Saive eventually had an advantage John Browning did not, in 1928 Colt’s M1911 patents expired permitting some designs such as a simplified take down system to be incorporated into the Hi-Power. He perfected the gun’s innovative double-stack magazine, giving the gun a 13+1 capacity and its Hi-Power name. Luckily they had another talented designer, Dieudonné Joseph Saive. 26, 1929 he died of a heart attack in Belgium at the Fabrique Nationale (FN) plant. Sadly, John Browning never got to finish the job, on Nov.

In designing the gun that would become the Hi-Power, Browning had to circumvent many of his M1911 patents, which were owned by Colt. The man commissioned to design this wündergun was John Browning, who had created the Government Model 1911 pistol. It also had to have a magazine disconnect, meaning the gun wouldn’t fire unless the magazine was fully inserted. The GP-35, or Grand Puissance, as the Browning Hi-Power was originally called, was developed at the request of the French government for a post-World War I replacement pistol that was easy to field strip, had an external hammer, a minimum magazine capacity of 10 rounds, and was accurate out to 50 meters. (Sourcing from research on the internet and magazine articles) The stamps show the Nazi eagle and the Nazi war office inspection marks. It is a Browning Hi-Power made at the FN plant in Belgium during Nazi occupation in 1943.

Late nazi hi power serial numbers b