[Jbar4Ranch]

They were made by a division of General Motors, Inland Guide Lamp, in 1942, and were intended to be air dropped to resistance groups in occupied territories. Ten rounds were supplied in the box and the idea was to take a few practice shots to learn the characteristics, then use it to shoot your favorite neighborhood Nazi at point blank range, and take his weapon(s). In actual use, it would have definitely been a one shot proposition, you either succeeded with your first shot, or you were dead. About a million were made over a period of eleven weeks, which comes out to something like one complete pistol every six seconds or so, twenty four hours a day, for eleven weeks. It's often said that it takes longer to reload a Liberator than it took to make one. Even for as short a time as they were made, there are at least five distinct variations known, including a prototype two shot version that had a sliding breech block which held two rounds. Mine is the most common variation, and there is evidence that it's been shot before, which is why I wasn't worried about depreciating it any by firing it five times. Very few, perhaps none, were ever dropped in Nazi occupied Europe, but a few were dropped in the Phillipines and China. Most were scrapped after the war, and I understand a great number of them ended up at the bottom of the English Channel along with various other unwanted war surplus materials. I have yet to see an estimate of how many survived, but judging by how many I've seen in my life (3, including this one), I'd say *not very damn many*. I've seen more Ruger Hawkeyes, and there were only 3300 of those made. Although several original opened boxes exist in various collections and museums, there is only one known example of a Liberator pistol still in its original sealed box.

Fascinating stuff, history is.