What Belgium Did With 319,000 Browning Hi-Power Pistols Germany Made in FN Factory
WW2 WarZone
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When Germany seized Belgium's FN Herstal factory in 1940, they thought they'd captured the world's finest pistol design. What they didn't know: the engineer had already fled with the knowledge in his head — and the workers left behind spent four years quietly building weapons meant to fail. This is the untold story of the Browning Hi-Power's split identity during WWII: 319,000 pistols made under occupation, sabotaged in silence, while its true twin was reborn in a Canadian factory and dropped into Germany with paratroopers in 1945.
#WW2History, #BrowningHiPower, #FNHerstal, #WorldWarTwo, #GunHistory, #BelgianResistance, #MilitaryHistory,
4 Comments
What Belgium Did With 319,000 Browning Hi-Power Pistols Germany Made in FN Factory
WW2 WarZone
7,791 views
When Germany seized Belgium's FN Herstal factory in 1940, they thought they'd captured the world's finest pistol design. What they didn't know: the engineer had already fled with the knowledge in his head — and the workers left behind spent four years quietly building weapons meant to fail. This is the untold story of the Browning Hi-Power's split identity during WWII: 319,000 pistols made under occupation, sabotaged in silence, while its true twin was reborn in a Canadian factory and dropped into Germany with paratroopers in 1945.
#WW2History, #BrowningHiPower, #FNHerstal, #WorldWarTwo, #GunHistory, #BelgianResistance, #MilitaryHistory,
My dad’s division, the 99th Infantry Division, had gone on line in the Ardennes, almost directly east of Herstal. The Belgium people were so happy to be liberated that an open invitation was sent out to Allied generals to come to Herstal for personal fitting of new Browning Superposed shotguns. Several American generals had accepted the invitation. They were to come to Herstal around December 18th or 19th to be fitted for their free shotgun. Unfortunately, the German counter-offensive into the Ardennes on December 17th, 1944, disrupted these plans.
I don’t know if any Generals got their Superposed shotguns or not. Because Herstal was in threat of being overrun, the wise decision to wait on the shotgun fitting was the common theme.