FN's 1923 Stocked Prototype Pistol and the Road to the High Power

Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons examines a 1923 FN prototype stocked pistol, filmed with access from the Ars Mechanica Foundation. The gun is an early step in work that began with a French Army request for a new pistol and ended with the Browning High Power.

Key points

• Origins: John Browning did the initial design for the French request, and his protege Dieudonné Saive at FN handled later versions and improvements.
• Early layout: McCollum explains that FN sent a modified 1903 design to Browning, who returned a locked-breech 9mm with an internal hammer. French trial feedback later pushed it toward an external hammer and a lighter build.
• Shoulder stock: This long-barreled example has a tangent sight graduated to 500 meters and a folding steel stock meant to turn the pistol into a small carbine.
• Shared parts: It has no slide stop pin and comes apart through a removable rotating breech block, but its magazine release, trigger bar, sear, magazine disconnect and out-of-battery safety carry over to the later High Power.
• Two tracks: After several years of French trials, FN split the project. The French line ended without adoption when France chose its Mle 1935 pistols, while Belgium adopted a later version as the GP35, or High Power.

Quick take

McCollum uses the prototype to show how much of the High Power's fire control was already in place by 1923, even though the stock and breech-block takedown were later dropped.

Watch the full video: Forgotten Weapons