Smith & Beecham Prototype Polymer High Power
South Africa
•
5m 14s
The South African company Smith and Beecham was not a large operation, and their most notable product was a .380 caliber compact pistol, of which not more than 2000 were ever made (it was not a success). Experimentally, the company also developed a polymer frame for the Browning High Power, however, and that is what we are looking at today. The weight savings from this are less than one might initially expect, because the High Power was designed with a metal frame in mind. Many of the pin positions and moving surfaces will not work when made of polymer, and so the Smith & Beecham design used a substantial metal insert within its polymer shell.
Only a few were made, because the design simply did not deliver much advantage. The closest it came to production was when the Republic Arms Company submitted a version of it mated with an RAP401 pistol for South African police trials, but it was rejected.
Up Next in South Africa
-
Musgrave 9mm: A Gun for the Black Market
In the brief couple of years between the election of a new black-majority government in South Africa in 1994 and the dissolution of the Musgrave company, it attempted to produce a new 9mm pistol to sell to the burgeoning market of black South African citizens buying handguns. Ownership of pistols...
-
P.A.F. Junior - South Africa's First ...
The Pretoria Arms Factory was founded in 1954 by Piet Nagel and Jan Willem Dekker. both Dutch immigrants to South Africa after WW2. They began manufacturing a simplified copy of the Baby Browning pocket pistol, chambered for the .25 ACP (6.35mm Browning) cartridge. This appears to be the first d...
-
South African R2 and its Special Furn...
In South African military service, the R1 was the FN FAL and was the preferred infantry combat rifle until the adoption of the Galil as the R4 rifle. So what were the guns in between? Well, the R2 was a South African adaptation of the G3. A large number of rifles were needed as a reserve, and als...
