Canada's WWII-era pistols dangerously unreliable — but the quest to find a replacement drags on
The Canadian Army brought 20 pistols to an Arkansas shooting competition. Before events had even officially kicked off, 15 of those pistols had jammed so badly during the warmup they couldn’t be used.
“It was so bad, the guys coming off (the range) were handing over their (remaining five) pistols to the next team because they couldn’t trust the others,” said Ken Pole, who wrote about the incident for a feature in Canadian Army Today.
On average, Pole found that the Canadians’ handguns has jammed once every 62 shots. Their British competitors, by contrast, squeezed off 5,620 rounds without a hitch.
This is all pretty standard for the Browning Hi-Power, the 74-year-old pistol still carried as the primary sidearm of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Unlike most pistols carried by G7 militaries, Brownings have a tendency to rattle and soldiers have been advised not to fully load the pistol because it will wear out the springs.
When a Canadian soldier is deployed to a war zone such as Afghanistan or Mali, they’re issued with whatever Browning Hi-Power is deemed to be least likely to give out. That’s why some have joked that if they’re ever forced to use their sidearm in combat, they’d be better off throwing it than shooting it.
“If you give me a choice of a sharp stick or a Browning, I’ll … sadly take the Browning but will look fondly at the stick,” Bob Kinch, a former competitive marksman with the Canadian Armed Forces, wrote in a September Quora post.
Like many times when the Canadian military tries to buy something, however, the quest to replace the Browning is now held up in a years-long procurement limbo. A 2016 statement by the Department of National Defence estimated that soldiers wouldn’t be able to get their hands on new pistols until at least 2026.
Canada’s Hi-Powers are so desperately obsolete, however, that the army has been forced to greenlight a stopgap program to buy up some working pistols in the meantime. Known as the “Army Interim Pistol Program,” it will buy about 7,000 sidearms to immediate plug what the army is calling its “current pistol capability gaps.”
“Due to the Browning 9mm advancing age, replacement of these pistols will be necessary in the future,” the Department of National Defence told the National Post in a statement.
When Canadians were still shooting Nazis and North Koreans, the Browning was a fine weapon. Designed in 1911***, it ranked among the most reliable sidearms that a mid-century soldier could expect to carry into battle. It was one of the few weapons to carry the dubious distinction of being used by both sides. After German troops overran a French factory making Hi-Powers in 1940, they ordered the facility to continue cranking out the pistols for use by Axis forces.
Canada’s Hi-Powers were all manufactured in Toronto by John Inglis and Company, which would later become a maker of washing machines. Many of the Inglis Hi-Powers were actually intended to be sent to China for use against Japanese forces.The order fell through when Imperial Japan surrendered and Canada was suddenly left with a massive surplus of wartime 9mm pistols. As late as the early 2000s, there were unused Hi-Powers sitting in Canadian depots, still covered in factory grease.
Age has withered Canada’s stock of Hi-Powers and in the wake of 70 years of pistol development, the sidearms have also become wildly obsolete.
Hi-Powers have no place to affix a flashlight. They have notoriously small sights that made the pistol hard to aim in low light. They’re virtually impossible to fire for anybody who’s wearing gloves or left-handed. They also have an unusually long hammer which has a tendency to shred shooters’ hands. “If I fired more than 20 shots, the hammer bite would cut my hand open,” the marksman Kinch wrote.
“The bottom line is that we don’t have a sufficiently reliable General Service Pistol,” Major Carl Gendron, head of infantry weapon procurement, told Canadian Army Today.
Like many artifacts from the 1940s, the Hi-Power’s all-metal construction also makes it unusually heavy. The average Canadian police officer, for instance, is carrying a Glock, a pistol made significantly lighter due to its polymer frame.
In a 2017 story on the 10-year, $50 million process to replace Canada’s Hi-Powers, Postmedia reporter David Pugliese wrote that “industry representatives have privately questioned why Canada would take so long to buy a new pistol, noting that the process could be completed in about a year or two at most.”
The British Army would seem to agree. Just a few years ago, the Brits were in the exact same position as Canada: Their soldiers were still carrying Second World War-era Brownings and this was starting to become a dangerous liability for deployed troops.
So, London tested some alternatives, settled on the Glock 17 and bought 25,000 of them for the equivalent of $15 million CDN — about one quarter the expected cost of Canada’s program for pistol replacement.
According to the BBC, the whole process only took two years
*** I've e-mailed Tristin about this error. I also suggested that the Army send the clapped out BHPs to PM Trudeau (or Blair, et al) , as they don't work properly and no gang-banger will be interested in them anyway.
This just in from Tristin: "Thank you. Correcting immediately." Boy, that was quick!
The Canadian Army brought 20 pistols to an Arkansas shooting competition. Before events had even officially kicked off, 15 of those pistols had jammed so badly during the warmup they couldn’t be used.
“It was so bad, the guys coming off (the range) were handing over their (remaining five) pistols to the next team because they couldn’t trust the others,” said Ken Pole, who wrote about the incident for a feature in Canadian Army Today.
On average, Pole found that the Canadians’ handguns has jammed once every 62 shots. Their British competitors, by contrast, squeezed off 5,620 rounds without a hitch.
This is all pretty standard for the Browning Hi-Power, the 74-year-old pistol still carried as the primary sidearm of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Unlike most pistols carried by G7 militaries, Brownings have a tendency to rattle and soldiers have been advised not to fully load the pistol because it will wear out the springs.
When a Canadian soldier is deployed to a war zone such as Afghanistan or Mali, they’re issued with whatever Browning Hi-Power is deemed to be least likely to give out. That’s why some have joked that if they’re ever forced to use their sidearm in combat, they’d be better off throwing it than shooting it.
“If you give me a choice of a sharp stick or a Browning, I’ll … sadly take the Browning but will look fondly at the stick,” Bob Kinch, a former competitive marksman with the Canadian Armed Forces, wrote in a September Quora post.
Like many times when the Canadian military tries to buy something, however, the quest to replace the Browning is now held up in a years-long procurement limbo. A 2016 statement by the Department of National Defence estimated that soldiers wouldn’t be able to get their hands on new pistols until at least 2026.
Canada’s Hi-Powers are so desperately obsolete, however, that the army has been forced to greenlight a stopgap program to buy up some working pistols in the meantime. Known as the “Army Interim Pistol Program,” it will buy about 7,000 sidearms to immediate plug what the army is calling its “current pistol capability gaps.”
“Due to the Browning 9mm advancing age, replacement of these pistols will be necessary in the future,” the Department of National Defence told the National Post in a statement.
When Canadians were still shooting Nazis and North Koreans, the Browning was a fine weapon. Designed in 1911***, it ranked among the most reliable sidearms that a mid-century soldier could expect to carry into battle. It was one of the few weapons to carry the dubious distinction of being used by both sides. After German troops overran a French factory making Hi-Powers in 1940, they ordered the facility to continue cranking out the pistols for use by Axis forces.
Canada’s Hi-Powers were all manufactured in Toronto by John Inglis and Company, which would later become a maker of washing machines. Many of the Inglis Hi-Powers were actually intended to be sent to China for use against Japanese forces.The order fell through when Imperial Japan surrendered and Canada was suddenly left with a massive surplus of wartime 9mm pistols. As late as the early 2000s, there were unused Hi-Powers sitting in Canadian depots, still covered in factory grease.
Age has withered Canada’s stock of Hi-Powers and in the wake of 70 years of pistol development, the sidearms have also become wildly obsolete.
Hi-Powers have no place to affix a flashlight. They have notoriously small sights that made the pistol hard to aim in low light. They’re virtually impossible to fire for anybody who’s wearing gloves or left-handed. They also have an unusually long hammer which has a tendency to shred shooters’ hands. “If I fired more than 20 shots, the hammer bite would cut my hand open,” the marksman Kinch wrote.
“The bottom line is that we don’t have a sufficiently reliable General Service Pistol,” Major Carl Gendron, head of infantry weapon procurement, told Canadian Army Today.
Like many artifacts from the 1940s, the Hi-Power’s all-metal construction also makes it unusually heavy. The average Canadian police officer, for instance, is carrying a Glock, a pistol made significantly lighter due to its polymer frame.
In a 2017 story on the 10-year, $50 million process to replace Canada’s Hi-Powers, Postmedia reporter David Pugliese wrote that “industry representatives have privately questioned why Canada would take so long to buy a new pistol, noting that the process could be completed in about a year or two at most.”
The British Army would seem to agree. Just a few years ago, the Brits were in the exact same position as Canada: Their soldiers were still carrying Second World War-era Brownings and this was starting to become a dangerous liability for deployed troops.
So, London tested some alternatives, settled on the Glock 17 and bought 25,000 of them for the equivalent of $15 million CDN — about one quarter the expected cost of Canada’s program for pistol replacement.
According to the BBC, the whole process only took two years
*** I've e-mailed Tristin about this error. I also suggested that the Army send the clapped out BHPs to PM Trudeau (or Blair, et al) , as they don't work properly and no gang-banger will be interested in them anyway.
This just in from Tristin: "Thank you. Correcting immediately." Boy, that was quick!
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