Small Firearms WI Challenge: Have the British Army adopt the Vis pistol

[Landshark]

Not a particularly earth shaking event but how could the British Army adopt the Polish Radom Vis semi-automatic pistol as standard issue sidearm in the 1930's?

In 1932 Britain adopted the Enfield No.2 revolver in .38/200 as the replacement for the famous Webley .455 revolver. During the war this was supplemented by the Webley Mk IV and the Smith & Wesson Victory Model. Neither of the British revolvers are particularly interesting or innovative weapons their main selling points being revolver reliability and increased controllability compared to the .455 gun.

So what if the War Office decides to make the jump to automatic pistols? Perhaps they decide to put off the change for a year or so due to economic issues and by the time they're ready to switch they're looking for something a bit more modern. The obvious candidate is the Browning Hi-Power but just because it's obvious doesn't mean that it'll be chosen and Britain was buying several Eastern European weapons during the 1930's, most notably the Bren and Besa guns.

So how would the Vis end up as Britain's standard wartime pistol and what would be it's likely history?

 

[hardrada55]

British Army adopt Vis pistol

Britain is going to have to not adopt the .38/200 and the Enfield revolver in 1932. Then they are going to have to go through a series of disappointing failures and experiments, with other domestic and foreign weapons, such as....

Britain could have adopted this BSA pistol designed in the early 1920s chambered for the .39 BSA cartridge.



Or maybe they should have beaten the American army to the punch and instead of a pistol adopted a light rifle, like the 21 shot 1927 Tokarev semi-automatic rifle, but chambered in .38/200.



Growing cooperation with Poland during the 1930s and close attention to the French pistol concours might have allowed the British to appreciate the merits of the fine new Vis Radom pistol with Britain purchasing a license and undertaking production during the period of re-armament running up to the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.https://www.alternatehistory.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

 

[wtw]

Or adopt either the 1911 in 455 Webley&Scott automatic cartridge. I can also see the Browning Hi-power also being considered earlier.

 

[yulzari]

In the real world they could have withdrawn all pistols and given officers back their swords and it would have made no real military difference except requiring inventing folding swords to wear in vehicles.

 

[Reydan]

Probably not what you are looking for...

...but this could have an impact on legal history in Britain and definitely on crime-post war.

Anxiety about the number of revolvers floating around after 1945 was quite intense in Britain. The Webley, and by extension US revolvers bought during the war, was the weapon of choice for the armed criminal in the 50s and 60s.

If this is replaced by an automatic pistol it makes gun crimes more deadly, with attackers able to fire off more shots and reload faster. You would probably see the move towards co-ordinated armed police units, over the rough system of having x many "authorised shots" in each station, take place earlier.

In legal terms it would have impacted one major case that led people to rethink the death penalty - the Craig and Bentley killings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Bentley_case

With an automatic its likely that the underage Craig would have likely killed more than one police officer and fired off enough rounds that police would be unlikely to pin their attention on Bentley.Then again, Bentley's famous 'Let him have it' might look, with automatic rates of fire, more clearly guilty and damp down public outcry about the miscarriage of justice. Either way, it removes a major rallying point for the anti-capital punishment cause.