The 'Cursed' British Pistol That Outgunned Everything — And Destroyed The Man Who Built It

The Mars Automatic Pistol is the most powerful handgun Britain ever evaluated and the one it was too afraid to adopt. Designed by a lone civilian engineer working from a private workshop near Birmingham, it fired rounds no other self-loading pistol would match for seventy years. It punched through sixteen half-inch wooden planks in military trials. The War Office praised it, tested it across eight separate evaluations, and then rejected it not because it failed, but because it was too powerful for soldiers to manage. The man who built it died broke. His son died on the Western Front. The weapon disappeared into obscurity while everything it proved was quietly confirmed by every pistol cartridge that followed it for the next seven decades. This is the full story of the Mars how it was designed, why its operating system was unlike anything before or since, what happened when the British military got their hands on it, and why the engineer who built the most powerful handgun of his era paid for it with everything he had. If you care about forgotten British firearms, prototype weapons that should have changed history, and the stories the official record buried, this is the channel for you. Subscribe to The Small Arms File for more deep dives into the weapons that shaped a century of British military history. TOPICS COVERED Why the firearms world of the 1890s had no answer to what Gabbett-Fairfax was trying to solve The long recoil rotating bolt action a mechanism so unusual only one other production pistol in history has used the same principle Why the Mars fired when you let go of the trigger and why that was a deliberate engineering decision The Hythe trials of October 1902 what the penetration figures showed and what broke at round 817 Why the War Office Small Arms Committee called it a very powerful pistol and still walked away The Director General of Ordnance's recommendation that the muzzle velocity be reduced and what it means that the army rejected a pistol for being too powerful Ballistic comparison: how the Mars cartridge outperformed the Colt 1911, the Luger P08, and the Browning Hi-Power weapons that arrived decades later Why no other self-loading pistol matched the Mars for seventy years not until the Auto Mag of the early 1970s The collapse of the Webley collaboration and why Gabbett-Fairfax refused every compromise Total production: approximately eighty weapons, no two dimensionally identical, parts non-interchangeable even between consecutive serial numbers The Mars Automatic Pistol Syndicate what happened to the patents after bankruptcy and why the syndicate failed by 1907 The only surviving personal record of Gabbett-Fairfax's voice and what the single word he chose tells you about the man Current survivor locations: Royal Armouries Leeds, German Military Museum Koblenz, and the May 2025 Rock Island Auction result MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES Edward Ezell, Handguns of the World, for War Office Small Arms Committee trial records and final report Geoffrey Boothroyd, The Handgun, 1970, for the preserved naval trial report and the sentence that survived a century H.B.C. Pollard, period firearms writing, for the contemporary description of the Mars as young cannons Birmingham Proof House records for production and inspection documentation Rock Island Auction Company, May 2025, for current collector market valuation Royal Armouries, Leeds, institutional records for surviving example documentation FURTHER READING Edward Ezell, Handguns of the World Ian Hogg, Pistols of the World Geoffrey Boothroyd, The Handgun John Walter, Pistols of the World Note: This is a history channel. We do not provide instruction on the use of firearms, and nothing in this video is a how-to. Where the historical record is incomplete or disputed — as it frequently is with prototype and rejected military weapons we say so clearly in the script. #MarsPistol #ForgottenWeapons #BritishFirearms #TheSmallArmsFile #WW2History #PrototypeWeapons #MilitaryHistory #GabbettFairfax #LostWeapons #SecretWeapons