Springfield Armory SA-35
Springfield Armory’s modern take on the classic Browning High Power design.
In the history of metallic cartridge handguns, there have been numerous iconic examples that had a significant, lasting influence on future firearm designs—the Colt single-action revolver, the Mauser C96 Broomhandle, the Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector revolver, the Colt 1903 Pocket Automatic, the Colt 1911, the Walther PP, and the Glock are several of these.
But one truly innovative pistol design incorporated so many advanced features that it set the stage in one way or another for most everything that followed: the Browning High Power, also known as the GP-35 or P-35. The Belgium-based Fabrique Nationale des Armes De Guerre responded to a French military requirement for anew service pistol, the Grand Rendement (High Output). FN began with another of the gifted John M. Browning’s designs that he was unable to complete due to his passing in 1929.
The project remained a priority for FN and its completion was assigned to John Browning’s principal understudy, Dieudonn Saive. Monsieur Saive completed the Pistol Browning Grande Puissance (Browning High Power Pistol, BHP) in 1935 in response to a request from the French government for a pistol to meet the following requirements: It must be compact, have a magazine capacity of at least 10 rounds, have a magazine disconnect, an external hammer, and a positive-engaging safety that blocked the sear.
In ad- FN and Browning varied the spelling over the years as did any number of the pistol’s variants. Springfield avoids these names, referring to their SA-35 as an improved version of John Browning’s P-35. I’ll stick with "High Power" here. The SA-35 has a thick, uniform phosphate finish and practical white dot front and Unotch rear sights, both dovetailed and adjustable for windage.
The thin walnut-appearing grip panels have aggressive diamond checkering.. dition, the pistol had to be robust and simple to disassemble and reassemble, and its cartridge must be lethal at 50 meters. The French eventually rejected the FN proposal and settled on a indigenous design, but the BHP was all that was required and more. The BHP featured all-steel construction with sections of the frame being intentionally as thin as possible to minimize dimensions and save weight.
This design concept is obvious in the slim, thin grip of the BHP frame, itself sculpted to fit particularly medium and small hands as well as larger mitts. The frame’s dust cover is thin, as is the profile of the slide surrounding the front of the recoil spring.
The dovetail dimensions are not the same as those of a Browning Mark III High Power, but they may be dimensionally identical with sights of other Springfield Armory pistols. The BHP’s short-recoil design is simple, featuring an angled notch in the barrel lug that together with a wedge-shaped crossbar in the frame functions as the cam to separate the two lugs atop the barrel from mating recesses in the slide. This is similar to that of the Browning-designed Colt 1911 but eliminates the swinging link of the 1911.
This linkless angled notch in the barrel lug has been widely copied in most short-recoil pistol designs ever since. One exception that comes to mind is the design used by Beretta and Walther in their centerfire pistol designs featuring tilting locking lugs. A further cost saving simplification of the High Power was the elimination of a separate barrel bushing at the front of the slide, another departure that Browning made from the 1911.
A number of more modern short-recoil pistols copied the BHP in that they do not employ a separate barrel bushing to provide for the necessary fit between the front of the barrel and the slide, most notably Glocks as one example. The fire control group was another simplification compared to Browning’s 1911.
Whereas the 1911 fire control parts are fully contained in the frame, the BHP makes use of a thin, pivoting sear lever in the slide to transfer force from a vertical lever at the rear of the trigger to the front edge of the sear in the frame front of the hammer at the rear of the magazine well.
Because the action of the fire control group parts relied on precise choreography of components in both the frame and the slide, there was considerable hand-fitting of these components prior to the development of computer-aided manufacturing techniques and equipment. In the original BHP design, the sear lever in the slide was held in place by a precision-fit oval insert with two pins, one of which was the sear lever pivot.
The external surface of this sear lever keeper was part of the serrated grip area; it was a very costly part to manufacture and fit. Later BHPs feature a simple horizontally-oriented solid or roll pin in the slide upon which the sear lever pivots. Two sear levers were used, a simple, straight, toothpick-like sear lever on earlier BHPs and a sear lever with a wide "paddle" on the rear end that served as a firing pin block safety. Pulling the trigger tilted the paddle away from a shoulder on the firing pin.
Early Browning High Power pistols employed an internal extractor held in place by the firing pin stop, essentially the same as that found in the 1911. Later versions of the BHP incorporated a simplified external extractor, coil spring actuated and pivoting on a vertical solid or roll pin in the slide. When one examines the Browning High Power in both its component parts and as-assembled, it can readily be seen just how many of the High Power’s features inspired handgun designs that followed.
The BHP was as successful as it was revolutionary. It was manufactured in Belgium, with licensed copies produced in Great Britain and Canada, the latter where the name was shortened to "Hi-Power." The Nazis occupied Belgium during WWII and adopted the BHP as the "Pistole 640(b)." Unlicensed copies have been made in Hungary, Israel, India, Argentina, and lately, Turkey. High Powers have no doubt been handmade in the Khyber Pass, because everything short of nuclear weapons have been copied there.
Dozens of countries around the world have employed the High Power pistol in military forces and police units. The BHP "fought" on both sides of the Falklands Conflict, along with another FN design, the FAL/L1A1. In the late 1980s due to tax reasons, FN began shipping High Power
components to a plant in Portugal for completion, assembly, and finishing. These were the Mark II and Mark III BHPs which feature a bakedon polymer coating, black plastic grips with a slight thumb rest, and "Made in Belgium—Assembled in Portugal" rollmarked in the right side of the slide.
Production of these basic models and those with target sights, wooden grips, and competition models were produced until FN decided to end the party after 73 years with the 2008 announcement that the BHP would cease production and sale. As classic as the BHP was, it was an all-steel, high-capacity, single-action, hammer-actuated pistol in a polymer/alloy and steel, high-capacity, double-action/SAO striker-fired world. In other words, a dinosaur. And at $1,100+ MSRP, an uncompetitively expensive one.
As has happened in the firearms field many times in the past, as soon as a particular model of handgun or rifle is taken out of production, suddenly the prices of remaining new old stock and used examples rise as demand shoots up. Recall as examples the Smith & Wesson 696 five-shot 44 Special, the Ruger 96 lever action carbine, and the Winchester Model 94. Nature and economic trade abhors a vacuum, and in 2021 the High Power was reintroduced by Springfield Armory as the SA-35.
As meets the eye, the SA-35 appears to be 100% High Power with a thick, uniform phosphate finish and custom grips. All external parts appear to be exact clones of those from Belgian-made BHPs. Looking closer, some differences are apparent. The sights are dovetailed, as were those of the Mark II and Mark III FN Browning BHPs, but the dovetail size is different between The notch cams against a wedge-shaped bar in the frame directly above the trigger.
The upper surface of the camming bar locks the barrel lugs engaged with the mating slide lug recesses, and the front of the camming bar contacts the lower surface of the barrel lug’s cam notch to pull the barrel down and disengage the locking lugs. It accomplishes the same function as the link in a 1911 barrel lug but less expensively. Then, push on the slide stop pivot from the right side of the pistol to start the slide stop out of position.
Remove the slide stop, pull back on the slide slightly to disengage the safety, ease the slide assembly off the frame, disconnect the rear of the recoil spring guide from the barrel lug, and lift out the barrel. the SA-35 and those of a Browning Mark III. Perhaps the SA-35 sights use dovetail dimensions that are the same as those of other Springfield Armory pistols, but as I did not have access to those pistols for this article, I could not confirm the conjecture.
The SA-35’s front sight is a white dot and the rear is a Heinie Ledge-style U-notch with a glarereducing serrated rear face and a vertical front face to facilitate one-hand slide racking if necessary. The sight picture is highly visible and would lend itself well to competition or serious use.
The slide is pure High Power, with rear grip serrations, dual-level lightening cuts at the muzzle end, two notches for the safety lever (the rear most notch for operating the safety in use, the front for disassembly), the pivoting external extractor, and the distinctive, small, oval-ish ejection port on the right side. And as mentioned, the business end of the SA-35 is free of a separate barrel bushing.
2 pencil points to the hole in the slide for the external extractor pivot pin and the long toothpick-like sear lever that partially covers that hole and pin. The sear lever is the older type without a wide paddle at the rear end, a giveaway that the SA-35 does not have a firing pin stop safety. It is retained by a vertical pin in the slide, and force is applied to the rear of the extractor by a recessed coil spring.
Modern pistols either use this design or an external extractor which pivots around a post and is loaded by spring and pin located longitudinally in the frame. The grips appear to be walnut or walnut-appearing hardwood, thin in construction and diamond checkered for an aggressive feel and excellent hand traction in any condition. The frame in the grip area is true to BHP dimensions in that standard or aftermarket High Power grips fit properly.
The safety lever on the SA-35 is generously long; original BHPs had very short button-style safety levers that were difficult to manipulate. Not so with the Springfield SA-35, which is operated with ease, and the safety lever is a perfect platform to support the right thumb during shooting, in my opinion. However, one criticism of the SA-35 is that the safety is right-hand only; there’s no lever on the right side of the frame for left-handed shooters.
The same reset spring concept can be found in Beretta and other pistols. The rear The bottom of the grip has been improved with a generous beveling of the magazine well. Keep in mind that the frame sectional thickness in the grip/magwell area is intentionally thin by design, but the length of the SA- 35’s mag well bevel is fairly wide and readily facilitates insertion of the tapered top of the double-column, single-feed magazine.
While on the subject of the magazine, the one supplied with the SA- 35 is stamped with the Springfield Armory logo and is made by Mec- Gar. Most notably, it has a 15-round capacity. Mec-Gar magazines for the High Power have been available for some time.
The increased capacity is realized by a redesign of the magazine follower, effectively removing the two projections on the bottom of the standard 13 round magazine follower and hollowing it out so that the top of the magazine spring fits inside the follower, creating enough space for two more rounds inside the 15round version of the magazine.
Natuend of the sear lever has a curved pad that engages the small rectangular protrusion at the forward right end of the sear, pushing down on the sear to raise the rear from contact with the sear notch in the hammer. This is the distinctive, classic BHP hammer and sear design, and parts from the author’s Belgianmade and Portugal-assembled Mark III fit and functioned in the SA-35.
rally, the SA-35 follower is simply molded hollow to accomplish this and is marked as being a Mec-Gar inside the follower recess. The magazine bodies are identical between "Made in Italy" FN Browning and Mec-Gar/Springfield units. There are subtle difference between the angle of the magazine spring coils, but the wire diameter is 0.048" on both FN Browning and SA-35 magazine springs. Internally, the biggest difference in the SA-35 compared to BHPs is in the barrel.
The SA-35 uses stainless steel as the barrel material and it is polished and left in-the-white. Springfield Armory says that modifications have been made to the feed ramp to facilitate feeding of ammunition with a variety of modern expanding bullet designs. Another difference between the SA-35 and later Browning High Power pistols is the lack of a firing pin block safety feature in the Springfield If it works, don’t fix it! Armory product.
In other words, the SA-35 is true to earlier BHP designs using a toothpick-like sear lever without a firing pin block "paddle" at the rear end. This no doubt contributes to the lack of creep on take up and the crisp break of the SA-35 trigger. I had to do considerable polishing of fire control bits in my own and customer BHP Mark III pistols to get those triggers as nice as the SA-35 trigger has out of the box. A third difference is the SA-35 has no magazine safety.
Most BHPs except for some made under Nazi occupation during WWII had a magazine safety consisting of a springloaded plunger that would contact the front wall of the magazine. Used BHP magazines will have an indicating square or rectangular area on the front wall where the finish is worn from contact with the magazine safety plunger pad. Magazine safety components increased friction in the trigger group and fire control parts train, increasing trigger pull force and making trigger feel worse.
In my SA-35 example, sans firing pin block safety and magazine safety, the trigger pull out of the box was a cleanbreaking five pounds, four ounces. The telltale for a High Power magazine safety is across pin in the body of the trigger behind the trigger bow and visible in the trigger guard opening in the frame.
Many gunsmiths and BHP owners who removed the magazine safety would usually reinstall the cross pin in the trigger to prevent loss, and the plunger and spring would go in a tiny bag; which most of the time gets lost itself, truth be told. 2 shows that the SA-35 is produced without a magazine release. If present, the pin retained the slotted shaft of a spring-loaded plunger that made contact with the magazine and allowed the trigger to rotate to the rear, tripping the sear.
The recoil spring of the SA-35 is about 5/8" longer than that which was supplied with my BHP Mark III, but it is recognized that the 30-yearold Mark III recoil spring could have taken a bit of a set, having been assembled for all that time. I did notice that the SA-35 recoil spring buckled downward when the slide was removed from the frame. Not so with the Mark III’s recoil spring. A check of the wire diameter showed the SA- 35 spring was 0.042" and the BHP Mark III spring was a thicker 0.045".
Presumably the slightly larger diameter of the Mark III spring helped to keep it aligned with the recoil spring guide, but it being shorter in length could also have helped. The remaining internal bits are all pure BHP—trigger and its vertical lever, trigger reset spring, axis pin, sear lever and pin, sear and pin, flat sheet metal sear spring, hammer, mainspring and its strut, and strut nut, etc.
One of my objectives of an examination of the SA-35 was to take a "parts is parts" approach and try the fit of parts from the Browning High Power Mark III in the SA- 35, and install SA-35 parts in the Mark III to determine how much interchangeability exists between a 30-year-old Belgian/Portuguese High Power and the current Turkish-sourced parts of the SA-35. In most cases I did not try one part at a time, but elected to swap groups of parts, such as the trigger group, the hammer/sear group, slide assembly, etc.
I did not try to install pivot pins from one pistol into another, and I did not measure pin diameters. As I disassembled both the SA- 35 and the BHP Mark III, the Mark III plastic grips and screws fit on the SA-35 frame perfectly. Same for the checkered wood panels and
Far There’s no drag on the magazine and it falls free of the SA-35 of its own accord. Earlier versions of the BHP had contact made between the sear spring and the magazine, requiring removal by the weak hand to avoid loss of the magazine. The author installed the Mark III safety assembly in the SA-35 and it functioned fine, suggesting that aftermarket BHP ambi safety assemblies can likely be fitted to the SA-35.
The SA-35 grips cleared the right-side/left thumb safety lever from the Mark III. screws of the SA-35 on the Mark III frame. Next was a try of the ambidextrous safety assembly from the BHP Mark III in the SA-35, where it fit and functioned perfectly, so it is concluded that aftermarket ambidextrous safeties currently available for the BHP (Nighthawk, Cylinder & Slide, Brownells, etc.) should fit as well.
The hammer/mainspring assembly and sears were exchanged and they also functioned in the other pistol’s frame without issue, using the respective slides; i.e., SA- 35 slide on the SA-35 frame, with the Mark III hammer, mainspring, and sear group installed. The Mark III pistol worked fine with the SA- 35 hammer, mainspring, and sear. Everything was swapped back to its respective home pistol and the front end of the fire control groups were exchanged.
The trigger assembly and resent spring from one pistol functioned in the other. Note that there were subtle changes to the trigger pulls as would be expected; while the trigger pull of the SA-35 out of the box was a clean-breaking 5 lb. 4 oz., the trigger pull of the SA- 35 with Mark III fire control parts was a slightly creepy 6 lb. 2 oz. My curiosity was satisfied in that the FCG parts seem to exchange, but apparently some tweaking and tuning would be necessary. YMMV.
BHP magazines fit and function in the SA-35 and vice-versa. Magazines fall freely from the SA- 35, and there’s no contact between the sear spring and the rear wall of the magazine as was the case with some earlier High Powers, which provided some friction to retain the magazine in the mag well to prevent magazine loss, a feature desired by some military and police customers.
An attempt was made to exchange major assemblies—the slide assembly of the SA-35 was installed on the Mark III frame and would travel fully back and forward, and the SA-35 slide stop would engage the Mark III slide on an empty magazine. Repeatedly The recoil springs in the author’s other High Powers—three Brownings and two Argentine FM Detective models—do not exhibit this behavior. The wire of the SA- 35’s recoil spring is 0.003" smaller in diameter than the 0.045" wire of the Browning and Argentine High Powers.
Far The two projections on the BHP magazine follower locate the magazine spring but limit capacity to 13 rounds. The thin section of the grip frame is obvious, which contributes to the fit and comfort of the High Power grip in medium and small hands. racking the slide fed and extracted ten A-Zoom snap caps.
However, when performing the other half of the experiment, the front of the Mark III slide would not clear the front edges of the SA- 35 dust cover; the rear of the SA-35 slide fell short of aligning with the rear of the Mark III frame by about 3/16". I did not force the SA-35 slide any farther to the rear as "some adjustment would be required" in the form of permanent material removal and that was not the goal of the examination.
It should be noted that this is also the sort of non-in- The SA-35 slide readily fit and functioned on the BHP Mark III frame. terchange that happens with slides and frames of Belgian made High Powers and John Inglis & Co. Canadian High Powers, or the slides and frames of Belgian and Argentine FM High Powers in my experience.
Finally, only the barrels were swapped between the SA-35 and the Browning Mark III; both pistols functioned with each other’s barrels and each cycled ten snap caps from their respective magazines. To correctly use the old adage, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
At the range on a cold and blustery December day in northern Pennsylvania, the SA-35 digested brass-cased full metal jacket and jacketed hollow point ammunition, reloads with a 124 grain Hornady truncated cone FMJ, and 115 grain Tula steel-cased ammo using both the supplied magazine and two Mark III BHP magazines. There were no failures to feed, fire, or extract/eject. Group sizes were respectable at 15 yards being four inches and mostly under. My curiosity was well and truly satisfied.
Springfield Armory has taken advantage of parts sourced in Turkey from a manufacturer experienced in producing High Power clones using state of the art CNC/ CAM machining technology, and then assembling and finishing the SA-35 in its own facility in Geneseo, Illinois. The SA-35 is faithful clone of the Browning High Power with a decent trigger pull and a barrel tuned to feed most contemporary ammunition.
It comes without what some consider to be undesired features, those being the magazine and firing pin block safeties. And it’s offered at a very competitive $699 MSRP, which is exactly what I personally paid out the door for my example. In today’s market, that’s not a bad price for trip back in history with the "wondernine" that started it all. AG
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