November 18, 2020 Extraordinary, Sporting & Collector Firearms
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/18/2020
Drift adjustable front sight, 500 meter adjustable tangent rear sight. Slide marked on left side with FN roll mark and Belgian proofs. Right side with serial number, barrel with Belgian proofs. Checkered walnut grips with painted interior. Internal extractor. Matching numbers observed on frame, slide, and obverse of barrel. Type 1 tangent sight. Round cut barrel with small "B" in front of lug. Slide with "H" in a square, "C" in a circle, and "H" in a triangle on interior. Slotted for shoulder stock. Someone has electropencilled "783" on rear strap oriented to read with magazine well up. Accompanied by a flat board stock with rivet attached holster with number 12836 near iron. Brass cleaning rod in compartment in holster. Cloth carrying sling. Magazine with split toe baseplate and "SA" in lozenge at rear. CONDITION: Very good with the barrel and slide having undergone an old high quality reblue with vast majority of that reblue remaining with some pings visible under the blue and some wear consistent with holster wear and handling and operation since reblue. Tangent sight has been blued. Frame appears to be the original bluing with haloing around stamps and wear commensurate with slide. Some areas of patination throughout. Stock is very good with some marks throughout. Leather holster is also very good with some expected tenderness at flap and scuffing. Action works appropriately when cycled by hand, bore is excellent with strong rifling. There is a small import mark on the magazine well lip indicating importation by Simpson, LTD. EW
CORRECTION: "Finnish use: 2,400 bought from Belgium in February - March of 1940. Finnish frontline troops used some during the last weeks of Winter War and in larger scale during Continuation War. Also issued in large numbers to Finnish pilots during Continuation War. Better known in English speaking word as High-Power this pistols design was started by John Moses Browning and after his death (1926) finished by D.J. Saive. Name Grand Puissance (High Power) came from magazine capacity, which was larger than other pistols of 1930's. In this magazine cartridges were in interlocking array, which made magazine quite short but allowed it to carry large amount of cartridges at the same time. Otherwise the basic structure of pistol used basically same "tilting barrel" concept, that Browning had used earlier in Colt M1911, but the concept had been somewhat modified. The pistol had two safeties: Magazine-safety (which unfortunately often have somewhat poor trigger with uneven trigger pull) and thumb-operated safety switch in left side of the grip. Unusual for European pre-World War II pistols was also location of the magazine release switch - typically it was located below grip in European pistols of that time, but in FN GP it was located next to trigger guard. The pistol was immediate success, during the few years before World War II some 70,000 (or 56,500 depending sources) were made and sold to Armed Forces of Belgium, Estonia, Lithuania, China and Peru. During World War II this pistol was used by both sides and manufactured both in occupied Belgium for the Germans and in Canada for the Allies (mainly UK, British Commonwealth and China). During the second World War some 319,000 were made in Belgium by FN and some 150,000 by John Inglis & Co in Canada. The Germans knew the pistol as Pistole 640(b) and Allies mostly called it "Browning High Power". After World War II FN continued their production and high-power pistols were purchased by dozens of countries (among them Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, Netherlands, Austria and West Germany) in addition of Belgian military and police. The pistol being highly popular that time it was manufactured with or without license in several countries like Argentina (FM), Hungary (FEG), Indonesia (Pindad), Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela, United States and Israel (Kareen). Later versions of this pistol are still used by authorities in many countries even today. FN did not end manufacturing of FN HP pistols until year 2012. The pistol was also one of the participants in Finnish pistol tests of 1939, whose winner was VKT L-35 pistol. During Winter War one of the shortages that Finnish military suffered from was shortage of pistols, due to which Finland bought some 2,400 FN M/35 pistols from Belgium, 900 of them arrived in February of 1940 and 1,500 in March of 1940. Number of pistols were issued to Finnish pilots during Continuation War, probably because in particular with the shoulder stock it was the best pistol available for the purpose. Those pistols that went to Army were issued mostly to frontline infantry. The pistol proved to be not only very reliable and accurate, but also very structurally durable - what is known they were the only pistol model in Finnish use that could be used with Suomi M/31 submachine gun ammunition, which had 115-grain FMJ bullet and had been loaded very hot. The pistols delivered to Finland had adjustable rear sights with sight tangent settings up to very optimistic 500 meters. FN did not have a specific serial number range the 2,400 pistols delivered to Finland, but most have serial numbers in 11000 - 15000 serial number range. The holster-type Finnish military used with FN M/35 during World War had holster attached to wooden holster stock. But apparently, they were often used without this holster stock - probably since it made the pistol holster clumsy to carry. Probably due to being so common with Air Force the pistol was unofficially also known as "lentäjä FN" ("pilot's FN"). World War II era Finnish photographs often show air crews with FN HP pistol holsters, which have basically been modified as shoulder holsters by adding a long leather strap going across chest and back and over a shoulder. Hard wartime use was visible in survivability rate of this pistol in Finnish use. Year 1951 only 1,378 pistols remained. They remained in use until 1985 - 1986, at which time they were decommissioned and sold away. Early 1980's Finnish Defence Forces selected a further double-action development of High Power pistol called FN HP DA (better known as Pistol 80 in Finland) as its new service pistol. Unlike the earlier single-action High-Power M/35 version, the double-action version has gained rather poor reputation in Finland, even with later improvements after which it was renamed as Pistol 80-91. While it has been partially replaced by Pistol 2003 (Walther P99) and Pistol 2008 (Glock 17), Pistol 80-91 has remained to be in use of Finnish military to this day (July 2020)."
Accessories
Holster stock, cleaning rod