Would it have been possible to suppress a liberator pistol?

S

simonrichter

New member
I'm well aware this is a mere hypothetic question. I argued with a friend - he says why not, I say it couldn't have been done because the tumbling bullet out of the smooth bore would have destroyed the can.

I'm just referring to the technical possibilities, being well aware that attaching a costly suppressor would be quite inconsistant with the idealof a cheap throw-away gun...
 
Yes, but to what degree?
An "extended barrel" that has ports / holes in the sides, it suppress the gun's report.
 
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Degree = easy measures like an extended barrel with ports/ vents is a little bit quieter.
Harder could be a much large bore supressor that is a can with a fiber sound absorber.

Note that shooting a rifle thru the center of 5 tires significantly cuts the report.
 
You would first need a new barrel since there is not enough room to thread the barrel as it is.* I don't see the smooth bore as a problem since the bullet can't/won't tumble enough just out of the barrel to harm the can. But the main problem is that the "FP-45" was designed as a "throw-away" item, like a Spam can or an M1 rifle clip, and won't hold up to any extended firing. If you want to make/market a silenced pistol, there would certainly be better bases around than the old Liberator.

Jim

*The Liberator barrel is spot welded to the frame, so installing a new barrel would present some problems. And the barrel would have to be rifled, since a smooth bore pistol will fall under the NFA.

JK
 
James has it.
Barrel too short.
And the bullet didn't tumble immediately out the muzzle, no damage would be done to the can.
Denis
 
A good candidate for a suppressor IMHO, since it is a single shot, don't have to worry about noise coming out from the breech when the shell ejects. Costly suppressor-a professionally made one, for long term or heavy duty, perhaps, but a homemade one for one shot...?
 
Or when the gun gets printed, just extend the barrel 3" and have small vents / ports added every 1/2". It becomes a printed NFA item but that may be moot in 6 months.
 
For an operation the liberator could probably be reasonably suppressed using an ad hoc single shot cloth suppressor. It would be unwieldy, hard to conceal, and make reloading even less plausible.
The pistols were supposed to come with ten rounds, but reloading in the field was near impossible, so a suppressor that worked for one shot would be all you needed.
Keep in mind that pretty much no one anywhere used the pistols. After manufacture the military decided they weren't worth air dropping as originally intended. They turned most over to OSS or MI6 and those organizations decided their limited logistic ability to supply resistance groups was better served with weapons that were effective.

The wikipedia article contains basic info as to their use and distribution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator
https://vintageordnance.com/t/fp-45-liberator-pistol
 
In today's world you could just duct tape a small plastic soda bottle to the barrel and presto-chango a one shot suppressor. However; I'm not sure what you'd use in WWII. I wonder if a hard bread roll would work?

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Any firearm can be suppressed, the questions are simply how much modification will be required to the firearm, how much of a decibel reduction are you going to get, and how long will the silencer last. So your friend definitely won this argument.

As far as the tumbling bullet from the smooth bore, all you'd need to do is over-bore the silencer to compensate. Generally, tumbling bullets aren't going too far off their axis that close to the muzzle, so you wouldn't have to over-bore the silencer too much. And if you still got baffle strikes, it probably would just take a notch out of the baffle without destroying the whole can.

I've had several endcap baffle strikes on my silencers due to misalignment and tumbling bullets where there was very minor damage, and I've also had bullets that keyholed at 7 yards that didn't cause any baffle strikes at all. I've also completely destroyed two different silencers in torture tests, and I can tell you that both survived multiple baffle strikes before they were destroyed.
 
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Thanks for the interesting insights so far. So dies that mean that on really short distances (say 5yrds and below) it doesn't make too much actual difference whether a barrel is rifled or not?
 
And the barrel would have to be rifled, since a smooth bore pistol will fall under the NFA.
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This only matters if US private sale is a consideration. The NFA 34 was an established law for a decade before the first Liberator pistol was stamped.

To the best of my knowledge, the laws governing private ownership of NFA items do not apply to government ownership of such items.

Example, NO GI ever issued a Tommygun during WWII ever went through the NFA process. They never had to wait months for background checks, and approvals, of their paperwork. They never paid the $200 tax.

The law simply didn't apply to them, and, for obvious good reasons...

So dies that mean that on really short distances (say 5yrds and below) it doesn't make too much actual difference whether a barrel is rifled or not?
Click to expand...

yes and no. Bullets DO NOT TUMBLE the instant they leave a non rifled bore. Not if there is any sort of fit between the bullet and the bore. EVEN IF the fit is "loose" by the usual standards. They may "wobble" and as they travel downrange, that wobble may turn into a tumble, but it will be at a fair distance from the muzzle.

THink about it. SHOTGUNS are smoothbore (unrifled). Shoot a shotgun at 5yards and below with slugs. Or shoot a musket (no rifling) with a round ball at 5yds and below. Does the bullet/slug/ball hit close to your point of aim? or does it "tumble" and miss??

Simple answer, it hits. If it misses you missed, it didn't, not at that close range.

As long as the fit between the projectile and the bore is close, (and friction tight is the usual) the projectile will fly straight for a short distance. At 5yards, it's a "gimme", at 50, its a maybe,

Are paintball guns rifled? (I'm not a paintballer, but I think they aren't) can you or anyone hit the other guy at 5yds and under??? I think the answer is yes...

Not being rifled doesn't seem to matter much at very short range.

I'm talking about systems with a close fit between barrel and projectile here, not the kind of thing where you are firing a .22 slug down a half inch bore pipe. That is a different matter, entirely.

If you are talking about firing a .45 bullet down a .45 smooth bore, and through a .45 cal suppressor (ALSO no rifling), the bullet will not tumble, nor will it wobble enough to matter, before it exits the muzzle, and certainly not enough to destroy the suppressor. also remember that we're talking about a single shot here, not dumping a 30 rnd stick though a can on full auto.

Does this help??
;)
 
The Liberator pistol was never intended to be anything but a means of acquiring a proper firearm from a sentry. Cost of the thing was $2.10US(1942 dollars). Total cost of 'em was 2.1 million USD. A very decided waste of money considering none were dropped anywhere. No point in spending the money for a suppressor for a disposable pistol.
 
I'm going to make an assumption or 2---you are talking about the original FP-45
Liberator, and the use of the suppressor would be "in the field" to fulfill the pistols original role--persuade somebody to give you their firearm. Liberator fired
a subsonic round from a 4" barrel (actually longer than an Officers model!). Trigger
guard was the only thing in the way of having a chunk of straight round barrel to
slip something over or attach something to. Do a search of Field Expedient Suppressors- there are more than a few possibilities.
 
The Liberator was basically a mass produced zip gun. As noted, it was intended to allow a resistance fighter to relieve an enemy soldier of his weapon and ammunition, and for use by those to squeamish to use an edged weapon.
 
and for use by those to squeamish to use an edged weapon.
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Yes, squeamishness, able to do murder, but can't stand seeing or getting blood on them? Yes, I'm sure that was what kept the resistance from taking up all those antique swords left from the middle ages that seem to be on every manor wall in the country (or just using their large kitchen knives) and chopping all the Nazi's heads off, and ending the problem...

Maybe if we had just dropped enough knives over France there would have been no need for the Normandy invasion???
:rolleyes:

Let's get real. TRAINED, FIT men & women can be deadly with a blade. They can be instantly fatal. They may even be able to throw a knife well enough to be fatal at a short distance.

Most people aren't in that class. Never were, never will be. Even a piece of junk zip gun like the Liberator offers some stand off distance, removes the physical strength disparity (allowing women, and the elderly, etc. to be just as deadly as the combat soldier, once, anyway), and done right, the single (admittedly loud) "pop" from the pistol might be less noticed than ongoing yelling or screaming from a botched knife attack. Also, not being covered in blood during your getaway attempt might be an important thing, too. ;)

The Liberator was a good concept, but badly executed. Had we been able to have dropped several thousand of them over France in 42, they might have had a noticeable effect. By 44, there was no point anymore. We could drop sten guns (better zip guns;) than the Liberator) and the invasion was coming...

So, since we didn't have them ready in time to be useful, they didn't get dropped (or dropped in any numbers). I've heard some were later sent to guerilla forces in the Philpines, but I don't know for sure.
 
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