From the Vault: WWII Liberator Pistol

We've featured a lot of beautiful guns on FTV, and even more that represent the pinnacle of firearm design and the custom gunsmith's craft. Today's gun is nothing like those! Brownells Gun Techs™ Keith and Steve are back at Rock Island Auction Co. to give us a close look at the frumpy, stumpy, crude FP-45 Liberator pistol, a product of America's clandestine war effort in World War II. "FP" stands for "flare pistol," which was part of a misdirection campaign to conceal the Liberator's true purpose: to be simple, easy-to-conceal weapon that could be dropped behind enemy lines to the Résistance in France (and elsewhere in Europe and the Pacific Theater, too). It was to be used to kill enemy troops to take their weapons. The single-shot Liberator, chambered in .45 ACP, is made of stamped sheet metal. It cost a total of $2.10 in 1942 dollars, so cheap it was nicknamed the "Woolworth pistol." About 1 million FP-45s were manufactured by General Motors, but only about 25,000 were sent to Europe. William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the OSS, had more sent to resistance fighters in China, where the gun was found to be better than nothing.... barely. The majority of Liberators were simply dumped in the ocean at the end of the war, which explains why surviving examples are fairly rare collectibles that now fetch a LOT more than $2.10 at auction!