FN

I continue to question the 1.5 million figure and the claim that the HP was the most widely used military handgun in history. Widely-used is the same as most-used. CZ makes the same claim about "widely-used" but doesn't limit it to military use.

As noted earlier, the US produced about 1.9 million 1911s for WWII alone, and nobody knows for sure how many 1911s have been made since WWII for military use.

I don't think MANY HP's could have been produced prior to WWII (1935-1939 or so). The using countries shown in the Wikipedia article about Hi-Power using countries show a lot of police and elite military units in small countreis using them, but darned few large militaries.
T. O'Heir said:
"...the Browning Hi-Power, as built by FN..." It was actually designed for European police use. Hence the daft mag safety. The mag safety was not in J.M.'s original design. Supposedly 1,500,000+ produced.
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Actually, the Hi-Power was designed for the French Army, and they turned down the design. The Belgian military and some police forces in Europe quickly adopted the HP, but they were all relatively small units. The mag safety was apparently a part of the original French design requirements.

Israel and a few other firms (including FM) produced guns for the Israeli and Argentinian militaries under license, but those militaries were still relatively small when compared to the Allies and Axis militaries. Arcus also produced guns under license, but I don't know whether Arcus did any mnilitary contracts.

After WWII, a lot of guns WERE used by a number of military units and police departments around the world, but again in relatively small numbers in small units. (You can see this in the Wikipedia data.)

One history of the Hi-Power says that about 150,000 HPs were produced by the Germans after they took overr the FN factory during WWII, but it appears that relatively few were captured by the Soviets; bunches of Lugers were captured, and eventually made their way to the U.S. (I had one of those Lugers!) Inglis, which took over HP production in Canada during WWII, may have produced 300,000 HPs, but I've not seen any information about about where those guns went, except that they were intended for Allied use in China. All that said, the total of Inglis and German FN production for WWII is still less than a quarter of the number of the 1911s produced for military use during WWII alone alone

JMB's original design was a single stack, 9-round striker-fired gun. The French wanted at least a 10 rounder, and at least 9mm. Here's a link to the original patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1618510A/en

The gun that was finally put into production had a lot of JMB's design features (many based on earlier Colt patents that had expired by the mid 1930'sm and which were not part of JMB's original Hi-Power design. The finished gun was arguably as much a Saive design as a JMB design.

While there was one or two double-stack magazines before the HP's introduction, Saive created the first really successful double-stack magazine. He was JMB's assistant at FN until JMB died in 1926, and then continued as project leader on the Hi-Power project until the gun was introduced in 1935. Saive and was later chief designer for FN. He is credited with improving some of JMB's machine gun designs, and for created the FN FAL.
 
nobody knows for sure how many 1911s have been made since WWII for military use.
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Comparatively, almost none. NO 1911A1 guns were made under military contract after 1945 (indeed the military canceled the contracts, as the war was won and they now had more than needed), until the pistol was retired from service in the 80s. Since then a small number of guns have been built for use by some elite units.

The using countries shown in the Wikipedia article about Hi-Power using countries show a lot of police and elite military units in small countreis using them, but darned few large militaries.
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yes, very few large militaries. The main reason being countries with large militaries generally have their own native arms manufacturers, and usually don't buy other nations designs. The only real exception to this was the United Kingdom during and for some time after WWII.

Most widely used, and most produced often go hand in hand, but not always. Look at the US .45, we produced a lot of them, but the only other countries I can think of (off the top of my head) that made them were Argentina and Norway. Nations we supplied them to used them, but didn't make them, those pistols we supplied to some of our allies were part of the guns we produced.

Look at the Luger, for another example, at one time (and the era you look at does matter) the Luger was one of, if not the most widely used (by number of nations using it) semi auto pistol there was. Because DWM MARKETED it to the world. Like FN later did with the Hi Power. Very few other countries bought the license and the tooling to make them on their own, they just bought the guns (and spare parts support, etc) from the people making and selling them.

WE never marketed our 1911 to the world. Nor did the British market their SMLE rifles. Though large numbers were produced, relatively few countries used them. FN, and earlier, DWM and Mauser marketed to the world. At one time, all "modern" nations used either their own home grown rifle or they used a Mauser. Some used their version of Mausers.

The point here is that some guns didn't get "widely used" (meaning used by a lot of different countries) simply because the people making them didn't sell them to a lot of other countries.
 
(((going only by memory here but....)))

IIRC,I heard that the HP was the most used sidearm quite a few years ago - - as in 30 plus - could even be a lot more..probably was more like 40..

That may have been true in that context & gets repeated now.
 
I'm aware of two police departments that have had difficulties with the FNS.

AZ DPS found that the FNS could fire if struck while out of battery, and Baltimore County PD had problems with a roll pin falling out of the trigger and disabling the gun.
 
kozak6 said:
AZ DPS found that the FNS could fire if struck while out of battery, and Baltimore County PD had problems with a roll pin falling out of the trigger and disabling the gun.
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I heard a lot about the AZ DPS that dropped the FNS line due to a safety issue. They did a video showing how the gun could be made to accidentally discharge. It wasn't due to a common shooter behavior, but it COULD happen.

FNS offered a non-mandatory recall to all FNS owners, and paid for the upgrade and shipping both ways. I sent my three FNS guns in, and got them back about 2 1/2 weeks later.
One of the interesting features of the FN-America/FN-Herstal warranty is that's it's a lifetime warranty for the gun, any owner (i.e. it's not limited to the original purchaser). My three FNS guns were all obtained in trades, and FN-America paid the costs of upgrades and shipping. (I don't expect FN to pay flr shipping TO them if I ever have a non-recall problem...)
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The Baltimore County problem started with the same issue, and one officer there had an accidental discharge. It was not witnessed, but it happened.

The firing pin issue is a bit more perplexing, given that LEOs typically don't shoot their weapons all that often (and then mostly in periodic requalifications -- maybe 90 rounds once a quarter or every six months).

Several members of the FN Forum have thousands of rounds through their FNS and FN509 guns, and others -- myself included -- have shot hundreds of rounds and none of us have encountered THAT problem. I wonder if there was just a batch of bad roll pins?
 
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To clarify a point that wasn't clear regarding the FN striker problem:

The problem behavior identified by the Arizona agency occurred only when the slide was moved a small distance, the trigger pulled, and the slide was allowed to return to battery with the trigger held to the rear. In that rare situation, the gun can then be hit, jarred or just re-holstered, and it can fire. Here's a link to the Arizona video from YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20MaN_eD4w8

There was manipulation prior to the unintended discharge, but NOT during or directly causing the discharge. The prior activity could be as seemingly innocuous as just holstering the weapon. But you still had to do something prior to holstering -- in this case, pull the trigger and keep it pulled to the rear while the slide returns to battery. And that action raises questions.

When the problem was first brought up, a bunch of us on the FN Forum thought the problem was caused by user actions (i.e., a negligent discharge).
That MAY Have been the case in the Baltimore event, but it seems unlikely that it was due to the problems demonstrated in the Arizona testing -- i.e., the officer would have had to have had the trigger pulled fully to the rear with the slide out of battery, and kept there as the slide returned to battery -- for it to happen as described. His accident apparently happened as he was suiting up for duty (or was it at the end of the day/); either way, he was inside the police station and nobody witnessed the event.
 
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A bit more background on the High Power. It did begin as a gun for the French military. This early gun, begun by Browning and Saive, with the bulk of the work done by Saive and continued after Browning's death. Through the constant changes desired by the French military it was called Le Grand Rendement (The High Efficiency) by FN. The effort to sell it to the French was deep sixed by the crash of 1929 and by Saive's suspicion that the French were building a gun of their own and teasing a prototype out of FN's labor.

FN did offer the gun on the market but the global economic crisis showed no buyers. The gun bore a close resemblance to the BHP and carried 14 rounds of 9 mm. Saive continued to work on the gun in 1930-1933.

FN set out to make the gun for a military contract. It was considered too large for police work. (See Anthony Vanderlinden "FN Browning Pistols, page 263).

FN's model was to produce a small number of pistols for use in military trials and once they won a military contract to go to mass production. So it was when the Belgian army in 1933 decided to order 1,000 pistols for trials. They requested several changes to the design (it was the Belgians who wanted the mags to be drop free, this prevented the mags from being accidentally ejected). They accepted the gun for their use in '34-35. It's military designation was the P35 . It was named, Le Grand Puissance, but it's not certain if the Belgian military started calling it that or FN.

It was always intended as a military sidearm.

tipoc
 
Can't speak to their other products but the Browning Hi-Power, as built by FN, is arguably the best military side arm ever designed.
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I guess, it is kind of like saying the Garand was the greatest military rifle ever designed. A lot has changed since either were introduced.
 
I guess, it is kind of like saying the Garand was the greatest military rifle ever designed. A lot has changed since either were introduced.
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Indeed. But I can think of some contemporaries of the Hi-Power than were better in most respects (capacity not being one of them!).
 
Can't speak to their other products but the Browning Hi-Power, as built by FN, is arguably the best military side arm ever designed.
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Possibly the best -- but some would argue that the SIG M-49. The only drawback to the M-49 was its cost. The M-49/P75/P220 was more durable, more easily maintained, and far more accurate than the Hi-Power..

The need for a less costly replacement led to the development of what we now call the SIG P-220, and that led to a number of different SIG semi-autos, all based on the same basic design, and most of them still in production!
 
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Can't speak to their other products but the Browning Hi-Power, as built by FN, is arguably the best military side arm ever designed.
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I guess, it is kind of like saying the Garand was the greatest military rifle ever designed. A lot has changed since either were introduced.
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This is true. It's also a factor in looking at what constitutes any list of the top military sidearms of the last century or so. Do you look at them in the context of their time or by how well they compare to the Sig M17 and M18 or the Glock 17 as military side arms and by the standards of proven military sidearms?

The Garand was one of the outstanding battle rifles of the last century. It was also soon outdated as a front line military rifle. The BHP in contrast, and to cite one example, remained in constant service with the British from WWII till just a couple of years ago when it began to be phased out as the standard service sidearm. Close to 70 years of combat and use. So to me it means that if you want to argue "It was the best" you got more than a leg to stand on. Like the 1911 it's days as a standard service sidearm have passed.



tipoc
 
Indeed. But I can think of some contemporaries of the Hi-Power than were better in most respects (capacity not being one of them!)
tipoc said:
For instance...
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Well, given the Hi-Power's many years of service, the number of contemporaries is not trivial. Give the years involved, the 1911 immediately comes to mind, and the 1911, in many different forms is still in production.

The Beretta M9 is widely used, still in production, and has a proven track record. (Brazil liked it so well it bought licensing rights for its military, and then bought the factory; it now builds its own version of the Beretta 92 under the Taurus banner.)

The SIG P220 (the civilian version of the P75, its first military designation, is still in production and used by civilians; Any number of variations of that original design, the P6/P225, P226, P228, P229, still being used by militaries and civilians around the world.

Note: there are also versions of the SIG P220 (the P220-X5, P220-X6, and P226-X5) that rival the SIG P210 for accuracy and reliability, but these models come with price tags that make them too expensive for military or police use.

There never was a .45 version of the Hi-Power, and for a while Browning sold a Browning-branded version of the .45 SIG P220, called the Browning BDA. (Browning was a FN-owned marketing subsidiary of FN-Herstal.)

Even the SIG P210 is still in production, but like the original P210, its just too expensive for military or police use.

From the time the Glock 17 and 19 were put into production (1982-) I suspect a lot more Glocks have been sold than Hi-Powers, as Glock apparently sells more than a million new guns a year to military and police units and civilians around the world. There may be 25+ million Glocks running loose out there!)
 
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No one knows exactly how many Hi-Powers were produced. FN knows how many it produced but will not say. It's clones officially and especially unofficially were fairly widespread and that information will be impossible to gather.

In the first edition of his 1984 book "The Browning Hi-Power Automatic Pistol" by R. Blake Stevens says in his prologue of the BHP that it:

"...has been in production almost without a break since it's inception in 1934. To date, over one-and-a-half million have been made by FN alone, and this does not count licensed client production, wartime German fabrication or other unauthorized copies."

Unfortunately Stevens did not update this information or Prologue in subsequent editions (1990 and 2014) of the useful book. He did update information on the clones and other developments.

I ought to do a break down of this but that will take some time and research. The pre-war production by FN was about 70,000 pistols so says Steven's. (Part of the 1.5 million)

Under German control during the war approximately 319,000 BHPs were produced using forced labor for the most part.

The Canadian production of the HI-Power during the war totaled 151,816 complete pistols delivered to the Canadian military. Some of these went on to China and elsewhere the exact number of those is unknown. As is the number that went back to England. The BHP became the go to pistol for the predecessors of the SAS.

So just till the end of the war over 540,000 of the BHP and one of it's key clones had been produced.

By 1984 1.5 million BHPs were produced by FN alone not counting the Germans and the Canadians and other makers. If we include the 470,800 produced by those two (Germans and Canadians) during the war to the 1.5 million we are close to 2 million. This as of 1984 or so. Of course this does not count other clones or that FN (and other makers) continued to produce the HI-Power over the 34 years since then till ceasing production last year, or was it officially earlier this year?

I, like Walt, am dubious of the claim that it was the most widely adopted military and police pistol globally till the 1980s or so. FN does not make that claim.

But how wide was it's distribution? That is very unclear. In part unclear because of FN which is a giant arms manufacturer. It produces artillery, rockets, aircraft weaponry and anti aircraft weapons, rifles, machine guns both mounted and carried. It has produced enough ammunition to fill a small ocean and that's just small arms ammo. They have produced over 10 million pistols as of 2013 or so in their existence (most designed by Browning and Saive), of various types and calibers. That is a small part of their overall production and sales. It is a force and player in statecraft and has been for over a century. It has worked with many, many intelligence agencies around the globe.

It produced Hi-Powers with no markings and pistols with false markings. It produced guns that went to one country and from there to another to avoid a direct route. At it's foundation Israel received BHPs through this round about method while the same pistol was being sold to Egypt. The BHP was sold to Argentina and England during the Malvinas war. So there is an official record and if 5,000 pistols fell off the back of a truck, hey what ya gonna do?

But pulling together a rough estimate could be useful.

tipoc
 
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tipoc said:
...The BHP was sold to Argentina and England during the Malvinas war. So there is an official record and if 5,000 pistols fell off the back of a truck, hey what ya gonna do?
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Argentina had been making its own licensed version of the HP for the Argentine military since 1969, and I doubt that they would have bothered to get more from FN. (Beginning in 1990, Argentina severed ties with FN and began producing commercial versions of the FM HP for sale on the world market.) While both sides were well-armed going into battle, handguns weren't that widely issued on either side, and the war only lasted a bit more than 2 months.

A Wikipedia listing of weapons used in the Malvinas/Falklands showed that the Argentines used HPs, Sistemas (licensed versions of the 1911), Ballester-Molinas, and some Colt 1911s. That listing showed that some British officers carried Sterling sub-machine guns (L2A3) rather than HPs. Some NCOs on both sides may have carried handguns, along with a few armored personnel and support troops.

The main battle rifles on both sides were versions of the FN FAL, and M-16s and those weapons were widely used.

I doubt that we'll ever know for sure how many HPs were produced, either by FN or by licensed or unlicensed gunmakers.
 
I doubt that we'll ever know for sure how many HPs were produced, either by FN or by licensed or unlicensed gunmakers.
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Yeah we won't. But the figures I gave for about 2 million produced from the three makers I cited up till 1984 come from reliable sources.

The reference I made to Argentina was that both sides used weapons from FN. Which was not uncommon.

It's also the case that FN did not make public the amount of guns that it sold as a part of all sales to various governments and militaries.

tipoc
 
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You're right about FN automatic weapons being on both sides of that war. FN made the Bristish weapons, but FM may have made some of the Argentine guns, under FN licenses.)

Here's a link to a listing of the weapons used in the Malvinas/Falklands War. Scroll down to near the bottom. I was surprised by how many guns had model numbers starting with FN or FM... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_the_Falklands_War

The problem I have with the 2 million figure is that we KNOW where a lot of the 1911s created during WWII are or ended up, and the CMP program is still passing some of them out.

As best I can tell, surprisingly FEW FN or Browning Hi-Powers have ever shown up in the used market here in the U.S. or in Europe. (Could they have gone to South America or Africa? There are limitations on 9mm in a lot of South American countries -- civilians can't own some "military" calibers.)

(CDNN sold off a bunch of tangent-sighted FN HPs some years ago, but I think that was hundreds not thousands of guns -- and they were all like new Where are those other million+ guns? AIM Surplus sold a few hundred Hi-Powers maybe two years ago, and did it again a while later... Century has had a FEW Hi-Powers for sale over the years, but not a lot -- and those came from the Middle East. But that probably represents a total of less than 2-3 tousand guns that I've seen offered over the past 15-20 years. And the U.S. is THE hottest gun market in the world!)
 
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