Located in the ancient city of Segovia, the Spanish Army Academy of Artillery was founded in 1764 by Don Félix Gazola, under orders of King Carlos III, unifying and centralizing the tasks until then undertaken by several different institutions dispersed trough the kingdom, some of them dating back to the 16th Century. Since then it has been one of the foremost military and technological institutions in Spain, as its graduates were in charge civilian and military engineering tasks until well into the 20th Century. Originally sited in the Alcázar (a Medieval castle), it was moved to its current location after the fire that destroyed the original site in 1853.

The main grounds of the Academy are inside the city of Segovia, just across the street from the Roman Aqueduct in a former monastery dated 1220. A separate site is the Polígono Baterías just outside the city and used until the turn of the century as a shooting range for live firing of all kinds of artillery, some times shooting to targets sited across the city.

The Academy’s mission is the human, technical and tactical formation of all Spanish artillerymen and women of all graduations and its continued training and updates, as well as being the custodian of the values, tradition and spirit of the Arm. Its modern simulation facilities allow for training on the whole scope of the artilleryman’s trade saving time, money and ammunition.

A visit to the Academia starts several weeks in advance, by requesting permission to the Museum’s director. Then the Academy Museum staff will contact you to confirm dates and times. On the day of our visit we were greeted by the Colonel Director of the Museum and a member of his staff that would act as our guide. After an introduction by the colonel and discussion of the topics of our interest, we were guided through the chosen areas.

As can be expected from such an institution, its grounds are full of military memorabilia and artillery pieces, both in and outdoors. Don’t forget that the first use of artillery in Europe took place in the siege of the Spanish city of Niebla in 1262 so, there’s a wealth of Artillery lore to preserve and display.

Understandably, there’s some bias towards materials of local design and manufacture but without dismissing foreign made pieces both used by the Spanish armies and also by other countries, as exemplified by an Arisaka field gun brought from South East Asia, which is now guarding a stairwell shaft.

The Main Hall’s walls are decorated with inscriptions remembering those battles in which artillery played main or decisive roles. The Graduates Gallery has wall panels listing the names of all persons graduated from the academy since its foundation, as well as a board containing the names or artillerymen awarded the Medalla Militar Individual, Spain’s second highest military reward.

It also hosts a series of cabinets containing fully detailed miniatures of antique artillery pieces, carriages and limbers, being, as our escort pointed to us, the teaching aids used before the arrival of computer presentations. This gallery also houses a collection of flags preserving, among others, all the Academy’s historic flags. Worth mentioning is the standard carried by the artillery regiment of the volunteer División Azul (also known as Wehrmacht 250 Division) through the Russian Campaign of World War II.

A prominent place is reserved for the statues or artillery captains Daoiz and Velarde, the first military personnel to join the people’s uprising against Napoleon’s invasion in May 2, 1808, which was the starting point leading to the first defeat of the emperor’s armies. Formations and roll calls are performed at the orders court, whose walls support boards with the names of all artillery officers fallen on duty.

The Materials Room houses part of the artillery collection illustrating the evolution of breech loading artillery from 14th Century iron and brass cannons to 20th Century pieces, with some additional older specimens, like a 40mm Ribadoquín from the 16th century, which is a breechloader, or a field piece from 1777 specifically designed to fight the Pampa Indians in Argentina, a forerunner of similarly mobile pieces from other European countries.

Indigenous designed and made materials, like a 40mm Ramirez Arellano infantry cannon, a very innovative design for 1927, are in force, but there’s also a very good representations of Italian artillery from the first half of the 20th Century, up to a 105/14 OTO-MELARA M-56, still in service in many countries after more than half a century, a mark also attained by the locally made and now retired 105/26 Naval Reinosa that sits at its side.

No artillery collection would be complete without a good sampling of Krupp, Skoda and Schneider guns and this one is no exception. There’s even a presentation Christophe volley gun, a gift from the Belgian maker to King Alfonso XII. A separate room houses the collection of ammunition spanning the range from stone balls to base bleed shells.

The Rockets Room has a couple Congreve rockets from the 19th Century and a very detailed display of rocket technology evolution from 1945 up to the 1980s as Spain was very active, and innovative, in the development of this kind of weapons in that timeframe.

The Portable Arms Room is home of the topographic tools, mortars and small arms. This latter collection is shared between this location and the now restored Alcázar. The weapons display comprises edged weapons, a superb collection of rifles starting with a 16th Century Harquebus and spanning all the evolution of the rifle up to the CETME L, the latest assault rifle designed and made in Spain, which was replaced by the H&K G36 a few years ago.

The display concentrates on breech loading rifles, with samples from several countries and more specifically with Spanish military rifles, with very complete collections of Remington Rolling Blocks (Fusil Modelo 1871 in Spain) and all the evolution and variants of Spanish Mausers from the 7×57 models of 1892 and 1893 to the 8×57 Model 1943 and latter conversions to .308 Winchester.

There are also samples from Winchester lever action and semiautomatic rifles used by the Spanish armed forces and several indigenous breech loading systems, as well as a board displaying the evolution of the CETME assault rifles, from the first prototypes in 7.62×40 (including a belt-fed version precursor of the H&K 21 with detachable barrel and marked “Mauser-CETME”), to the last version chambered in 5.56×45. Also worth mentioning is a superb 19th Century cabinet brought from Fábrica de Oviedo displaying a full set of templates and tools for making the Mauser 1893 rifle, as well as a wall board displaying one of those rifles completely disassembled.

There’s also a handful of submachine guns, most of them Spanish made, and a small but varied mortar collection from between world wars, including the now world standard Stokes designs but also several Spanish (like an early ECIA and a Valero) and foreign mortars and grenade launchers from France, England, Italy and Russia, including a Brixia grenade launcher and a Mosin-Nagant rifle converted by radically cutting its barrel and fitting a grenade launching cup and a bipod.

Finally, there’s a collection of machine guns and automatic rifles, highlighted by a pair of 11.43mm 1885 Gardner guns (in one and two barrel versions). Also worth mentioning is a brass Maxim from 1890 in 11mm, a pair of 7.62×54 Spitalni-Komaritsky (models of 1928 and 1930), a Spanish Trapote 1913, a Oviedo Coruña 1925 and a Mexican Mendoza automatic rifle, all in 7×57, to name a few.

The Sciences and Technology room preserves technical and scientific instruments from centuries past, as well as teaching aids. There’s also memorabilia from French scientist Louis Proust who was professor of chemistry at the Academy for 14 years, formulating the law of definite proportions during his tenure. Since its foundation, the Academy has maintained a very well stocked library, containing many ancient first editions, which is open to modern investigators, civilian and military. It issues grants to investigators who publish works based upon the library’s funds.

Visits to the Academy must be requested in advance by writing or faxing to the attention of the museum’s director: Attn.: Director del Museo de la Academia de Artillería, C/San Francisco Nº 25. CP 40001. Segovia. Spain. Fax: 921435464. Be sure to request with enough advance, to offer alternate dates (in case your first choice enters in conflict with the Academy’s official agenda), and include an e-mail address to expedite arrangements.

The museum is open only in the mornings, so you can use the afternoon to visit the nearby Alcázar. As it is housed in a historical complex, the Academy lacks facilities for the physically impaired. The staff can speak English, and probably some other languages, depending on who is assigned there at the time of your visit. There are information sheets and a very nice guide book (only in Spanish).

Segovia is around 80 Km North of Madrid and well connected by rail and road transport. It is a popular excursion from Madrid and has an excellent tourist infrastructure and a lot of historical sites to see. Also nearby are the Royal Palaces of La Granja and Riofrio, very worth visiting by themselves if you stay overnight or for non-gun people. And make sure not to miss the excellent gastronomy.

The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum Established at Aberdeen Proving Ground

An article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance, published by the American Ordnance Association, records prophetically that the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, established in 1919 [and] raided for scrap metal in World War II and again during the Korean conflict has a history of struggle.

1927: Jarrett Joins the Reserve Army – the Aberdeen Museum Opens

An article published in the Harford Democrat on April 14, 1966, to commemorate then-Colonel George Burling Jarrett’s retirement as Curator of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, records that Jarrett was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1927.

A later article in the same newspaper, published on April 4, 1973, titled A New Museum to Open, records that the original Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen was officially opened in that same year, 1927: Although it had been in existence for seven years prior to that time, the museum was housed in a rectangular metal building which had been manufactured in France. This structure was utilized by the Army for a time following World War I. It was then dismantled and shipped to the Proving Ground for reconstruction and use as the post museum.

WWII Breaks Out in Europe – Jarrett Ordered to Active Duty

The draft of Jarrett’s own May, 1970 article continues to chronicle his first visit to “the real” Aberdeen, and then, as the new war became a reality, his growing involvement with the Ordnance Department:

I had gone to Aberdeen Proving Ground as early as 1924 to see the famous Ordnance Museum which was a display made from World War I captured materiel. They had a fine collection of tanks, artillery, various artillery ammunition and bombs, and some of the more important small arms.

The 1938-39 period was full of a new war threat, as Hitler did as he pleased in Europe. Then, in the late summer of 1939, war did burst on Europe. This caused an alert in the U.S. and, having been a reserve officer since 1927, I was invited by Colonel Hatcher (later Maj. Gen.) to join his staff at the Ordnance School then being expanded at Aberdeen Proving Ground, long a Mecca of Ordnance as far as I was concerned. I closed up all my display activities, built a series of sheds at the farm, and stored all my collections. Then in November of 1939, I went to Aberdeen and joined Colonel Hatcher.

In 1939 when I joined the Staff and Faculty of the school, I was also given the added duty of Curator of the Museum.

Since teaching about small arms, artillery and or munitions was very much the same as I had been doing with my own museum displays, the teaching-lecture job as a staff and faculty member at the Ordnance School was just a continuation of my former work. There was one important difference, however: this time, this knowledge could be of use to our Ordnance Program in the mobilization of the Army.

Col. Icks’ 1974 article in the Ordnance Journal continues the story by describing some of Lieutenant Jarrett’s early accomplishments after joining the Ordnance Department in 1939:

[Jarrett] was among the first few reserve officers in the United States to be ordered to active duty early in the period preceding Pearl Harbor, and the first reserve officer to become a member of the staff and faculty of the Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Ground. In 1939, the late Major General Julian S. Hatcher (then a colonel in command of the school) requested that Lieutenant Jarrett be ordered to duty at the school… Lieutenant Jarrett’s background and interest caused him to be made Museum Officer. He also helped… establish a Bomb Disposal School.

Jarrett Sent to Egypt to Assist the British

Col. Icks continues:

Under Lend-Lease, the first shipload of American light tanks went to Egypt for the British in May, 1941… Since the British also were receiving other American weapons, they were in need of an ammunition expert. Jarrett, by now a captain, was ordered to Egypt as a one-man technical section to act as ammunition advisor to British GHQ.

Jarrett’s own May, 1970 draft article fleshes out the beginning of this crucial phase of his career as follows:

I was sent from the Ordnance School to General Maxwell’s Ordnance Staff in Cairo in November of 1941, which had the responsibility of helping the British 8th Army to understand and use the American Lend-Lease equipment then being furnished them… Soon I was to see all sorts of Allied and enemy materiel in daily use as the British fought the Axis armies.

I also became the Director of the USA Ordnance School, Middle East, and our job was to teach the British troops how to use the Lend-Lease equipment. These were the U.S. M3 Light Tank, called the Stuart, the M3 Medium called the Grant, the M4 Medium called the Sherman and the M7 Gun Motor Carriage, called the Priest… Up to that date I had known many of the designers in the Office, Chief of Ordnance and the proof engineers at Aberdeen who tested their designs. So I was well aware of the ordnance thinking of that august body at the time, and then being in the Middle East I was soon to examine and test many of the captured items.

With the advent of Rommel the desert warfare took on a new aspect as he certainly had fine operational plans, excellent designs in their ordnance (some of which proved sensational as the war progressed), and certainly very courageous and brave soldiers. The world was treated to a new concept of warfare and equipment as the war in the desert opened up.

To me it was apparent in 1942 that a lot of American design thinking of that period had not enjoyed that which the Germans had given to their ordnance. During WWII we learned quickly and made many vast improvements, but in some areas such as tank guns and armor we lagged behind, with badly-needed new designs not being available until the close of the war.

The Origins of U.S. Ordnance Technical Intelligence

An excerpt from the book Planning Munitions for War continues with an overview of U.S. Ordnance Technical Intelligence – or the lack thereof – as World War II began in earnest for American forces:

The U.S. Army’s disregard of developments in foreign munitions before 1940 is a perpetual source of astonishment to the European… the extent of what the Ordnance Department did not know about German, French and British ordnance is plainly revealed in a list of questions prepared by the Office, Chief of Ordnance in June, 1940.

At the end of August, 1940 the General Staff inaugurated an Army-wide intelligence system. The Ordnance Military Intelligence Section was established in September… From the data supplied by the special bulletins of G-2, the small staff of the Ordnance section periodically prepared detailed analyses of information bearing on ordnance. The Ordnance Intelligence Bulletins, averaging monthly nearly fifty pages, circulated among interested agencies… As early as March, 1942 the communications of the Acting Ordnance officer in the Middle East [Jarrett] described features of German weapons encountered by the British in the recent battles for North Africa, and a series of photographs of captured equipment arrived at Aberdeen soon after.

Some actual specimens of German materiel also were shipped to the States, although in 1942 they formed a thin trickle compared to the flood that was to reach Aberdeen in the summer of 1943.

Early in 1942 General Barnes was convinced that research and development would benefit by a more direct flow of technical information [and] that summer, as soon as he became head of the separate division for research and development, he persuaded G-2 and the rest of the War Department that… specially briefed Ordnance teams should be sent to the active theatres. The first Ordnance intelligence mission accordingly went to North Africa soon afterward.

The New York Times Confirms “New U.S. School in Africa”

Under the heading “Aberdeen Men Busy in Africa”, a New York Times story by-lined Cairo, May 9, 1942, reads in part:

Major General Russell L. Maxwell, head of the United States Military Mission in Africa, announced today that his organization has opened an ordnance training school for the Eastern Mediterranean area… The school is intended to train non-commissioned officers of the British armored corps in the maintenance of United States equipment, particularly tanks… Commandant of the school is Major G. B. Jarrett, formerly of the U.S. Ordnance School in Aberdeen, Maryland.

Establishing the Foreign Materiel Section at Aberdeen

A further excerpt from the book Planning Munitions for War continues as follows:

Meanwhile, Jarrett’s Finest Hour

As noted above, Jarrett went to Egypt as a captain in May, 1941, assigned as an ammunition advisor to the British Army in North Africa, where his vast knowledge of U.S. and European ordnance was to be used to its fullest value. For his outstanding achievements during this mission, chronicled in detail below, Jarrett was awarded the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.), and the Legion of Merit.

The following long excerpts from the excellent article in the December, 1957 issue of Cavalier magazine, rather irreverently titled “The Junkman Who Stopped Rommel”, indicates that author Arch Whitehouse spent a great deal of time and care researching this crucially important period in Jarrett’s career:

Hitler’s Afrika Korps had swept across North Africa in one victory after another, and was now threatening Cairo itself. The only entrance to the city was through the back door, which the British had managed to keep open by defeating the Italians earlier in Eritrea.

That is one terrible region. The world has some bad deserts, like the Sahara, the Arabian, the Sind, and Australia’s Great Sandy, but that lifeless stretch of dead volcanoes, volcanic glass, and drifting sand between Khartoum and the Red Sea can make them all look like a fruitful paradise. To make matters worse for… Jarrett, the only desert transportation available was an aged Grumman flying boat that was definitely not made for emergency landings on sand… By the time he landed in Khartoum he had referred so frequently to his new, pocket-sized edition of the New Testament that most of his suffering fellow-passengers thought he was a chaplain.

But once he was in the land of the Nile, Jarrett felt as much at home as in his own museum. Egypt was the end of the line, but so desperate had grown the battle for North Africa that every weapon, new, old, or obsolete, was being pressed into service. Worst in the lot, according to the complaints of the British, was a lot of Lend-Lease “junk” sent over by the United States, and it was with the correction of this rather unflattering impression that Jarrett was primarily concerned.

Brigadier General R. E. Maxwell, in command of the United States North African mission, made it bluntly plain that the trouble Jarrett faced was not trivial. “I sent for you” he explained, “because I need a specialist in everything. I’m appointing you Ammunition Advisor to the British, and I must say they have a real problem. Frankly, unless something is done immediately to ‘surround’ this problem, they can lose this war right here in Africa. They are having trouble with our tanks, with our anti-tank guns, and with our ammunition. Now you know this lend-lease stuff is not the most modern equipment in the world, but when the British say they can do more damage throwing kippers at the Nazis than they can with stuff marked ‘Made in U.S.A.’ well, that’s not good, you know. Get up there to Heliopolis and find out what’s wrong.”

Jarrett’s acquisitive heart pounded when he saw the foul-up at Heliopolis. Spread out for acres were such an array of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and American weapons, only a few alike and most of them of World War I vintage, that his collector’s soul ached to think of their being destroyed in combat. At the same time his long-subdued gadgeteer’s instinct wanted to see everything belching smoke, and with that his dander rose. If there was something pathetic about trying to pit these aging relics against Rommel’s modern, fast, heavily-armed tanks plated with shell-deflecting Krupp steel, Jarrett did not think so. These were his pets, and he knew what they could do.

Fortune favored Jarrett on his first contact with the British. Ordnance officers were puzzling over the fact that some of their men had apparently been machine-gunned with their own bullets. “The only difference,” said a major, “is that these are stamped ‘7.7’. Otherwise they are identical to our .303 ammunition.”

Jarrett hefted the [cartridge case] and peered owlishly at its [headstamp]. “Easy”, he said. “In World War I you British supplied the Italians with Vickers and Lewis guns, and .303 ammunition to match. They ran out of ammunition long ago, but with the guns being as good as ever, Mussolini just ordered more of the same ammunition from his own munitions factories. Everyone knows that in the metric system, 7.7 is the same as .303 in British inches.”

“They do?” Somewhat dazed, the British major looked at Jarrett with new respect.

“Of course, these did not come from your guns,” continued Jarrett as though he were lecturing in his museum. “These came from an Italian Fiat machine gun. Every weapon leaves its own particular identification on…”

“We know that, but in this man’s war there are hundreds of different kinds of weapons. We’d have to set up a Scotland Yard here to identify them all.”

“Not at all,” said Jarrett modestly. “I know every single one.”

“… Now what’s your biggest problem?” asked Jarrett.

“Those lend-lease 75mm shells of yours” said the colonel in command. “At long range, with a high trajectory, they work fine on a stationary target. When they come bang-on down on the nose, they are quite satisfactory, but it so happens we did not order them for that. We need them against tanks, and I must say I take a dim view of their performance there.”

“Tell me exactly what happens.”

“Nothing, dammitall. Not a dashed thing. You must know these tanks are fast. You shoot ’em like you shoot rabbits with a shotgun. Figure out the range, lead ’em a few feet, and blaze away. Hardly proper for artillery, shooting from the hip, as it were, but this war is hardly proper from the beginning. Now here’s the thing in a nutshell – at a flat trajectory, your shells bounce off those tanks like peas, and when they explode, if they explode at all, it’s when they ricochet into the ground a mile or so beyond. I will say this for the Heinies – they hang their armor plate on their tanks at so many angles that it is almost impossible to score a direct hit.”

The two months Jarrett had spent exploring the secrets of the French “75” fuse raced through his mind. The word was “creep”. Those World War I fuses were so sensitive that the mere brushing of a shell through the treetops was enough to jar the “creep” into sliding up to detonate the charge. The Americans, vexed at so many premature bursts, had taken the creep out of their fuses, and were gratified thereafter when the shells exploded only upon making direct, nose-on contact with the target. That was fine when all artillery targets were stationary, but for World War II, against racing tanks, that old creep or “graze” fuse could be mighty handy. Even though a shell only kissed an angled plate of armor, it would explode fast enough to rattle a few teeth.

“The last of the creep fuses were made in 1918,” announced Jarrett from his stockpile of obsolete knowledge, “but if I know the French, they did not throw away the surplus of old fuses when the new models came in. Aren’t there a lot of French Foreign Legion outposts around the Sahara somewhere?”

The British colonel had not achieved his rank through being dim-witted. “Better yet, old chap”, he announced. “A lot of the French forces from Syria have joined us, bringing in their old French “75s” with them. Seemed a little hopeless at the time, but now that you mention it, our RAF blokes can fly you up to their encampment in a couple of hours.

Within 24 hours of his arrival, Jarrett had master-minded his first triumph. At the French encampment he located a store of 90,000 “creep” fuses, No. 1898/09, and had them airlifted back to Cairo. It marked the turning point. With Rommel within 90 miles of Alexandria on his “unstoppable” drive, the Tommies went into action with the Jarrett-improved shells. It was a slaughter. On modern shells the old museum-piece fuses, some of them dating back to 1915, acted with uncanny assertiveness, needing, as one Tommy said, “only a whiff of sauerkraut to go boom.” The supply lasted all through the Libyan battles the following May, and Egypt was saved.

Meeting Major Northy

At length [Jarrett] came to an ammunition dump, and there, leaning disconsolately against a mound of captured shells, he met a Major Northy, ammunitions expert with the Australian forces. Instinctively Jarrett looked first at the shells.
“High explosive ammunition used in the 7.5cm tank cannon of the Panzer IV,” he catalogued aloud.

“Righto,” agreed Major Northy. “And what bloody chance do we have with our pea shooters when the Jerries have got ammo like this?”

“But they haven’t got this pile,” observed Jarrett, blinking. “We have. Let’s toss it back at them.”

“Wrong size. I suggested once that wars be fought with interchangeable ammunition, but nothing ever came of it.”

Jarrett measured the shells with nothing more scientific than his eye. Except that the rotating band looked a little thick and wide, he had just the gun to fire it. “The old M2 tank gun,” he mused. “Frankly, I’ve always said the tank and the gun were better than their ammunition. If you don’t mind, this is my chance to prove something.”

Major Northy could see no reason why he should mind. An hour later they were in Cairo requisitioning an old engine lathe from a British-owned machine shop. It was not self-powered, but that little detail meant nothing to Jarrett. Back in his junkyard he had enough old trucks, belts, gears, and other incidentals to power a dozen machine shops. By mid-afternoon of the next day his borrowed lathe was hooked up to the drive wheel of an old truck, and a crew of mechanics who knew better but didn’t give a damn were busy trimming the rotating bands of the captured shells to fit the M2 tank gun. Among the minor miracles of the war is that not a single shell exploded while being spun furiously on the lathe.

Out on the Suez Road Test Range, even Jarrett was surprised at the results. In its native German gun, the captured ammunition had a muzzle velocity of 1,650 feet per second: in the M2 gun it blasted out at 1,950 feet per second, with an increase in its power to penetrate that was truly fantastic. When tested on a captured Panzer tank, it not only pierced the armor plate, but with its high explosive burst it scattered the tank over the desert.

“Wow, that’s better than our best ammunition,” exclaimed Jarrett, picking up a twisted chunk of “invulnerable” armor plate. “Back in Aberdeen there’s a big argument about armor-piercing shells. One group claims the shells have to be high-explosive to do any real damage, and the other says a standard charge is plenty. We can settle that little debate right now.”

Another Panzer IV was rolled out onto the range, and this time Jarrett let the tank have it with the latest M61 shells. The penetration effect about equalled the German ammunition, and while there was little doubt that the shell would knock out the tank crew, the tank would be in fine shape again after a few repairs, this was the proof Jarrett wanted. The shells had to be high-explosive to decisively knock out a tank.

“That does it. I’m sending a cable to Aberdeen tonight, and we’d better get a photographer out here so the boys can see for themselves the difference in the damage. This is going to change a lot of thinking back home.” said Jarrett.

“Back home?” exclaimed Major Northy. “It’s changed a lot of thinking right here. Let’s get those 15,000 captured shells processed!”

Within another 24 hours the British Royal Armored Ordnance Corps had a score of lathes in operation, all patterned after Jarrett’s original model and powered by old trucks.

With that operation in high gear, Jarrett started one of the weirdest and potentially the most dangerous munitions operation in the world. Calling upon his wide knowledge of explosives, fuses, and shell cases, he began turning out a hybrid ammunition made up of a little bit of everything. With the Ordnance Corps improvising shell pullers and crimpers, and with Arabs for labor, he began taking shells apart for their assorted parts. American M72 and Mk I high explosive shells provided the primed cartridge cases and charges. German shells were pulled and their cases disposed of. And then, to get the desired velocity of 1,950 feet per second, all sorts of recovered gunpowders were carefully weighed, dumped into cleaned oil drums, and there blended under the hot desert sun with wooden paddles. At one point in this safety-last operation, with Jarrett himself stirring up a barrel of powder with an oar, it is estimated enough propellant was being mixed to blow the whole junkyard into bits should so much as a small spark be struck on one of the steel drums. And there was no shortage of flint-like rocks being kicked around. But the inevitable never happened, and when the hybrid shells went into action they performed so far beyond anything yet on the field that Jarrett was awarded the Legion of Merit medal.

Augmenting British Weaponry

By that time he was deep in his next task. Rifles and all sorts of small arms, plus ammunition, were in desperately short supply. In his dash across North Africa, Rommel had made a point of striking first at supply depots, and by the time he had the Tommies backed up against the Pyramids, most of them were reduced to the few weapons they had been able to carry with them, and the few rounds of ammunition that remained in their belts. What was more; the wily Desert Fox had done an excellent job of severing all their supply lines. Rising to this crisis, Jarrett recalled the stacks and stacks of Italian materiel he had seen during his brief stopover in Eritrea. Included had been thousands of rifles piled up in the open, and slowly being covered with drifting sand.

The admiring British at this stage were willing to grant Jarrett anything he asked for; knowing in advance few of his requests would be either sane or reasonable. They were not surprised then when Jarrett called from the Eritrean Service Command, requesting an Alfa Romeo automobile assembly plant and a score of machine shops left over from Mussolini’s Ethiopia campaign. Nor were they surprised a few days later to learn that Jarrett had cut across national lines, and that British and American armament men were working side by side in a fast-operating weapons reconditioning factory. Sand-choked weapons were being fed into one end of the converted automobile plant, dismantled, cleaned, inspected for worn parts, and reassembled at the rate of several hundred a day.

Factory organization was but a small part of Jarrett’s job. The captured Italian weapons were of all shapes and sizes, and in all states of disrepair. Until he got his machine shops going making spare parts, as many as three rifles might have to be dismantled to get enough parts to make one good one. All told, he found 53 types of rifles requiring 13 different kinds of ammunition, and he could only wonder how Mussolini had ever managed to defeat Emperor Haile Selassie’s spear-carrying warriors. He produced order out of this chaos by combining the useful parts of a dozen obsolete weapons to make a half-dozen efficient hybrids. For example, he found several hundred old Vickers and Lewis machine guns that had been stripped from old aircraft. The guns were useless as ground weapons, the whole firing mechanism of each weapon being dependent upon power supplied by the aircraft engine in synchronization with the propeller. But Jarrett had made them work in his museum, and now, by taking parts from other, less efficient machine guns, he was able to put them back in action, complete with a new spade-grip hand-trigger component and tripod mount.

His biggest triumph came when he reconditioned thousands of Mauser rifles and assured the British their own 7.92mm cartridge would fit perfectly. “It has to,” he informed a skeptical British ordnance man. “You might not know it, but your British Besa gun is an adaptation of the old Czech Brno, and the Czech gun was originally designed to use Mauser 7.92mm ammunition. So you see, Major, in copying the Czech gun you copied the German ammunition, and I happen to know we have plenty of 7.92mm ammunition in Cairo.”

Now for the astonishing part of Jarrett’s foray into the Eritrean junkyards. To classify all the Italian weapons and ammunition, sort them out according to usefulness, cross-breed those necessary to produce his hybrids, organize his reconditioning factory and machine shops, and start the flow of desperately needed weapons to the front, had taken just two weeks. He was back in Cairo just sixteen days after his departure, and spent the night writing a handbook translating American technical terms into British nomenclature.

Jarrett Draws Some Crucial Conclusions

As a captain and then as a major, Jarrett continued to follow Rommel’s retreat across North Africa. When he discovered German shell cases made of blued steel instead of brass, he was the first to announce that Hitler’s copper supply was nearing exhaustion. By taste and smell he was the first to discover Hitler’s motor fuel was ersatz, a synthetic substitute that would break down on a long haul. Both of these discoveries enabled the Allies to increase the pressure on the Germans at a time when such pressure would have been suicidal had Jarrett been wrong.

Jarrett Returns to APG a Light Colonel; Proceeds to “Raise Hell”

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article describes Jarrett’s return to Aberdeen as a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Foreign Materiel Branch, where he was to remain until the end of the war:

A promotion to Lieutenant Colonel took place prior to his return to the United States to head up a Foreign Materiel Branch for testing and evaluating captured weapons. Finding no action had been taken on producing a delayed action fuse and finding that the 100 rounds of German ammunition he had shipped from Cairo had never been tested, it was characteristic of him to raise hell from top to bottom over the matter. Rank for its own sake meant nothing to him and sacred cows to him were for slaying… A few heads were weary when he had finished, but American tankers quickly were on the way of receiving something badly needed, although an entire year had been wasted through negligence.

Jarrett on the Foreign Materiel Branch (FMB)

In a document titled Ordnance Research Center General Story for Press and Newsreels dated November 26, 1943, Col. Jarrett spelled out the important mission of the center which he headed as follows:

The Foreign Materiel Branch was established in the latter part of 1942 to receive and store enemy weapons sent to the United States by groups of Ordnance Intelligence officers and enlisted men from the various theaters of operation. Directly responsible to the Office, Chief of Ordnance in Washington, the Branch’s mission includes the analysis of all materiel for evaluation and for possible adaptation of noteworthy designs into our own equipment, to maintain a collection of the available weapons and to conduct training programs to disseminate information on this captured enemy equipment.

The flow of German, Japanese and Italian weapons into Aberdeen Proving Ground has been continuous, and at the present time there are approximately 4,000 tons of enemy pieces, comprising 1,300 principal items. Results of the detailed analyses of the materiel tested here and at other stations are maintained in the files of the library together with intelligence received from Military Attachés and other overseas observers.

The Importance of Ordnance Technical Intelligence

Lt. Col. William L. Howard, the compiler of the informal book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, penned the following under the heading “Introduction and Purpose”:

My purpose in preparing this booklet was to record in picture and letter format the evolution of the U.S. Army’s Technical Intelligence Operations from about 1918 until the present. It is primarily the story of a select group of men in the Army who have defied the traditional career patterns and forged ahead into the future…

Certainly Col. Jarrett qualifies as perhaps the most important of this select group of men.

Jarrett in Europe, Leading a Technical Intelligence Team

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article continues:

Before World War II was over, he was ordered overseas again, this time to Europe. There he participated in the industrial and military interrogation team efforts in evaluating German experimental material found in various plants and proving grounds. Again much of the material which had value to us was shipped to APG for further study and comparison…

An Excerpt from Intelligence Bulletin Vol. III, No. 6, February, 1945

Tom Nelson recalls that Col. Jarrett, along with Phil Sharpe and other noted U.S. ordnance experts, gathered and edited the material which appeared in the Technical Intelligence Bulletins, published by the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, which proved of great value to the Allied cause.

In a related article about captured WWII Japanese aircraft being tested by U.S. Technical Air Intelligence, reprinted in Lt. Col. Howard’s book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, author Robert Mikesh leads off with these sardonic words:

“The Germans fought for Hitler, the Japanese fought for their Emperor, and the Americans fought for souvenirs.” This was the comment most often repeated by members of the Technical Air Intelligence Units, whose first responsibility was to keep G.I.s away from captured enemy equipment.

This sentiment was echoed in an article titled “Ordnance Intelligence Teams Uncover Technical Secrets”, published in February, 1945 in Vol. III, No. 6 of the Intelligence Bulletin, excerpted as follows:

“One of the biggest difficulties that Ordnance Intelligence Teams face is the continued refusal of combat units to recognize the importance of technical information gained from a study of enemy ordnance.”

… This report [from a lieutenant in charge of an Ordnance Technical Intelligence Team now operating in the Pacific] emphasized an unfortunate condition which has existed for a long time. Combat troops, preoccupied with fighting or souvenir hunting, are unaware of the part captured enemy equipment plays in the progressive development of our own weapons, and of its usefulness in enabling intelligence officers to predict the probable widespread use of new weapons by enemy troops.

This difficult master-minding is a job of the Army Service Forces Equipment Intelligence Service Teams. These teams include trained personnel from each technical service. Specifically, where weapons are concerned, it is a job for Ordnance Technical Intelligence, which must keep the army up to date in this highly technical aspect of warfare.

Early in the war, the U.S. Army saw the necessity for immediate first-hand technical observation, and in December 1942 the first Ordnance Intelligence Team, a handful of specially-trained officers and enlisted men, was dispatched to a combat zone. Its mission was to procure enemy weapons and ship them to the United States to be used in a continuous study of the latest developments and trends in the enemy armament industry and to rapidly develop counter weapons. Today teams of trained technical observers work in every theater of operations.

Col. Jarrett’s Team at the Walther Factory

An interesting anecdote from Chapter One of author Fred A. Datig’s book on postwar Russian small arms, titled Soviet Russian Postwar Military Pistols and Cartridges, 1945 – 1986, discussed further in Part III of this series, concerns an important and timely visit by a U.S. Technical Intelligence team, led by Col. Jarrett, to the Waffenfabrik Walther plant shortly after the end of WWII in 1945:

… The United States Army’s Technical Intelligence team, headed by the late Colonel G. B. Jarrett, was able to enter Walther’s factory only 2 hours before the Soviets (thanks to Yalta and Potsdam) were to take charge officially. Jarrett’s group was able to cleanse the premises of the entire collection of some hundreds of prototypes of pistols, rifles and machine guns, plus much pertinent documentation, and to whisk everything, including Fritz Walther himself, away to the West.

A Typical Jarrett `Take’ on a Pentagon Briefing

Tom Nelson, who will also be mentioned in greater detail in Part III of this series, recalls a briefing which Col. Jarrett was invited to give to an assembly of general officers at the Pentagon in 1946. Casting his eye about the thousands of exhibits and artifacts at his disposal in the Museum, and concerned about just what he would be able to cover in the limited time available to him, in the end Jarrett selected and took with him five items, each of which he felt represented an outstanding advance made by the Germans in WWII.

The first items he put on the table were a captured MP44 (Sturmgewehr) and an example of its 7.92x33mm intermediate cartridge. The advantages of this new weapon system were many fold, he explained: constructed very largely of plain carbon steel stampings requiring no scarce, exotic alloying elements, production of this weapon was cheap and fast, compared with a U.S. product like the M1 rifle. Even more importantly, he said, it represented the dawn of a new tactical era, one for which the U.S. had no comparable weapon or cartridge, other than the M1 carbine and its comparably weak cartridge. (History has shown that while the U.S. was to flounder along with the underfunded M14 program until 1957, the Soviets took these advances very much to heart and were soon to emulate both the German StG concept and its intermediate cartridge with the adoption of the 7.62x39mm AK47.)

The second example he laid on the table was an MG42. This fast-firing weapon incorporated the improved cartridge belt and direct feeding system, the quick-change barrel, and the recoiling “softmount” of the Einheitsmaschinengewehr (all-purpose machine gun), all features which had been introduced in the earlier MG34, which in its day was by far the most advanced machine gun in the world. The MG42 went one step further, and like the MP44 it was also made very largely of plain steel stampings, which meant that it could be manufactured five times as quickly as a comparable U.S. Browning machine gun.

The third was, ironically, a German copy of the American “Rocket Launcher, A.T., M1″, commonly known as the Bazooka, which fired a larger (3.5″) and more powerful shell than its U.S. 2.36” counterpart. The shaped charge of the larger German projectile was capable of defeating the armor on virtually all existing tanks and self-propelled guns. Jarrett urged that the then-U.S. bazooka round be increased in size and power. (Here again his remarks soon proved to be prophetic, as U.S. soldiers rushed from Japan to Korea in 1950 were to discover that their bazooka rounds bounced off the armor of the latest Russian T-34/85 tanks.)

The fourth item was a large German artillery shell, which had been made of cheap cast steel rather than as an expensive machining as were U.S. projectiles. Jarrett pointed out that the German round was thus much quicker and cheaper to make, although it produced the same degree of devastation on impact as did the machined projectile. The advantages were obvious.

The fifth and final example Jarrett piled on the table was a late-war German Panzerfaust (literally, the “tank fist”). This he regarded as being capable of improvement (as indeed it was during the final stages of the war), because the German design was a dedicated single-shot launcher which, once fired, could only be discarded. Jarrett recommended that development be undertaken to produce a similar device, but one that could be reloaded multiple times with separate grenades – exactly like the highly successful and ubiquitous East Bloc RPG, which still accounts for a high percentage of Coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan to this day.

As an extremely dedicated and knowledgeable man but one with few social graces, Jarrett harangued the assembled officers with the dire prediction that if the U.S. did not recognize and copy the advances that these examples represented, the looming threat of Soviet aggression would be difficult if not impossible to overcome in the future. The days of NMA (not made in America) were over, he concluded.

Unfortunately, his forceful demeanor and the brusqueness of his presentation rubbed his august audience the wrong way, with the upshot that rather than inspiring improvements, his urgings were ignored.

Jarrett Released from Active Duty – Becomes Civilian Curator

The Harford Democrat article recording Jarrett’s retirement in 1966 contained the following brief comments regarding his release from active duty:

… Following his release from active duty in 1947, [Jarrett] continued the study of foreign materiel until the Korean War as civilian museum curator.

Jarrett on WWII Russian Ordnance

A further excerpt from the draft of his May, 1970 article contains Col. Jarrett’s typically pragmatic overview on the state of Russian ordnance during WWII and later:

Throughout the war we, along with the British, supported the Russian effort and sent Ivan boatload after boatload of equipment, fuel, various other supplies and food, and never even got thanks. But the Germans who first faced the Russian materiel and at the time easily forced the Soviets to retreat deep into the interior, later got up against some very remarkable Russian-designed ordnance. This material, in the final analysis of combat, surprised the Germans; and let us not forget that the Russian T-34 tank provided enormous support for the great Soviet offensives which eventually drove the Germans out of Russia. The Russian engineer was no fool, was brutally realistic and [was] eventually capable of producing such vast quantities of materiel, plus training of personnel, that one day Ivan drove the German armies out of Russia.

Many Russian pieces of ordnance were reliable and capable enough of excellent field performance that they were utilized by the Germans for combat replacement in the German Army. The Russian 7.62cm field gun, model of 1936, as one example, was used by the Germans in great numbers and eventually modified to improve its performance. It turned up in Libya in 1942. When I saw this piece I was deeply impressed, and from that time on I was anxious to examine any Russian piece of ordnance we could find. I was to see many of them prior to the war’s end, and again from Korea.

By the time we were involved in the follow-through for the D-Day venture in France, use of countless Russian pieces of ordnance by the Germans was found to be commonplace, and eventually we shipped a large collection of it as captured enemy materiel to Aberdeen. After the war we conducted a considerable examination of all these pieces and coupled it with reports made by the Germans (which we had captured), who had of course captured it first. Thus we managed to become well informed on all of it and its performance. When the Korean War broke out, we possessed priceless data and an understanding of the Russian equipment which we discovered was then in use by the North Koreans, including the Russian T-34 tanks equipped with the highly satisfactory Russian 85mm tank guns.

Jarrett Appointed Honorary Curator of the West Point Museum

Col. Jarrett’s friend and admirer Charles Yust, at the time the editor of the now long-defunct periodical Gun & Cartridge Record, who as discussed in Part III served under Jarrett at the Aberdeen Museum, recorded the following concerning a new accolade bestowed upon Col. Jarrett in 1952:

In the “Who’s Who” Department of our July [1952] issue, we ran the biography of Colonel G. B. Jarrett, and feel that it is in order to add a bit of new information which has recently come into our possession…

This was followed by an extract from an official letter dated November 16, 1952, signed by Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, appointing Jarrett an Honorary Curator of West Point Museum:

y Dear Colonel Jarrett:

In recognition of your standing as an authority in the field of Modern Ordnance and in acknowledgement of your generous activities in an advisory and consultive capacity… it gives me great pleasure to appoint you an Honorary Curator of the West Point Museum…

It is a distinction for the Museum that it may welcome you as an “ex officio” member of its staff, and I trust you will have no objections to the recording of your name as an Honorary Curator in appropriate future publications of the Military Academy and the Museum…

A Jarrett Retrospective on the Acid Test: Combat Performance

Jarrett’s draft article of May, 1970 contains the following retrospective thoughts:

In more than 50 years of curio collecting, I have owned or cared for and tested at Aberdeen well nigh countless pieces of ordnance. Many were extraordinary, and yet many many items were well nigh worthless. Some enjoyed amazing physics lab performance and fooled people into thinking them capable of great military potential, but on the battlefield they fell far short of such performance…

It has been my privilege to observe a lot of armored force equipment in action, made movies or stills of these tests, fired their guns and shot at them to observe their armor qualities, and long ago came to the conclusion that most tanks over the years had more penalizing points than good ones. In our Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen we have had a remarkable collection of wheeled or half- and full-tracked vehicles, headed under the general title of Armor. These have come from World Wars I and II and since. Of all the collection only maybe 4 or 5 were outstanding fighting vehicles, by which one might expect to affect the outcome of WWII or of modern warfare. I’d list them as far as WWII is concerned as the German Panzer IV, with long-barrel 7.5cm gun, the Panther with its super-long 7.5cm gun, the U.S. Shermans with the British 17 pdr. A.T. gun (which the British put on the Sherman tank), the U.S. Sherman M4A3E8 (better known as the “Easy 8″on which we had put the then-new 76mm gun, and lastly the famed Russian T-34/85. All these tanks were capable of good movement and their gun performance did great hurt to the enemy, and did affect combat operations favorably for the side in question.

Jarrett Retires as Curator of the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article frankly sums up some of the accomplishments, setbacks and tribulations of Col. Jarrett’s remarkable career on the occasion of his retirement as Curator of the Ordnance Museum:

Before his demobilization from active duty [in 1947], Colonel Jarrett was offered a permanent commission in the Regular Army, but he decided to remain at APG as a Civil Service employee and did so until his retirement in 1966. He built up the Foreign Material Branch and the Ordnance Museum and during the Korean War played an important part in evaluating Chinese and Russian weapons and equipment in comparison with our own. A short-sighted Chief of Ordnance permitted another scrap drive, duplicating one which took place… during World War II. On both occasions, priceless museum pieces were lost forever. His own collection also suffered from lack of care while he was away. Most of the planes were in bad shape. He planned to move them to his new home on an estate near Aberdeen, but shipping costs precluded it. Eventually he sold two of the planes and most of the other weapons and moved the rest to Aberdeen.

He trained the first Ordnance Technical Intelligence team which went to Korea, but the job was then given to the Ordnance School in 1951. With fine disregard for their own part in the matter, higher authority criticized him for not having had such teams ready when they were needed. He found shortcomings in our equipment and was not reticent about letting it be known, in spite of incurring the wrath of higher-ups who preferred not to rock the boat.

He frequently got along on only a few hours of sleep a night, his usual working day being about 18 hours. His energy was boundless, and yet he was and is no recluse. With all this, he lived a normal social life with his wife and one daughter who now is married to a young Regular Army officer.

Jarrett Makes Aberdeen’s Collection “The Largest in the World”

The April 14, 1966 Harford Democrat article marking Col. Jarrett’s retirement as Curator of the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum records that “He added, from his personal collection, 9,000 items to the museum, making it one of the largest and finest collections in the U.S. Army.”

The April 4, 1973 article in the same newspaper goes further, calling the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum “the largest consolidated collection of such material in the world.”

The Ordnance Museum is Closed: Collection Moved to a Small Barracks

The Harford Democrat article dated April 4, 1973, titled “New Museum to Open”, records that the old pre-WWI French steel “Truscon” building, which had long served as the Ordnance Museum, was closed indefinitely in 1968 and the building slated for conversion into the new, modern home for the Headquarters of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command.

The real reason behind this move was related to the author by long-time Ordnance expert Harold Johnson, who explained that there was a total freeze on the construction of new buildings at Aberdeen at the time, but that existing structures could be “improved”. Col. Jarrett had antagonized a number of highly-placed officers in the military by this time, and when all the possible locations for the new headquarters were surveyed, the building housing his Museum was selected. In the end the only feature that was saved was the concrete pad – the building itself was completely demolished and a totally new structure was erected on the original floor.

According to the article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance, the Ordnance Museum was thenceforth housed ignominiously “in a small, wooden barracks-type building and reduced (in terms of materiel actually on display) to a few carefully selected items and files of photographs.”

The 1973 Harford Democrat article concurs, stating that:

Despite many attempts to find a new home at the Proving Ground for the Ordnance artifacts, none were successful. It was decided to mothball the thousands of items rather than permit them to either deteriorate, be destroyed, or transferred to other installations and thereby losing the largest consolidated collection of such material in the world.

Consequently the job of labeling, recording, protecting and packing these items was begun. The larger items were moved to an outdoor area to augment an existing display of tanks, self-propelled weapons and the large field and railroad artillery weapons systems.

In 1968 the Ordnance Historical Exhibit was opened in a one-floor wooden barracks type structure. It contained a few hundred selected items, models and photographs.

Col. Icks pulls no punches in describing how Jarrett’s outspoken attitude had contributed to this public humbling of the importance of his work, and thus of himself:

It was a hard blow for this sincere and earnest man to reach the age of retirement, but an even harder blow was to have higher authority decide that his Museum Building was needed for other purposes and that all the contents should be placed in mothballs indefinitely.

This was the last job that he supervised, almost like a man attending his own funeral. After the Army reorganization which did away with the Ordnance Corps as such, APG became just one of many testing facilities now controlled by the Army Materiel Command. All the Defense experts seemed to be looking ahead and apparently saw no need to look back or even to look around to see what the competition is doing.

Colonel Jarrett fought that kind of smugness and is still fighting it. He believes with all his heart in the United States and cannot understand anyone putting personal prestige ahead of his country’s interests. Stuffed shirts are his favorite target and, as can be imagined, he has intensely loyal friends and intensely bitter enemies.

The Ordnance Technology Foundation and the New Museum Building

Characteristically, however, Jarrett bounced back. As recorded in the final excerpt from Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article,

… [Jarrett] did not take the placing of his beloved Museum on the shelf as final, but is working hard toward the building of an Ordnance Center of Technology at APG supported by private subscription…

The article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance continues, recording that:

… ground was broken on August 27, 1971 [and] the new building will dominate the center of the APG’s Foreign Tank and Artillery Park… Arranged around the building will be the entire collection of foreign tanks and artillery while, inside, small ordnance items will be displayed.

The value of the present collection has been appraised at $24 million – and this tremendous treasure of armament artifacts and information has been guarded and kept together almost single-handedly by Col. G. Burling Jarrett, U.S.A. (Ret.), who, however, is the first to call attention to the help that has been received over the years from individuals and groups who have the Nation’s defense interests close at heart.

The April 4, 1973 Harford Democrat article further records that:

… six years of dedicated labor by local citizens, businessmen and both retired and active U.S. Army officers will be culminated when the Ordnance Center of Technology Foundation, Inc. donates the new structure to the Army.

The museum construction was undertaken by the foundation, a private corporation.

Museum Size, and Jarrett’s Role, Severely Curtailed

Despite his Herculean efforts, described above, which “single-handedly” guarded and conserved “this tremendous treasure of armament artifacts and information”, and then his dedication in organizing the non-profit Foundation which raised the money for the new museum structure, Col. Jarrett had meanwhile seen his future role reduced to that of a mere “adviser” to the museum.

In addition, despite the best efforts of the Foundation, which had envisaged a building of some 300,000 square feet capacity, the money raised proved sufficient only to underwrite a much more modest structure, which measures some 10,000 square feet.

A Typical Jarrett Broadside Greets Plans to Curtail Exhibits

In an article published in the April 26, 1973 edition of the Baltimore Sun, the new curator described in detail how he planned to arrange only a comparatively few exhibits in the new museum, in effect utilizing only 15 percent of the available material.

Typically, Jarrett objected strenuously to these plans in a letter to the Sun Editor, which is reprinted as follows:

Sir: I have read your article (The [Baltimore] Sun, April 1) on the Ordnance Museum with considerable amazement. You were duped into the background, for the article is not only misleading but parts are downright incorrect and could only be the work of misrepresentation on the part of the person interviewed. The picture is very distorted.

The Ordnance Center of Technology Foundation has had a difficult time over the past seven – eight years to realize this goal, and quite frankly your article at this critical time comes as a shock. That the story could be so diverted from the facts is a dreadful sham – and by one who has only personal aggrandizement as a basis for it.

[Gordon W. Chaplin] may be a good history teacher but is no ordnance expert. To condemn 85 per cent of this famous collection to stay in the warehouse by his display arrangement certainly is a dreadful shame. The current design of the display media while exquisite is exceptionally wasteful of space.

It is a great shame that your article had to appear at this time, less than two months prior to dedication… I have spent more than 30 years of effort on making that collection and creating a building and I must repeat: to condemn 85 per cent of it to the warehouse is inexcusable.

G. Burling Jarrett, Colonel U.S.A. (Ret.),
President of the Board,
Ordnance Technology Foundation.
Aberdeen.

An excerpt from a one-page In Memoriam to G. Burling Jarrett, Colonel, United States Army Reserve, Retired, records that the new museum did open as scheduled, with Jarrett himself serving as master of ceremonies:

On May 18, 1973, the completed structure was dedicated and accepted by the Army in an impressive program. Colonel Jarrett served as master of ceremonies. Until his final illness, he continued to serve as an adviser to the museum.

A final excerpt from the May 19, 1973 article in the Harford Democrat states as follows:

Thousands of historical ordnance items presently in storage will see the light of day on May 19, 1973 when the new Ordnance Museum is… turned over to the U.S. Army and opened to the public.

Priceless and historically irreplaceable, this collection represents more than a century of [U.S. and foreign] ordnance development.

A Final Tribute, to an “Outstanding American”

A letter to the editor published in the March/April, 1972 issue of Ordnance, the journal of the American Ordnance Association, titled “Outstanding Americans”, by Hanson W. Baldwin, contained the following tribute to Col. Jarrett:

I am delighted that Col. G. Burling Jarrett’s single-minded devotion over many years has at last paid off in a new building for the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen… I well remember the days when Col. Jarrett, a born collector of ordnance of any kind, was fighting a lonely struggle for recognition of the importance of such a museum. For years the “museum” was his own back yard: only Col. Jarrett’s perseverance over the years overcame official indifference – and even opposition – lack of funds, and apathy.

The End of the Road

A final excerpt from the Harford Democrat of July 3, 1974 reads as follows:

Colonel George Burling Jarrett USAR (retired) died at his home in Churchville on Monday evening [July 1, 1974].

Col. Jarrett was Curator Emeritus of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground and his leadership within the Ordnance Center of Technology, Inc., a non-profit organization, resulted in the building of a new U.S. Army Museum at the Proving Ground. The structure was dedicated on May 18, and Col. Jarrett served as Master of Ceremonies.

He is survived by his wife, the former Marguerite Workman, a daughter, Mrs. Nancy Jarrett Travis of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and three grandsons, Michael, Richard and William Travis II.

Interment will be in Arlington National Cemetery at 1:30 p.m. [on July 5, 1974].

The name ArmaLite is synonymous with innovation and design excellence. As the company started it was ahead of the rest of the industry bringing new aircraft age technology into the firearms industry. Although the company has changed hands over the years, some things never change. The current president, Mark Westrom, has kept the legacy going by developing new members of the AR-family of rifles as well as enhancing the AR-10 and AR-15 rifle systems. The key to the survival and popularity of the AR-10 and AR-15 rifle systems is the rifle’s ability to adapt and evolve. That makes it timeless; some say 50 years old, some say 50 years young and still evolving, making the best even better.

At SHOT Show 2010, Westrom and ArmaLite introduced a product that will surely enhance not only his own rifles but will give the customer the ability to have the benefits of a kit that will match the monolithic upper receiver to their favorite existing barrel. Enter the ArmaLite SPR Mod 1.

The ArmaLite SPR Mod 1 is a collaboration between ArmaLite and Aero Precision, with Aero performing most of the design and tooling. The ArmaLite SPR Mod 1 is a kit that contains a true one piece upper receiver manufactured from a single 7075 T6 aircraft aluminum forging. Unique to the Mod 1, The Mil-Std 1913 rails at the 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions are removable. They can be replaced with a variety of rails.

What is unique about this system is that there are currently only three true monolithic upper receivers in the industry (ArmaLite, Colt, and LMT), but ArmaLite’s is the only one that allows installation of a barrel with a standard barrel extension. Other systems, which claim to be monolithic, are actually two pieces welded together or held together by screws.

All that is required for a customer to convert their existing carbine to SPR Mod 1 configuration is removal of their existing front sight base, delta ring/barrel nut assembly, replacement with the provided barrel nut, and reattachment of the front sight base with the gas tube installed. The ArmaLite SPR Mod 1 is universal. As the product stands right now the ArmaLite SPR Mod 1 upper receiver will take alternate-caliber barrels including 6.8mm Rem SPC, 6.5 Grendel, .204 Ruger, 5.45x39mm and .50 Beauwolf to name a few.

The benefits of the long 12 o’clock rail are many. One rail to attach optics, magnifiers and night vision with complete zero retention. Free floating the barrel offers an excellent accuracy enhancement with better cooling characteristics. All accessories are attached to the rail, not the barrel, and there is no chance of the barrel being bent from the downward pressure of a vertical pistol grip or upward pressure of a bipod. The shape and size of the air vents on the upper assure that fingers cannot go through to the hot barrel.

Built into the receiver is a fired cartridge case deflector as well as a forward assist. All rails are numbered enabling optics and accessories to be repeatedly placed on the receiver at the same location to avoid rezeroing.

Parts interchangeability has been kept with the ArmaLite SPR Mod 1. The upper receiver uses the same charging handle, bolt carrier group, forward assist assembly, ejection port dust cover assembly, gas tube, front sight bases and barrel extension as the standard M4 family of rifles. Keeping these parts commonality will be the largest selling point over any other monolithic receiver on the market today. No sharp edges and an excellent fit and finish is what we have come to expect from Westrom, and the Mod 1 provides it.

The Mod 1 kit includes: the upper receiver, barrel nut, Mil-Std 1913 rails, plain rails, torx wrench, screws as well as the barrel nut wrench. Provided with the rail panels is one Mil-Std 1913 and one plain rail, which has a cut for a detachable sling swivel. This enables the shooter to have a quick detach sling receptacle anywhere on the rail they wish. The kit comes complete in a box along with instructions on how to assemble the barrel.

In addition to a conversion kit, ArmaLite sells complete upper receiver groups so that a customer may simply switch an existing upper receiver group with the SPR Mod 1 system.

Last but not least, the SPR Mod 1 is offered is as a complete rifle. Both the rifle and the kit were sent as T&E’s for this article. The complete rifle came with a 16 inch, 1/7 inch chrome-moly-vanadium M4-profile chrome-plated barrel with compensator. The lower receiver was a standard ArmaLite lower receiver with six-position telescopic stock and standard pistol grip and was equipped with ArmaLite’s trademark heavy bolt catch.

The trigger is superb; it is ArmaLite’s proprietary two stage trigger. The first stage of ArmaLite’s trigger is very smooth and the second stage of the match-grade triggers break between 4.5 and 6 pounds. The Tactical Match grade triggers focused on the law enforcement market weigh in at approximately 8 lbs.

New Magpul High Speed Accessories

Taken the opportunity to fire a new high speed rifle, some of the newest Magpul accessories were chosen to use on the ArmaLite SPR Mod 1. Magpul has taken its rightful place in the industry as offering some of the finest accessories for the M16/M4-family of rifles in the world. They are loved equally by commercial, law enforcement and military customers. Magpul provides OEM for several companies whether it is the PMag or any of their high end stocks or other accessories.

The new ACS or Adaptive Combat Stock was used on the test rifle. This new stock provides the stock has two removable battery compartments along with an integral storage compartment. The stock comes with a .30 inch thick rubber butt pad. The friction lock has a lock that prevents it from moving at an inopportune moment.

The MIAD or MIssion ADaptable grip replaced the standard A2-style pistol grip. This is adaptable to the hand size of the shooter as both the front and backstrap are removable. The back comes with three different sizes and the front can be had with and without the finger rest swell. There is an internal storage compartment that can be bought separately in several configurations including battery storage, bolt/firing pin storage or spare ammo storage. Of any pistol grip this author has tried, this is by far the most comfortable.

Every rifle must have back-up sights. The new Magpul MBUS or Magpul Back-up Sight were chosen. Both front and rear are provided by Magpul. First, both have a lever to press for release. But another feature built into the sight was in an emergency you may not have time to hit both levers. By smacking the front of the sights with your hand they both engage. The rear sight is adjustable for windage only and has a flip up small aperture and has a larger aperture. The front has a standard front sight post which is adjusted with a tool or cartridge tip.

The RVG or Rail Vertical Grip debuted at the SHOT Show as well. This is unique in two ways. First, it is much shorter than the standard KAC grip. Second, is that it comes with adapters so it can be mounted to a handguard without a rail. The contour was very comfortable and easy to maneuver.

The product that has really put Magpul on the map is their PMag. The PMag is perhaps the finest magazine ever made for this platform of weapons. The PMag is made of a proprietary polymer that is stronger than aluminum or steel – so much so as you can run these magazines over with a truck and they still work. The magazine does not swell nor suffer from feed lip creep. The magazine uses an anti-tilt follower with a constant curve construction so the cartridges stack in their normal curvature in the magazine. The magazine can be had with and without a clear window with round reference numbers and an orange mark on the spring to let you know the ammo status of the magazines. These magazines have been proving themselves in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Many foreign countries have adopted these magazines for their M4 rifles as well.

At The Range

The ArmaLite SPR Mod 1 was taken to the range on an 85 degree day and tested at 100 yards. The optic chosen was the Trijicon ACOG (TA31RCO-M4CP). This is a 4x scope with a tritium lamp as well as fiber optics. The ACOG is ideal power for a combat rifle due to quick target acquisition. An excessively high power telescopic sight has a narrow field of view that isn’t practical at typical short combat ranges. This optic is standard issue for the U.S. Marine Corps issue M4 carbines.

The ammunition chosen was Silver State Armory 5.56mm M193 ball for function testing and Silver State Armory 77 grain open tip match for accuracy. SSA is known for manufacturing some of the highest quality duty and match ammunition in the industry at competitive pricing. Silver State Armory just moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Packwood, WA where they have a 100 meter underground range and the facility meets United States Department of Defense requirements to manufacture military contract ammunition. They manufacture their own brass. All SSA ammunition is loaded with custom blends of powder geared towards the specific loading. They offer several loading in 5.56mm, 7.62mm NATO, 6.8SPC and .499 LWRC. They are also one of the only ammunition manufacturers in the United States to manufacture armor piercing rifle ammunition in 5.56mm, 7.62mm NATO and 6.8SPC.

More than 500 rounds of SSA M193 were fired with no malfunctions of any sort. Both PMags and C-Products stainless steel magazines were used in testing the rifle. With the 77 grain ammunition, groups consistently hit around 1 to 1-1/2 inches. This is extremely respectable for a combat grade chrome lined barrel: not to mention standard M4 profile and not a heavy barrel.

The SPR Mod 1 is an accurate, beautiful and extremely flexible rifle. As increasing numbers enter the market you’ll find them offered with a variety of barrel lengths, materials, calibers, and weights to satisfy the customers requiring an accurate and flexible rifle for anything from hunting to law enforcement or military use. Magpul’s accessory items and magazines are a sure hit when used with the Mod 1.

Since the rifle’s inception in the late 1950s, the M16 was far more accurate than it was given credit for. With time it has gotten better and better. ArmaLite continues its legacy of innovation and development of modern and futuristic firearms like the SPR Mod 1. Westrom has made sure the focus of the original company has flourished.

It was hot and unusually humid in Springfield, Massachusetts during the summer of 1953. Yet, it was not nearly as sweltering as most of the summers he had endured back in his home state of Alabama. Weather aside, LTC Roy E. Rayle took an early liking to his new assignment. His wife and two young sons were in love with the beautiful on-post housing supplied by the Army, and his new job was challenging, exciting, and important. He was to direct 350 people in the Research and Development of small arms at the Springfield Arsenal. He had leadership training from the Army and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. He felt well prepared for any challenge.

In his first job briefing, the Colonel in charge updated him on the status of the programs now under his control. It was a glowing report, with no major challenges on the horizon. Two Springfield Armory-designed guns in trials at Ft Benning were reportedly doing very well. The T161 machine gun and the T44 rifle were both undergoing user tests there. These two would later be designated the M60 machine gun, and the M14 rifle, respectively. Assuming successful trials, these would become the first small arms in U.S. history chambered for the new 7.62mm NATO round. Rayle’s predecessor had decided not to send a representative to the test site for technical support and feedback. As a result, not much had been heard from Ft. Benning since the testing began. Everyone assumed that the tests were going well. Going so well, in fact, that his new boss spent most of their meeting time reviewing the other developmental weapons now under Rayle’s direction.

LTC Rayle enjoyed a blissful honeymoon that lasted a full two days. Suddenly, the Armory received an urgent and most disturbing phone call from U.S. Army Ordnance’s Chief of Small Arms Research and Development, Colonel René Studler. TheT44 was performing poorly in testing. A Pentagon representative was already on his way to the test site and Springfield Armory was to immediately dispatch a representative to Ft. Benning. Who would they send? The new guy, of course, LTC Roy Rayle.

Once at Ft. Benning, it didn’t take Rayle long to figure out the major problem. The T44 was having cartridge feeding issues that stemmed from too much friction in the magazine. Rayle asked them, “How much time do we have to fix the problem.” He didn’t like the answer. Only eleven days of testing remained. Results had to be tallied and submitted to Army Field Forces headquarters at Ft. Monroe, VA. Ft. Benning had been directed to follow a rigid timeline.

It wasn’t only the gun that was having a problem. Since his arrival there, Rayle sensed a certain animosity from the test crew. It wasn’t toward him necessarily, but rather it was directed toward Springfield Arsenal. After he examined the T44 test weapons more closely, he understood why. The rifle was far from production ready. T44 receivers had been made from an earlier prototype, the T20E2 that used the longer M1 round (.30-06). To reduce the bolt travel in the rifle for the shorter 7.62mm NATO round (.308 Winchester,) filler blocks had been placed inside the receiver. The fix worked well enough. That is, right up to the point where the blocks loosened and caused malfunctions. This was only the beginning. Designers at the Armory had taken other shortcuts that made it blatantly obvious the T44 was little more than a cobbled-up prototype. In stark contrast was the rifle submitted by the competitor. The entry from Fabrique Nationale (FN) of Belgium was a well-made and well-thought out design. FN’s rifle was designed for in line firing that directed the recoil load straight into the shoulder. This greatly aided the shooter in controlling the weapon’s hefty recoil. The rifle we know today as the FAL was then designated by the Army as the T48. It featured smooth feeding, and a simple operating mechanism that was easy to field strip and service. The general consensus at Ft. Benning was that the Belgian design was far more mature than the T44 and better prepared for user tests at Ft. Benning. The test crew welcomed the amiable on-site FN representative and viewed his presence as part of FN’s commitment to winning the competition.

The Belgians had spent their own money on the development of the T48, making numerous design changes in answer to every whim of the American military. They converted their original design from the .280 British round and developed a simple top loading magazine charging clip that the Americans demanded. FN spared no expense in producing test prototypes for the Army and arranged for their top designer, Mr. Ernst Vervier, to be on standby at the test site to oversee weapon repair and to answer questions.

American regulations made the testing unfair to FN. As the Belgian company was foreign owned, the company was not allowed to obtain any of the information from the classified test results. FN was allowed to know how their own T48 was doing, but no information was provided as to how the T44 was faring. In spite of this, FN’s Managing Director, Mr. René Laloux, somehow knew a great deal about how the testing was going, stating at the end of this sequence of testing, “….between the two rifles, T44 and T48 FN, the final conclusions were in favour of the F.N. rifle.”

Before Rayle left Ft. Benning, the Colonel in charge pulled him aside to receive one more embarrassing admonishment. This time it was for the shabby performance by Springfield Armory on the T161 machine gun prototypes. Like the T44’s, these were failing miserably, too. There were failures to feed, broken firing pins, and ruptured cartridges that spewed debris all over the test cell. The weapon was not only performing poorly, but engineering support was lacking. What about that tripod Springfield sent for the machine gun tests, the Colonel demanded? His test crew was expecting a new design but received a cobbled up tripod instead. What was the Armory doing with all of its time and money? Rayle had no answers and none of it was his fault, of course, but now he was in charge of R&D and he now owned all the blame. Rayle was not even three weeks on the job and his two major programs were already in big trouble. It was an embarrassment; for him, and for the Springfield Armory.

LTC Rayle returned to Springfield on 20 July, anxious to get his team working on solutions to the T44’s problems. He began with a briefing on the history of the weapon. It was not a happy tale. The original design intent was to develop a .30 caliber rifle weighing no more than 7 pounds that offered semi and full automatic fire. Design goals included: reduce coil, accommodation of a new short round, and firing from a detachable box magazine. The purpose of the new rifle was to replace the M1 Rifle, the BAR, the M2 Carbine, and the M3A1 .45 caliber submachine gun. Four weapons and three different calibers replaced by a single weapon. This would greatly improve logistic support in the field. Since the end of World War II, numerous rifle designs had been developed and trialed until only the T44 remained.

“Who is the engineer in charge of the T44?” Rayle demanded. There was no single answer. The project started and stopped so often and priorities shifted so much that there really wasn’t one individual who followed the program from the beginning to now. John Garand had been responsible for some of the early designs, and Earl Harvey for some of the others. Garand had retired only a couple of weeks before Rayle came to Springfield, and was no longer available to the team.

The rifle’s status was a confusing mess that was compounded by the military’s “big picture.” How was the war with Japan brought to an end? It was with the atomic bomb, of course. There was a new thinking and general consensus by the military’s top brass. Wars would now be fought and won with nuclear weapons. Small arms would only be needed for a short cleanup with rifle wielding soldiers. What rifle did they need? For a totally demoralized enemy, almost any firearm would do.

As Rayle planned the direction forward, more bad news arrived. Classified Ft. Benning test results had been leaked to Newsweek magazine. The 20 July 1953 issue featured an article claiming that the Belgian T48 was far ahead of the American T44, and predicted it would soon be announced that FN was the winner. Those at the Armory doubted the veracity of the report. Long afterwards, they learned that the Newsweek article was totally accurate. Ft. Monroe had secretly decided the FN T48 was the winner. They also decided to allow the T44 to continue with the next scheduled round of testing in Arctic conditions, only to serve as a yardstick to gage how much better the T48 would perform in cold weather conditions.

At the end of August, Rayle gathered his group together and offered them three options: The first one was to build up some repair parts to refurbish the guns after testing and submit the guns for trial in the same configuration. The second was to address the gun’s major problems so the rifle would not be a total embarrassment to Springfield Armory. The third option was to use the remaining three months to fix everything that was broken. This included testing in both ambient and Arctic conditions with the objective to beat out the FN candidate.

Much was at stake. First and foremost was the avoidance of a huge loss of face for the United States, should a foreign weapon win the competition. Chief of Ordnance, General Ford, was already taking hits from the recent episodes of poor performance of Springfield designs. The decision of Rayle’s team was unanimous. They would pull out all the stops in order to win the Arctic competition. From what he knew of the two designs, Rayle recognized this would not be an easy task. The T44 had to overcome major design problems while the major issues with the FN gun were mostly metallurgical problems. From his engineering background he knew these could easily be solved by material or process changes.

Rayle was no stranger to solving difficult technical problems on a tight schedule. He once undertook a wartime assignment where his job was to discover the cause of mid air bomb collisions. The subsequent detonations, which occurred soon after release, were responsible for downing the very aircraft that dropped them. Rayle worked around the clock, conducting analysis, as well as filming and retrieving dropped bombs. He expeditiously determined the cause and verified the solution. Many bomb crews owe their lives to his timely solution.

To solve T44’s problems he decided on a direct approach, so he listed all of the technical problems in accordance with their severity. Once identified, they would be addressed one by one. Right away it became evident that he would need personnel and manufacturing capacity. Even though he had 300 people working for him, redirecting some of them to the T44 improvement would be detrimental to the schedule for the project they were working on. It wasn’t just warm bodies he needed either. He required top notch design talent – someone with expertise at the level of John Garand. Garand had earlier been approached, but refused after he learned that returning to work at the Armory would require him to give up his retirement pay. Getting Garand back this way was out of the question.

Rayle found a solution that solved both problems at once. A nearby machine shop, Mathewson Tool Company, was well known to the firearms industry for its excellent manufacturing capability. Their reputation was due, to a large extent, to the manufacturing prowess of its owner, Dave Mathewson. Rayle’s solution was simple. Mathewson would get a contract to produce any new T44 components that were needed and John Garand would work for him as a consultant. Garand could still collect his Army retirement along with a paycheck from Mathewson.

The T44’s number one problem was feeding cartridges from the magazine. They all knew that proper feeding is the primary key to the development of a reliable semi or full automatic weapon. Examining the test records, the Springfield team realized that rounds fed poorly from new magazines and much better from ones that were worn in. Their magazine improvement program included some spring and configuration design changes, but the major improvement was the application of what was then a relatively new development; a dry film lubricant called molybdenum disulphide. The new coating provided lubrication while the magazine was new and wore off at the same rate as the magazine wore in. Problem solved!

The buttstock was reinforced to improve it for grenade launching. For the Arctic testing, an enlarged trigger guard was developed to accept a gloved trigger finger. New designs were verified by testing in ambient, dusty, and cold conditions, until acceptable function was achieved. More than once, they found that parts that worked in ambient conditions were totally unreliable at low temperature. Rayle was impressed by the technical expertise of his team. Engineering technicians carefully conducted each test, taking careful notes and changing one thing at a time, so they knew if each individual fix was effective or not. By mid December the much-improved T44’s were sent to Alaska, meeting up with the T48’s that had been sent from the FN plant in Liege, Belgium. This time, Rayle decided, the Springfield team would send technical representatives to support the testing, replacing them every two weeks so that a new pair of eyes were available for a fresh look to address every problem that occurred. Rayle had recalled previous mistakes, and was determined not to repeat them.

As testing got underway, the T44’s were not problem free, but worked much better in the cold conditions than the T48’s, which suffered from a loss of power. These problems were reported to FN who once again dispatched their design expert, Ernst Vervier to witness the problem and hopefully provide a solution. Unfortunately, Mr. Vervier could only come up with one on-site solution to cure the sluggish operation. His only option was to enlarge the gas port to give the weapon more power. Determining the proper gas port diameter on any weapon is a very tricky undertaking, usually requiring extensive testing. Mr. Vervier was well aware of the risk associated with changing it, and knew it was a sword that cut both ways. It solved the immediate power problem but the higher bolt velocity worked all of the components harder causing an increased number of broken parts. Vervier tried to explain them away as normal parts life issues, but the malfunctions stood, counting against the T48 on the competition scorecard.

In spite of the redesigns, there were still plenty of problems with the T44. Those miserable filler blocks that shortened the T20 receiver were continually working loose and grenade launching was still problematic. At the end of February, it was clear that the T44 had come out ahead and was announced the winner of the cold weather testing. Cautious military commanders at the Pentagon recoiled a bit from this latest development. Had they been too hasty in discounting their own American entry? To the joy of Rayle’s team, Ft. Monroe announced that the next round of testing would again include the T44. Possibly this time it might be considered as a serious contender.

Rayle’s visit to command headquarters at Ft. Monroe was a disappointment. Rather than showing any enthusiasm for the success of the American weapon, most of the discussion centered on the Americanization of the T48. It was if the recent T44 success had never happened. The entire U.S. defense industry was based on English inch-system dimensions. With no easy way to introduce a metric-designed weapon into U.S. production, it would be necessary to convert the entire T48 drawing package to the inch-system. At the same time, it was also important to convert the European format drawing into one more recognizable in the U.S. The good news was that the Canadians were interested in helping with these tasks, since they had already decided to adopt the FN design as their service rifle.

To his dismay, he learned that Springfield Armory was to assist in the metric conversion. Now his R&D department faced a huge challenge. It would be necessary for them to do a near perfect job with the conversion. Should even one component be manufactured incorrectly as a result of the conversion, the failure would likely be viewed as an effort to sabotage the competitor. And how would anyone know? Easy. Competing right alongside the U.S. made T48 would be the same metric guns made at the FN factory in Belgium to assure the American conversion was flawless.

Rayle could not let anything jeopardize the non-metric T48 design and subsequent testing. The Armory was already in trouble with Congress and some branches of the military, accused of being wasteful, inefficient, and some even said incompetent. Springfield Armory had no friends in the U.S. firearms industry either. Concerned firearms manufacturers had insisted on a meeting with him, displeased that Springfield Armory was taking work they believed could be more efficiently performed by private industry. A mediocre conversion job could sound the Armory’s death knell.

Rayle went back to Springfield prepared for the direction forward. He would farm out the metric conversion to U.S. industry. The industry would be totally unbiased and if anything, supportive. This would be an opportunity for them to tool up for U.S. production of what might become the next U.S. service rifle. Harrington and Richardson won the contract for the conversion and the production of 500 inch-system T48 rifles.

Undaunted by these new developments, the luxury of additional time and the recent miracle they pulled off with the Arctic testing gave Rayle the time he needed to beat the T48 in the next round of testing. In June of 1954, Dave Mathewson delivered the first T44E4, a rifle with a proper length receiver that had been designed with the aid of John Garand. The T44E4 looked good and was a full pound lighter than the T48.

Excited about the work done by Mathewson and Garand, Rayle took the rifle home that same night to examine it more closely. Sitting in the kitchen with the rifle in his lap, Rayle thought back on the ease at which the FN rifle could be field stripped. “The T44E4 was easy to strip too,” he thought. Or was it? He disassembled the T44E4 a couple more times to convince himself. Then a better idea came to him. Relying on her unfamiliarity with firearms, he asked his wife to leave the dishes for a moment in order to try her hand at it. She succeeded for the most part, but floundered, when trying to remove the bolt.

The next day Rayle called Dave Mathewson and recounted the previous night’s field stripping exercise. Dave agreed to look into it, and sure enough the next models delivered had extra cuts to facilitate disassembly. After thirteen each of the T48’s and T44E4’s were delivered, the guns were sent in opposite directions. Arctic testing would continue in Alaska while Ft. Benning would be supplied five of each type for user testing. By the spring of 1955, it was concluded that the weapons had an equal number of deficiencies, but the Board had a clear preference for the T44. At the conclusion of testing in November 1955 the malfunction rates were: T44–1.4%, inch-system T48–2.4%, and FN made T48-2.4 %.

Design refinements of both weapons and testing continued through most of 1956 with the final report indicating that either rifle was suitable for Army use. The lighter weight, ease of manufacture, non-adjustable gas system, fewer components, and slight edge on reliability gave the Board reasons to make their choice the T44E4. Official notification was not made until June 1957, but by then Rayle had been reassigned as the Ordnance Adviser to the First Field Army of the Republic of China, in Taiwan.

The teams led by LTC Roy E. Rayle had overcome great odds, beating out one of the finest service rifles ever developed. Without his engineering and leadership skills, the history of U.S. small arms would look quite different than it does today.

For many years, Lone Wolf Distributors (LWD) of Oldtown, Idaho has built a reputation providing high quality parts and accessories for Glock handguns at reasonable prices. Most notably is their diverse catalogue of aftermarket barrels that include a number of conventionally rifled alternatives for all Glock models. These can be had in stock lengths, extended lengths to satisfy Canadian legal requirements or handgun hunters, extended threaded versions for sound suppressor owners, and conversion barrels that permit the firing of alternate ammunition (such as 9mm in a .40 pistol). They have also built a quiet reputation of innovation that has included their own versions of popular Glock items and those not available from the original manufacturer such as extended slides for certain models.

LWD unveiled their latest innovation at the 2010 SHOT show in Las Vegas, NV; a replacement polymer frame with modular interchangeable grip back straps to accommodate shooters with smaller grip preferences. This new frame is called the Timberwolf, and like an original Glock frame, is a serial numbered part that must be transferred like any other firearm. The first of these were produced as prototypes and distributed in the summer of 2010 to customers willing to give them an immediate 1,000 round test drive. The Timberwolf is intended as a replacement for the original frame while making use of all original slide and internal components from the host gun. The one tested for this article was assembled with a LWD slide and barrel in .40 S&W, and further tested with an original slide and barrel from a Glock counterpart (Model 22).

Some of the Timberwolf features include:

• Oversized magazine release button (previously available from LWD as a user modification for existing Glock models)
• 3 channel accessory rail that fits most existing Glock compatible lights and mounts
• Extended beavertail
• Two grip back strap panels (one straight, one curved)
• Textured grip sides and front strap finger grooves with trigger guard undercut
• Tapered frame to match beveled face of LWD slides

When assembling the Timberwolf, the only specialized parts required are a trigger/ejector housing from a slim frame model and a late generation locking block, which are available from LWD if the host Glock is of an earlier vintage. Otherwise, it accepts all original parts and most qualified Glock armorers should be able to assemble the finished product easily. The Timberwolf looks well designed cosmetically and internally. The seams and fit of the back strap panels are snug and there are locking block cutouts absent from earlier Glock models where tiny frame cracks were known to develop.

The grip texture on the front is excellent allowing for good retention but not so sharp as to be uncomfortable. The rear of the grip is significantly smoother and could be improved if retextured to match the front. The back strap panels are removed by pressing the hook internally within the magazine well and pushing downward. The early versions could also be removed with a sharp impact to the bottom of a seated magazine while firmly gripped by overcoming the hook tension with direct force. The downside of this fact was that a sharp magazine seating motion could dislodge the back of the grip. This was more likely with the smaller of the two grip panels initially tested but not a problem with the larger one for some reason and subsequent versions seem to work flawlessly. The larger panel was meant to feel similar to a SIG Sauer grip shape and the smaller panel is simply the smallest grip you can find for a Glock handgun: no grip reduction could ever do better.

Test firing the Timberwolf was accomplished with both a Glock slide and barrel and a LWD slide and barrel. Accuracy was good for each but slightly better with the original Glock parts. Reliability was excellent with either slide when using the original Glock barrel; however, most reloaded ammunition and a few varieties of factory ammunition had feeding problems using the LWD barrel. This includes reloaded ammunition specifically tested by hand chambering the cartridges in the barrel in lieu of a chamber gauge prior to their use. LWD barrels are known to have tight chambers that fully support the case and this makes them less forgiving when it comes to feeding and chambering reliability. For customers with problems shooting reloads, LWD offers a number of suggestions and remedies including chamber modifications they’ll do to customer specifications.

Most factory ammunition functioned reliably with the occasional stoppage just short of achieving a full lock up in battery and one failure to fully eject a fired case in 700 rounds. This should not be a problem once the parts are sufficiently broken in and/or appropriate lubrication is applied. This pistol was assembled dry and thoroughly tested without lubrication for the first 1,000 rounds. No other cycling problems were identified, although ejected cartridge cases tended to have a diverse distribution and a number went to the left (a few even struck the shooter in the forehead). When the ejector was replaced with one intended for a .40 S&W Glock pistol, the ejection pattern normalized.

When reloading the pistol, the magazine seated and was locked adequately by the release button, although there appeared to be some up and down slop in the final seat position when locked into place, but no reliability consequences of this were identified. The magazine fit in the well is snug to the point of not allowing the loaded or unloaded magazine to drop free unless generation 4 magazines are used; however, LWD has assured the author that this issue was rectified for the final production models. A cutout on the lower front area of the grip gives access to the magazine to grip and remove it but no such cutout exists in the back so this task requires more dexterity than one would like. Because the thickness of the grip sides is greater than the width of the stock magazine floor plate, gripping the magazine from the side is not easy unless an extended floor plate is installed.

Both the LWD slide and barrel are stainless steel with a black oxide coating that matches the frame nicely. LWD barrels are conventionally rifled with 6 sharp lands/grooves and a left hand twist. For unknown reasons, this particular barrel would come to rest in battery in one of two positions: normal (fully parallel with the top of the slide) or slightly below. In the normal position, direct pressure to the top of the barrel would snap it into the lower position but not unlock the action in any way. This occurred with either slide and the only noticeable effect from this condition is a slightly off center firing pin impact that never caused a misfire.

The LWD slide has fine sharp serrations both front and back and a tapered forward contour that matches the Timberwolf frame and is similar to the subcompact Glock pistols. The loaded chamber indicator extractor functioned perfectly and the slide shape conforms to the most current ejection port profile with the 15 degree rear angle. The only exterior markings are a small Lone Wolf logo on the right rear portion of the slide; internally the slide is marked “LONE WOLF” with the designated caliber. Front sight cutout and rear dovetail match standard Glock sight dimensions.

As with any new product, some improvements are likely in the near future and Lone Wolf’s beta-test marketing strategy should help this process considerably. After 2/3 of the first 1,000 rounds, a small crack developed on one side of the frame by the left rear corner of the locking block. A similar problem was common in 1st and early 2nd generation Glock pistols and like those early Glocks, this presented no problem with functionality and did not appear to worsen. Because this was the first of that kind, LWD requested a return of the frame for immediate replacement and study. It was later discovered by LWD staff that the cause was the installation of an older locking block by the author – in other words, operator error. The subsequent replacement frame with correct locking block showed no such faults in subsequent use.

My list of desired changes is short and includes a looser magazine well for drop-free reloading with early magazines, improved grip back strap texture, and some kind of rear magazine well cutout so that the magazine can be pinched between two fingers and removed if stuck. Regarding the LWD barrel and slide, chamber modifications to improve feeding reliability and wider slide serrations that are not quite as sharp would round out the list. The barrel modifications were already completed for this particular barrel and the results are enhanced reliability.

The SIG Sauer 556 rifle model strikes many as a valid option to the AR-15/M16 platform ever since its introduction in the U.S. In its original offering, the SIG556 was chambered in 5.56mm with it accepting AR-15/M16 magazines – a necessity for it to have any chance in the U.S. market. What many may not realize due to the SIG556 accepting AR-15/M16 magazines is that it is closely related to the Kalashnikov AK in actual operating method. It utilizes a gas piston operating rod system with a rotating bolt and carrier very similar to the AK’s in configuration. Two major differences are quickly evident between the SIG and AK method. This first consists of the recoil spring being incorporated around the operating rod versus placed at the rear of the bolt carrier in the original Kalashnikov design. The SIG two-position adjustable gas system is the other difference allowing for the SIG not to be over pressured and thus more refined in operation.

The SIG operating rod system is often referred to as the Porsche of AK designs due to the tighter tolerances and better workmanship found in SIG weapons compared to other manufacturers using the AK as a basis of design. The gas piston operating system keeps the action cleaner, cooler, and overall more reliable. It also allows the use of side folding stocks to reduce overall dimensions of the rifle when needed. These are all positive attributes, especially considering the recent rush to create gas piston ARs due to the increased reliability factor. SIG Sauer recently fully embraced the Kalashnikov heritage by introducing the SIG556 Russian model chambered in 7.62×39. The 556 Russian accepts AK47 magazines and is a nod to the previous experience with the 556 line-up designed to accept AR-15/M16 magazines. Any new firearm introduction is more readily received if use of proprietary magazine is avoided.

Anyone looking for a hard-hitting carbine will appreciate the SIG556 Russian. The functionality of a rifle utilizing AK47 magazines incorporating a proven gas piston operating rod system with a heritage tied to the legendary SIG550 is hard to deny. SIG manufacturing quality combined with the means to mount any optic of choice on the 556 Russian’s flattop upper receiver represents the AK design coming full circle. Combining this with quick handling and an ergonomic rifle design that is easily transported, especially with the stock folded, is a further reinforcement. The SIG556 Russian integrates excellent accuracy from the 16-inch barrel with efficient handling and maneuverability. Thus, no matter the situation, whether it is a rural setting with longer distances encountered or more urban requiring CQB style tactics, the SIG556 Russian can satisfy the mission. This is due to SIG’s well earned reputation for ruggedness and reliability combined with the 7.62×39 cartridge. Lessons rediscovered in Iraq and Afghanistan about terminal ballistics serves to enhance the 7.62×39 credentials. 7.62×39 load offerings range from 122g-154gr FMJ, HP, and SP perform very similar to the .30-30 in terms of ballistic performance. A recently introduced Hornady 123gr SST offering is further proof that the AK47 has come to stay in the U.S. The Kalashnikov long-stroke gas piston operating system, especially when tweaked in the form of the SIG550 rendition, is a benchmark in terms of reliability for other actions.

The SIG556 Russian features a flat-top upper receiver with a Picatinny rail for mounting optics or other aiming devices. Recent trends in fighting rifles would indicate the design intent for the SIG556 Russian is to mount some sort of low powered magnified optic or red dot as the primary sighting tool. Along these lines a SIG STS 081 red dot optic is shipped with the rifle. It was decided that a magnified optic would better serve the SIG556 Russian.

The SIG556 Russian chambered in 7.62×39 weighs 7 pounds, measures 36 inches with the telescopic stock fully extended, 34.5 inches collapsed, and 27.1 inches folded. The folding adjustable for length stock positively latches when closed and unfolds securely for steady shouldering. The A2 flash suppressor uses a standard .5×28 thread pattern for mounting. SIG installs a two-stage trigger and ambidextrous safety on the 556 Russian. SIG uses aircraft grade aluminum alloy forgings for the lower receiver. The SIG556 Russian has a 16-inch military grade cold hammer forged barrel with 1:9.5 twist. The 556 Russian is an intriguing hybrid of AK/AR/SIG rifle features. SIG operating mechanism that is ultimately derived from the AK, using AK magazines chambered in the prototypical Soviet/Russian 7.62×39 cartridge, with AR operating controls such as bolt hold-open latch and ambidextrous safety with flattop style upper receiver for easy installation of optics.

The SIG556 Russian upper hinges open ala AR design with bolt group and gas piston removed per provided directions and trigger group exposed in the lower. Barrel/chamber cleaning is easily accessed as is the bolt group and piston operating rod. One interesting side note is that the upper of the SIG556 Russian bears the serial number of the weapon compared to the lower of the AR-15. Overall, cleaning of the SIG556-series takes little time with the bolt group needing little more than a wipe off and re-lubrication. The Nitron finish on the upper and hard coat anodized aluminum lower keeps exterior concerns to a minimum.

It was decided to take full advantage of the 556 Russian’s flattop upper by mounting multiple optics on the SIG556 Russian during testing. A 3.5x ACOG TA11H model with green horseshoe reticle was mounted on the 556 Russian to wring the most out of the rifle. Along these same lines a Leupold Mk 4 CQ/T 1-3x was also utilized. In addition to low magnification battle optics, a Leupold Mk 4 2.5-8x was employed to ascertain the 556 Russian’s accuracy potential and could be left on if individual user chose to go this route: a low power setting for quick target acquisition at close range, a turn of the knob to 8x for longer or precision shots as the mission dictates. The optic intended to be left on the SIG556 Russian after accuracy testing would be a Trijicon ACOG or Leupold Mk 4 CQ/T. The ACOG sight assisted in engaging targets at close distances with its green reticle easy to pick up rapidly. Both sights offered the capability to engage multiple targets in rapid sequence compared to open sights, while at the same time providing adequate accuracy out to a couple hundred yards. The Trijicon and Leupold reticles superimpose an aim point on the target while not totally obscuring the target due to the center dots not being that large. As many “maturing” shooters can attest to, the single focus plane reticle is easier to shoot accurately than coordinating front and rear sights. The 7.62×39 round’s trajectory is conducive to making hits out to 300 yards without having to resort to excessive hold over; 3 inches high at 100 yards produces a 200 yard zero with -15 inches at 300 yards.

Multiple 7.62×39 loads were tested with the SIG Sauer 556 Russian such as Hornady, Wolf, Barnaul, Egyptian and Yugoslavian surplus. Barnaul Silver Bear zinc-plated and Wolf Ammunition steel cased 122gr and 124gr loads hovered in the sub 3 inch range at 100 yards with surplus Egyptian and Yugoslavian 7.62×39 producing similar groups. The long anticipated Hornady 123gr SST bullet mated to steel cases are starting to arrive on dealers’ shelves and was tested with the SIG556 Russian. It seems that the original Hornady 7.62×39 loads that featured the V-Max bullet is being replaced with the SST bullet type, which represents a more controlled expansion with its bullet construction in lieu of the more varmint style V-Max construction. The SST loads delivered accuracy in the 1.5 inch range at 100 yards. The SIG556 Russian combined with Trijicon or Leupold optics mated to quality ammunition in the form of the Hornady 123gr SST is what many AK connoisseurs have been waiting for. There are many pages written in magazines and on various internet forums about what it would take to turn the 7.62×39 AK into more of a general purpose rifle. The hold-up to more effective use of the AK at ranges past 100 yards usually revolves around solid scope mounting and ammunition of greater quality than what is offered in the surplus realm. The SIG Sauer 556 Russian solves this conundrum.

Most range testing utilized the Wolf Ammunition Military Classic 124gr FMJ load. The steel cased Wolf Ammunition and brass cased surplus Egyptian/Yugo surplus ammunition performed without issue. Magazine change drills turned out to be more AK like than AR in terms of manipulation techniques. The SIG556 Russian does not have a bolt hold open feature after the last round is fired. However, a bolt hold open latch is incorporated. Magazine changes resort to either reaching over or under the rifle with your left hand to work the bolt recharging the chamber, or tilting the rifle over with the right hand on the pistol grip and work action with left hand, or switch rifle over to left hand and work bolt with right hand. None of these techniques were particularly hard to master, but different from what dyed-in-the-wool AR operators will be accustomed to. A word of hard learned experience with reloading the SIG556 Russian in that the windage knob on the Leupold Mk 4 2.5-8x scope (and most other classic turret scopes) dictates an underneath finger pull action on the SIG556 Russian’s bolt handle versus a more aggressive “grip-n-rip” pure AK style.

The folding telescopic rear stock is an immediate advantage found on the SIG556 compared to a traditional AR rifle with its buffer tube preventing a folding stock option. SIG is now using a folding stock reminiscent of the design found on the classic SIG550 compared to other types that accompanied early 556 variants. The folding telescoping stock, once deployed, is very sturdy and does not exhibit any side-to-side or up-and-down wiggle. The stock has multiple lengths of pull adjustments so a user can find what best suits individual needs, especially if wearing body armor. Multiple sling attachment points come standard on the 556 Russian, including a single point option. A BLACKHAWK! single point sling was attached for this evaluation.

Range testing commenced with functionality assessment consisting of dumping multiple magazines at several targets in rapid fashion once sight zeros were verified. Any fighting rifle, regardless of chambering, must be reliable to be worthy of consideration. Once the SIG556 Russian proved reliable, it was then put through its paces on different rifle courses of fire that were set up for a pending law enforcement competition held at Echo Valley Training Center. It was quickly ascertained that the SIG556 Russian had a much more substantial recoil impulse compared to its 5.56mm brethren. This is not hard to fathom considering the difference in cartridges. Magazine changes, shooting from the non-dominant shoulder and unconventional positions around barricades helped to evaluate the SIG556 Russian. Strings of fire ranged from 15 to 80 rounds with target distances measured in feet out to a couple hundred yards. The SIG556 Russian handled as expected from a lightweight carbine combined with perfect reliability. One nuance found with the SIG556 Russian is that it is particular about what magazines it accepts. Only steel AK and Bulgarian polymer magazines, one of these was sent with the rifle, worked in the 556 Russian evaluated herein. U.S. Palm, AK waffle pattern polymers, and drum magazines were a no-go. Along these same lines, with the magazines that do fit a fair amount of wobble is exhibited in the mag well.

Further evaluation of the SIG556 Russian was based on training experiences derived from attendance at Tactical Response and Suarez International rifle courses. Several of the more dynamic drills experienced during the Tactical Response and Suarez International courses were based on Team Tactics exercises. Team Tactic exercises involving moving to and from a designated target area using cover while either changing magazines or engaging targets when a partner is reloading are excellent weapon evaluation drills. One gets a good sense of the way a weapon handles along with reliability due to the sum of ammunition expended in short time frames characteristic of these Team Tactic drills. The full gamut of rifle manipulation is encompassed in Team Tactics training evolutions – handling around cover while engaging designated targets, accuracy to effectively strike at both distance and CQB ranges, magazine changes, and reliability once a weapon gets heated up. The growing popularity of AK products translates into ancillary items being more readily available. This is represented by two US Palm products used in conjunction with the SIG556 Russian: the AK Attack Rack and Defender Series chest rigs. The AK Attack Rack is low profile secure platform for 4 AK magazines and 4 pistol magazines. The AK Attack Rack chest rig can be worn over hard or soft body armor and is built to military specifications out of 500d Cordura nylon for durability and minimal weight. Another US Palm accessory used in conjunction with the SIG556 Russian was the Defender AK body armor rig. The Defender comes with a Level III soft armor insert with ability to install hard SAPI plates both front and rear. The Defender is US Palm’s effort to make more affordable products available to security conscious civilians or law enforcement having to purchase their own gear. The Defender AK model mounts quickly and offers body armor protection along with capability to carry three AK magazines and three pistol magazines.

The SIG Sauer decision to utilize its proven gas piston operating system derived from the SIG550 combined with accepting AK magazines is sound. While the SIG556 Russian is not going to be used by our military services or even law enforcement; it is not hard to visualize special operation forces, not to mention private contractors and security conscious civilians, wanting to take advantage of its ability to utilize 7.62×39 cartridge fed via ubiquitous AK47 magazines fired more accurately than thought possible. The SIG Sauer 556 Russian could be the answer to fulfilling a multitude of roles: DMR rifle, general-purpose patrol rifle, or even entry weapon. This is a positive reflection on what SIG is seeking to accomplish with the SIG556 Russian – accuracy, reliability, handling and ergonomics.

Sources:

SIG SAUER, Inc.
18 Industrial Drive
Exeter, NH 03833
(603) 772-2302
www.sigsauer.com

Wolf Ammunition
PO Box 757
Placentia, CA 92871
(888) 757-9653
www.wolfammo.com

US PALM/SGCUSA
14860 N. Northsight Blvd.
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
(480) 222-4369
www.uspalm.com

Hornady Mfg. Inc
3625 Old Potash Hwy
Grand Island, NE 68802
(800) 338-3220
www.hornady.com

Leupold & Stevens Inc
14400 NW Greenbrier Pkwy
Beaverton, OR 97006
www.leupold.com

Trijicon Inc.
49385 Shafer Ave
Wixom, MI 48393
(248) 960-7700
www.trijicon.com

So You Want to Buy a Machine Gun

I have been in the NFA business for a long time and it has been one of the most enjoyable experiences in my entire life. As is so common in your life, the story is: “You should have been here yesterday.” Back when M16s were $1,500 and MAC 10s were selling for $300 is a time long gone along with the 5-cent Coca Cola and the 10-cent Hershey bar. Like everything else the prices continue to go up over time, regardless of the state of the economy. When you take into consideration that twenty years ago an M16 did sell for $1,500 it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if that same gun sells today for $15,000, then you made a pretty darn good investment. Compare that to your stock portfolio and the fog starts to lift. You immediately start thinking, “I wish…” There were a lot of individuals who made the decision to invest in a machine gun and have enjoyed the growth of their investment.

You should always remember when it comes to this type of investment, it’s never too late. You have to remember that this opportunity has a limited supply that continues to dwindle in numbers every year. In November of 2009, we knew that there were only 182,619 transferable machine guns available to anyone that had the time and the money to buy one. Every year that number gradually falls due to a variety of reasons. Although prices do fluctuate, make no mistake, no other asset in your portfolio has a history like this type of investment. So what is holding you back? A variety of reasons, all which make little sense to those of you that have been collecting this most magnificent investment for a number of years.

The most frequently heard reason why many people don’t make the leap of faith is, “I don’t want to get a special license to buy a machine gun.” Other common things we constantly hear are, “I don’t want to give up my privacy rights when I do this allowing the government to come into my house anytime they want.” For those of you that have been buying, selling, or collecting machine guns you have heard the frequent issues and have been plagued with the same old wives-tales with a ton of bad information. The truth of the matter is none of this is true. When you buy any NFA item all you need to know is, that it is, and has always has been, a tightly controlled process that insures that these types of weapons do not fall into the wrong hands. ATF has always handled the transfer of a machine gun from one person to another extremely carefully. You don’t need a special license and you do not give up any rights when you buy a machine gun. You are simply applying for the transfer of a title from one company or individual to yourself, and paying the appropriate tax to the government one time for the cost of the title transfer. You pay this tax only one time. For the cost of machine guns this tax is $200. For that $200 you are paying for a clear title to a weapon. When you get your approved form back from your dealer it has a beautiful Internal Revenue Service tax stamp on the form that is proof that you have paid the tax. It is often humorous to see sometimes that when someone sells their machine gun, that stamp, which is no longer valid, is often auctioned off on eBay or some of the other collection sites. Most people keep their paperwork and the associated stamp for memorabilia.

Simply stated, buying a machine gun is a darn good investment. It will not only continue to increase in value over time but offers the opportunity to have some fun like you have never had in your entire life. When you find a good dealer the experience will be an enjoyable one that is virtually painless. The anticipation, the excitement, and the joy of procession are beyond words. Just talk to anyone that has a couple of guns and it’s hard to continue to pass up this opportunity when it is such a good investment.

One of the other attractive options about buying machine guns is that many dealers in the market today offer various buying options to help stave off the impact of such a large sale. Taking 50% down or multiple payment options are not uncommon in today’s market. When you buy simply ask and you may be surprised at how many options may be available.

The other opportunity that you want to explore when you break the ice and buy your first machine gun is to align yourself with all of the right resources for answers to all of the questions that you may have after you purchase. A good dealer, other enthusiasts, and especially an organization like the NFATCA can provide you with a wealth of information to keep you better informed. Good dealers and a membership with the NFATCA and their associated web site will be worth their weight in gold.

Our advice today is, buy now. The market is prime, the prices are good, and the opportunity is right. So what are you waiting for?

Still have questions? Come join us today at www.nfatca.org and let us help you make the right decisions to improve your investment future.

Hyskore Introduces Black Rifle Machine Rest and Armorers Vice

The new Hyskore Black Gun Machine Rest allows the user to sight in and find out exactly how accurate the gun is. It progressively absorbs the recoil pulse by employing two long (110mm) stroke nitrogen filled compression dampers assisted by adjustable coil springs. This gives it the unique ability to handle everything from .22 LR to .375 H&H. With previous machine rests you had to change dampers for different calibers. In addition, the dual rail design of the Black Rifle Machine Rest accommodates pistol grips and high capacity magazines allowing it to be used with 30- or even 40-round magazines of any caliber. The gun can be fired from the shoulder, using the buttstock strap, directly off the shoulder without the strap, or with the strap and secured in the vise for repeatability testing. The entire vise assembly can be removed to expose a platform for rest bags and a remote hydraulic trigger release is included with the rest. The rest has ambidextrous windage adjustment knobs and ball bearing elevation adjustment. The rest even has mounting tabs to bolt it to your shooting bench. Also new from Hyskore is their new Armorer’s Vice. The portable Armorer’s Vise can be used at the workbench or at the range. It is a versatile gun servicing fixture that clamps to a bench top and rotates 360º around a horizontal axis. A gun can be held at any required angle for all cleaning and servicing procedures. Both new products can be used with bolt guns as well as “Black Guns.” For more information on these and an extensive line of fine firearm accessories please contact Hyskore, Dept. SAR, 193 West Hills Road, Huntington Station, NY 11746. Phone: (631) 673-5975. Fax: (631) 673-5976. On the web at www.hyskore.com.

Troy Battlemags Now Shipping

Troy Industries is pleased to announce that they have started shipping their much anticipated CBIR (Chemical, Biological, and Impact Resistant) polymer Battlemags to industry dealers and distributors. These magazines have been involved in a lengthy research and development phase, in which time they have come under severe punishment and testing. They have survived not only loading and feeding evaluations, but also destructive product testing, such as being shot with shotguns, high powered rifles, crushed by vehicles, frozen and baked in extreme temperature ranges. All magazines then functioned flawlessly after the for-mentioned torture tests, and the visual results can been seen on the Troy YouTube video channel. Stephen Troy, Troy Industries President and CEO, declared that the magazines will offer the end-user the most durable and comprehensive magazine on the market today. The CBIR Battlemag is currently offered in a 30-round 5.56mm/.223 version. They are available in black, flat dark earth, OD green, and coyote tan. Every magazine includes a flush and shock absorbing bottom floor plate. Battlemags work flawlessly with all M4, M16, AR-15, HK416, and FN SCAR rifles and carbines. Other features include a proprietary engineered resin, reinforced feed lips, anti-tilt follower, and an aggressive fish scale gripping pattern. You can contact them at Troy Industries, Inc., Dept. SAR, 151 Capital Drive, West Springfield, MA 01089. Phone: (413) 788-4288. Fax: (413) 383-0339. On the web at www.troyind.com.

New Sightmark Night Vision Monocular

Venturing into the dark of night can be an unnerving experience, but with the Sightmark Eclipse 2×24 Gen 1 Night Vision Monocular, outdoorsmen can feel right at home even in the darkest places. Inspired by military and law enforcement applications, the Sightmark Eclipse features multi-coated optics and a wide-angle field of view to give you a crystal clear, dynamic image. The built-in IR illuminator extends viewing capabilities even farther allowing you to acquire your target even in the darkest situation, without them seeing you. With three different magnification options in the Eclipse Series, the monoculars are both powerful and reliable, with up to 72 hours of continuous operation without a battery change; you will never have to worry about suddenly and unexpectedly being plunged into darkness. Accessories include a tripod adapter, carrying case and an attached lens cover to prevent losing the lens cap on late night outings. For more information contact Sightmark, Dept. SAR, 2421 Callender Road, Suite 123, Mansfield, TX 76063. Phone: (817) 225-0310. Fax: (817) 394-1628. Website: www.sightmark.com.

Woolrich Introduces Discreet Carry Jacket

Woolrich Elite Series Tactical introduces the Elite Discreet Carry Twill Jacket, the latest addition to the company’s line of concealed carry outerwear. Based on one of Woolrich’s most popular traditional jackets, the Dorrington, the Elite Discreet Carry Twill Jacket has a number of tactical features built in. Large, reinforced inner pockets feature integrated holster loops to accommodate concealed carry handguns with up to a 6-inch barrel. A unique double angle on the inner pocket provides ready access to gear, but prevents the pocket from flaring open and exposing the contents. The rear locker loop conceals the entrance to a hidden accessory tunnel, which allows for convenient yet discreet carry of plastic restraints as well as providing routing for electronic wires. Front hand warmer pockets contain internal accessory loops, perfect for carrying spare magazines, flashlights, batons or chemical sprays. These elastic loops are set at a 45-degree angle for optimized access and keep the items secure and in a consistent orientation for rapid deployment. The hip-length waistband and cuffs are fully adjustable and the jacket features a boulder-washed finish for a broken-in feel. The shell is made of 11.5 oz. cotton twill and is lined with a polyester Sherpa liner. Sleeves are insulated with diamond-quilted 60-gram Arctic Insulation. For more information on this and other tactical clothing please contact; Woolrich Elite Series Tactical, Dept. SAR, 1 Mill Street, Woolrich, PA 17779. Phone: (570) 769-6464. Website: www.woolrichelitetactical.com.

Revision Now Has Tan Desert Locust Goggle

Revision, leading developer of protective eyewear for militaries worldwide, introduces the Tan 499 Desert Locust Goggle Kit with enhanced camouflage for the warfighter. The new color configuration is designed to better integrate with the U.S. MultiCam uniforms currently in service in Afghanistan. The new kit features a Tan 499 frame and strap with MultiCam anti-reflective sleeve and carrying case. The Desert Locust Goggle is the first and only MultiCam eyewear on the U.S. Army Authorized Protective Eyewear List (APEL).

The Tan 499 Desert Locust Goggle combines the best ballistic protection and widest field-of-view with optimal fit and superior camouflage making this the ultimate goggle for extended use. Its high-performance OcuMax coated lenses protect against fogging and scratching while the filtered ventilated frame keeps sand, wind and dust at bay. The goggle exceeds ANSI Z87.1-2010 and military ballistic impact requirements; ensures flawless optics for distortion-free vision; and provides rugged durability to protect and perform through all the rigors of combat. The Tan 499 Desert Locust Goggle U.S. Military Kit retails for $99.99 MSRP. For more information you can contact them at Revision, Dept. SAR, 7 Corporate Drive, Essex Junction, VT 05452. Phone: (802) 879-7002. Fax: (802) 879-7224. On the web at www.revisionmilitary.com.

Desert Tactical Arms Introduces New Suppressors

Desert Tactical Arms developed the DTSS (Desert Tactical Sound Suppressor) to enhance accuracy, repeatability, and minimize impact shift between suppressed and unsuppressed fire. Testing shows consistent accuracy improvements of nearly 0.25 MOA when shooting with a DTSS. The full titanium construction makes the DTSS the lightest .338 caliber silencer on the planet weighing just 1.15 pounds. They offer both steel and titanium suppressors. The DTSS Silencer conveniently installs over the SRS-QD Brake. The baffle design tightens the Suppressor as gases impact the baffles, which prevents the Suppressor from loosening during high volume fire. Many competitors use a ratcheting lock to prevent their cans from loosening. Distance between ratchet teeth allows minor play even when tightened, which will degrade accuracy. DTSS are available in .30 and .338 caliber options and provide a high-to-low compatibility feature that allows the .338 caliber suppressor to attach to both .338 and .30 caliber muzzle brakes and prevents the .30 caliber suppressor from accidentally being installed on a .338 caliber muzzle brake. For more information you can contact them at Desert Tactical Arms, Dept. SAR, P.O. Box 65816, Salt Lake City, UT 84165. Phone: (801) 975-7272. Fax: (801) 908-6425. Website: www.deserttacticalarms.com.

SARCON 2011 Canceled

Unfortunately, we did not receive enough pre-registrations to warrant having the 2011 SAR Convention here in Las Vegas this September. We’ve refunded all the Conventioneers who signed up, and will consider having another convention when the economy is stronger. We want to thank all of those who did sign up, and in case you had booked your tickets and were still coming out to Vegas that weekend, we’ll be happy to invite you to a small private shoot, barbecue, and tour of LMO at no charge. It seems that many of the people planning to attend had to put off their decision until July or August, and we simply can’t wait any longer without committing to large overhead fees. We want to bring you the best experience possible, and that may have to wait until 2012 or later if the economy isn’t back up and running.
In this issue, we bring you the continuing view into the amazing story of Colonel Jarrett and build-up to how he has influenced generations of the “Gun Culture” through his museum, Aberdeen, his wartime accomplishments, turning the tide in North Africa with his collector’s knowledge, and the trickle down effect of everything he did for us today. There are two more installments in this story in future issues so don’t miss them. I am particularly struck by how much of a gun-guy’s fantasy life he led. From the piles of interesting firearms and militaria he acquired at a very young age, to how his knowledge was so useful in defeating The Desert Fox himself and driving the Nazi’s back across the North African Desert. Sort of a “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” fantasy story.
Well, Colonel Jarrett really did that, in his version and day. It’s a great story. We have some more like it to bring to you, as well as some upcoming Interviews with noted author and Tai-Pan Thomas B. Nelson, Jonathan Arthur Ciener himself, and Donald G. Thomas of MAC fame. -Dan

In 1858, the French Navy adopted the Lefaucheux revolver; however the more conservative Army waited until 1873to adopt a centerfire Chamelot-Delvigne design. At the end of the 19th century the excellent Model 1892 was developed, but at the beginning of World War I in 1914, this armament appeared insufficient. The French Army then turned to Spanish factories for additional handguns. As of late 1918, the Spanish had delivered 485,291 revolvers and 968,220 pistols. Most of them were of the Ruby or Star type.

After the war, 588,000 handguns remained in the stocks of the French Army. But conscious of the fact that all the material of their infantry was obsolete, the Staff launched a complete programme of renewal.

On May 9, 1921, the first program relating to the development of a new model pistol was written. The weapon was to have a long barrel to develop high energy and it must be able to receive a shoulder stock. The influence of the Mauser C 96 and Long Barrel Luger pistol is obvious.

The program was revised on July 25, 1922. The dimensions of the weapon were reduced and its energy brought back to 35 kgm. But in France, the development of new weapons was never in a hurry and it was necessary to wait fifteen years before not one but two models of automatic pistols were adopted.

In 1922 and 1923, the Versailles Experiment Commission evaluated the Colt M1911, P 08 and Long Barrel Luger, Steyr 1912, Mauser 1912, Webley & Scott, Lewis, Beretta 1915, Ruby, Browning 1903, 1910 and 1922, Lambrecht, Rochet, and various prototypes made by MAC, MAS, MAT and F.N. Browning.

None of the weapons put to test was retained and headquarters again modified the specifications of the future weapon on June 2, 1927. They had been directed at the beginning of the program towards the 9x12mm Luger cartridge but they turn now to the 7.65mm Long.

The 7.65mm Long is not well known except to specialists. It draws its origin from the .30 Pedersen tested by the Americans at the end of the World War I to transform the Springfield M1903 rifle into an automatic weapon. It is light and has low recoil, but this is to the detriment of stopping power which was surprisingly weak. This ammunition was adopted in France (and not elsewhere) for the Army pistol and the future submachine gun.

A Slow Gestation

Others weapons were tested separately and in 1933 an open competition was organized where many pistols appeared:

7.65mm long pistols

• One Bayard blowback pistol,
• One Browning No. 1 blowback pistol,
• One Lepage blowback pistol,
• Six MAS 1932 blowback pistols (three Type A and three Type B),
• One MAT No. 2 delayed blowback pistol,
• One Paillot blowback pistol with double action only,
• Pieper blowback pistols,
• Three Seytres pistols, two blowback models and another similar to the Colt M1911,
• Two Souzy, locked breech pistols, looking like the Colt M1911,
• Two Star pistols with removable shoulder stock,
• One Warnant double action pistol with an external hammer.

Others

• One 9mm Luger, Browning 1930 pistol, calibre, evolution of the Grand Rendement,
• One 9mm Browning long, Le Français Type Armée pistol. It works with a blowback mechanism and a double action only trigger,
• One 7.65mm Browning Le Victorieux Type Ruby pistol,
• Two Star locked breech pistol, one shooting the 9mm Largo cartridge and the other in .45 ACP.

The 9mm Luger Browning gun is an ancestor of the H.P. It was created in 7.65mm Long especially for the French tests, with a removable trigger mechanism as the schedule of conditions specified and it worked with a blowback slide.

Although none of the pistols in the competitive test of 1933 were adopted, the best results were obtained by the MAS 1932 Type B No. 3, Bayard, Seytres No. 3 (in fact a Star pistol), the Browning No. 1 and the MAS Type B No. 1.

But the unstated goal of this test was only to select the criteria to be retained for the development of the final weapon: short recoil locked breech, removable trigger mechanism, single action with an external hammer and a common spring for the hammer and the sear, safety on the slide and blocking the striker and simple disassembly without tools after removal of the slide hold open latch.

After new trials in 1935, only four pistols remained: the MAS, the SACM (Petter system), the F.N. Herstal (Browning) and the Spanish Star. The ultimate phase of the selection included the shooting of five thousand cartridges per weapon, with:

* Velocity measurement on ten shots.
* Test of precision on bench at fifteen meters, by four series of ten shots.
* Test of endurance on 950 shots without cleaning, oiling, nor replacement of parts.
* Long service test with 4,000 cartridges, including cleaning and maintenance.

At the conclusion of these tests, in 1937, France finally adopted an automatic pistol. Better, after all that delay, it adopted two of them. The gun developed by the Saint-Etienne factory was adopted under the name of pistol Modèle 1935 S and of the Petter gun presented by S.A.C.M., which took the name of pistol Modèle 1935 A. The 1936 Browning and Star were discarded.

At the beginning of the program, the Saint-Etienne factory had begun research for the development of a new model of pistol and several prototypes were developed:

* A 9mm MAS 1923 pistol. It was gas operated and has a vent perpendicular to the gun and an articulated slide.
* A 9mm MAS 1924 with short recoil of the barrel associated with a helicoid movement.
* A 7.65mm Long MAS 1925, with a blowback slide and a recoil spring around the barrel. The frame is made of two asymmetrical elements articulated on a hinge located at the base of the grip.

For the competition in 1933, the establishment presented six guns (3 MAS 32 Type A and 3 others of Type B) Type. These weapons were the summit of the evolution of the various prototypes constructed in the factory.

One of the models presented during the final selection was adopted by a ministerial decision of December 29, 1937, undoubtedly to compensate for the limited production capacities of S.A.C.M.

In September 1938, the MAS factory received an order for 10,000 guns and the first weapons were delivered in February 1939. But the workload of the establishment was such (rifles, machine pistols, spare parts, gas masks) that only 1,404 guns are produced before the armistice of June 1940.

The Model 1935 S pistol is not listed in the instruction manual Instruction sur l’Armement et le Matériel de Tir, edition of 1940 (National Printing Office) whereas the pistol Model 1935 A does appear. On the other hand, one still finds it in documents of instruction of years 1950/1960, whereas the Model 1935 A does not appear there any more.

Description of Model 1935 S

The frame has a trapezoidal handle with a very marked pointed busk. It supports the aluminium trigger and its bar. The handle receives Bakelite plates fixed by two screws and it carries at the base a ring for lanyard.

The magazine is retained by a catch located at the base of the trigger guard. The magazine has on the sides seven holes corresponding to the position of the cartridges in the magazine.

The slide is guided on the frame by means of grooves matching those in the frame. This solid slide has grasping grooves at the back. These grooves, vertical on the prototype, are oblique on the series version.

The ejection port is on the right and the loaded chamber indicator on the top. The safety is placed at the rear of the slide and blocks the striker. It is placed in a boss on the slide where the open U notch rears sight is cut. The front sight, a truncated half-moon, is machined at the end of the slide.

The barrel is assembled in the frame and it comprises a shoulder at the rear that locks in the ejection port. It is bored for the 7.65mm calibre (.30) with four groves, one turn on 250 mm (9.84 inches). The recoil spring with its guide rod is placed below the barrel.

The removable lock work holds also the ejector, the hammer and the firing spring. The firing pin is pushed by the hammer after the trigger is squeezed. The weapon is provided with a magazine safety and the hammer can also be half cocked. The metal parts receive a parkerized finish.

Marks

The slide carries on the left the mark MAS and on the right: MODELE 1935 S CAL. 7,65 L
The serial number is engraved on the right side of the frame, just below markings of the slide. The weapons are numbered by series of ten thousand (or more exactly from 1 to 9999) with a letter prefixes, the first of which is F.

Production ceased at the armistice in 1940 and rather curiously, it is not reactivated by the Germans when they take the control of the Southern zone in November 1942. The MAS factory became a subsidiary company of Mauser, where various spare parts and bayonets for the K98 k, which carry the code ogy, were made. Note, the MAS Model 1935 S carrying Waffenamt marks are fakes!

Production

The manufacture of the Model 1935 S pistols started again after the departure of the Germans and the MAS factory made 1,165 pistols without letter prefixes and 4,117 guns in the series F.

Later, the MAS factory was overloaded and sub-contracted the manufacture and the assembly of the guns to the Manufacture Française d’Armes et Cycles, a private factory located in Saint-Etienne and also known as Manufrance. Manufrance machined the frame, the barrel, the slide and the lock work from parts furnished by MAS. They used 222 machines and the work was done by 58 people. The contract ended in October 1945, with production of ten thousand guns. The slide of the guns assembled by Manufrance kept the MAS mark but the serial number on the frame received the letter prefixes MF G.

Between August 1945 and May 1946, the production of the pistol Model 1935 S was gradually transferred to the Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Châtellerault (or MAC), in collaboration with the Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Saint-Etienne or MAS (frame, magazine) and the Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Tulle or MAT (barrel, slide, various parts).

MAC re-dimensioned the parts in order to allow their complete interchangeability, which was not the case before. The firing pin and the safety were improved, now, when the lever is in the safety position, it sticks out the back of the slide beside the hammer. The weapons having received this modification are designated Model 1935 S M1. They were produced from 1946, but the marking was modified the following year and became regular only after January 12, 1950.

The magazine was also modified. The milled floor plate is replaced by one made of stamped sheet metal. The two-part follower assembled with a rivet is replaced by a single part. The floor plate is marked MLE 19 35-S (1st type) or 19 35-S (2nd type).

The weapons assembled at Châtellerault carry on the left face of the slide a MAC, MAS or MAT marking, according to origin. The frame is marked MAC before the serial number. The weapons made by MAC are blued or parkerized. Production ceased in Châtellerault in 1956 though production capacities were maintained until 1960 ensuring the production of spare parts. MAC produced 56,087 guns and the weapons were delivered per numbered series from 1 to 10000 with letters prefixes A, C, D, E, from 10001 to 20000 for the series B, and again 6,087 numbered guns from F 1 to F 6087. This last series included 70 guns assembled with parts stored by MAS, while eleven specimens were kept in store until 1964.

In addition, the production of the Model 1935 S pistol is entrusted to the Société d’Application Générales Electriques et Mécaniques (SAGEM), which manufactured them in a factory located in Argenteuil (west of Paris). The barrels were produced by the Manufacture d’Armes de Paris at Saint-Denis (north of Paris), an Hotchkiss-Brandt subsidiary.

The contract with the SAGEM was signed on September 12, 1945 and was terminated on September 12 1951. The company produced ten thousand Model 1935 S M1 pistols: 9,512 of them were in conformity with the production tables and they were dispatched to the Ordnance Center in Vincennes (east of Paris). The 488 remaining specimens had barrels outside of specifications and after a reconditioning in the MAC plant they were delivered to the security service of the arsenals.

The weapons produced by SAGEM carry the logo of the company (the initials in an oval) on the left face of the slide and the right-sided of the frame. They are numbered from 00001 to 10000 with prefix A. The barrels are marked MAP. These weapons receive a blued, parkerized or enamelled finish (baked on over parkerizing).

The cumulative production of the Models 1935 S, 1935 S M1 pistols, made by MAS, Manufrance, MAC and SAGEM, is 82.763 guns. The Models 1935 A and 1935 S were gradually withdrawn from service progressively after the arrival of a new model in the Army. The gendarmerie and the police force used them later. The motorcyclists of the Paris Police were still equipped with them up to the 1970s. Some countries in Africa also received them but now they are retired from service because of the lack of ammunition.

Operation

The Model 1935 S pistol works by short recoil of the barrel, according to the system Colt/Browning. The square notch at the rear of the barrel acts as a locking lug. The pistol has a captive spring (shorter than that of the 35 A) and removable lock work, but there are no common parts between the two weapons, not even the magazines.

Disassembly and Reassembly

The disassembly and reassembly of the model 1935 S or S M1 pistol is carried out in the following way:

• Put the weapon on safe.
• Remove the magazine.
• Open the slide to check the chamber is empty.
• Bring the slide back until its notch is opposite the slide stop.
• The slide stop is driven out from right to left, which makes it possible to separate the slide from the frame.
• The barrel and the spring can then be separate while the lock work is lifted from the frame.
• Reassembly is carried out in the inverse order.

Characteristics – Model 1935 S

Caliber: 7.65mm (.30)
Ammunition: 7.65mm Long Overall length: 190 mm (7.48 inches)
Barrel length 107 mm (4.21 inches)
Height: 121 mm (4.76 inches)
Weight (empty): 800 g (1.76 lbs)
Magazine capacity: 8 rounds

Test and Evaluation

We tested a Model 1935 S pistol made by MAS in the pre-war period. It is very worn and carries the serial number F 131. The pistol feels good in the hand, but the handle is too small for a gunner having large hands and the spur would have to be a little longer to avoid pinching the space between the thumb and the forefinger by the hammer when the slide recoils. The angle of inclination of the grip is perfectly appropriate for shooting with the gun at top of a straight arm. The trigger pull is rough – it weighs 3,100 kgf (6.8 lbs) and it is two stages. The sights are clear, but a little too small. The recoil is soft. Disassembly and the reassembly are easy. The gun is accurate but the stopping power of the ammunition is poor.

Epilogue

A Model 35 S M 1 enlarged and chambered for the 9mm Luger was developed in 1946. This improved weapon was the predecessor of the pistol Model 1950, still in use in the Army.