I know a lot of Inglis Canadian made pistols were in the UK military inventory but did Enfield make HP pistols? The HP has been in the UK military a long time and post WWII to now: who made these pistols? Or did Inglis make all of them for the British Army?
Just curious on the facts.
No, Enfield did not make any HPs. All in British service came from FN and Inglis. I'm not sure who did the FTRs on British HPs, might have been Enfield.
All of the Brownings up until 1968 were from Inglis, From then on, they came in dribs and drabs from Belgium and many/most of the existing Inglis spare parts were interchangeable. The British issue pistols were serially numbered BL-year-A 1234 until about 2000 and were marked with PISTOL L9A1 on the slide (or variations of this including the NATO stock number). In about 2000, we abandoned the BL type serial numbers and UK Military designation on cost grounds and took off the shelf pistols but specified the landyard loops.
Enfield FTR'd many many thousands of the old No2 Browning Pistols in the early to mid 60's so it's not uncommon to see the FTR DE 1964 logo. The last Inglis Brownings I saw were in the late 90's.
In 1998 RTMC (the UK centre for mobilsing TA and reserves) were still handing out apparently brand-new Inglis HPs, complete with the maple leaf decal on the front of the grip. The recipients tended to be regular army reservists, rather than mobilised TA, so I wonder if all those weapons came from some sort of ring-fenced reservists' pool thats been sat on the shelves for decades?
Originally Posted by Thunderbox
I saw a write up in a magazine about a year ago, on Prince Harry in Iraq, he was carrying a HP pistol,..always a good endorsment
That was probably the last time you'll see them. They are quickly being phased out now for the SIG
They attempted to reverse-engineer drawings at Enfield (actually at CEAD Cheshunt, just up the road) during the war, but failed to produce anything usable before Inglis production made it pointless.
I can well remember on Exercise LIONHEART seeing reservists in brand-new uniforms unwrapping brand-new SLRs with wooden furniture from their green plastic long term preservation packaging.
The most recent HPs I've seen belonging to the Army Rifle Association don't seem to have any specifically British makings on them at all, just the NSN and that cheap lanyard ring fitting that breaks as soon as look at it.
Last edited by Mk VII; 10-05-2009 at 06:08 AM.
There's a sorry story about the Brownings and their being replaced that will be told - eventually! It's the old story about '...fair weather friends' I think that will suffice for now. I know that the Browning is a classic example of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and 'keep it simple stupid' but.......................
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