John Browning: Man and Gunmaker by Barrington James

Author:Barrington, James [Barrington, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press Ltd.
Published: 2012-10-16T18:30:00+00:00

9. Automatic weapons development

The story is often told how John Browning, while out hunting, fired his gun near some bulrushes, and noted the disturbance this caused in the vegetation some distance away. This sparked his interest in the automatic operation of weapons, and led not only to the automatic shotgun, but also to his automatic pistol and machine-gun designs. The fact that John Browning’s middle name was Moses probably made the tale about the bulrushes almost inevitable, but actually the story is almost true.

In reality, the incident occurred in the autumn of 1889 at the weekly shoot of the Ogden Rifle Club at the club range by the river to the east of town. John wasn’t firing at the time but was watching a friend, Will Wright, shoot, and noted the way the muzzle blast caused the movement of a clump of weeds between Wright and the target.

Of course, he had noticed the same thing hundreds of times before, as any hunter would, but on this occasion he suddenly saw it as something else – a form of energy released by the action of firing that was being wasted, but which could be trapped and utilized. Ed and Matt were with John for the shoot, and they recalled that he immediately lost interest in the afternoon’s sport, summoned his brothers and returned to the Browning shop. He knew he had work to do.

In the shop he secured an old .44 Model 73 to a board, took a block of wood through which he had drilled a hole slightly larger than .44 calibre, placed it by the muzzle, lined up the hole with the barrel and fired. The block bounced all over the shop and, as the smoke cleared, John remarked casually to his brothers that they might have a workable machine-gun in ten years. More to the point, he announced that he was going to make a gas-operated gun the following day.

If any man other than John Browning had made such a claim, it would have appeared to be an idle boast, but coming from John, as his brothers well knew, it was simply a statement of intent, and by four o’clock the following afternoon the world’s first gas-operated rifle was undergoing test-firing.

It was a crude and basic design built on the same old black-powder Model 73 John had used the previous day and relied on muzzle blast to operate a simple lever – Browning called it a ‘flapper’ – which in turn pulled an actuating rod connected to the repeater mechanism. But it fired 16 rounds a second fully automatically from a single pull of the trigger. As far as John was concerned, the gun was a success, because it proved the principle of the mechanism. With the knowledge that he had acquired, he had the opportunity to develop the concept into a marketable weapon.

And develop it he did. The Model 73 was followed by a variety of other modified weapons as John Browning explored the new concept, and he filed his first patent application covering gas-operation of a firearm on 6 January 1890.

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