Smooth bore pistols

In the book "D Day through German Eyes" a Wehrmacht sergeant interviewed ten years after the war, gives an accurate description of a Liberator pistol used by a french prostitute to dispatch a Wehrmacht hauptman. Others have reported to me seeing pictures of Liberators in the hands of resistance fighters in France; and post war in Burma. The whole story of the Liberator is quite muddled. It was long reported that almost all of them were destroyed post war, yet I saw them frequently at gun shows shortly after they were removed from NFA restrictions. I have no first hand evidence of their wartime use, but I do find the report of the German sergean quite compelling.

gary
 
There is also some confusion between the "Liberator" pistol (aka FP-45) and a stamped sheet metal gun also produced in the U.S. and was rumored to also be produced by GM at their Guide Lamp Division. Or maybe Colt.

The "Liberator" had an official military designation. It was a single shot pistol, not a self loader. Meaning it had to be manually cocked for each shot. It did not have a magazine. It could hold 5 loose rounds in it's hollow handle. It was the one with the smooth bore. It was shipped in a package that held ten packaged rounds of 45 acp. If you did it right all 10 could fit stacked in the grip. About 1 million of these were made.

More on the Liberator:

https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2012/7/24/the-liberator-pistol/

http://americanshootingjournal.com/lost-pistol-world-war-ii/

The other stamped sheet metal gun was a larger magazine fed single action semi auto. Made either in the same plant as the Liberator or by Colt. There are no official records of it that have been found and only a small number were produced. It has no military designation. Apparantly only prototypes were made. Edward Scott Meadows in his book "U.S. Military Automatic Pistols 1920-1945" shows several pictures of it. Looks like it used a standard 1911 magazine. It had a rifled barrel.

http://ww3.rediscov.com/spring/VFPC.../DETAILS.IDC,SPECIFIC=10024,DATABASE=26766896

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2013/01/02/the-mystery-of-the-stamped-steel-1911/

tipoc
 
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