Forgotten Gems

[m24]

By Richard Venola

Source: http://www.gunsandammo.com/content/forg ... assic-guns

In the world of commerce, it's difficult to predict the winners, but of all the concepts overlooked or underappreciated in the history of 20th century firearms, none is more bizarre than that of Winchester's family of Self-Loaders.

There were four members of the family. Two of them, the .32 and .35, were uselessly underpowered, and the .401 was a bit on the heavy side. Right there in the sweet spot was the .351 WSL, princess of the prison tower.

Perhaps the whole family of these brilliantly designed blowback rifles--the easiest to take down ever designed--were damned early by the faint praise of celebrity adventurer Harry Payne Whitney. This bazzillionaire took a spanking-new 1905 in the underloaded .35 WSL on an Arctic expedition. An eager press reported his every word, including praise for the rifle's function in extreme cold and its inability to put down heavy musk ox.

The hotter .351 is close to the perfect submachine-gun round, pushing a 180-grain bullet out of a 20-inch barrel at 1,530 fps. All through the post-WWI development of the SMG concept, with seemingly every European designer trying to come up with a more powerful loading for its anemic European cartridges (and Fedorov struggling with his avtomat/assault rifle concept), the .351 was already there.

It's odd that in the 1960s, Ruger's .44 Magnum carbine was heralded as the best brush-country whitetail gun of the time, but five decades before, the 1910 in .401 WSL--a gun of virtually the same size, weight and performance (200 grains going 1,915 fps)--was condemned to keeping the weekend peace in towns along the Tug River.

Why the WSLs weren't the toast of trench fighters is open to discussion, but by the time the concept of a short and handy (if a bit heavy) semiautomatic carbine with medium range and intermediate power could be realized, the Sturmgewehr had taken the world by storm.

It's not that Winchester's Self-Loaders were unknown. The French used thousands as aerial observers' rifles, and 10-round magazines were (and still are) plentiful on the Continent. Even the Brits and Russians used them until machine guns could be successfully rigged for aerial use.

(It is interesting to note that in 1916 the 1st Aero Squadron armed up with 1907 WSLs to help Pershing chase Villa.)

Some years ago I read that Winchester Self-Loaders were purchased by Marine officers and NCOs headed for sweaty jungle duty with the Haitian Gendarmerie or bashing about after Sandino's guerillas in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, several calls to the Marine Corps Museum failed to turn up supporting evidence. (Perhaps some kind reader has a grainy sepia photo of Grandpa Hiram with a 1910 WSL guarding a United Fruit Company loading dock.)

When the advantages of a midrange carbine were recognized, it's reported that the folks at Aberdeen merely took the semi-rim off the puny .32 WSL and voilà, the puny M1 Carbine was born. If we'd gone with .351 as a start, we might still be using it.

Perhaps it was a case of military cosmetics. The Winchester lacked a full stock, but many police variants were fitted with Krag bayonets and slings. It becomes mildly irritating to read endlessly about the genius of David "Carbine" Williams when the road was paved 35 years before by the talents of Winchester's Thomas Crosley Johnson (who was only responsible for 124 firearms patents in 49 years).

Yet this same forgotten family of rifles was one of the most widely used prison guard and patrol rifles of the first half of the 20th century, with almost 80,000 being built from 1905 to 1956. Perhaps it all has to do with horseflesh. Until World War II, a military rifle had to be able to take down a horse to be considered effective. The WSLs just couldn't knock down a half-ton charger, but they could knock a bank robber off the getaway car's running board.

Pershing predicted the end of horse cavalry in 1917, but it took military smallarms designers a quarter-century to realize it. By then, manufacturing techniques, better propellants and more effective ballistic designs had pushed Johnson's brilliant self-loaders into the dim pages of history.

[nagarifle]

m24 its time you got your pea shooter so apply for your ticket

[m24]

I wish, Naga, I wish.

Regards