What firearms are synonymous with the .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) cartridge and World War II?

This question brings three things to mind:

1. If you answered the legendary M1911-A1 single-action semiautomatic pistol, you’d be partially correct.

2. If you answered the “Tommy Gun,” more specifically the Auto-Ordnance M1928 and M1 Thompson submachine gun (SMG), again, you’d be partially correct.

3. >If you answered the M3 “Grease Gun” SMG—immortalized in USMC running cadences—once again, you’d be partially correct. 

What do I mean, well, I’m glad you asked. As historically iconic firearms truly are, no discussion of .45 caliber firearms of WWII would be complete a discussion of what the late great gun writer Dean A. Grennell referred to in his 1989 book The Gun Digest Book of the .45, as “The Weirdest .45”: the FP-45 (as in Flare Projector Caliber .45) Liberator, aka the OSS Liberator.

OSS Liberator Origins, Specifications, and Combat Performance

The Liberator pistol was designed in May 1942 by George J. Hyde Sr., a German-born American machinist and gunsmith, and manufactured by the Guide Lamp Division of the General Motors (GM) Corporation.

It was a crude, single-shot pistol—somewhat akin to a twentieth-century derringer—designed to be cheaply and quickly mass-produced, with just twenty-three largely stamped and turned steel parts. Its .45 ACP pistol cartridge was discharged from an unrifled barrel, thus greatly reducing its intrinsic and practical accuracy alike and being intended for short-range use—ideally, one to four yards (0.91–3.66 m). It’s maximum effective range was only about 25 ft (7.6 m).

The premise of the Liberator was that of an insurgency weapon to be dropped en masse behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter/partisan was to recover the gun, sneak up on an Axis adversary, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve the bad guy’s weapons. The gun was as envisioned a psychological operation weapon as it much as it was a physical fighting tool, as it would presumably hurt German morale by making the occupiers fearful.

Over a million of these single-shot pistols were produced during a mere two-month span from June 1942 to August 1942, and their crude design notwithstanding, it’s believed that they accounted for more Axis casualties than all of the M1911-A1 pistols in the hands of Allied troops!

Range Report: Firing the Liberator

As much as I’d love to give you a first-hand test firing report of the OSS Liberator, alas, I’ve never been lucky enough to have gotten a hold of one. So instead, we turn back to the late Grennell’s 1989 writeup:

“I tried a few shots with it. Had I dreamed I’d want to write about it forty-five years or so into the future, I would have reviewed it more intently and thoughtfully, but how was I to know?... I recall the trigger pull fairly clearly. If you tried to haul a tomcat off a cedar shake roof by tugging on the end of his tail, the sensation would not be too different from dragging the Liberator trigger until it released the striker. Putting it another way: It was neither smooth nor crisp.”

As if that weren’t disconcerting enough, Dean continued the harrowing tale thusly:

The Government Model pistol, caliber .45, Model 1911/1911A1, generates a substantial amount of recoil and muzzle blast, with its five-inch barrel and net weight of thirty-eight ounces or so, as many of us are well aware. Set off a round of GI hardball in a pistol weighing less than half that, out of a barrel an inch shorter – all this at a time when the helpful muff-type ear protectors were a decade or two short of being invented – and the subjective effective [sic] was plumb, downright traumatic … I think I fired two shots with it at the six-inch ten-ring of the six-foot by six-foot rapid-fire target at fifteen yards. The first shot hit something like twelve to eighteen inches wide of the aiming point, and the second was off by about the same distance, more or less in the opposite direction. That was at a time when I’d gotten to the point where I could manipulate the M1991A1 with reasonably telling effect … Candidly, I can’t help feeling grateful my destiny didn’t include having to take out an armed sentry in the dark with a Liberator pistol. Despite that, I’d have to concede it would have been a helluva lot more attractive alternative than having to do the same job barehanded.”

Good grief, Charlie Brown!

Want Your Own?

Say what? You still want to fire one after reading that traumatic report from dear old Dean? Or maybe you don’t necessarily want to fire a Liberator pistol, but would at least like to own one for the sheer historical significance and the collectability factor.

Well okay then, more power to ya, but be ready to shell out some cash. Although the Liberator cost about $2.10 to make (about $37.70 in 2022 dollars), which prompted some to dub it the “Two-Buck Gun” or the “Woolworth Gun,” nowadays those same “Two-Buck” guns sell between $2,500 to $5,000, as the majority of the one million original pistols produced were destroyed after the war ended.

Now, on the other hand, if you’re willing to settle for a replica instead of an original, then you won’t have to bust your bankbook so severely. Vintage Ordnance (located in Elizabethtown, Kentucky) is currently selling a so-called “FP-45 Liberator Model 3 WITH Threaded Barrel (Standard Model)” for a comparatively modest price tag of $775 (though as I type these words, the product is on backorder status).

About the Author: Christian D. Orr 

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch , The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

Image Credit: Creative Commons.