by The new Liberator pistol from Defense Distributed is gaining as much attention from having its 3-D plans removed from their website at the request of the State Department as for the plans themselves. I know that I for one downloaded the plans from Pirate Bay just because.
This got me to thinking about the FP-45 Liberator pistol from World War II. It was designed as an insurgent’s weapon with the idea that the resistance fighter would use it to kill a German soldier and take his weapon and ammunition. The original idea was to drop these by the thousands in Occupied Europe. While some did make it to France, more were distributed in China and the Philippines by the Office of Strategic Services.
In the video below, Phil Schreier, Senior Curator at the NRA National Firearms Museum, discusses the history of the FP-45.
Doing a little Google search, I found the original blueprints for the FP-45 as designed by the Inland Manufacturing Division of General Motors. You can see them below as well as download them from Scribd.
Forgotten Weapons had a good video on the original Liberator – including info on the (much better built)reproduction.
Anyone else notice that none of the part drawings had part names that indicated gun parts? This was done to keep the whole project secret and still allow for sub-contractors to help with building the parts. Perhaps the same method could be used for other parts that need to be built today 🙂