A bit of history (The Liberator)

[Grenadier]

I was at a neighbor's house recently, and saw his extensive collection of handguns from the WWII era. Quite an impressive collection, with several pristine Luger pistols, some beautifully cared for 1911's, etc., but the most unique one, to me, was a small single shot .45 ACP pistol known as the Liberator.

Here's some background info on this little piece:

http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/liber.htm


Quite a feat, that 300 people working at a relatively crude factory, could churn out these pistols at a rate of one per 6.6 seconds, which is faster than the amount of time it takes to reload them.

That site also shows a few other tiny pistols for covert operation. Some good reading, in case if any of y'all are drinking that second cup of coffee right now.

 

[Deaf Smith]

And that is another example of the falicy of gun control. You see how easy it is to make a pistol. Submachineguns are easier!

And what did the users of the Liberator pistol going do to with the gun? Why in WW2 they would use the gun to kill an enemy soldier and take his MUCH better gun!

Deaf

 

[KenpoTex]

there were a lot of neat little weapons produced during WWII.

 

[chinto]

I was at a neighbor's house recently, and saw his extensive collection of handguns from the WWII era. Quite an impressive collection, with several pristine Luger pistols, some beautifully cared for 1911's, etc., but the most unique one, to me, was a small single shot .45 ACP pistol known as the Liberator.

Here's some background info on this little piece:

http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/liber.htm


Quite a feat, that 300 people working at a relatively crude factory, could churn out these pistols at a rate of one per 6.6 seconds, which is faster than the amount of time it takes to reload them.

That site also shows a few other tiny pistols for covert operation. Some good reading, in case if any of y'all are drinking that second cup of coffee right now.

I have actually held one in my hand..... cheep to make, and very funky looking like some kind of prison made zip gun or something.. It was a cheep little gun to let the partisans and resistance fighters get a better gun! shoot the sentry and take his weapon... that kind of thing. With the knock down power of the .45 ACP at close range they went down usually and stayed down while you took their weapon. ( a 9mm weapon might not put the sentry or who ever down with one round. that is why special operations personal even today tend to prefer the .45 cal pistols like the 1911-A1)

 

[Grenadier]

Interesting note, that the accuracy / precision wasn't nearly as horrible as one might expect:

http://home.pacbell.net/rlhag65/misc.htm

4 shots in a cluster of under 6" from 50 feet away.

 

[Steel Tiger]

there were a lot of neat little weapons produced during WWII.

Yeah, there were some nice ones. Have a look at the Welrod pistol which is kinda cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welrod

 

[KenpoTex]

here's another, this is a suppressed Hi-standard .22

And while not a gun per se, this thing is cool. It was called a Spigot-gun and is bacically a booby-trap that launches a payload of 3 lbs. of plastic-explosive. The video is an actual OSS film.
http://www.realmilitaryflix.com/public/253.cfm

 

[chinto]

Yeah, there were some nice ones. Have a look at the Welrod pistol which is kinda cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welrod

well most welrods were not 9mm, but .32 acp. it was the most silent pistol of WWII and I do not know of any pistol since that is quieter. the idea was to shove the muzzle end of the suppressor against the victims body and pull the trigger for effectively a completely silent shot... taken apart in a drawer or tool box, many even trained security persons would not realize that it was in fact a silenced pistol type weapon.