Bumar
Fabryka Broni

FABRYKA BRONI UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION

During the war and German occupation, the Fabryka Broni was put under the administration of the ex-Austrian munitions concern, the Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG. At that time the FB worked three shifts a day, manufacturing and delivering mostly Vis wz.35 pistols to the Heereswaffenamt of the Third Reich.

At first, the Fabryka stood idly for almost a year. Although the Germans captured it intact and in full swing o­n September 8, 1939, after September 17 it became unclear where the new German-Soviet border would be, and whether Radom would not en up in the Soviet zone. As early as fall of 1939 an evacuation of raw materials and machines to Warsaw begun, in preparations for the handing over of the factory. Then the border was set farther east, but still nobody re-started production – this time the delay was caused by the argument between economical power centers in Berlin, as to who would take what industry. At last the FB was excluded from the rest of the PWU taken over by the Hermann Göring-Werke, and consigned to Steyr. All of these, and the time wasted for repatriating part of the already evacuated machinery delayed the re-start of the manufacturing for almost a year – to the fall of 1940. The civilian program was abolished for the duration of war, and left-overs from Polish manufacture were completed first, with the main stress being placed o­n assembling the G.29/40s (a ‘Germanized’ kbk wz.29 carbine, with K98k style woodwork and Steyr code ‘660’ replacing the Polish Eagle o­n the receiver ring), as well as the Vis pistol, now designated the P.35(p). Waffenfabrik Radom, as all Steyr filials, also manufactured parts for the automotive industry and organized a large truck-repair facility. A forced-labor camp for several thousand initially mostly Jews was organized at the factory premises as well. In 1942 the Waffenfabrik Radom was visited by Dr Hans Frank, the Governor General of the occupied Central Poland.

As of 1941, when stocks of ex-Polish rifle parts were exhausted, P.35(p) became the main product of the Waffenfabrik Radom, with a stress placed o­n mass-production and wartime streamlining of the manufacturing technology. Some cosmetics were abandoned, but the most important change was that Radom did no longer delivered a complete product, but a mere part sets sans barrel, made at the main Steyr factory, where final assembly and technical acceptance were also executed. This was a measure to discourage local workforce from smuggling out the pistols to the various factions of the Polish resistance, which sprang throughout Poland almost overnight after the September 1939 defeat. Despite that ingenious ruse, many Radom workers co-operated with the Armed Struggle Union, soon to be renamed the Armia Krajowa, AK – the Home Army. Hundreds of parts sets were smuggled, defying the Gestapo terror. o­n October 16, 1942, 15 Waffenfabrik Radom employees were hanged at the entrance of the factory to discourage the others. The o­nly result was that smuggle rose to a level, which forced the AK to organize a special barrel manufacturing line at Teofil Czajkowski’s mechanical workshop in Warsaw to cope with raising demand for the missing barrels.

Meanwhile at the Waffenfabrik Radom the production technology was being streamlined to promote effectiveness. The stock slot in the grip – never used anyay – was abandoned in 1941. Most of the non-essential polishing was abandoned, surface treatment was simplified – time-consuming and expensive deep bluing gave way to fast and cheap browning. Then in 1943 a subsequent series of shortcuts was implemented, including the elimination of the safety-like disassembly catch, creating what collectors now call a ‘two-lever Radom’, and the Germans designated P.35/II(p). These measures, along with using force labor and three-shift day, resulted in an all-time surge in pistol production numbers: between 1941 and 1944 as much as 350000 pistols were taken over the Heereswaffenamt, seven times the pre-war production in the same four year period. In August 1944, five years after German tanks entered Radom, in view of the advance of the Soviet ‘steamroller’ offensive, a decision was made to evacuate the factory to Austria. Eventually, as no place was found at the Steyr Werke to set up Radom machines, a Steyr filial making automotive parts organized at the Diturvit industrial porcelain plant in Czech Znaim (Znojmo) was chosen for the new manufacturing plant. Machines robbed from Radom were set up there, and in November 1944 assembly of the pistols from ready parts taken from Radom re-commenced. A new, even further simplified model, the P.35/III(p) was designed, with sheet-metal frame, ready to be manufactured as of early 1945. o­n January 2/3, 1945 the Znaim factory was heavily bombed, and these plans were never implemented. The most famous Fabryka Broni product – as the German made Vis wz.35 pistols were still marked ‘F.B. RADOM’, and readily earned the ‘Radom-Pistole’ sobriquet, carried over by their Allied captors and still used throughout the world – was no longer in production. But the last 26 Vis wz.35s ever to be manufactured were made by the ZM £ucznik SA in 1992, when the factory was testing the marketing potential of the replica pistol. The price of the hand-finished prototypes proved to be so prohibitive, that the whole project fell, though.