FP-45 Liberator

Infobox Weapon
name= FP-45 Liberator


caption=The FP-45/M1942
origin= flagcountry|United States
type= single-shot pistol
is_ranged=yes
service= 1942-1945
used_by= dropped into occupied territories for use by insurgents
wars= World War II
designer=
design_date=
manufacturer=Guide Lamp Corporation of GMC
unit_cost=
production_date=June 1942-August 1942
number= 1,000,000
variants=
weight= 1 lb. (454 g)
length= 5.55 in. (141 mm)
part_length= 4 in. (102 mm)
width=
height=
cartridge= .45 ACP
action= single-shot
velocity= 820 ft/s (250 m/s)
feed= single shot
sights=

The FP-45 Liberator was a pistol manufactured for the United States military during World War II for use by resistance forces in occupied territories.

History

The pistol had its origins in the US Army Joint Psychological Committee and was designed for the United States Army in 1942 by the Inland Guide Lamp Manufacturing Division of the General Motors Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.Interestingly, 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 label the barrel as "tube", the trigger as "yoke", the firing pin as "control rod", and the trigger guard as "spanner". The Guide Lamp Division plant in Anderson, Indiana assembled a million of these weapons. The "Liberator" project took about 6 months from conception to end of production with about 11 weeks of actual manufacturing time, done by 300 workers.

Design

The FP-45 was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly mass produced. The Liberator had just 23 largely stamped and turned steel parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired a .45 caliber pistol cartridge from an unrifled barrel. Due to the unrifled barrel, maximum effective range wasonly about 25 feet (less than 8 m). At longer range, the bullet would begin to tumble and stray off course.

Use

The "Liberator" was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden dowel to remove the empty shell casing, and an instruction sheet in comic strip formcite book
last = Bishop | first = Chris
title = The Encyclopedia of Small Arms and Artillery
publisher = Grange Books
date = 2006
pages =pp. 19
isbn = 978-1-84013-910-5 ] showing how to load and fire the weapon. Extra rounds of ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip.

After production, the Army turned the "Liberators" over to the OSS. A crude and clumsy weapon, the "Liberator" was never intended for front line service. It was originally intended as an insurgency weapon to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter was to recover the weapon, sneak up on an Axis occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons. Many resistance fighters called the FP-45 "a great weapon to get another one with."who

The weapon was valued as much for its psychological warfare effect as its actual field performance. It was believed that if vast quantities of these weapons could be delivered into Axis occupied territory, it would have a devastating effect on the morale of occupying troops. The plan was to drop the weapon in such great quantities that occupying forces could never capture or recover all the weapons. 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.

In reality, the OSS never saw the practicality in mass dropping the "Liberator" over occupied Europe, and only a handful were ever distributed. Only the Chinese and resistance forces in the Philippines received the Liberator in any significant quantity. The "Liberator" was never issued to American or Allied troops and there is no known instance of the weapon ever actually being used in combat.

The original delivered cost for the FP-45 was $2.40/unit ($26 in 2005). A "Liberator" in good condition today can fetch approximately $2500, with the original box bringing an additional $1500, with an original extremely rare paper instruction sheet the value could exceed $4500 to a collector of rare World War II militaria. There are fakes of these sheets, but the real ones had a watermark that can be seen clearly, which is difficult to duplicate.

An interesting fact about the Liberator is that the factories could produce one faster than the weapon could be loaded and fired. The factory turned out a pistol every six or seven seconds whilst loading took about 10 seconds.

Another variant of this gun was a two shot version which never made general production. It had two chambers, where one would be fired and then the other slid into position to fire. This version is extremely rare.

The concept revived

The Liberator was replaced with the Deer gun in 1964 when a modernised equivalent was designed for possible use in Vietnam . This was because the CIA needed a weapon of this type, and most Liberators had been scrapped after WWII. The Deer Gun, or sometimes Dear Gun, was chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum, and was loaded by unscrewing the barrel and inserting a round to fire. Almost all of these were scrapped, making the Deer gun rarer than a Liberator.

References

External links

* [http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/liber.htm The Liberator Pistol] (with pictures)
* [http://www.nfa.ca/content/view/105/197/ Liberator Pistol FP-45] - A page on the Canadian National Firearms Association website.
* [http://members.shaw.ca/cronhelm/Liberator.html Additional photos of the Liberator pistol]
* [http://www.mouseguns.com/blast/libinst.jpgThe Liberator instruction sheet]