Today we are looking at the entire scope of Aimpoint’s firearms development division…which is actually just this one firearm. Aimpoint was founded in 1975 as a partnership between Arne Ekstrand (a Swedish inventor with an idea for a brand new “red dot” type of optic) and Gunnar Sandberg (a wealthy Swedish entrepreneur interested in new technology). The company began by developing the Aimpoint Electronic sight, and in the later 1970s the men were introduced to another Swede, Carl Bertie Johansson (CBJ). He had an idea for a new firearm mechanism, and found an interested audience in Aimpoint. He was hired on, and the company now had two divisions; one for optics and one for firearms.
A single prototype of Johansson’s firearms was made, circa 1979. It was a PDW type of weapon, with a short stroke annular gas piston and a rotating bolt, chambered for .221 Remington Fireball using a magazine in the pistol grip. What made the design quite interesting was the axially symmetric nature of the action – it all acted around the center of the bore. The company sent Johansson to the US to look for a market and a manufacturing partner, and there they encountered a number of major players in the firearms industry, including Bill Ruger and Jeff Cooper. They were unable to find a suitable factory interested in making the gun, however, and a short time later Sandberg (the money behind the Aimpoint company) decided that the firearms division did not have the potential to justify continuing it. Johansson parted ways with Aimpoint on good terms, and is still doing firearms work today (you may have heard of his 6.5mm CBJ cartridge).
The one PC-80 (a name given to the gun by Jeff Cooper in his 1980 article for Soldier of Fortune) remains at Aimpoint to this day. Many thanks to them for giving me access to it to film for you!
Wow, a nice piece of equipment, that would have required an awful lot of machining to produce.
I can see Bill Ruger in a meeting pointing to a Mini 14 with a folding stock and basically saying, we already do that for a lot less expense.
I am not sure I would trust my life to the helical soft plastic gas seal. That seems like something that would deteriorate over usage/time causing failures to fully cycle. Kinda like Ian was experiencing with this unit.
“(…)can see Bill Ruger in a meeting pointing to a Mini 14 with a folding stock and basically saying, we already do that for a lot less expense.(…)”
Ruger company did introduce weapon with similar purpose in mind in 1995 dubbed MP9
http://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/u-s-a-submachine-guns/ruger-mp9-eng/
which was 9×19 blow-back selective fire compact fire-arm.
“(…)would have required an awful lot of machining to produce(…)”
Importantly it also used untypical cartridge, meaning that they would not only need to convince customers that they need yet another cartridge intermediate between cartridge for handgun (like e.g. Patrone 08) and already intermediate 5,56×45 NATO, which was not as readily available as latter and I presume more expensive, though I can not find 1980 price for both.
Another Swedish company did make weapon of similar layout and in similar time, but using 5,56×45 NATO cartridge, namely Interdynamics MKS carbine, see http://modernfirearms.net/en/assault-rifles/sweden-assault-rifles/interdynamics-mks-eng/
It also did not yield commercial success.
Can this helical thingy be made from steel? Like expanding and contracting type
I don’t know if this particular gas piston assembly could have been made entirely from steel. Many weapons have gas systems made entirely of steel. I just wonder what the reasoning was behind the designers choosing this soft plastic gasket arrangement. Just as a matter of curiosity.
When exposed to constant expansion an contraction, high temperatures, corrosive gasses, lubricants, friction and the negative effects time has on plastics it would seem an obvious point of failure in the design.
Soft plastic recoil buffers require periodic replacement. I would assume that this helical gasket would also require periodic replacement to maintain normal weapon function.
Piston rings a la the AR-15 have worked well, and would likely work well in this application just as well.
Use of inappropriate materials is the mark of the beginner, I fear. It’s also bad design; see Challenger for examples of just how bad neoprene O-rings can get, design-wise.
Interesting gun… Calibre… Cocking method – Quiet? Overall length… Maybe with the “military” wee barrel, bump off with a silencer Soviet generals or such. Sweden eh, Ikea who knows…
The entire annular/bullpup arrangement. Perhaps Pdw intent. Possibly… Interesting design anyway.
I mean have you ever been to Ikea…
“I mean have you ever been to Ikea…(…)”
I do not understand, therefore I must presume hermetic joke.
3 pound dish…
Where pdb is concerned, “hermetic” is guaranteed but I’ve never known him to tell what I could recognize as a joke.
Ambidextrous… Are there many “Ned Flanders in Sweden?” Loads of Gingers apparently in Russia, more than in Ireland. Who knew.
Sunny days; big issue for Gingers you know… Sunburn…
Ok for Gingers, but what about for Rogers ?
Is a fact, I often found myself having to rub sun tan cream on my ginger mates “I had ginger mates, we get on.” Aye… To prevent death, from sunburn. Interesting topic to me, in regards I once read a story that the Irish language started in what is now Russia. Anyhoo, eh… Thank feck for sun cream.
The thing Ireland has going for it, is clouds. So no Sun… Perhaps they thought… Hey! It’s a strange old world.
Maybe Irish language started in Flanders.
Ned Flander mutha fecker, leftorium.
Anyway I digress…
Don’t you know, Flanders is fairly close to NEDerlands.
Fair point.
“(…)annular/bullpup(…)”
For earlier example of weapon being gas-operated/annular AND bullpup at same time, see Korovin automaton of 1945 year, see 1st photo from top https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Korovin_AK-45
7.62x41mm Love ya buddy!
Sweden?
Funnily enough, gun gives Keltec vibes.
Maybe rotating the hole to another dwell point would mitigate the f.t.e.
“(…)Calibre…(…)silencer(…)”
I must warn you that, whilst .221 Remington Fireball did spawn .300 Whisper, latter is longer (has greater overall length) and therefore might not fit inside magazine of said weapon.
Change it, the mag, it has lips… Hi! xx
Weapon developers always seem to be trying to find the perfect cartridge for use in a PDW type weapon. These days everyone is looking to the 5.7mm.
Everyone wants something more powerful than a 9mm but easier to handle in a smallish PDW than a .223.
I always find myself scratching my head and saying, uhh guys, have you heard of the .30 carbine?
‘Innovation’ can assume pathogenic forms. One ignores solutions at hand simply because they are at hand. The .30 carbine round is despised because it is not a novelty.
Ok… Well if you wanted to design a Pdw now, would you copy/base it on that. No? Well what about a silenced carbine?
Big silencer on it, that action, from cocking to “Insulation” including operating mechanism, looks… To me, to be more quiet; quite, than other systems.
Weapon developers always seem to be trying to find the perfect cartridge for use in a PDW type weapon. These days everyone is looking to the 5.7mm.
Everyone wants something more powerful than a 9mm but easier to handle in a smallish PDW than a .223.
I always find myself scratching my head and saying, uhh guys, have you heard of the .30 carbine?
Technolgy eh .30 cal M1 in… Well avoid the body armour. It is an industry mind, not even a war industry – These days, bullets will have pronuns “Whatever the feck pronuns are” I am not one, up Martin Luther.
https://youtu.be/DT-EbciFZKU?si=nTsWpuAZ49nRAu7D
Thats whats up with this country Sasha, pro feckin nuns.
And then there was this guy, in 221 necked up to 6mm:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Armament_Company_PDW
I think the entire PDW concept is essentially an answer to a question that tactical reality is not asking anyone. In the long tactical conversation between reality and weapons designers, the sad fact is that all the PDW-like “solutions” eventually go by the wayside of reality.
Here’s the deal: You cannot do the job of a carbine with something that’s somewhere between a pistol and that carbine. The range envelope and the lethality envelope just do not allow it to work. As we used to say in the Engineer branch, the only thing that substitutes for a D7 bulldozer on a jobsite is another D7 or anything bigger. An M9 ACE is just not on, so far as speed of dig, reliability, and getting the job done in challenging conditions.
Likewise, you need to kill someone out at 400m? You need a carbine, not some hopped-up range toy that’s ohsoeasy to carry around. Suck it up, buttercup… You want to survive in combat? You need to be able to kill reliably and consistently out to at least 400m with your individual weapon, and you need access to heavier weapons like a good medium MG setup to range out to around 1500m. The necessities of tactical reality call for this, and you cannot fantasize your way around it.
The only place I see a PDW having relevance would be in paramilitary security where the expectation is that you’re not going to be encountering actual prepared opposition. If your likely opponents have assault rifles, you’re screwed. And, you’ve made some fundamental mistakes in your assumptions about what you’re likely to face, and how you need to arm yourself.
I am not a fan of the idea of taking what amounts to a knife to a gunfight. The reality is, you need a full-scale weapon to deal with people who also have full-scale weapons, and the PDW just doesn’t answer the mail.
It’d be my contention that the M1 Carbine was a PDW, not a carbine. It did not afford the person carrying it the ability to really deal with things in the range/lethality band between “pistol” and “rifle” the way a real carbine should have. As such, I’d be against issuing its equivalent today. It really shouldn’t have been issued back when, either. What should have happened, based on the experience that nobody digested or paid attention to back in the 1930s, was that they should have developed and issued a box-magazine fed carbine in an intermediate caliber whose ballistics afforded accuracy and lethality out to around 400m, and developed a good full-size LMG to complement that weapon. The general-issue individual weapon we fought WWII with should have looked an awful lot like the SKS, in other words.
The carbine was specifically stated to be a replacement for “pistols, submachine guns, and some shotguns”. Which pretty much says straight out “If you need a rifle, this isn’t it”.
In his 1954 book Weapons Edwin Tunis called the M1 carbine “the pistol that looks like a rifle”. And pointed out that its special .30 round, while much less powerful than the then-standard .30-06, was a lot more powerful than any pistol cartridge. At 200 yards, it hit harder than a .45 or 9mm pistol or SMG at the muzzle. Also, it was actually possible for somebody other than a dedicated pistol shooter or SMG expert to hit something that far out with the carbine. At the more rational (and statistically-average) range of 100 meters in infantry combat, the carbine wasn’t up to a rifle, but was still better than a pistol or SMG in the hands of an average soldier.
in the Army’s Light Rifle trials in 1957-58 (which was CONARC and the Infantry School’s idea, not Ord’s) Winchester’s “.224 Light Rifle” was basically an M2 carbine slightly beefed-up for what became the 5.56 x 45mm round. It finished second to Fairchild/Armalite’s AR-15 even with Ord’s deliberate sabotage of the latter. Word is that the designers later moved to another company and created a very similar carbine that’s still around today, the Ruger Mini-14.
Ironically, Melvin M. Johnson came up with what might have been the ideal “PDW round” not long after the trials;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Spitfire
As can be seen from the attached photo, FN’s 5.7 x 28mm round owes more to Johnson’s 5.7 x 33mm than FN is ever likely to admit. And the .22 Spitfire was intended for a rebarreled .30 Carbine with no other major alterations.
A carbine-type PDW makes sense for support troops which would otherwise have pistols or SMGs, just on the grounds of being easier to actually hit something with. It makes a lot more sense than any “combat shotgun”, which is pretty much useless on a battlefield to begin with.
Although today, issuing everybody M4s in 5.56 x 45mm and making them at least practice enough to qualify is probably the least-stupid approach.
cheers
eon
I think the design process for all of this is sheerest lunacy and folly.
What they need to do is look at what is actually going on in combat; what are the parameters for most encounters where the individual rifleman is going to have actual tactical effect, and what does that rifleman need to do?
From what I’ve observed, the furthest out the individual rifleman is going to be really effective and able to even spot targets reliably is around 300-400m. It’s that “spot the target” thing that’s the key: With the cover/concealment factor going on, and against any reasonably proficient enemy, what few glimpses you get of a target past 400m are going to be furtive and fleeting, and the actual odds of successfully engaging them when analyzed across the full spectrum of an engagement…? You really need to be firing your damn area weapons at those targets, because at that level, applying a weapon that’s really only appropriate for a point target is a waste of time, statistically speaking. It’s like hunting for deer; you see one, there are probably at least five or six you’re not seeing, there in the immediate vicinity of the one you spotted. This means that you really ought to be engaging those targets with something that’s going to hit the “one you see” and all his friends. To do anything else means that what you’re really doing is running a master-class in how to avoid being spotted, and you’re also eliminating the one guy on the other side who is dumb enough to let himself get spotted…
Over the long haul, how do you suppose that works out? Yeah; you’re weeding out the weak, and basically running a training course for the enemy. When you see that “one idiot”, you need to take advantage of the situation and eliminate all his friends, the ones who’re more tactically proficient. Just shooting him through the head ain’t enough…
Which is not what the numpties crying out for mo’ bettah individual weapons want to hear, but there you go: It’s a numbers game, and when you don’t bother to shoot up the surrounding area, you’re leaving a bunch of the enemy alive and taught to avoid detection. Highly unintelligent, that.
So, if you’re going to design a damn individual weapon, what you need to do is design it for what it actually needs to do, and for what it needs to be effective at that job. This means it needs to be handy, able to be shot and carried by all, and to have lethality out to 400m. This ain’t what we’re issuing; the M4 was woefully deficient with regards to lethality for a long time, and I still suspect that there are issues that the newer ammo hasn’t addressed effectively. However, the M4 is still a better individual weapon for the lowest common denominator grunt because he can carry a lot of ammo, and be able to employ the damn thing on the wing, so to speak. What they’re trying to shoehorn into the individual weapon mission with the M7 is basically sending a sniper rifle to do the job of a skeet shotgun; the carbine needs to be able to take all those “on the fly” shots and not require five minutes to sit down and set up the perfect shot… Engagements in combat are ugly fast, fleeting, and if you don’t take the shot and a couple of follow-ups within split seconds, you’re basically combat ineffective as a rifleman. I suspect that while the M7 is gonna do great things on the range, they’re also going to lead to a lot of “missed kills” in combat, which when coupled with the heavier ammo and recoil…? Do the math. It doesn’t work, for me.
I think that 5.56mm and the M4 is, at best, marginal. However, I emphatically do not have the empirical data or evidence to back that idea up. Neither do any of the numpties behind NGSW. You should not make decisions like this based on feels and biased suppositions.
What I think they should have done is work out the minimum ballistics they need for lethality at 400m, maybe bump that up a bit, and then work out whether that round could be controlled on full auto from something in an envelope appropriate to an individual weapon. I suspect that would be something in the range of a dialed-up 5.56, maybe in 6mm-7mm range, and that it should be nowhere near the velocity and power of the current full-on NGSW weapon. Think “6mm SAW” from back in the early 1970s, if that fit the controllability criteria from something in the range of an M4.
And, that’s all an individual weapon ought to be… You want a DMR? Build one on your support weapon’s cartridge, which really ought to be closer to the .338 Norma than the idiot idea of using a marginal-for-an-individual-weapon cartridge like either the 7.62 NATO or the current NGSW idiocy. Neither of those are really heavy or powerful enough, and should never have been pressed into the role of “support MG round”.
You need to be able to blast through cover and destroy things like trucks and other targets in that class. If you can’t stop a vehicle-borne IED in its tracks with a burst of MG fire, you may want to rethink your caliber choices… You should certainly be able to do enough damage to the engine in order to stop it. That’s sadly not always true with the 7.62 NATO, a leading indicator to me that the caliber is inadequate for the role…
We’re doing this all wrong. And, as an aside, the whole PDW concept needs to be thrown out on its ass, period. Even for cops; with the evolving threat environment, they need to armed and equipped as light infantry, capable of going toe-to-toe with VBIEDs and all the rest of the current terrorist arsenal. That means light AT weapons like the Carl Gustav, folks.
Eventually, there is going to be a Mumbai-style attack here in the US. How well we deal with it will depend an awful lot on where it happens, but I suspect that there are a lot of soft targets and inept local security elements that will enable a lot of horror happening. Europe is going to be vulnerable, as well… However, with the police/security infrastructure that a lot of European countries have? You’ll see a more effective response than you will in some areas of the US. In any event, the only places a PDW is going to be appropriate will be the opening phases of a Mumbai-style attack; once it gets going, all a PDW will really do is mark you out as a priority target.
We’re on the same page, here.
The SWAT concept in law enforcement is a thing of the past. Today, pretty much every (one-man) patrol unit has to be able to join with a minimum of two other (one-man) patrol units to act as a pick-up “tactical team”. Because by the time you “call SWAT”, the suspects are gone.
It’s not just that you have to be able to deliver a tactical level of containment and response, it’s that you have to deliver it Right The F**k Now. Before the suspects can yank some innocent bystander out of their passing vehicle and take off with it, selfieing themselves as they go.
As for the 300-to-400-meter engagement envelope of the infantry rifle, the only army that actually took notice of that after WW2 was the Russians. In fact, they were working on it before the war. The result was the 7.62 x 39mm M1943 cartridge and the Avtomat Kalashknikov. And I suspect it was only a 7.62mm because that was the bore spec their “embedded tech” was built around.
When they went for a later, optimized version, it ended up as a 5.45mm. (See The AK-47 Story by Ezell.) Tests by the likes of Raymond Caranta showed that it was perfectly adequate out to 300 meters, and beyond that it was the job of support machine guns using 7.62 x 54Rmm. (The only thing wrong with that was the “R” part, really.)
I’m inclined to think that both the 7.62 x 51mm DMR and the 12.7 x 99mm HMG have had their day. The DMR just doesn’t have the range or power needed, and the HMG just weighs too much, especially its ammunition.
A new DMR should be in something like Lazzeroni 7.82 Patriot, that can deliver ballistics equivalent to a full-length belted Magnum from a standard-length rifle action (better yet, a self-loading action).
As for a replacement HMG, I’d suggest the .408 CheyTac (10.6 x 77mm). It can deliver a 27 gram bullet at 900 m/s at the muzzle, that is still moving above M=1 at 2,000 meters. Both monolithic bronze solids and tungsten core penetrators are standard in this caliber already. With a base diameter of .637in and an OAL of 4.3in, it could be accommodated in a modified RM338 MMG, which is built around the .338 Lapua round.
If we’re going to be fielding new rifle and MG rounds, re-inventing the 7 x 57 Mauser “one more time” is not the way to go.
cheers
eon
@eon,
I would strongly suggest that anything even vaguely resembling that Lazzeroni offering should be avoided like the plague.
Why? Because the damn thing is way too high on the velocity scale. Unless they’ve figured out how to magically reduce bore erosion on that thing, you’re going to go through barrels just as quickly as the current NGSW full-power “solution”, which is waaaaay too fast, in terms of acceptable-for-actual-warfare.
There are times and places where reaching for the outer edge of a given envelope is a good thing; choice of cartridges for general issue ain’t one of them. What you want there is to remain well inside the current technological envelope, where everything is understood and predictable. Reaching for things is how we wound up with the initial “Oooooh… Let’s substitute the old ball powder for that hard-to-make IMR crap Stoner designed this thing around…” issues.
I think a better model for the support weapon cartridge would be something like the old Swedish HMG round, modernized. Lots of energy, arrived at via what are now reasonable propellant charges.
I don’t know what Lazzeroni is loading those rounds of theirs with, but I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that they’re likely boutique powders, ones that aren’t gonna lend themselves to mass production under wartime conditions. You have to design and procure for worst-case situations, and that means looking out ahead and asking the question “What if we can’t make enough of this stuff to fight a really serious war…?” If the answer to that is “No, we’re gonna need to be able to buy tons of Mongolian Furred Caterpillar fuzz to make this crap, and they can only produce a few hundred pounds per year, which has to go through Chinese borders…”, then you are wrong, wrong, wrong about going for that cutting-edge performance.
I think that what we ought to be doing is taking something like the old high/low mix the Swedes had for themselves, and then modernizing the cases after right-sizing the performance. The 6.5 Swedish was potentially a good individual weapon cartridge if they’d downsized the case and the power just a bit, while I think the HMG round would have been well-suited to a bit of a power upgrade to make it more destructive of material targets than it was. Ideally, you want to be able to stop a truck with a well-placed burst or two… Can’t do that, reliably? You need a bigger gun. At least, that’s my instinct.
Boutique and baroque solutions requiring outer-edge-of-the-envelope technologies and techniques need not apply. You need stuff you can crank out in the millions and billions, in case of a full-on war like WWII. Period. Full-stop. Whatever punctuates that necessity properly…
@ kirk;
We pretty much agree again.
Yes, the Lazzeroni rounds are hard on barrels. So is just about very other high-performance “sharpshooter’s” round in service.
My own experience with the .300 WM was that the leade was worn smooth by 2,000 rounds, and by 4,000 the barrel was like a Brown Bess musket for about 2/3rds of its length. That turns out to be about average, no matter which of the hyped-up “long-range” rounds you’re talking about.
“Sharpshooter’s” rifles just have short service lives. I think the Lazzeroni people figured that since that’s the case, they might as well get the highest possible performance out of the critter as long as it lasts. Yes, a “throwaway”, expendable rifle. What a concept.
More to the point, the whole idea of the military sharpshooter is probably obsolete and has been since the machine gun and mortar came along.
The classic definition of what a military sharpshooter does is in chapter 58 of The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy, when Sgt. Gogol takes down Gen. Peng with one shot. Very poetic, but sort of a waste of resources.
A general is “generally” accompanied by at least some staff, plus a command vehicle. In my entirely civilian opinion, that’s something you hit first thing with support weapons, MGs, mortars, or call back to DivArty and ask “what you got?” Hopefully including 155 with superquick.
We’ve romanticized the military sharpshooter and sort of ignored the whole concept of “neutralize entire unit whenever feasible”. Maybe it’s not romantic enough. Or else they’re trying to make up for the neglect that characterized our doctrines going back to the Civil War. As William B. Edwards pointed out in Civil War Guns, we seem to forget the “lessons learned” immediately after every “V-Day”.
Or maybe we just keep learning the wrong lessons, over and over again.
cheers
eon
All arguments in this thread, not all necessarily yours, regarding cartridges and the efficacy of PDW’s are valid, but it is all a circular argument. You state, “A carbine-type PDW makes sense for support troops which would otherwise have pistols or SMGs, just on the grounds of being easier to actually hit something with.”
Wasn’t that the entire design criteria for the M1 Carbine?
The M1 with its reduced power cartridge wasn’t a battle rifle. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was what we would today call a PDW.
Regarding other comments in this thread, again not necessarily yours. I am amazed at folks’ immediate reaction to a PDW design when they go on to say….now let’s hang a suppressor on it. Then a large cap magazine. Then some scopes or electronic sights. Then in the next breath criticize a PDW because with all the bells and whistled attached, “If you need a rifle, this isn’t it”. Well no kidding. It weren’t supposed to be!
A PDW is a VERY niche weapon. However, as an old Aviator who started off the career carrying a selection of worn out 45’s and Victory model S&Ws tucked in my vest (the Navy throws nothing away) I can only say that I often contemplated hitting the ground, sans aircraft, in some deep dark jungle or bright sandy expanse with nothing but a 6 shot 38 Special revolver to hand and wondering “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Luckily, I never had to find out. Something lighter that a rifle but better than a pistol tucked away in the seat pack would have been nice.
Despite what they named it, the M1 Carbine did not fall into the “carbine” category.
It was a PDW before they had that particular stupid idea… A carbine is defined as “A lightweight rifle with a short barrel.” By this definition, whatever an M1 “Carbine” is, it ain’t a lighter-weight version of the standard rifle with a shorter, handier barrel.
They called it a carbine because that was a term they had; the role it filled was the one we conceived the term “PDW” to cover, these days. Mostly because we loves us some new acronyms…
The thing is, there’s this historical tactical role that has to be remembered… What were the ranges and targets that the old carbine versions of the standard rifles were meant for? Oddly enough, the very same ones we find addressable by the assault rifle individual weapon… The band from muzzle out to about 400m. Back in the day, the full-size rifles were firing in volleys at the targets we should be addressing with machine guns and mortars. The carbine was an effectively auxiliary weapon issued to artillery, engineers and others as weapons meant for close-in self-defense out to that 400m limit. If you examine the old tactical standards, they were using the carbine for the same things we issue assault rifles for… And, when you look at today’s categories, the M4, the M27, and all the other shorter versions of rifles like the M16 are basically filling that role.
The M1 “Carbine” could not fill that role; it was simply not effectively lethal enough out to the 400m line, nor did it retain enough energy to really fit the proper tactical definition. It was meant for augmenting the handgun, out to maybe 150-200m, effectively. If they’d have issued the damn thing in the M2 format, and then used and issued it in the role of an SMG, I think it would have been a lot more useful than it really was… And, in the role of SMG/pistol. Not “Carbine”.
I feel for you. An “old eagle” I grew up around (USAAF, P-51s, ETO and PTO) said that his preferred “bailout” piece wasn’t either the Colt .38 revolver or the M1911A1 .45 automatic he was issued at different times,, but the prewar Walther HP (commercial P.38) in 9mm he’d bought mail-order from Stoeger’s in the summer of 1939. Why? It could use the “other guy’s” ammunition. Plus, if he had to use it, the corpus delicti would not immediately scream “ I was shot by a downed Ami airman.”
Later, in the runup to D-Day, he did one of those deals we all know about, and promoted a brand-new, still in the packing, folding-stock M1A1. At the time, of course, they only had 15-shot magazines, but he figured that was still better than even 9 rounds of 9mm.
He never had to use either one, but as the old saying goes, it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
cheers
eon
ME with the stated ballistics would be about 690 FPE. Which takes it out of the “9mm NATO equivalent category” of the 5.7 x 28mm out of the P90 barrel, and brings it up to a level where it should penetrate soft body armor.
Overall, the ergonomics are very like those of the Colt SCAMP of 1971, which also existed only as a single prototype;
https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Colt_SCAMP
Which fired a shortened .221 Fireball round;
https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/.22_SCAMP
It in fact delivered ME equivalent to 9 x 19mm.
Today, if you want something roughly equivalent to this, you can buy this;
https://www.keltecweapons.com/firearm/rifles/cmr30/
“off the shelf”.
And .22WMR ammunition is considerably cheaper per round than .221 Fireball.
clear ether
eon
Buy now!
Re: your “old eagle”1) I doubt many folks can glance at a clothed corps and tell whether it was shot with a 9mm or a .45. In war time Germany, if a soldier were shot anywheres within fifty kilometers of where an Allowed plane went down, you really think Inspector Scherloch Holmz is going to think “Maybe ze Butler hat this Mord most foul kommitted
“?
I think you’ve failed to think things through; a .45 Colt fired in a forest sounds a hell of a lot different than a 9mm Parabellum. Signature, when you’re trying to escape and evade, counts for a hell of a lot.
Not to mention, if you’re going to be caught, it’s probably better that whoever you shot trying to avoid it wasn’t killed with anything that a little forensic work is going to tie to you… Which is precisely why a 9mm pistol would be preferred to the .45 Colt ACP. So long as there is ambivalence, you’re going to be better off if it comes to a prosecution.
I suspect General William O. Donovan agreed. When OSS was getting geared up, one thing “Wild Bill” did was appropriate Stoeger’s entire stock of Walther pistols in calibers ranging from .22 LR to 9 x 19mm, especially the .32 ACP PPs and PPKs. Not to mention every P.08, new or “reconditioned” they had.
All the “OSS equipment” books say that the Jedburghs had Colt Official Police .38s or Colt 1903 pocket auto .32s. Maybe the “Jed” teams did, but the agents who went in first with the clandestine radios and etc. mostly had ex-Stoeger German-made pistols.
Which meant that a lot of their “immediate actions” were likely blamed on the local Resistance types. Which might at least partly explain why the Germans, and even some early (pre-1990) historians, believed that the French Resistance was considerably larger and more effective than we now know it wasn’t.
cheers
eon
The balls on all of those guys had to be their biggest worry, in terms of what might give them away to the Germans.
Knowing what they did about the Gestapo and its methodologies of interrogation, to have willingly gone into German-held territory with nothing but a .32 ACP handgun, of whatever provenance? Holy hell, but that’s utterly mad.
I don’t think those people get enough credit. Especially the women involved; you read the AAR and biographies of some of the agents, and it makes anyone doing “Extreme Sports” today look like the silly buggers that they are. There was that one agent who parachuted in with a wooden leg, and managed to evade capture for years. Utterly insane bravery.
Or the 19-year-old from Pt. Pleasant WV (one of my uncles knew him) who after a six-week training syllabus at Camp X was dropped into Normandy three months before D-Day. No contact after landing, so they concluded the Gestapo got him.
A week after Operation COBRA kicked off, they found him. He’d spent six months driving the Germans insane. Yes, they’d grabbed him. But then he took out a German officer, took his uniform, and just walked away.
Since he didn’t have any fancy OSS gadgets, he fell back on the sort of thing all us hillbillies from either side of the Ohio River know. Like dumping motorcycle dispatch riders by just tying a rope to a tree on one side of the road about four feet off the ground, threading the other end through a fork on a tree on the other side, and letting it lie slack until the guy was almost on it, and giving it a good, hard yank, catching the rider in the throat and generally breaking his neck. (Those riders liked to go fast, you know.)
Let’s not get into the stuff he sabotaged with nothing but a few matchbooks. (Terrific time-delay igniters if you know how to use them.)
After it was all over, Gen. Donovan personally pinned the Intelligence Star on him. For his “success at impeding enemy activity”. Even Donovan wouldn’t say “for seriously fucking them up” in an official citation, but that’s what he meant.
As for what the man himself said, as quoted in a book, “They dropped me into France with pretty much nothing but a couple of tins of beef jerky and a can-opener. So I figured I’d better stick to what I know”.
Moral; Never mess with a hillbilly. We don’t fight fair.
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eon
eon, please tell me that there’s a biography or autobiography of that guy’s life out there, somewhere… That’s the kind of thing that deserves being in the record.
@ Kirk;
I first read about him in “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross, and though, “Oh he just made that up”.
Then I ran across it in the official history of the OSS, published in 1956. (I’m guessing that’s where Ross got it from.)
When the latter mentioned he was from Pt. Pleasant, my memory clicked, because my uncle told me about him.
But nobody mentioned his actual name, dammit.
cheers
eon