare

The Liberator came in a cardboard box with a supply of 10 rounds of 45 ACP ammunition, a wooden trunnion to extract the empty case, and a comic-strip instruction sheet showing how to load the weapon and its use. Excess ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip. The weapon was designed to be used extensively behind enemy lines by resistance fighters in the occupied territories. Resistance fighters used this weapon, undetected, by attacking the enemy, either killing or wounding them in order to recover their weapons.

Many resistance fighters called the FP-45 "an excellent weapon to obtain another one." The weapon's effectiveness was more in its psychological warfare effect than its actual performance. A few examples of this weapon reached Lozère.

I subscribe to read the rest