Browning Hi-Power

Origins

In the early 1920s the French Army asked for a new service pistol with a large magazine, and Fabrique Nationale of Herstal turned to John Browning, whose designs it had built since 1899. Browning had sold the M1911 Pistol patents to Colt, so he had to work around his own ideas. He filed for a striker-fired pistol in 1923 and was refining a hammer-fired version when he died at the FN works in November 1926. FN's Dieudonne Saive took over. He had already patented a staggered double-column magazine holding 13 rounds, and once the M1911 patents expired in 1928 he could borrow its best features. France in the end chose another design, but Belgium adopted the finished pistol in 1935 as the Grande Puissance, the GP35, and FN sold it abroad as the High Power or Hi-Power.

Design & Construction

The Hi-Power is a short-recoil, locked-breech pistol in 9x19mm. Barrel and slide travel back locked together for a few millimeters, then a cam-shaped lug under the chamber rides against a pin in the frame and tips the barrel down out of engagement with the slide. This lug replaced the swinging link of the M1911 and has been copied by almost every service pistol since. The single-action hammer, thumb safety and slide stop follow the M1911, but the Hi-Power has no grip safety; instead it has a magazine disconnect that blocks the trigger when the magazine is out. The magazine holds 13 rounds, roughly double the contemporary norm. The pistol weighs about 2.2 pounds empty with a 4.65-inch barrel. Early military models came with a tangent rear sight graduated to 500 meters and a slot for a wooden holster-stock. The Mark II of 1982 added an ambidextrous safety and better sights, and the Mark III of 1988 a firing-pin safety.

Combat Use

The Hi-Power fought on both sides of World War II. After Germany occupied Belgium in 1940, FN kept producing it for the Wehrmacht as the Pistole 640(b), and it went to Waffen-SS and paratroop units. Saive escaped to Britain and helped re-create the drawings, and from 1944 John Inglis and Company of Toronto built the pistol for Nationalist China, Canada and Britain. Inglis guns armed Canadian troops in Northwest Europe and British airborne, commando and special forces, including the British SAS. After the war Britain adopted the FN pistol as the L9A1 in 1954 and kept it until the Glock 17 replaced it in 2013. In that time it was the SAS sidearm at the Iranian Embassy in 1980, the pistol of British patrols in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, and the standard handgun of Rhodesian forces in the bush war, paired with the FN FAL rifle. Both sides carried it in the Falklands, since Argentina made it under license. Belgium, Canada, Australia, India, Indonesia and more than 50 nations in all issued it.

Legacy

The Hi-Power set the pattern for the modern service pistol: a 9mm with a double-stack magazine and cam-lug locking. The CZ 75, the SIG Sauer P226 and the Glock all use its lock. FN ended production in 2017 after 82 years, then brought back a modernized FN High Power in 2022 as demand from collectors and shooters continued; Springfield Armory's SA-35 and Turkish copies filled the gap. Aging L9A1s were retired mainly for their 13-round magazine and single-action trigger, not for want of reliability. It is one of the most widely issued military handguns of the twentieth century, and with the FAL and the MAG it stands at the center of Belgian Arms & Weapons.