Browning Hi-Power

The Browning Hi-Power is a semi-automatic pistol developed for the Belgian firm Fabrique Nationale, begun by the American firearms designer John Browning and completed after his death by the FN engineer Dieudonne Saive, entering production in 1935. Chambered in 9mm Parabellum, it was one of the first widely successful service pistols to use a high-capacity, double-column magazine holding thirteen rounds, roughly double the capacity of most contemporary single-stack service pistols, a design feature that later became standard across most modern military and police handguns. Captured by Germany after the fall of Belgium early in the Second World War and produced there for German forces even as Allied-licensed production continued in Canada for British and Commonwealth troops, the Hi-Power ended up armed on both sides of the same war, and its long production run and broad adoption by dozens of countries' armed forces over the following decades made it one of the most widely issued military pistols of the twentieth century.