November 26, 1926. Hurstl, Belgium, FN factory floor. John Moses Browning, the greatest firearms designer in history, collapsed at his workbench and died. He was 71 years old. On the table in front of him sat an unfinished pistol, perhaps half complete. It held 13 rounds when most military service pistols held seven or eight.
The mechanism was simpler, the design was lighter, and if anyone could figure out how to finish it, this pistol would reset the standard for military sidearms. The problem was that few people had the full design picture. Browning had kept most of it in his head. 14 years later, German tanks rolled into Belgium and captured the FN factory.
They found the finished pistol, now called the High Power, and immediately put it into production for the Veyact. Over the next four years, occupied Belgium would manufacture more than 300,000 of these pistols for Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, in England, the man who had actually completed Browning’s design was desperately trying to recreate production drawings from memory so the Allies could build their own.
This is the story of how a dead Americans unfinished sketch became the most influential combat pistol of the 20th century. how it armed both sides of the same war and why British special forces fought to get their hands on it while the regular army refused to give up their revolvers. The French military started this entire saga in 1921 when they issued a specification for a new service pistol.
They wanted something revolutionary. The requirements demanded a minimum of 10 rounds, a caliber of 9 mm or larger, an effective range of 50 m, and a weight under 1 kg. At the time, no pistol on Earth could meet these specifications. The standard Cult 1911 held only seven rounds. The German Luga held eight.
The British Webly revolver held six. And even with its fast top break reload, you were still behind on capacity. Consider what that meant in practical terms. A British officer in 1921 carried a Webly with six shots. His German counterpart carried a Luga with eight. If both emptied their weapons, the German had a 33% advantage.
But the French wanted a pistol that would give their officers 60% more ammunition than the Germans before needing to reload. No existing design came close. John Browning, working from his workshop in Ogden, Utah, saw an opportunity. He had already designed the 1911 for cult, but he had sold those patents and could not legally copy his own work.
So he started fresh. The critical innovation came from his colleague at FN, a Belgian engineer named Yodon Sev. SE invented something that seems obvious now, but had never been successfully implemented in a military pistol. A double stack magazine. Instead of rounds sitting in a single column, SE’s magazine staggered them in two columns that merged into one at the top.
This nearly doubled capacity without significantly increasing grip size. The mathematics were elegant. A single stack magazine holding 9 mm ammunition could fit seven or eight rounds in a grip of comfortable dimensions. Scythe’s staggered design squeezed 13 rounds into a grip only marginally wider. The high power weighed around 900 g unloaded, just under the French requirement.
Overall length was approximately 200 mm. Muzzle velocity varied by ammunition, typically in the mid 300s of meters/s. The specifications met or exceeded the French demands. Browning filed his patent on June 28, 1923 and built two prototypes. Then he traveled to Belgium to continue development at FN’s facility. He made that trip repeatedly over the next 3 years, refining the design, solving feeding problems, improving the trigger mechanism. He never saw it finished.
After Browning’s death, Save spent 8 years completing the pistol. When Colt’s 1911 patents expired in 1928, he was finally free to incorporate some of Browning’s earlier innovations. He simplified the barrel linkage, replacing the swinging link with a shaped cam that was cheaper to manufacture and more reliable in service.
The final design was ready in 1934. FN designated it the P-35 and began production in 1935. Then came the bitter irony. France, the nation that had commissioned this pistol in the first place, rejected it. They chose a domestic pistol family instead, the Modell 1935 series. The pistol built specifically to French specifications would never serve in the French military.
FN named it the Browning High Power, partly to honor the late designer, but the name actually referenced the magazine capacity, not ballistic performance. High power meant high round count. By May 1940, FN had produced roughly 56,000 pistols, mostly for Belgium and China. Germany invaded on May 10, 1940. The FN factory fell virtually intact just 2 days later.
German industrial managers took control immediately recognizing the value of what they had captured. Production resumed under occupation and the high power received a German designation. Pistol 640 with a letter B in parentheses indicating Belgian origin. Vermach procurement officers commonly issued these pistols to Waffan SS units and Falermaga paratroopers rather than regular infantry.
Elite units received elite weapons. According to production records examined by firearms historians, German occupied FN manufactured around 300,000 high powers over the next 4 years. Quality declined as the war dragged on. Some late war examples emit the magazine disconnect safety, likely to speed production. Belgian employees reportedly sabotaged some pistols through improper heat treatment.
Though this claim remains difficult to verify from primary sources, the strangest consequence of this dual production emerged at Arnham in September 1944 during Operation Market Garden. British paratroopers of the First Airborne Division faced Waffen SS troops across the bridge. According to anecdotal accounts, both sides may have been carrying high powers manufactured in the same Belgian factory.
The same pistol, the same caliber, the same magazine capacity, pointing at each other across a Dutch river. While Germany exploited the captured factory, Diodon Sie was making his escape. The story of how he reached England reads like a spy novel because in many ways it was one. In mid 1941, with help from the Belgian resistance, Scythe fled south through occupied France into neutral Spain, then across to Portugal and finally by ship to England. The journey took weeks.
German agents watched the borders. Vichy French police checked papers at every checkpoint. Scythe arrived without complete blueprints. Some drawings remained hidden in Belgium. Others existed only in his memory. At the Royal SmallArms factory design department in Chessant, he began the painstaking work of recreating production specifications from a combination of partial documents, a few pre-war examples found in England and his own recollection of dimensions he had spent a decade perfecting.
Imagine trying to reproduce industrial blueprints for a precision instrument from memory. Scythe did exactly that. By June 1943, British engineers had modified his drawings for industrial production. But British factories were already stretched beyond capacity producing leenfields, steam guns, and bren guns.
Every lathe, every milling machine, every skilled worker was already committed. There was no manufacturing capacity available for a new pistol. The solution came from across the Atlantic. The John English Company of Toronto had nearly collapsed during the depression. A new owner named Major James Horn purchased the struggling metalworks firm in 1937 and won contracts for Bren gun production.
By 1943, English was manufacturing 60% of all Bren guns for the British Commonwealth. They had the precision engineering capability, the workforce, and the factory space. In April 1943, China requested 180,000 high powers through the Canadian Mutual Aid Plan. They wanted an unusual variant with tangent sights graduated to 500 m and wooden shoulder stocks similar to the Mousa C96 pistol.
These optimistic sights were essentially useless for actual pistol shooting, but the Chinese military wanted them regardless. FN agreed to license production for a royalty of 25 cents per pistol, payable after the war. Scive and another Belgian engineer named Rene Louu traveled to Toronto to assist with tooling and quality control.
Production began in February 1944. English manufactured two main variants. The number one Mark1 with its tangent sights and stock slot was intended for China. These pistols carried a CH serial prefix. The number two Mark1 used fixed sights, a parkerized finish, and checkered bake light grips. These carried a T- serial prefix and were destined for Commonwealth forces.
The Chinese contract collapsed in September 1944. Only about 4,000 pistols had reached China before political complications ended the agreement. The remaining Chinese patent pistols were redirected to British and Commonwealth units. By October 1945, when production ended, English had manufactured approximately 151,816 powers.
Now about that claim in the title, the French resistance and the high power. Here the historical record requires careful examination. The special operations executive, the British organization responsible for supporting resistance movements across occupied Europe, initially requested 50,000 English high powers. Approximately 40 to 50,000 were delivered to Britain during 1944 and 45.
But where did these pistols actually go? The evidence strongly supports that high powers were issued primarily to SOE agents and Jedba teams. The trained operatives dropped into occupied territory to coordinate with local resistance groups. Documentary records confirm that British equipped Jedbo teams carried either Webly Mark III revolvers, Enfield M2 revolvers, or English made Browning high powers in 9 mm.
The choice often depended on availability and personal preference. What the evidence does not strongly support is the claim that French resistance fighters specifically requested the high power above other weapons. In June 1944 alone, according to SOE supply records, British aircraft dropped to the French resistance nearly 10,000 Sten guns with 8 million rounds of 9mm ammunition, over 8,000 pistols of various unspecified types, more than 5,000 rifles, over 5,000 M1 carbines, and more than 2,000 Bren guns.
The Sten gun, not the pistol, became inseparably linked to the Macki. It was cheap, concealable, used the same 9mm ammunition as captured German weapons, and could be manufactured in underground workshops. Pistols represented a small fraction of dropped weapons, and the high power was only one of several types supplied.
The story of mass resistance demand for this specific pistol appears to be enthusiast mythology rather than documented history. If you are enjoying this examination of British wartime engineering, consider subscribing. We dig into the specifications and the documented history that other channels skip over. Now let us look at why the high power actually mattered for the operatives who carried it.
For SOE agents operating alone behind enemy lines, the high power offered genuine advantages over alternatives. 13 rounds versus six in a revolver meant more than double the firepower before reloading. In an ambush, a roadblock, or a compromised safe house, those extra rounds could mean survival. The 9mm chambering allowed resupply from captured German ammunition, the same cartridge used in steam guns and German MP40 submachine guns.
An agent could scavenge ammunition from dead enemies or raid German supply depots. The comparison to the American Colt 1911 was equally relevant. While the American pistol fired the heavier 45 caliber round with greater stopping power, it held only seven rounds. An SOE agent armed with a high power carried nearly twice the ammunition in a weapon that weighed less.
The flat profile also concealed more easily under civilian clothing than the bulkier cult. For an operative expecting to work without resupply, that capacity advantage was decisive. Many agents reportedly cashed their pistols immediately upon landing, as the risk of discovery during German searches outweighed the benefits of carrying.
These cashed weapons sometimes found their way to local partisan groups, one indirect route by which high powers reached Mackey fighters. But this was opportunistic distribution, not systematic supply. The British regular army remained stubbornly attached to revolvers throughout this period. According to military procurement historians, British military leadership continued to hold the conservative notion that revolvers were more sturdy and more accurate than automatics well into the 1950s.
The British army was the last major military to adopt a semi-automatic service pistol, waiting until 1954, nearly a decade after the war ended. This was not because anyone considered the high power useless. No evidence emerged during research that any British military official ever used that characterization. The resistance came from institutional inertia about sidearms generally, not from any specific failing of the high power.
Special operations forces who actually needed pistols for combat rather than ceremony, adopted the high power enthusiastically. Regular army procurement simply did not prioritize pistol modernization. The Special Air Service made the High Power their standard sidearm from the Second World War through the early 1990s.
The Sixth Airborne Division received large numbers of English pistols by March 1945 in time for Operation Varsity, the crossing of the Rine. This was the largest single-day airborne operation in history with more than 16,000 paratroopers landing east of the Rine to establish bridge heads into Germany. Commandos valued the high power for operations behind enemy lines.
The units who needed modern firepower got modern firepower. The units who saw pistols as ceremonial accessories kept their revolvers. For operations requiring complete deniability, SOE favored purpose built sterile weapons like the well-rod suppressed pistol which was manufactured without serial numbers or markings. The high power served a different role as the high-capacity sidearm for agents who might need firepower rather than silence.
The 1980 Iranian embassy siege made the high power world famous when television cameras captured SAS operators wielding them during the rescue. Both sides in the 1982 Falklands War carried High Powers. British L9A1s faced Argentine FM pistols from licensed production. The same design again on both sides of a conflict. The High Powers true legacy emerged after the war.
Adopted by more than 50 armies across 93 countries, it became what the 1911 was to America. the standard military pistol for most of the rest of the world. The British armed forces finally adopted it officially in 1954 and retained it until 2013, a service life of 59 years. Canada kept theirs until 2024, 80 years of continuous service.
Saves double column magazine became the template for every modern combat pistol. The Betta 92, the CZ75, the SIGP226, the Glock 17, all descended from the innovation that SCY developed to meet a French requirement that France itself rejected. The tilting barrel short recoil mechanism that Browning designed appears in nearly every semi-automatic pistol manufactured today.
Some historians argue that the high power is more sive than Browning, given how much work remained after Browning’s death. What cannot be disputed is that both men created something that outlasted them by generations. Browning announced the end of high power production in 2018, closing one of the longest handgun production runs in firearms history.
A modernized version was reintroduced in 2022, but with different internal design. The original Browning and save mechanism, refined over decades, but fundamentally unchanged since 1935, had finally ended its run. returned to that workbench in Hurst, November 1926. John Browning dead at 71, his final design incomplete on the table before him.
He could not have known that a Belgian engineer would spend 8 years finishing his work, then flee Nazi occupation to recreate production drawings from memory in England. He could not have known that his pistol would arm both sides of a world war, manufactured in the same occupied factory for enemies facing each other across European battlefields.
He could not have known that his 13 round magazine would remain the benchmark for military pistol capacity for the next 50 years. The high power was not dismissed as useless. It was not the most requested weapon of the French resistance. Those claims do not survive contact with primary sources. What it was documented and verified was the first successful high-capacity military pistol, the template for modern handgun design, and the preferred sidearm of British special forces who understood that in clandestine warfare, ammunition
capacity saves lives. Browning died before finishing it. Scythe completed it. Canadian workers built it. British commandos carried it. 93 nations adopted it. The numbers prove it. The documents confirm it. British engineering finished by Belgian genius, manufactured in Canadian factories, created a pistol that shaped every combat handgun that followed. That is not myth.
That is verified
