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Product ID: R71135
F-45 Liberator Pistol
In order to comply with the VCR act proof of age 18 or over and address is required. We accept scans of full or provisional driving licences or a UK passport and the heading from a utility bill or appointment letter that matches the delivery address emailed to relicsarms@hotmail.com.
If neither option is available we can send a form through Royal Mail or it can be downloaded via the following link Age Declaration Form
This form is specifically designed to be printed and completed offline. Once completed it can be scanned and emailed to us or posted to:
Relics AD Dept., Lower Ground Floor, 29 High Street, Polegate, East Sussex, BN26 5AB.
Modern guns will be supplied in a peel off yellow finish.
This product is currently out of stock
Produced for the US Army/Office of Strategic Service, the F-45 OSS/SOE Liberator Pistol was designed in 1942 by the Inland Guide Lamp Manufacturing Division of the General Motors Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.
It was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly mass produced, having just 23 largely stamped and turned steel parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired a .45 caliber pistol cartridge from an unrifled barrel.
Due to the unrifled barrel, maximum effective range was only about 25 feet (less than 8 m). The Liberator was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition, a wooden dowel to remove the empty shell casing, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form showing how to load and fire the weapon. Extra rounds of ammunition could be stored in the pistol grip.
The Liberator was intended as an insurgency weapon to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. It was valued as much for its psychological warfare effect as its actual field performance, and it was believed that if vast quantities of these weapons could be delivered into Axis occupied territory, it would have a devastating effect on the morale of occupying troops.
The plan was to drop the weapon in such great quantities that occupying forces could never capture or recover all the weapons. It was hoped that the thought of thousands of these unrecovered weapons potentially in the hands of the citizens of occupied countries would have a deleterious effect on enemy morale.
In reality, the OSS never realised the objective of mass dropping the Liberator over occupied Europe, and only a handful were ever distributed, usually via Harrington airfield and base in Northamptonshire. There was also some limited distribution in the Far East, most however, were scrapped or dumped in the Atlantic.
Our replica is a solid reminder of those desperate actions by partisan heroes fighting against all odds with little help or support from anyone. Made from resin, it is full size and extremely realistic. No moving parts whatsoever.
The VCR act applies to this item. Supplied in a peel off bright yellow finish unless you belong to a VCR exempt group. Should you subsequently join an exempt group the tape can be removed.
18 or over customers only - ID must be provided with your order before the goods can be despatched. A driving license or passport photo page and a page header from a bill, statement or appointment to prove your address are all acceptable forms of ID.
UK Customers: if you are a UK resident living offshore of the mainland ie Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight etc please select your area from the dropdown menu to see the current shipping rate for your order.