The FP-45 Liberator is a
pistol
A pistol is a handgun, more specifically one with the chamber integral to its gun barrel, though in common usage the two terms are often used interchangeably. The English word was introduced in , when early handguns were produced in Europe, an ...
manufactured by the United States military during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
for use by resistance forces in occupied territories. The ''Liberator'' was never issued to American or other Allied troops, and there are few documented instances of the weapon being used for its intended purpose; though the intended recipients, irregulars and resistance fighters, rarely kept detailed records due to the inherent risks if the records were captured by the enemy. Few FP-45 pistols were distributed as intended, and most were destroyed by Allied forces after the war.
Project history
The concept was suggested by a Polish military attaché in March 1942. The project was assigned to the US Army Joint Psychological Warfare Committee and was designed for the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
two months later by
George Hyde of the Inland Manufacturing Division of the
General Motors Corporation
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
in
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...
. Production was undertaken by General Motors Guide Lamp Division to avoid conflicting priorities with Inland Division production of the
M1 carbine.
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 labeled the
barrel
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, ...
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
Anderson, named after Chief William Anderson, is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Indiana, United States. It is the principal city of the Anderson, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses Madison County. Anderson is ...
assembled a million of these guns. The ''Liberator'' project took about six months from conception to the end of production with about 11 weeks of actual manufacturing time, done by 300 workers.
Design
![FP-45 operating instructions](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/FP-45_operating_instructions.jpg)
The FP-45 was a crude,
single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly
mass-produced. It had just 23 largely stamped and turned
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired the
.45 ACP
The .45 ACP ( Automatic Colt Pistol) or .45 Auto (11.43×23mm) is a rimless straight-walled handgun cartridge designed by John Moses Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic pistol. After successful military trials, it ...
pistol
cartridge from an
unrifled barrel. Due to this limitation, it was intended for short range use, . Its maximum effective range was only about . At longer range, the bullet would begin to tumble and stray off course. The original delivered cost for the FP-45 was $2.10/unit (), lending it the nickname "Woolworth pistol".
Five rounds of ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip.
Wartime use
The ''Liberator'' was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden
dowel
A dowel is a cylindrical rod, usually made of wood, plastic, or metal. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is called a ''dowel rod''. Dowel rods are often cut into short lengths called dowel pins. Dowels are commonly used as structural ...
to remove the empty cartridge case, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form
showing how to load and fire the weapon. The ''Liberator'' was a crude and clumsy weapon, never intended for front line service. It was originally intended as an
insurgency weapon
Insurgency weapons and tactics are weapons and tactics, most often involving firearms or explosive devices, intended for use by insurgents to engage in guerrilla warfare against an occupier, or for use by rebels against an established governme ...
to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter was to recover the gun, sneak up on an
Axis occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons.
It was manufactured under the "FP" prefix and referred to in official documentation as a "
Flare pistol
A flare gun, also known as a Very pistol or signal pistol, is a large-bore handgun that discharges flares, blanks and smoke. The flare gun is typically used to produce a distress signal.
Types
The most common type of flare gun is a Very (som ...
". The pistol was valued as much for its
psychological warfare
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
effect as its actual field performance. It was believed that if vast quantities of these handguns could be delivered into Axis-occupied territory, it would have a devastating effect on the
morale of occupying troops. The plan was to drop it in such great quantities that occupying forces could never capture or recover all of them. 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.
General
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
's staff never saw the practicality in mass dropping the ''Liberator'' over occupied Europe, and authorized distribution of fewer than 25,000 of the half million FP-45 pistols shipped to Great Britain for the French resistance. Generals
Joseph Stilwell
Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (March 19, 1883 – October 12, 1946) was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. An early American popular hero of the war for leading a column walking ...
and
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
were similarly unenthusiastic about the other half of the pistols scheduled for shipment to the Pacific. The Army then turned 450,000 ''Liberators'' over to the
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...
(OSS), which preferred to supply Resistance fighters in both theatres with more effective weapons whenever possible.
French use of the FP-45 remains undocumented, however a first hand account of an assassination with an FP-45 exists from German military policeman Niklaus Lange. He claimed that there were thousands in circulation in occupied France.
The OSS did distribute a few to Greek resistance forces in 1944. Most of the pistols shipped to Britain were undistributed, and later dumped at sea or melted for scrap metal.
One hundred thousand FP-45 pistols were shipped to China in 1943, but the number actually distributed remains unknown. A few were distributed to the Philippine
Commonwealth Army,
Philippine Constabulary, and resistance fighters.
See also
*
Deer gun
The Deer gun, developed by the CIA, was a successor to the FP-45 Liberator, Liberator pistol. The single-shot Deer gun was intended for distribution to South Vietnamese guerrillas as a weapon against North Vietnamese soldiers.
Design
The Deer gu ...
, a Liberator-style handgun tested during the
Vietnam war
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
*
Liberator, a 3D printed handgun (2013)
References
External links
The Liberator Pistolat JustGuns.com
The Liberator instruction sheet''The Liberator Pistol'', by Ralph HaganFP-45 Liberator PistolForgotten Weapons
Forgotten Weapons is a website and channel appearing on YouTube, Utreon and Full30, created and presented by Ian McCollum, that covers the history of antique, obscure, and historically important firearms.
Videos
Forgotten Weapons frequently fe ...
{{Authority control
Derringers
Insurgency weapons
World War II firearms of the United States
Single-shot pistols
Madison County, Indiana
History of Dayton, Ohio
General Motors
.45 ACP firearms
Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1942