Hank Williams doesn’t own the only old family tradition. On a sunny summer afternoon, a petite and very capable 12-year-old girl stared down the sights of her brand new birthday-gift Ruger AR-556, and with breathed-out precision, squeezed the trigger. After firing off a volley of successive rounds, with sparkling eyes she smiled big at her shooting mates and said simply, “This is really fun.” 

This was a Life Moment that Kara Windfall was destined to have. For some families, traditions are held in high esteem. For others, carrying on their family’s legacy is a forgotten pastime, much like Sockie and Kick the Can. However, in some traditional American families, honoring those who came before as well as continuing the fight and pursuance of freedom runs as deep as the blood in their veins. And for Kara, she hopes to continue that long-held tradition starting with those first shots with her new semiautomatic rifle. 

Kara’s family military history can be traced back generations. The first recorded account of one of her ancestors (a Polish knight of the highest order and a heroic warrior) in battle was during the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, where Poland and Lithuania came together to defeat the German-Prussian Knights of the Teutonic Order. 

“This was the first account of ‘one of us’ putting it to the bad guys,” said Sidney Windfall, Kara’s father, a native of Western Pennsylvania who works as a communications consultant. He and Kara currently reside in Europe. 

The Windfall family is found in the annals of the American Civil War under the Yankee government and also fighting for America in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and now in the Middle East. 

“Seems like there was a grandfather, dad, uncle, son or cousin in our family tree, with a grin or grimace, who was always ready to roll up their sleeves when the opportunity presented itself,” Sid adds proudly. His own grandfather served as a Navy LST fireman in the South Pacific during WWII. His father was with the 82nd Airborne, while his uncle served in Vietnam as an Air Force intelligence officer. Finally, his cousins were all Army infantrymen during Desert Storm. 

Birthday Tradition 

Another Windfall tradition goes hand-in-hand with their military history. Following after a beagle-breeding grandfather who loved the thrill of the hunt, if a family child shows interest and is responsible enough, he or she will receive a firearm on his or her 12th birthday. “That is when I got mine,” Sid Windfall recalled. “It was a Sears and Roebuck single-shot, hinge-action .410. Most all the others got simple bolt-action .22s.” 

But, back to our current birthday girl’s AR-556 baptismal. 

When it came time to honor his daughter Kara’s 12th birthday, Sid Windfall kept this old family tradition alive by introducing her to her first gun, the Ruger AR-556, on their recent trip back to the United States. “I presented her with her first real rifle, the semiauto Ruger, which we got from ACE Sporting Goods in Washington, Pennsylvania,” Windfall said. “Up until now, her exposure had been limited to Airsoft replicas and pellet guns. Regardless, she knows what a bull’s-eye is and surely knows gun safety.” 

Prior to having this, her first live fire with the AR-556, Kara has had extensive firsthand gun safety and personal instruction in gun handling and use at home in the U.S. and in Europe. Handing over the Ruger AR-556, which Kara promptly named “ARlene” (showing her puckish sense of humor, another family trait), Sid Windfall couldn’t help building off the life lessons his grandpap taught him by passing along some those bull’s-eyes of wisdom to his daughter. 

“Grandpap taught us that once you decide to squeeze that trigger that the bullet ain’t coming back,” said Windfall. “And, check how you feel when you see what game animal you have shot and killed. If you feel hungry, that is good,” he added with a chuckle. 

For her first crack at the shooting range, Windfall said he knew that he needed to find the right instructor to properly tutor Kara on those initial shots. And, that’s where I did my walk on. 

“Grandpap taught us that once you decide to squeeze that trigger that the bullet ain’t coming back. And, check how you feel when you see what game animal you have shot and killed. If you feel hungry, that is good.” 

– Sid Windfall 

Fort Truby 

Sid was my son’s college roommate back in the ‘80s, way back when I was a university professor, book author, magazine editor, writer and a military historian. Plus, many years earlier I had been an Army Combat Intelligence NCO and later a civilian military advisor and instructor. So, for a couple of days, I invited Kara and Sid out to the boonies of Western Pennsylvania (we call it “Pennsyltucky”) and what neighbors and friends call Ft. Truby. 

After a review of the basics by Kara and myself, the shooting began. Lying in the prone position on my very informal shooting range, Kara was the picture of comfort and poise. Outfitted with her shooting ear muffs, protective eyewear and trusty ARlene, the birthday girl was ready to take aim. Kara confidently fired her first round, then many, many more. Kara expertly handled her weapon, hitting the target with precision. She said that proper safety training and respect for firearms made her feel totally in control of her AR-556 rifle. 

“It seems to me a gun is only as dangerous as the person holding it,” she said. Looking at her father, she thanked him for putting his trust in her and instilling her with “some serious responsibility.” “It’s hard to say who had the most fun on that very loud morning,” Sid told us. “We did however expand our family tradition to include lead covered in lipstick.” 

With the Windfalls temporarily residing in gun-unfriendly Europe for now, who knows when Kara will be able to shoot ARlene again. But, if Kara has anything to say about it, it will be sooner, rather than later. An active member of her school’s Paramedic Team and Red 

Cross First Aid Group, she plans to be back in school in the United States. After graduation, she told me that she would attend college and also join the U.S. Army to pursue her dreams of helping the oppressed by her chosen career in medicine. 

And, their respect for and use of firearms will always be there, too. Sid is a long-time NRA member, and Kara signed on as a Junior NRA member. Both pledge to be very dedicated proactive members. 

Kara is a very impressive young lady with a good head on her shoulders. She is ambitious and has clear-cut goals in her life which is evident in everything that she does, including her shooting. She plans to be the next generation of Windfalls to exhibit her love for America through military service and the 2nd Amendment. And, judging by her first shots on target at Ft. Truby, she will succeed with all. 

Dan Shea got it wrong, Robert Bruce got it wrong, Chris Eger got it wrong, Ian Hogg got it wrong and so did Gary Paul Johnson, Jack Krcma, Dick Meadows, Keith Melton, John Minnery, T. C. Smith, Don Walsh and Yours Truly … until Jonathan Liu of the CIA’s office of Public Affairs kindly told me the truth about the mysterious CIA “Deer” Gun, as it has been known since 1962.

“This weapon is actually known as the CIA DEnied ARea Pistol, hence DEAR Pistol. It was designed for distribution to foreign fighters willing to operate behind enemy lines,” Mr. Lui informed me, sharing with me data from the Agency’s own files, including a CIA photograph of their original production DEAR Pistol.

And, it all began with the fabled OSS Liberator.

The World War II Liberator was a small, nifty, behind-the-scenes pistol. It wasn’t meant for the battlefield, though; it was meant for use as a sneaky behind-enemy-lines killer for an ally friendly OSS. About 20 years later and half-way around the world, its successor, the CIA’s Deer Gun, as it has been incorrectly known for over 55 years, hoped to continue that legacy, yet inadvertently created a puzzling reputation of its own.

The DEAR Pistol was conceived as an updated version of the Liberator pistol, a gun built by General Motor’s Guide Lamp Division. Developed for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Vietnam conflict, the DEAR Pistol was a very simple, single-shot 9mm pistol designed to sneakily bring better weapons to the U.S.’ South Vietnamese allies fighting against their invasive local Viet Cong and the invading North Vietnamese soldiers. It was designed to be purely one-on-one deadly.

“The idea was to supply this glorified zip gun to our friendlies who weren’t afraid to carry the war close and personal to our enemy,” the late U.S. Army Major Dick Meadows, a true Special Forces icon, explained. “They’d get close, take him down with the Deer Gun, then strip him of everything usable, including his AK47and spare ammo and any material useful for intel purposes.”

The weapon was planned between operational CIA officers and our military. Discussing the project with several gun designers in the late 1950s, the goal was for the gun to be a modern version of the FP-45 Liberator, which had been discharged (an on purpose pun) after WWII.

By 1962, covert operations were already underway in Southeast Asia. According to Major Meadows, “Deep down at Langley, someone must’ve recalled those long-lost Liberators and their previously discussed updated counterparts, the Deer Gun. It was time to get them operational.”

“For some insane reason, much WWII materiel was destroyed in 1946-47. Liberator pistols were torched, melted and crushed into postwar scrap. Very few survived, and there was no inventory when President Kennedy decided to support low-profile, low-intensity counter-guerrilla warfare in Vietnam,” he explained.

The CIA called on the Chief Engineer for American Machine & Foundry (AM & F) special Firearms division, the late Russell J. Moure, a very experienced ordnance veteran who was a principal developer of the mini-gun, who also worked with and for Firearms International and Interarms. The CIA told him to create an effective successor to the Liberator, as they had discussed several years earlier. When the CIA and Moure met in 1962, discussions centered on an idea to create a lighter, smaller, simpler and far cheaper Liberator-type pistol.

Major Meadows explained, “The CIA wanted a simplistic design that was operationally sound, as well as quick and economical to manufacture. The purpose was to supply the pistol to indigenous guerrillas and irregular forces behind enemy lines. Yes, it was also an assassination gun, and it was to be part of what became known as Operation Phoenix.”

The CIA chose AM & F because it was a company well known for recreational products and had only a small, very secretive ordnance section. As author Chris Eger wrote, “Allen Dulles’people wanted someone far off the firearms radar, such as AM & F.”

One of Moure’s engineering colleagues at AM & F, who asked that his name not be used here, added, “Russ (Moure) spent 10,000 words explaining to some CIA guys what was basically a crude, ugly, but damn decent $4.00 zip gun for our Third World allies to kill one of the bad guys each time, usually during a behind-the-lines recon op. Then, to take that guy’s weapon, probably an AK for his own use. … that was the CIA program for this weapon.”

The tiny 9mm pistol with a case aluminum receiver, a screw-out-to-load 2-inch barrel, was made largely of plastic, steel and aluminum parts and would cost the U.S. approximately $3.95 apiece. The DEAR Pistol was made to be small, efficient, cheap and untraceable.

So, how did this mysterious pistol get its name wrong? U.S. Army Sgt Gary Paul Johnston suggested “Deer Gun” was an Agency codename with a sardonic, big game hunting reference. Suppressor designer Don Walsh thought the Deer Gun was named after a WWII OSS operation in Burma, “The Deer Mission.” Turns out, they were wrong, as we have just learned.

The late Vaclav “Jack” Krcma, an ordnance expert, WWII combat vet, CIA contract agent, Interarms field icon and close friend of Moure, marveled at the design of the DEAR Pistol. He had seen some of Moure’s initial actual design work. Krcma stated it was the lightest and smallest 9mm issue pistol ever developed, as well as being “of splendid design and robust construction.”

I knew Jack well, and we discussed the pistol often. He, too, called it the Deer Gun. My guess is that the CIA, in its infinite judgment of mysterious ways and means, just let people refer to it as the Deer Gun … until now.

The CIA examined and tested the prototype. Satisfied with Moure’s design, they ordered 1,000 pistols, issuing AM & F a developmental contract for $300,000. This price was higher than the originally quoted price of under $4.00 per weapon; however, with all developmental special weapons, research, testing and prototype costs had to be recovered. As Jack Krcma noted with alacrity, “In our business, we all know how that works.”

The production DEAR Pistol is 4-1/8 inches high, 5 inches long and weighs 12 ounces. The body is one piece cast aluminum, with a blued steel barrel. The raised grip is cross hatched, and the three rounds that come with each gun are stored in that hollow area. There is no trigger guard, and the sight, as such, is a grooved notch on the receiver top.

To fire the DEAR Pistol, the barrel is unscrewed, a round is loaded, and the barrel is screwed back in. The cone-shaped cocking lever is pulled back, the pistol is then aimed and fired.

However, by 1964, it was clear that Southeast Asia was bound for a major war. With that level of war a set of guidelines and parameters was passed down from the Pentagon flag pole. Their rules of engagement made the DEAR Pistol a low priority.

Diminished significance or not, the first 1,000 pistols made it to active duty in sterile condition. These guns were completely sanitized, meaning there were no serial numbers, no ordnance proofs, no ID markings, no connection to the U.S government. They were packed individually into a plain white, sturdy Styrofoam box accompanied by three rounds of 9mm ammunition which were also sterile. According to author Chris Eger, “the head stamps on the cases of those rounds were marked not with a NATO symbol, but with ‘9mm 42’ to imply that they were possibly WWII vintage bullets of German, Italian or some other origin than American.”

The packaging also contained a four-color, cartoon-style, wordless instruction sheet that visually detailed how to operate the weapon and whom to shoot with it. The instructions depicted a generic guerrilla using a DEAR Pistol to shoot an enemy soldier bearing a Soviet armband, hammer and sickle included. Ironically, that armband is the only identification marking of any kind found on the weapon, its container or the instructions.

According to Krcma, of the weapons delivered to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), approximately 150 were sent for field testing in Southeast Asia. There are no official records available that any of the DEAR Pistols were used beyond controlled, non-combat testing. However, one U.S. military officer relayed a story to me in which he accompanied a patrol of both U.S. and Vietnamese Special Forces in 1963, during which two DEAR Pistols were carried for what he referred to as “active evaluation.”

“We had run a successful ambush and were returning for extraction with four prisoners, three of whom were wounded. The unwounded man noisily resisted restraint. Because the potential for hostile reaction to us being there was very real, our senior man decided to terminate the recalcitrant prisoner.”

“That’s when I saw the Deer Pistol ‘field-tested.’ One shot was fired from a range of two feet into the back of the base of the man’s head. He lurched forward and fell quite dead. We then effected our extraction with the other, very silent prisoners, all officers.”

Thus, by 1964, the DEAR Pistol was officially cleared for field issue. It was listed in the CIA’s special weapons inventory and carried stock number 1395-H00-9108. However, since its change in status, little information has been released about this limited issue weapon. Until now, the CIA has denied requests for materials regarding the DEAR Pistol. AM & F, totally out of the ordnance business for years, refused to provide me any information.

“Over the years, I had seen Deer Guns at one military museum, at a CIA facility and at a few ordnance research facilities,” Jack Krcma told me in 2005. “But, they must have grown legs and walked off, because they aren’t there anymore. Where did they go, and I wonder who has them now?”

There is at least one DEAR Pistol at the CIA Museum, and there is also one at the JFK Museum at Fort Bragg. That has been confirmed.

However, there are some other stories. A DEAR Pistol was reportedly confiscated in Mexico in 1970, before it could be used to assassinate a Cuban official. This account is totally unconfirmed. The Deer Gun was mentioned and accurately described in William Caunitz’s 1985 novel, One Police Plaza.

Of the original 1,000 weapons produced, maybe 10 to 20 remain in circulation, according to the well-known collector, Keith Melton. Eger wrote that one was legally sold at a recent auction for over $22,000. Another was sold legally by Rock Island Auction in 2011 for $25,875. Robert Bruce photographed another one for his 2003 SAR article titled “The CIA’s Deer Gun in Vietnam” (Vol. 6, No. 4). Three of his pictures are with this article, the first color photos and also the first with a person holding the DEAR Pistol.

He told me, “It belonged to a 1st Cav Special Ops vet who was on a recon mission in Vietnam and saw the weapon there. He said he ‘acquired’ it and was able to get it home.”

The remainder have apparently disappeared into collectors’ quiet and private inventories. The DEAR Pistol may not have been successful in combat, but its reputation continues to be successfully enigmatic to this day.

The bulky, big, plastic/metal pistols command a utilitarian following. The classic Kalashnikov boasts military aficionados. But great things also come in small, aesthetically pleasing packages. That’s why I class the Sidewinder as a sub-subcompact or miniature pistol. It’s one of the smallest concealable backup handguns available.

It’s a gun you can carry when and where you can’t carry a gun.

When you Google the .22 Sidewinder, manufactured by North American Arms, you can almost hear the virtual happy verbal applause of fans from various online forums.

“I think that the Sidewinder is the best NAA mini-revolver platform yet, offering more convenience with few negatives,” Randy Wakeman, Guns and Shooting Online senior editor wrote, “…If you are looking for maximum convenience in an extremely small, well-crafted package, the Sidewinder will delight you.”

“I want the Sidewinder like you wouldn’t believe,” online commenter D.J. raved. “NAA made a great revolver and it will retire my Wasp to a show piece.”

Even though it’s not much bigger than a box of 50 .22 cartridges, its name is inspiring. “Sidewinder” is the demarcation for two species of venomous reptiles, at least two military aircraft, a short-range surface-to-air-missile, a baseball pitcher, Dodge and Kia concept cars, three roller coasters, and a handful of diverse musical groups and songs of varying quality. But the design of this pistol is simply unmatched for shooters needing this specific genre of pistol.

The basic specs for the Sidewinder are that it is a five-shot, .22 (both LR and Magnum cylinders available), with a one and a half inch barrel and five inches overall. The height is just less than three inches, width is just over an inch and the unloaded weight is 6.7 ounces. Trigger pull data are in the five to six pound range and most shooters describe the recoil as surprisingly moderate.

The revolver features marbled wood grips and clean lines. But besides being a pretty piece of hardware, why do people like the Sidewinder so much? That’s easy, it is both plain, simple, plus it’s easy to load and unload the five-shot revolver. The “swing-out” style cylinder assembly is similar to most modern revolvers. This miniaturization of a traditional technology is what sets the Sidewinder apart from other smaller handguns. In a typical miniature firearm, first you must pull a pin here, scoop out the cylinder there, and reload. By the time you’ve fumbled the cylinder back into position, taking care not to accidentally pinch off your thumbnail, the Sidewinder has long been ready to shoot. Best of all, the spent shells shake loose easily, or the extractor allows you to pick spent brass out from the side.

Not only is the design simple, clean, functional and totally dependable, but the Sidewinder is also very safe to carry, thanks to NNA’s exclusive safety notch cylinder. It is also a very “easy on the eyes, and great to handle firearm, too,” as Conti Industries & Black Ops Tactical executive Heidi Conti told me. “Plus, with the proper ammo, you’ve got a great little pistol in your power.”

The self-defense effectiveness of the Sidewinder was greatly boosted with the introduction of Hornady’s purposefully designed 45 grain FXT Critical Defense .22 magnum load. It rips out of the barrel at 1000 fps and has penetration of test gel better than most .380 loads. Speer offers a 40 grain Gold Dot load which also has major target punch, real or test, as well.

NAA strongly suggests that you do not use any PMC ammo, long rifle or Magnum, in their pistols due to double discharge possibilities. Extensive testing shows that only PMC ammunition has this hazard with NNA .22 revolvers.

Interestingly, NAA’s General Manager, Ken Friel, told me that some Sidewinder owners have used the CCI Shotshell load in their pistols. The load has 52 grains of #12 shot in each round. When fired at three yard range, the coverage is group is a 9-inch square. I imagine a load of that in the face of a bad guy at that range would stop most any assault.

The pistol’s safety mechanism is ingenious, so there’s a lower risk of accidentally nicking a finger when preparing to fire. What the Sidewinder lacks in stopping power when compared with other, more intimidating calibers, it makes up with more utility. You can slip it into a pocket or a purse much more easily than its larger handgun brethren and be on your way, unseen by our new world’s highly suspicious eyes and all powerful video surveillance.

The accuracy is admirable for its class, too. In his firing tests, J B Wood noted that his Sidewinder performed really well. He reported, “In classic encounter range of 7 yards, it kept all five rounds centered in the black on a Champion VisiShot target.” Likewise, Heidi Conti came away from their Conti Industries range totally impressed with the Sidewinder.

“I tested five shots on a printed groundhog target from fifteen feet away. Three shots punctured the body just below the target spine. The other two hit solidly within the crosshairs, while two of the outer three shots grouped tightly together, as you see in the photo. Not bad for paper varmint disposal duty,” she added with a chuckle.

Most commendably, the recoil won’t knock your hand off-balance, so you can squeeze off a second shot,” she added. Sadly, though, it is a single action revolver, meaning you have to cock it for each shot.

Ms Conti also said, “But, do pay attention to the sight radius when aiming as it is tiny and it doesn’t take much tremor to mess up your aim.”

Yet, as Randall Kari, an LEO with whom I used to work, said, “You don’t hunt deer with it at 50 yards out, but when and where it counts at close range defense, it’ll hit where you aim. It’s a great back up and a very easily concealed defense pistol.”

Part of the Sidewinder’s factual legend is the narcotics agent who did a buy on a Florida beach wearing only a Speedo. No room for a standard piece, so the agent hid his NAA Sidewinder in a drinking cup.

As an aside, for those of you considering a .22 for maximum conceal self-defense, I suggest you read Richard Mann’s article in the June 2013 issue of AMERICAN RIFLEMAN; good reportage there.

Though industry rumored for weeks, the first public hint of the Sidewinder came in March of 2012, when NAA CEO Matthew “Sandy” Chisholm said, “The Sidewinder will be a single-action mini-revolver, solidly built on our stainless steel magnum frame, whose cylinder is mounted on a side-releasing crane, just like most revolvers…an easy loader, too.”

And, just as everything else in our hyper-online lives, the young, traditional Sidewinder is subject to change, too. Even as Ken Friel and I were ending our interviews today, he told me about the new model 4-inch barrel Sidewinder coming to market late summer of 2015.

Phew!

But, as with everything, NAA gets it right and shares that with the rest of us users. Their NAA instruction book includes photos with the detailed printed instructions for loading, unloading and using the Sidewinder. There’s also a video showing the entire process on NAA’s
very elaborate website.

It’s no surprise, then, that the current Sidewinder models remain somewhat back ordered. Yet, you don’t have to stand in a backed up waiting line at major retailers to own the old fashionedly modern Sidewinder. In my case, a quick trip down the road to Bee’s Guns, a truly old school kind of small town real gun shop in Saltsburg, PA made it all happen, thanks to owner Ken Bee and very knowledgeable assistant Jesse Syster. Within the week, my Sidewinder was there.

Fortunately, gun shops aren’t left waiting for a slow boat from overseas for Sidewinders. These stainless steel mini-revolvers and other small pistols manufactured by North American Arms are handcrafted and manufactured in Provo, Utah. And they carry a lifetime warranty.

As Chisholm predicted, NAA’s Sidewinder actually made its debut in 2012 to much hoopla and fanfare, all quite deserved.

North American Arms started as the short-lived Rocky Mountain Arms, and then became a subsidiary of an aerospace manufacturer, that was absorbed by Teleflex.

In the late 1980s, Philadelphia business man Matthew “Sandy” Chisholm III was working in mergers and acquisitions for Teleflex, which owned NAA at the time. The company wanted to get out of the small arms business, but was having a hard time finding a buyer. For one thing, according to Chisholm, the business was profitable, self-sufficient, and Teleflex wasn’t budging on their selling price or terms.

So Chisholm decided to become a small [arms] business owner. He explained, “…I saw first-hand the capabilities of their management team and the opportunities available to the business, given just a modest investment of time, love and money. So, in a ‘Victor Kiam/Remington moment,’ I chose to leave the corporate world and become a small business owner in November of 1991.

“Shortly after the purchase, I built a new home for the business in Provo, where it has remained ever since. I have respect for and confidence in Ken Friel and his team and their ability to responsibly and successfully make the operational decisions regarding our business. I add my value on the legal, accounting and strategic planning issues.

“Things have worked exactly as we planned. And with remarkably few exceptions, both the management team and work force are exactly as they were when we began.”

Others in the field agree. According to NRA Board Member and publisher of SOLDIER OF FORTUNE magazine, Robert K. Brown, “Sandy Chisholm, General Manager Ken Friel and Sales Manager Ken Barlow are, “Three of the truly ‘Top Good Guys’ in the shooting sports Industry.”

Oh, and why did NAA name their tiny revolver The Sidewinder? As Ken Barlow explained, “It’s simple, it is a revolver with a swing out cylinder and someone in a John Wayne western called those guns ‘Sidewinders’.”

Thus, exactly like their expertly designed Sidewinder, North American Arms also has a very smooth and on-target operation.

George S. Patton, Jr. The name brings shuddering images of the brutally tough, old school four-star general, one of America’s great command heroes of World War II. Yet, before all that, Patton proved his combat skill in a stand-up, man-on-men shootout in a most unlikely place against an unlikely foe. George Patton’s storied military career began in Mexico during the hunt for Pancho Villa in 1916.

Born November 11, 1885, in San Gabriel, California, George Smith Patton, Jr. followed in his ancestors’ footsteps, attending Virginia Military Academy and later graduated/commissioned from the U.S. Military Academy in 1909. After competing in the 1912 Olympics, where a judge’s horrendous error cost him a Gold Medal in the Pentathlon, Patton trained with the old “boots and saddles” cavalry at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he embraced the Colt Peacemaker, one of which became his ivory-handled trademark as America’s tough guy military icon. Soon, he would draw real blood with his Colt.

In 1910, Mexico was in a period of violent uncivil war. Francisco Madera, an influential idealist, ended the thirty-year reign of the dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Enter Jose Doroteo Arangp Arambula, far better known to the world as Francisco “Pancho” Villa, a cattle hustler, rustler, drover, butcher, murderer and damned good self-taught combat commander who had killed his first man at age 16. He formed his own private “army” in Northern Mexico and supported Madera. However, within three years, Madera was executed by his own top general, Victoriano Huerta, who quickly declared himself president and imposed a tyrannical police state.

Villa escaped the murderous clutches of Huerta, taking refuge in El Paso, Texas, where he reportedly met young Arnold Rothstein, soon to become a major Mafia leader, who arranged financing for armament purchases. After Madera’s death, Villa crossed back to Mexico with another private army to depose Huerta, in hopes of becoming Mexico’s next president. He had the editorial support of William Randolph Hearst’s powerful newspapers due to the media baron’s mega-holdings and investments in Mexico. However, Venustiano Carranza, who had the support of American President Woodrow Wilson, had troops with quiet American aid and Huerta fell in July 1914. Carranza became president, and Villa became embittered.

Disillusioned and finding himself and what was left of his army unemployed, Villa became a roving bandit gang along the border, irritating both Mexicans and Americans. Then, he did the unthinkable, leading his men boldly across that border and attacking the sleepy little town of Columbus, New Mexico on the morning of March 9, 1916.

Yelling “Viva Villa,” and “Muerte a los Americanos,” his men shot up the town, robbed, pillaged and set fire to many buildings. The small local detachment of the U.S. 13th Calvary may have been the only thing that saved Columbus from total annihilation. As the attack dust cleared, 39 soldiers, bandits and civilians littered the ground, with Villa fleeing back to Mexico…fast!

The United States was outraged, and the population demanded action. Back then, unlike today, American citizens got positive reaction decisions quickly. On March 15, 1916, on orders from President Wilson and despite Carranza’s protests, General John Pershing led the Punitive Expeditionary force over the Mexican border. Part of Pershing’s force was the 11th Calvary to which 2nd Lt. George S. Patton was assigned.

Bored with the inaction and constant training, young Lt. Patton craved excitement. When his unit was assigned routine border patrol, he took his case directly to Gen. Pershing to accompany the raiders chasing Villa. Patton sold Pershing on taking him as a replacement for one of his absent aides, a decision that would weave the legend of Patton’s tough guy personal valor and heroism.

By May, deep into Northern Mexico with Pershing’s 6th Infantry Regiment, Patton was in charge of locating the head of Villa’s personal bodyguards, the Dorados. Capt. Julio Cardenas was thought to be hiding near the village of Rubio at Rancho San Miguelto. Patton did a quiet recon of the compound, memorizing every tactical detail.

Patton had traded cavalry horses for noisy Dodge Touring cars to make it look less like a recon patrol and more like a loud, brazen supply trip to the village. Many historians claim he was the first U.S. officer to use motor vehicles in a combat patrol mission. Thus, while purchasing supplies for his men, Patton was tipped by locals that Cardenas was at the ranch. Traveling with Patton in three cars were a corporal, six privates and a civilian interpreter. Patton wanted to approach the ranch with caution as he heard that Cardenas possibly had twenty men with him.

Allowing his men to surround the ranch to the southwest with two cars, Patton took the other car, the driver, the interpreter and a private to the northwest. After dropping Patton and the interpreter off, the driver and the private went to cover the north and west sides of the ranch. As Patton was walking onto the ranch, three men on horseback made a break for it. Having seen Patton, the men rode in the direction toward the southwest corner, where they ran into the blockade of soldiers. Thinking their odds would be better against the lone gringo on foot, the men turned and charged. But, the young lieutenant had a trusted ally: his Colt .45 Single Action Army revolver.

Colt had supplied the U.S. Calvary with that iconic revolver, aka the Peacemaker, since 1872. However, by 1916, they were no longer standard issue. The Calvary now carried the Colt .38 Model 1892 Double Action Army revolver. Not Patton. He not only continued to carry his old Colt Peacemaker with the 4 3/4-inch barrel, but his was custom made, a privilege not many young officers shared. His gun’s grip was ivory clad and along with his initials, an eagle was carved into the ivory by Colt’s own chief engraver, Cuno Helfricht.

For Patton’s first shootout he carried only that single Colt, but he also quickly learned a deadly lesson: from that day and from then on, he always carried two handguns. Those two guns became Patton’s Symbol, which he carried, literally, throughout his military career and into American history.

It was with this legendary six shooter that Patton entered the showdown with Villa’s men who were charging at him. Armed with Winchester and Mexican army issue Mauser rifles, plus Colt revolvers, the banditos opened fire from twenty yards out. Standing tall, firm and unfazed, Patton returned fire with his Peacemaker. As the Mexicans’ semi-aimed rounds rained down around him, Patton calmly shot one rider through the arm, the .45 Colt slug breaking it instantly. But still, the horseman rode on. Young Lt. Patton realized he needed to take down the horses first, then the armed riders.

Bringing down the lead horse and its rider, Patton had emptied his Colt, so he took sparse brush cover to reload. The other two riders had passed Patton while firing blindly. Patton realized that he was in trouble, even as he calmly reloaded his Peacemaker. As the Mexicans turned to charge again, Patton aimed, dropped the one horse, which pinned its rider. Patton waited patiently until the rider freed himself from the cover of the dead animal, before firing the second shot, taking down the second Mexican. The third horseman turned his mount away to flee. By this time, two of Patton’s soldiers had reached their officer, and the three Americans took the rider off his horse, fatally.

The first man shot was not killed when his horse fell and tried to flee, broken arm and all. Patton shouted at him to HALT! Stopping, the Mexican raised his wounded arm as if to surrender, but before he could be taken into custody, he quickly drew his revolver and shot himself dead. Patton recognized the dead Mexican as Capt. Cardenas, Villa’s senior personal bodyguard, the man he’d been assigned to capture.

Needing to get out of that area as quickly as possible to escape vengeful wrath of Villa’s banditos or nearby villagers, Patton strapped one body to the hood of each of his touring cars and took off, headed North to Pershing’s HQ at Dublan. Arriving at base camp late in the afternoon, Patton learned that Pershing was in a staff meeting. Yet, anxious to show his general the very personal evidence of the successful patrol, Patton insisted that the general be pulled from his meeting. Angry at the interruption, then seeing the bodies ripened by the Mexican sun and the heat from the hoods of the touring cars, and knowing that one was a top Villa aide, Pershing quickly joined the enthusiasm and success of his young lieutenant. In fact, Pershing was so impressed with Patton’s exploit that he nicknamed him “Bandit.” That American journalists were at the HQ camp, including photographers, made the event a “headliner” in the U.S. for that week.

When the American public read/saw this news of Patton’s adventures, they hailed him as a national hero. In fact, Patton’s showy shootout was one of the few successful missions of the Punitive Expedition. And to punctuate both the event and his new nickname, Patton carved two notches into his Colt’s ivory grip.

Overall, the Punitive Expedition proved fruitless. So, after ten months, Wilson pulled Pershing and his troops out of Mexico in January of 1917. It would be another six years before Villa was ambushed and killed by local rivals in Parral.

The Punitive Expedition was not a complete letdown. It warmed the American military for Wilson’s weak, reluctant entry into WWI, plus it solidified what George S. Patton always knew and felt in his heart, which was he was meant to be a military mastermind and fearless in the face of danger.

Despite his WWII reputation as a tough, lead from the front foul mouth, George Patton was also a very erudite and sophisticated officer who often flew his own C&C aircraft to staff meetings and recons. Four Star General George S Patton, Jr., died on 21 December, 1945 of severe spinal injuries suffered in an automobile wreck in Germany, though there is controversy as to whether the wreck was an accident or an assassination.

Best known for his heroic, personal leadership in World War II, it was Patton’s aggressive, brave and personal action in Mexico, with his famous Colt Peacemaker which started him on the fast track to legend.

By late 1941, Japan was rolling to take over the Pacific, preparing to bite down hard on Australia, New Zealand and nibble on other choice morsels of the oceanic lands. Due to Hitler’s stranglehold on the U.K.’s home islands, the lands down under were pretty much on their own for defense.

Like every nation defending against Germany and Japan, New Zealand had a severe shortage of small arms of every kind, but especially semiautomatic rifles and machine guns. In 1941, one interesting theoretical military weapon that stood between the Empire of the Rising Sun land invasion and the Kiwis was Philip Charlton’s theoretical machine gun, theoretically produced from an antique, bolt action rifle.

The Charlton rifle was his conversion of the Lee Enfield rifle of Boer War fame and was intended as a substitute for the Browning, Lewis and Bren machine guns of which Australia and New Zealand had very few, and which England could not supply, according to firearms historian Errol Albert Christ.

Christ notes, “The British had all they could deal with fighting Hitler’s ‘Blizkrieg,’ so that ordnance was not available to supply Australia and New Zealand. Even if the weaponry were available, the supply logistics would have been impossible. Those good folks had to improvise.”

The original Charlton automatic rifles were converted in 1941 from obsolete, bolt action Lee-Metford and Lee Enfield rifles from the Boer War era. Charlton himself referred to the guns as museum pieces in his written proposal to the government. It was to be used as a self-loading infantry rifle with the full-automatic capability available for tactical use. The planned issuance was to the Home Guard. The Charlton fired the .303 British service round, weighed 16 pounds unloaded, was 44.5 inches long, 13.3 inches high and 8.2 inches wide. It was gas operated and could fire approximately 600 rounds per minute.

“I should like to bring to your notice a semiautomatic attachment for service rifle, which I have perfected,” Charlton said when he appeared before the NZ Parliament and the Army to formally present his design in June of 1941. “…The almost complete absence of recoil enables the rifle to be fired from the side through a loop hole. It can be fired at arms length across the body. The attachment is very suitable for anti-aircraft work…” He went on to explain the fully automatic capability, as well

Immediate reaction from the political suits was nervous laughter. How was it possible to make a machine gun from an antique bolt action rifle? He was laughed out of the room, literally, by New Zealand’s prime minister and other parliament members.

However, Charlton was a design genius, had a working prototype, and knew if re-fitted rifles could keep back the horror of the Japanese, the Army was willing to listen and observe. They did so during Charlton’s second demonstration that fall.

According to John C. Osborne, a weapons adviser and researcher at the Queen Elizabeth II Army Memorial Museum in Waiouru, New Zealand, this second application, with a live demonstration, to army officials was conducted successfully in November 1941, with production to begin immediately.

Charlton had an Army contract for converting 1,500 of the Home Guard’s long magazine Lee Metford and long magazine Lee Enfield rifles, which were originally manufactured between 1889 and 1903.

Philip Charlton, who Osborne depicts as “having a very receptive mind and described by fellow engineers as very clever, especially to improving existing mechanical devices,” had actually begun designing weapon conversions before World War II began. He had seen drawings of G.T. Buckham and A.T. Dawson’s work with the Lee-Enfield-type rifle conversion to semiautomatic, but he saw that he could improve on their designs. His resultant selective-fire option worked very well. They looked chaotic and awkward, though, with the conversion kit installed externally. But, the rifle functioned perfectly and safely, according to all accounts.

In the New Zealand version, according to Windsor Jones, curator at the Waiouru National Army Museum, the stock was given a pistol grip and a foregrip, the buttstock was lowered in order to clear the modified action and the rear of the barrel had cooling fins. Charlton modified the sights, and changed the magazine-well to take a modified, larger capacity Lee-Enfield magazine, or a modified Bren magazine. He shortened the fore end so that the barrel could cool more efficiently, and so that the gas operation would fit with the foregrip attached to the gas tube shroud. He tipped the barrel with a muzzle brake and modified the barrel length. Also, unlike small arms of that era, this patchwork weapon was adapted to use a clip-on bipod for full auto fire stability.

Of course, all this had not come together to work on his first try. But, Charlton never let failure get in the way of his dream. One malfunction after another didn’t stop him from creating his gun that would do the job. According to Osborne, “Philip always discussed these problems with as many people as possible. He was determined to make the conversion work and, asking as many other knowledgeable engineers and gun aficionados for ideas as he could, proved to be successful. His final, patented design worked perfectly.”

Born in 1901, in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England, Philip Charlton, an engineer by education and training, was destined to become a firearms design expert, according to period newspaper stories plus family member stories about him. He got his first .22 rifle, a B.S.A., for his 14th birthday. His love of firearms, along with countless hours of target practice with other gun buffs, plus his keen engineering mind prepared him for the work needed to develop his emergency rifle that would keep the Japanese at bay if they ever attacked New Zealand.

Charlton’s nephew, John P. Charlton, remembered that his uncle was passionate about intricate mechanical workings of all kinds. “When I knew him, he owned a Mk2 Jaguar, which he thought was one of the best cars in the world. He took me to the Auckland War Memorial Museum to see a Rolls Royce Merlin engine there – he said it was the finest internal combustion engine ever made.”

It was only natural for Charlton to speak with equal exuberance about car engines as he did about the machinations of guns, because he became a qualified automotive and general engineer before he arrived in New Zealand from England in 1923. His granddaughter, Liz Whiting, says he traveled from England to New Zealand as the ship’s engineer and radio operator on the Grimsby Steam Trawler. She said he was “quite relieved to reach NZ safely as the only training he had as a ship’s engineer and radio operator were what he had read in the local library several days before departure.”

Once in New Zealand, he set up his own business in Hastings as an automotive motor body engineer, according to his nephew. It was in Hastings that Charlton’s intense interest in all aspects of rifles grew, and he first suggested his idea to convert a self-loading rifle to a fully automatic gun to his friend and fellow gun fancier, Maurice Field. That idea grew into the prototype of The Charlton Automatic Rifle.

Two versions of the Charlton existed: the New Zealand version produced locally by Charlton Motor Workshops in Hastings, and a version made in Australia by Electrolux, using the SMLE Mk III for conversion. The two designs differed greatly in external appearance, as the New Zealand Charlton had a forward pistol grip and a bipod and the Australian version didn’t. However, they used the same operating mechanism.

John Osborne reported that Charlton negotiated with the Australian government in 1942, to provide 10,000 Charlton automatic rifles similar to those being produced in New Zealand, to be made in Australia. Osborne wrote, “Phil Charlton entered the factory (one morning) very excited, waving a telegram requesting that he go to Australia the next morning.” Charlton received a small royalty for each completed rifle, which was somewhat less than the royalties he was to receive from the New Zealand government.

In anticipation of the Japanese invasion of New Zealand in 1942, about 1,500 rifles were manufactured in New Zealand, while only a few prototypes were turned out in Australia, according to firearms researcher Ian Skennerton.

The Charlton Gun was not his only contribution to wartime armament. He continued scheming ways to fight against the Japanese threat, with some personal risks.

“Uncle Phil went on in the war to develop a ship-mounted anti-aircraft gun, which, unfortunately, jammed during testing,” John Charlton said. “By bypassing some of the electrical interlocks he managed to get it to fire. But unfortunately, those interlocks had disabled the gun because of a fault and it exploded, badly damaging one of his hands. The doctors wanted to amputate two fingers, but he wouldn’t let them. He regained most of the movement in them eventually, which didn’t surprise me at all.”

Happily, even through all of Philip Charlton’s innovation, sacrifice and toil, the dreaded Japanese invasion never came. Thanks to superior air and sea power, plus resupply capability, the Allies stopped the Japanese advance, and slowly turned the war from one of defense to a highly potent offense. Thus, WWII ended with none of the Charlton rifles ever seeing combat.

His granddaughter says that after the war, Philip Charlton ran an automobile parts distributorship, plus designing a hydrogas system to supply automobile power, and a system to micro-open pistons. He and his wife, Eileen, raised two children, Robert and Faye. Philip Charlton died in Auckland Hospital in 1978.

Sadly, most all of the Charlton inventory was destroyed in an accidental fire at the Palmerston North Armory storage facility shortly after World War II. According to Osborn, less than 200 survived the fire, and were used for training and demonstration purposes. These deteriorated through time and were scrapped, a tragedy for historians and collectors. Today, only a handful of the converted rifles survive as Philips Charlton’s legacy.

Where are those remaining rare legacies of Philip Charlton’s true small arms innovation and national significance? There are only five which exist officially, and they are housed in museums: The Waiouru Army Museum in New Zealand; The Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa); The Auckland Museum; The Army Museum (Bandiana) in Australia; and The Imperial War Museum in London. A few others are thought to be in private collections, unofficially or otherwise. Or, as a youngster, John Charlton remembers that years ago, his Uncle Phil used to keep “a couple or so in his back shed.”

(Many thanks to the following who provided valuable research and assistance about this little known man and his unique machine gun design: Ralph Behrends, Curator of the Army Museum, Bandiana, Australia; John Charlton, Philip Charlton’s nephew; Errol Albert Christ, firearms historian; Albert R. Christ; Marian Fiscus; Michael Fitzgerald, Director of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa; Windsor Jones, Curator of the National Army Museum of New Zealand; Kari Randall; Dan Shea; Elizabeth Whiting, Philip Charlton’s granddaughter; and Paul Wraight, photography and Jim Crombie.)

As the warm Spring of 1910 melted away the cold winter in the Mid-Atlantic states, the Pittsburgh Pirates were preparing to defend their position as the World Champions of professional baseball, President William Howard Taft was vigorously continuing the legislative reforms begun by his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, while from Mexico, a Hearst journalist named J. F. Albert was sending back reports of revolution from that wild land: “Díaz government officials are denying reports of a popular uprising being led by a rebel named Zapata in support of Francisco Madero, the reform candidate for the presidency. The revolt is said to be in the state of Morelos, to the south of Mexico City.”

Zapata never formally ruled Mexico and his army never outnumbered that of his ally, the bandit Pancho Villa. Unlike other greedy and ambitious revolutionaries, Zapata had a single goal: land reform for the common citizen.

While Mexico’s national forces and police had arsenals of modern firearms and open channels of mass supply, revolutionaries did not. Their arms suppliers, financing and methods were as blurry as the borders they illegally crossed to supply the freedom fighters.

For example, late in 1910, an innocent looking wagon entered Zapata’s small village in Southern Mexico, loaded with hay. Beneath the hay rested 60 Winchester Model 1886 and 1894 rifles, 30 Colt revolvers, and 2,800 rounds of ammunition. The Zapata peasants had their start-up arsenal of vintage American frontier weapons to fight the federal troops armed mostly with new model Mauser bolt action rifles.

History placed Emiliano Zapata into the eye of this revolutionary storm, curling its deadly cyclones around the corrupt establishment. Indeed, today there are more statues of, and other tributes to, Emiliano Zapata throughout Mexico than of any other revolutionary figure.

President Diaz’s top general, Victoriano Huerta and his troops chased the small band of loyal Zapatistas across the mountains of Morelos. Yet, the rebel army grew in size through autumn of 1911, fed by the people’s hatred for the murderous Huerta. One Mexican leader said of Zapata, “Emiliano Zapata is no longer just a man; he is a symbol for other men.”

With success, more arms and material came his way. As the Hearst journalist William Jenkins wrote: “Instead of the battered, old handed down guns and captured rifles, crates of new Winchesters and even some Mausers were showing up in Morelos. We are told they have been bought by friends to help Zapata’s armies in their battle in the South. Clearly, they come from the North. How far north is anyone’s guess to make…. Ammunition, too, as I saw crates of it. Before, these soldiers had to beg for even a few cartridges. Some loaded their own powder and ball. Today, they have modern factory ammunition and a good supply of it… it keeps coming here in the same type of plain wagons… sometimes by train.”

“Matters will change when we get some artillery and some more of these modern Mauser rifles,” Zapata informed one of his agents who was dealing with Texas gunrunners. “We need Mausers and the automatic machine guns… Can we obtain the American Springfield and ammunition for all the guns?”

Zapata didn’t place firearms in the planned obsolescence category that industrialized military societies do to market new technology even before their old creations are worn out. As long as a gun fired, Zapatistas used it. Firearms authority E. Dixon Larson writes, “There is no question that those (old firearms) that have seen service in Mexico will easily outrank all others in a use and abuse exhibit of grueling wear and unorthodox modification.”

According to most historical accounts, the majority of weapons used came from the United States, with Europe a distant second. Colt and Winchester models outpaced all of the others by 30 to 1. But, getting modern military guns in the United States proved impossible as the American government gave military equipment to the “rightful and orderly” Mexican government, but denied weapons to “any rebel group.”

Obviously, blockades, like prohibitions of any sort, are made to be broken. Lives and fortunes were both won and lost on the Texas and Arizona border with Mexico and along both the Gulf and Pacific coasts, as dozens of gunrunners sought to sell modern weapons. The U.S. and Mexican governments attempted to stop weapons coming in for rebel forces. But, when smugglers are into serious profit, a few dollars or a few pesos change hands, heads are turned and the goods go through.

According to contemporary reports, observers saw some machine guns with the Zapata forces, usually old Colt potato diggers, a few Gatling guns, but at least ten newer Maxim guns. By 1916, Zapata had a dozen or so Lewis guns, some stolen from U.S. units, others “donated” by friends of the Revolution.

Naturally, a helter-skelter ordnance system created logistical supply headaches, e.g. matching ammunition caliber with differing rifle calibers, obtaining a machine gun without vital parts, etc. In addition to the smuggled weapons, Zapata’s forces had homemade guns, plus weapons stolen from the established military and police. Sometimes, new weapons would come in with the wrong caliber ammunition, or no ammunition would show up for any weapon. Many of the peasants brought their own rifles from home, for which no modern ammunition existed.

The basic rifle of the federal soldier during the Zapata period was the Mexican Mauser Model of 1902 in 7mm; an excellent, hard-hitting, accurate rifle. Zapata told a reporter from Literary Digest, “The old Winchester saddle rifles our boys have are no distance match against the army’s new Mausers.”

The Mexican government also purchased numbers of the Mauser Model 1912, a rifle very much like the German Model 98 rifles. The only major difference is that the Mexican model has a tangent-type rear sight and a longer hand guard than the German rifle.

The Mexican military also bought quantities of the 7mm Arisaka rifle from Japan. This five-shot weapon is very much like the standard Japanese model of 1899, and was used through the 1920s.

A very unusual weapon that found some common favor among the rurales of Porfirio Diáz was the Pieper-Nagant, a nine-shot, 8mm rifle with a revolving cylinder. Made in Belgium, the weapon’s barrel is completely enclosed in the wooden fore end. The cylinder closes with the barrel to make a gas-tight, leak-proof seal.

The Mondragón rifle, known officially in Mexico as the Fusil Porfirio Diáz Systema Mondragón, Modelo 1908, was conceived by General Manuel Mondragón in the late 1890s, but he did not perfect and patent his design until 1907. He was forced to have his semiautomatic rifle manufactured by SIG in Switzerland, as there were no suitable production facilities in Mexico. Although the Mondragón is best known for its use by several European countries, the Mexican Federal Army imported a number of them in 7mm, adopting the weapon in 1911. The Mexican models were fitted with a box magazine into which an 8-round clip was loaded. In addition, a few of these pioneer auto-loading rifles were produced in 5mm.

In those days, Mexico was often called a machine gun seller’s paradise, and the Revolutionary era government used a variety of the automatic weapons, mostly the 1896 Hotchkiss gun in 7mm, later, the 7mm Browning model 1919, the 7mm Colt Automatic Gun “Potato Digger” of 1895, plus the Model 1911 Madsen machine gun.

Anyone who has examined the thousands of pages of text, reports, interviews, as well as several thousand period photos, can safely conclude that just about every type of period firearm from homemade hand cannon to machine gun was used in the Mexican revolutionary decade.

“If it shoots, it’s welcome in the Revolution,” Emiliano Zapata told an old man who offered a crude, homemade shotgun to the Chief in 1913. As reported by Literary Digest in 1912, “Zapata creates a faithful follower by handing him a rifle and shells. And to the average Mexican, a rifle means everything.”

A Zapata aide, General de la O, recalled, “We were always happy to see deserters from the federal troops bring along their Mauser rifles. Emiliano wanted very much for his boys to have the best. We were a very raggedly armed bunch, some men had muzzle loaders nearly 100 years old. There are never enough brave men who risk death to bring us modern weapons.”

In August of 1914, knowing that a majority of his men were armed with antiquated Winchesters that had already seen rough service on the North American frontier, handed down family antiques and 40 year old French rifles, Zapata decided he would have to raid more federal arsenals and trains. It worked.

Zapata’s men came into Mexico City on November 24, 1914, acting more like peasants lost in a big city than conquering soldiers. Pancho Villa’s Villistas joined the Zapatistas in the capital on November 28. The historic personal meeting between Villa and Zapata took place December 4, 1914, in Xochimilco, a small town outside of the city. Villa offered Zapata modern arms and ammunition, while Zapata offered men and silver. On December 6, 1914, the two chiefs led their armies into the capital in a peaceful joint occupation.

The peace soon ended in the South. By July 30, 1915, the army of General Pablo González was pushing through Mexico City toward Cuernavaca. Aroused, the Zapatistas took to war again. Zapata celebrated his 36th birthday by driving González and his soldiers back to Mexico City, telling him to stay out of Morelos; then he tried to retire to peace once more.

“Instead of fighting all the time, why can’t we simple people be left alone in peace to enjoy what we fought for?” he asked his friend and advisor Antonio Diáz Soto y Gama. He probably never learned the answer to that question, even though the next three years were somewhat less warlike.

Money and politics had largely replaced bullets as the major weapon. Indeed, in the spring of 1919, the increasingly repressive government, now headed by President Venustiano Carranza, invited Zapata to a luncheon to discus land reform.

As April 10, 1919 dawned, Zapata and nearly 150 of his men rode into a hacienda, about 35 miles south of Villa de Ayala, without suspicion. Shortly after 2 p.m., he rode his horse back inside the hacienda walls for a luncheon of beer and tacos, as a guest of Col. Jesus Gujardo, an aide to Pres Carranza, who had made the invitation to this peaceful sit-down for both sides. Privately, Guajardo had hinted he was ready to defect to Zapata’s side of the political revolution, which was what drew Zapata out of his home district that day.

Guajardo had a small honor guard lined up inside, supposedly to receive Zapata. Three times the bugle sounded the honor call, then as the last note died, the honor guard, made up entirely of government officers dressed as enlisted men, suddenly raised their Mausers and fired point-blank at Zapata and the handful of men who rode behind their chief. Two volleys were fired. Zapata was killed instantly, assassinated at age 39 by a turncoat. A young Zapata aide who survived, Reyes Avilés, wrote of the murder: The surprise was terrible.

The soldiers of the traitor Guajardo were firing on us… resistance was useless. On one side, we were a fistful of men thrown into consternation by the loss of our loved Chief; and on the other side a thousand of the enemy… This is how the tragedy was.

On orders, Guajardo’s troops grabbed the dead rebel leader as his body fell from the horse. A dead Zapata would be powerful propaganda, so immediately, the body was taken to Gen. González’s headquarters and placed on public display in the city of Cuautla. His supporters all over Mexico brought back his famous quote, “We die again. But, this time, to truly live.”

One old veteran of the Revolution said, “Emiliano now rides with the wind. But he is here and he will always ride with us. You can see him too if you look on the right hill at the right time. Zapata is forever.”

SAVE THE LAST BULLET FOR YOURSELF
A Soldier of Fortune in the Balkans and Somalia
By Rob Krott
Casemate Publishers, 2008
239 pages, 30 photographs
ISBN 9781-1-932033-95-3
$32.95

One of the great things about reading articles in SAR is that you know the writer has been there, done that and knows the firearms from personal, hands on experience.

It’s especially so with SAR’s own Military Affairs Correspondent, Rob Krott, whose first book of a trilogy on his life as one of America’s premier security contractors has just been published. Save the Last Bullet for Yourself is one helluva great read.

Before we go any further, as a matter of ethical disclosure, I must tell you that I’ve known Rob a long time as a friend and professional colleague. Whether that makes me biased or simply more knowledgeable is for your judgment.

Rob Krott is a former U.S. Army Infantry Captain who has been a professional combat soldier for more than 20+ years now. In his book, he also flares brightly as an entertaining storyteller and cogent writer. His warrior rhetoric impacts with strong effect as to the why of modern mercenaries and their attempts to do the right thing for the right people: naïve and old fashioned as it may seem.

Rob’s book tells of his going from a rural kid in the sparsely populated wilderness of Northwestern PA, to enlisting in the National Guard as a 17-year-old high school boy, to an Army commission, then up the ladder from Benning to the JFK Center at Bragg, to grad school at Harvard, plus infantry assignments in Korea and other military garden spots.

Explaining that special gene that makes some soldiers true warriors, Rob’s career tells how, where and why he became a military contractor, our current PC term for mercenary soldier. It’s an interesting explanation, too, along with the rationale and the action of his early contracts and assignments in Africa and in the Balkans, which is the venue and time frame of his first book. There are about 30 photos in his book, good personal shots of his fellow soldiers displaying a surprising variety of small arms.

One thing Rob told me recently, is how much of the 3rd and 4th world is still using military small arms from the WWII and Korean War era; he’s seen WWII pistols and rifles being used by locals in Africa and the Balkans during the early and mid ’90s, the period covered by his book. With a laugh, he added, “If it weren’t for the combat action, many of the field assignments reported in my book were like walking through an open air museum of classic military firearms.”

This phenomenon is what attracted him to SAR and he has shared those highlights with us over the years through the magazine, and, now, in his book. For example, in Bosnia, he saw everything from Yugoslavian Tokarevs to an old Marlin lever-action .22 rifle with a Tasco scope.

“The King Tomislav Brigade’s armory included a hodgepodge of weaponry: bolt-action Yugo Mausers, Yugo versions of the SKS carbine, various Zastava hunting/sniping rifles, WWII Russian PPSh-41 or look-alike Yugoslav Model 49 submachine guns, and even some poorly maintained Thompson .45 SMGs. There wasn’t any .45 caliber ammunition for the old Chicago equalizers. Just as well, as I don’t think I really wanted to tote one up and down the Herzegovina Mountains,” Rob writes when describing his first experience walking into his unit’s armory in Bosnia.

As he told me, “One really unusual weapon we used there was a South African ARMSCOR MGL Mark 1, 40mm grenade launcher. Very distinctive with it’s six-round cylinder and optical sight. We received a whole shipment of them, new-in-the-box, from South Africa.”

Rob continues in his book, “The PPSh-41 World War II Soviet submachine gun is easily recognized by its distinctive ventilated cooling jacket and 71-round drum magazine. The Yugos copied it as their Model 49. These weapons saw extensive use in the Balkans, for personal defense or close-in work in urban areas or trench lines.”

Rob adds, “Croatia produced a copy of the PPSh-41, their Sokac M-91, in 1991-1992. The receiver was identical to the original, except it was chambered for 9x19mm caliber, and had a plastic pistol grip and a folding stock like the CZ-24 Czech submachine gun. There were a standard model, a suppressed model, and an early version with wood furniture instead of plastic. But it was strange for me to see soldiers running around in the 1990s with a weapon from World War II.”

Obsolete subguns like this are better than nothing when small arms are scarce, but no substitute for a modern assault rifle, he concludes.

While working as a U.S. government consultant in Somalia in the early ’90s, Rob also ran across a number of classic small arms. “A really interesting find was a Smith and Wesson 1917 service revolver, the one chambered for .45 Long Colt, but used with .45 ACP cartridges and half moon clips. It had a short, snub-nosed barrel. The finish was 100 percent and the grips were unscratched. It looked like it was boxed out of the factory yesterday. Otherwise, it seemed like there was one of everything: Browning HiPowers, Thompsons, MG-42s, even a Breda Model 30. SKS carbines were piled on top of M1 Garands, which leaned against Mannlicher-Carcanos, flanked by Czech LMGs and rusting Mausers.”

Happily, this will not be Rob Krott’s only book. This is the first of at least two more books detailing the exciting, real and all very true stories of SAR’s own modern soldier of fortune. Personally, I hope he’s locked ‘n loaded and gets them down range soon.

Japanese Training Machine Guns
By William M.P. Easterly
62 page pamphlet
Order from the author:
PO Box 2814
San Juan, TX 78589-2814
www.dragonsoffire.com

William Easterly has been around the Class 3 community for half a century, and perhaps is best known for his Collector Grade Publications book The Belgian Rattlesnake, which is the definitive treatise on the Lewis machine gun. More than that, Mr. Easterly is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Japanese machine guns of the pre-war and World War II eras.

He has taken that historical passion and decades of study and put an interesting pamphlet together covering one often overlooked aspect of collecting Japanese machine guns: the machine gun trainers.

There are many variations of these trainers, all designed to fire blank cartridges. Like the regular machine guns that were brought back as trophies, many of the trainers are missing their feeding devices because that was a way of “deactivating” these as war trophies. The US Navy simply tossed the magazines and feeding devices overboard on the trip home from the Pacific battlefields. It is a great help for many collectors of these to see photos of the feeding devices that they need to find for the various models.

Since the trainers are machine guns, albeit blank firing, they were required to be registered in the 1968 Amnesty, and there are a surprisingly large number of them in private hands.

Easterly’s pamphlet does an excellent job of covering the history and development in Japan, and the why’s and wherefores of the manufacture of these interesting historical pieces. If you have an interest in World War II, Japan, and machine guns, this is a pamphlet you should own. We highly recommend a visit to his website as well: www.dragonsoffire.com

Available on his website for $26 including shipping in the US.

Tough, disciplined Japanese troops hit the Philippines just after the Pearl Harbor attack, roaring through the islands, capturing Manila by January 2, less than three weeks later. The dazed American and Philippine survivors stumbled to Corregidor in retreat.

“With the Japanese in charge so quickly and firmly, the allies had only one hope to regain freedom – guerrilla warfare,” the British military historian Trevor Dupuy wrote of the deadly defeat.

Only days after the Japanese victory, word got around the islands that a few Americans were in the rugged mountains, trying to organize guerrilla bands. However, when Corregidor fell in May of 1942, the last headquarters of the Americans was gone. General Jonathon Wainwright, under great duress, ordered that all Americans surrender to the Japanese.

Not all Americans obeyed that order. Many chose to continue that battle. The true stories of many of these heroes, e.g., Blackburn, Noble and Moses have filled novels and have been the subject of films and military histories. Interestingly, one of their major universal problems was a severe shortage of firearms. Guns, badly needed to fight the Japanese, were a rare item, until a bright, young U.S. Navy officer showed up to help. Under the leadership of Lt. Iliff Richardson, USNR, the early Philippines guerrilla troops literally ripped apart their own plumbing and built guns to fight the Japanese, beginning on Leyte. Freedom’s revolution spread.

“Like a character in the book A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT, Lt. Richardson showed the guerrillas how to fashion the badly needed guns right in their own villages using scrap material like plumbing pipe and old lumber,” correspondent Ben Waters reported in 1944.

Young Richardson’s impact and fame were the right stuff for democracy, and his exploits were featured in two best selling books and Hollywood films of the ’40s. That’s the rare and right stuff for a preacher’s (dad) and a teacher’s (mom) son born in Denver in 1918, to accomplish in such a short time.

A rangy, 23 year old Ensign, with blond hair, Iliff Richardson evaded the Japanese during those first hectic war days of December, 1941, eventually fleeing into the hills with a few Filipino soldiers and other civilian refugees. The war correspondent Ira Wolfert wrote of Richardson’s experiences, “His life leading irregulars against the Japanese was a how-to book, e.g., how to make fuel for your car out of palm tree sap, or how to scrape your way through jail bars with a beer can opener, or how to make field artillery out of a brass pipe, how to tell time in the jungle at night when you don’t have a watch, or how to sail a banca, or how to make bullets out of a curtain rod.”

In 1938, Iliff Richardson was a young college student at California’s Compton College when he decided that we wanted to see the world before graduating. So, he spent 18 months traveling in Europe and the near and far East. He quickly surmised that a World War was in the immediate offering. He returned to the States just prior to the Fall of France in 1940 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Because of his college background, after Boot Camp, he got into OCS at Northwestern University, graduated college, was commissioned, and by the fall of that year was on a minesweeper in the Philippines. He transferred to the new Motor Torpedo Boats in 1941, and volunteered for Lt John D. Bulkley’s PT Squadron 3, the so-called “expendables” that both carried General Douglas MacArthur’s family and staff from the Philippines to Australia, plus covered for that White House-ordered deployment. He served aboard PT Boats 33 and 34, and was at the helm of the 34 boat for the start of the MacArthur’s evacuation.

“After that, our mission was to run murderously outnumbered combat patrols around Bataan, Cebu, Corregidor and Mindanao against Jap transports, barges and gunboats, trying to keep the Japs busy while the brass got out,” Richardson said. “The Japs sunk most of us ‘expendables’ including my boat in Subic Bay.”

Richardson and other survivors managed to float wreckage and swim for nearly 24 hours, evading the Japanese, finally making land in Mindanao. Their plan was to steal a Japanese boat and reach Australia, 1300 miles away. Lt. (jg) Richardson took charge of ten stranded army air corps pilots and they tried to sail a native boat out for Australia. It was sunk, so he then led a 13-mile survival swim to Leyte. Again, they thought to get another boat to escape by sea.

Instead, Richardson and the others spent the next three years on Leyte, serving as guerrilla leaders eventually becoming chief of staff to Col. Ruperto Kangleon, the major resistance leader. Richardson set up and maintained the radio net that linked about 50 guerrilla groups, enabling them to coordinate their activities and to communicate with MacArthur’s headquarters.

In addition to the communications job, Lt. Richardson also became the officer in charge of ordnance, communications, finance, quartermaster, and public relations for Col. Kangleon.

During Richardson’s service on Leyte, MacArthur direct commissioned him as a Major in the US Army and appointed him as Army Intelligence liaison. He was also commissioned as a Major in the Philippine Army. This assignment meant he had to delegate his other duties while he concentrated primarily on communication and liaison between the guerrilla command and MacArthur’s people. Indeed, one of the first Americans MacArthur requested to see as the invasion of Leyte was taking underway was Major/Lt. Iliff D. Richardson. MacArthur personally awarded Lt. Richardson, USN, the Army’s Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, in lieu of a second Silver Star, was awarded two Presidential citations, plus there was talk of MacArthur nominating him for a Medal of Honor, which Richardson, in his own modest style, downplayed.

In addition to his leadership for three years, plus his ordnance skills, battle savvy and courage throughout the war, Iliff Richardson also made his own unique small arms contribution, the ubiquitous Philippine Pipe Shotgun. His 1942 “invention” shows up among armed rebels even today as various Philippine rebel groups continue to fight their various political battles, more than 60 years later.

“It’s a slam-action shotgun made from two pieces of plumbing pipe, a chunk of wood, and a nail. We made them from scraps,” Lt. Richardson explained in 1945.

“Sure, it’s crude and ugly. But it kills just as dead as that fine, expensive M1 rifle you have,” he replied to a skeptic who poo-poo’d the junk gun.

“The idea was to use our pipe shotgun to kill a Jap so our people could liberate one of their real rifles and all the other battle gear we could,” Lt. Richardson explained.

His shotgun was a rough hunk of wood, perhaps a whittled piece of old 2×4 with a hole bored in one end to accept a short bit of plumbing pipe. This was the crude receiver.

A nail was placed at the back of the receiver, sticking forward. Then a homemade, 12 gauge shotgun shell was loaded carefully into the longer, smaller diametered piece of plumbing pipe – the barrel.

Lt. Richardson said, “The two pieces of the gun were joined gingerly together when one of our men got close to action. Firing was a matter of clamping the wooden piece under your arm, then slamming that barrel back into the receiver, like a trombone. Hopefully, the sharp end of the nail hit the primer in the shotgun shell.

“If so, BLLOOOMM…the Emperor lost another soldier and our guys gained another real rifle and ammo from the departed Jap.”

The purpose of the Richardson pipe shotgun was not to engage the Japanese regulars in set piece, pitched battles. Rather, it was a “home-expedient weapon”, as the U.S. military quaintly called it in post war reports, “designed solely to kill enemy soldiers so that irregulars could acquire military rifles and ammunition.”

Later, the U.S. would furnish real military small arms to the guerrilla groups. But in the early days, they used Richardson’s pipe shotguns to harvest Japanese Arisaka rifles and ammunition. The process worked well.

Richardson led his guerrillas and their Rube Goldberg shotguns into many small group ambushes, early in 1942, explaining, “These pipe guns weren’t worth much in open combat, but they’re great for ambush. As soon as he got a modern rifle from a dead Jap, our man would pass his slam-bang shotgun on down the line to a new recruit, who’d pass it along after he used it to get his new rifle.”

After the war, Iliff Richardson tried to market a commercial version of his weapon back in the States. He called it the M4 Guerrilla Shotgun, advertised it for “lowest cost hunting,” and sold it for $7.20. His slam-fire design took on a more commercial look as The Guerrilla Gun, Model R-5 12 gauge, which was manufactured by Richardson Industries, Inc of New Haven, CT. The gun was 36½ inches overall, with a 24-inch barrel, and sold for $7.99. Very few were sold and the idea was folded in 1947.

Literary history was kinder to Richardson, though. He was the inspiration for the war correspondent Ira Wolfert’s 1945 best-seller, AMERICAN GUERRILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES. Although the book was nominally fiction, the protagonist and his story were Richardson.

In that book, Richardson’s character, through Wolfert, describes how he organized, armed, and led his people against the Japanese.

“At first, we did it all in the villages, making all our supplies in impromptu workshops. We used hack saws, hand files, plumbing pipe, tape, nails, and materials stolen from the Japanese supply depots.

“In one 10×20 ‘factory,’ we even had a hand forge. There, we made shotguns, some rifles, and all of our ammunition. All of it was from homemade ingredients, and all of it was done by hand.”

Hollywood turned Wolfert’s story of Richardson’s heroics into a film, starring Tyrone Power, in 1950. However, his real story was more deadly interesting than the reel one.

For example, the first ambush with the homemade shotguns was in early February of 1942, and netted Richardson’s band of eight men and two women five Japanese rifles, one submachine gun, and a few hundred rounds of ammunition.

“We got hand grenades and more ammo from the soldiers we ambushed on the second try a week later. We got a light machine gun and more small arms the third time. We now had enough real arms to make real raids,” Richardson reported.

Jungle telegraph word of Richardson’s success spread, as did the number of small groups under his nominal command, all using the same tactics. In addition to killing Japanese troops and taking their weapons, equipment and food, these tactics were forcing the enemy to utilize more troops to find the shifty irregulars; the first step to not losing a guerrilla war.

At that point, toward the end of 1942, Richardson’s group became a vital link in organized guerrilla activities, not only in Leyte, but also in all the islands. The U.S. Navy promoted him to Lieutenant and in addition to his U.S. Navy rank; he was also a Major in the Philippine Army.

The experts recognized Richardson’s impact.

“The propaganda slogan of the Japanese sweep through the Pacific had been one of racial nationalism, ‘liberating their racial brothers from the exploitation of their white colonial masters.’ While the idea was successful in some parts of Asia, heroes like Lt. Richardson stopped it cold,” was the assessment of Major General Edward Lansdale, a military icon in that region.

He added, “There was little question of the Philippine/American friendship and loyalty. The Japanese came on so very heavy handed that their racial stuff didn’t work. So they resorted to their old tactic from China, terror, torture and horrible death for all in their path.”

The historian Trevor Dupuy wrote, “The Philippine people are proud, freedom-loving, and independent. During WWII, man for man and woman for woman, they fought harder against an occupation enemy than any other nation.”

Yes, the Japanese were cruel and harsh. But so were the guerrillas. It was that kind of war.

“When the nationalism didn’t work, the Japs really put on the direct pressure, lots of terror killings, civilian hangings, and heavy, hunt and kill patrols,” Richardson said.

“They also told us by radio that Gen. Wainwright had surrendered all American forces and that the only honorable thing for us to do was to surrender. They promised us good treatment. But, by then we already knew about Bataan and the death march.

“Later, they said they would kill surviving prisoners from Bataan and Corregidor unless we came in,” Richardson said.

Feeling an obligation to honor, a few senior officers did surrender. The younger ones, like Richardson, were cynical, and stayed to fight, as they did not believe the Japanese…who were lying, and killed the prisoners anyway.

“We learned, too, that Lt. Col. Martin Moses and Lt. Col. Arthur Noble and a few of our key men had escaped from Bataan and were determined to build an even stronger resistance movement. That was very good news,” Richardson added.

By October of 1942, Gen. Douglas MacArthur urged Resistance units to “strike whenever and wherever possible” at the enemy. He also established submarine supply and communication plans for the irregulars who remained behind enemy lines.

“We’d been operational way before October. But, I was glad to hear about the supplies. We were getting low on captured material and had little powder for our homemade guns,” Richardson remarked.

Not only didn’t enough supplies arrive, but by a stroke of bad luck, the Japanese captured both Colonels Moses and Noble in May of 1943. The officers were beheaded publicly.

“The Japanese also offered great sums of money to locals for informants, especially to turn in Americans. But there were only a few isolated cases. The Philippine people were wonderfully loyal to us, and to their own freedom,” Richardson explained.

Richardson said, “The Japanese had played the racial issue all through WWII, trying to convince these native peoples in each nation they invaded that they were there to save them from American and British colonial masters. What damned nonsense.”

However, coupled with the Japanese brutality, this racism, plus monetary rewards, did create collaborators among the local population. This did not sit well with the guerrillas. According to most experts, in general, Filipino people are usually mild and peaceful folks. Aroused or engaged, like any of us, they can become fearfully vindictive and brutal.

Richardson recalled one instance where guerrillas on Leyte caught some of their countrymen cooperating with the Japanese to kill both Americans and Filipino leaders. He said the guerrillas minced the captured Filipino collaborators alive, and floated the pieces downstream, into their home village. He said there were far worse events that he heard about.

The relentless Japanese pressure never broke the guerrilla movement. By late summer of 1943, Col. R.W. Volckmann took command of the guerrilla units and re-established communication and supply networks, increasing combat efficiency, and morale.

“Not only did Col. Volkmann do that, but also he pushed MacArthur to send along the supplies he’d been promising, finally! We started to get both regular air drops and submarine supplies that included the latest equipment and weapons,” Richardson recalled.

“By early 1944, we were certain the allied invasion wasn’t far off. We really intensified our counter-terror campaign against the Japanese.

“Finally, we got coded radio messages that the invasion would be on the eastern shore of our island, Leyte. Our units were given more arms and supplies, and told to get more recruits so we could support the invasion force,” Richardson said.

Amazingly, Richardson wrote a 200-page personal diary, typing duplicate pages on an antique typewriter on his rare breaks. One finished copy was buried by priests in a Mindanao church yard, after sealing it in a bamboo box. He gave the other copy to the Navy brass upon the full liberation of the Islands in 1945. Following WWII, the priests returned that copy to Richardson.

Coma Richardson, his wife of 56 years, says, “That original manuscript is in remarkable condition. We gave it to the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, TX for their archives.”

Mrs. Richardson, a charming and delightful lady, said that friends and family members would like to see Lt. Richardson’s original diary published, verbatim, for the pure reality of daily life in the guerrilla life. She says it is more starkly realistic that the novel of her husband’s incredible experiences.

On October 21, 1944, Gen. MacArthur waded ashore on Leyte, the day after the U.S. Sixth Army had landed. He announced, “People of the Philippines…I have returned. By the grace of the Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil. Rally to me! Rise and strike!”

A bemused Iliff Richardson said, “That sure was pompous grandstanding for the newsreel cameras. We guerrillas have been rising and striking for three long years already!”

All over the Islands, guerrilla units fought side by side with regular forces to finally defeat the Japanese, who didn’t give up easily. The Allies encouraged the guerrillas already behind Japanese lines to step up their favorite tactics of assassination, ambush, destruction of supplies, terror, and cutting communications. Slowly and painfully, the Japanese rolled back.

“By January of 1945, our irregulars were in the front line that moved into Luzon. When the Japanese finally surrendered the Philippines, the Allied unit nearest their major headquarters was our guerrilla band,” Richardson said proudly.

“Considering what we started with, I’d say that victory was truly ours,” added this real American guerrilla in the Philippines.

Following the war, Iliff D Richardson returned to Texas, married, raised a family, and began a civilian career with Northwestern Life Insurance Company, after his brief fling with that civilian version of his guerrilla shotgun. He also worked as a motivational consultant to corporations and government agencies.

He never returned to the Philippines to visit any of his former wartime comrades. As Coma Richardson says, “Rich told me that once the war was over, it was over, and he was ready to move on with our life together.”

In honoring Richardson after the liberation of the Philippines, Col. Kangleon said of his American friend, “He was the light that led MacArthur back to the Philippines.”

Yet, Iliff Richardson has no ship nor other USN facility named after him for his accomplishments nor is anything likely to be named in his memory. He wasn’t a lifer, a careerist, and he survived the war. He did his duty, wow, did he do his duty, WAY above and beyond the call of that duty.

When Iliff David Richardson passed away at age 83 on 10 October, 2001 in Houston, Texas, local journalist Chuck Hlava wrote, “Richardson had courage, brains, organizational skills, charisma and character. They don’t make them that way anymore…He left a legacy of bravery and ingenuity like no other.”

by J David Truby

As the Beretta 92 replaced the venerable old Colt M1911A1 as the US military’s sidearm in 1985, few remember that it had been less than 15 years earlier that Colt built its better mouse trap, the handgun that almost succeeded its aging ancestor: the little-known Colt SCAMP, almost 40 years old now and barely known except to small arms cognoscenti.

Faced with the hoary age of the 1911A1 and its inevitable retirement by the military, Colt designers came up with a new concept in 1969. They decided not to merely replace the veteran pistol; they chose to improve the capability of an already good basic design. Colt design engineer Henry A. Into called his 1971 prototype the “SCAMP,” for Small Caliber Machine Pistol.

“We looked at all the mini-submachine guns already out there, e.g., Skorpion, Mini Uzi, plus the small Walther and Beretta designs, and, in addition our engineers tinkered with various pistols they converted to full-auto with large capacity magazines, like the Browning Hi Power. Then, we did several in-house designs, finally settling on the SCAMP as the one that met all the required criteria of lightweight, compact, easily hand-acquired, accurate and capable of putting out a high rate of effective suppressive fire,” said Ronald Stilwell, former president of Colt.

According to Henry. A. Into, former manager of handgun engineering for Colt, who actually designed it, the SCAMP was “more than just a handgun for individual military personnel. It was a solid, lightweight and accurate machine pistol…truly a versatile and useful offensive handgun, just a bit bigger than our 1911A1.

“Although we developed the SCAMP officially as a proprietary handgun for the military’s personal defense weapons program, what we turned out was a lot more. We gave the individual operator a whole lot of handheld firepower.”

Only slightly larger and heavier than the .45ACP 1911A1 pistol it was to replace, the SCAMP was built around a Colt-developed, high-velocity, centerfire .22 round. It was also far better balanced than the old Colt, according to Into.

“The SCAMP was a gas-operated, locked-breech weapon with select-fire capability, including three-shot burst,” he added.

One of the major problems faced by any automatic weapon is the climb factor which draws the weapon off target. Light, miniature full autos like the SCAMP magnify this tendency. Eliminating that problem was a major accomplishment of the Colt engineering team, that sought minimal group dispersion in burst mode, according to Into, who also wrote Colt’s official proposal for the weapon to the military in 1971.

“Rather than build-in additional bulk and weight to control climb and recoil, we decided to create a compact compensator and a burst control mode, both of which would add to the inherent accuracy of the weapon by defeating the inaccuracies usually found in the smaller automatic weapons. The concept worked well,” he added.

Into added, “We used the burst control method because it is far easier for operators to keep their weapon under control that way, which also increases the potential for better aimed shots and a higher hit-per-shot ratio. This is especially true under stress situations, which is when this weapon would be used.”

The Colt prototype was 11.6 inches long, 1.4 inches wide and 6.8 inches in height. It weighed 3.25 pounds with a magazine capacity of 27 rounds. In a futuristic design, ahead of the times, the receiver housing was glass-reinforced, high impact plastic and contained the moving parts, all of which were made of stainless steel. The cylic-firing rate varied between 1,200 and 1,500 rpm

Another factor in the control and accuracy problem was that the cartridge originally suggested for the SCAMP was the .223 round, far too hot for an ordinary handgun, much less a machine pistol.

The SCAMP’s .22-centerfire cartridge fired a 40-grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of 2,100 fps. Colt officials developed the round specifically for the new weapon. The world standard and popular 9mm round was rejected because of its relatively heavy recoil signature. The designers also rejected the rimfire .22 long rifle because of its inadequate ballistics.

Into’s later research rejected the .22 Winchester Magnum and the 5mm Remington cartridges. The .22 Hornet cartridge was studied for modification, as well. However, the Remington .221 Fireball cartridge was used as the starting point for the new Colt cartridge. In their benchmark book on submachine guns , Nelson and Musgrave explain the design capability of the new Colt cartridge, writing, “Should a substantially different type of ammunition than ball be desired, the general design is capable of further modification…a multiple flechette round, for example.”

Testing showed that the new round shot flat and accurate out to about 125 meters, far superior to most military pistols, plus it had the full-auto and burst control capability of the SCAMP pushing it. By the way, this .22-centerfire Colt round developed for the SCAMP was later redesigned as a rimmed cartridge for revolvers, to be used primarily by security forces. This effort met with about the same level of contractual success as the original SCAMP design.

The SCAMP’s grip design was fashioned after the thumb-rest grips of target pistols and the bore was located low to the firer’s hand with the firing mechanism above the bore to lower the center of gravity and improve balance.

The sights were open partridge, adjustable for windage on the front, plus rear sights with ear protectors and windage adjustment. According to Into, “We also designed a quick-point aiming rib into the housing design for combat shooting, plus the weapon was balanced for natural pointing characteristic along the shooter’s forearm.”

Fieldstripping was simple and required no tools. A major part of Into’s design requirement was “for simple maintenance and a high degree of insensitivity to environmental harshness,” he explained.

The SCAMP was designed for performance under poor environmental conditions and with ease in maintenance. Into noted, “Face it, we do not fight wars in hospitable locales and you want a survival weapon that’s going to work each time and every time, no matter the field conditions.”

Thus, all metal parts were built of stainless steel, while the housing was fabricated from fiberglass-reinforced plastic. The front sight was anodized aluminum. Field stripping was designed to be easy and is component based so as not to lose small parts in the field. Colt also proposed several ways of storing and carrying the weapon; including two new holster designs and a Velcro-based hook and loop fastener for wear on the uniform. This design was offered for aircrew use.

Although only one prototype SCAMP was built, it was tested both by Colt and military officials. According to Into, “We were highly pleased with the operation and performance of the weapon…it was all we had hoped it would be.”

The Army said it had evaluated the weapon only on an unofficial basis and one ordnance NCO with whom I spoke said he shot it at the factory. Retired M/Sgt Fred White had been at the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal facility after two tours in Vietnam and was at Colt to do some work on what eventually became the M16A2.

“They asked me to try this experimental pistol back in 1974, said it was one of a kind,” M/Sgt White explained. “I recognized it was bigger than the old Colt auto, but the old one didn’t have three-round burst or the flat accuracy this gun had. I liked it a lot. Show me any other solid, working machine pistol that was smaller than 12 inches and weighed 3 pounds. That one was it, too bad it didn’t cut the grade.”

Of course, part of the original design thought for the SCAMP was as a survival gun for the Air Force.

According to Robert Ormann, who was with the USAF developmental command at the time, one of the Air Commando people had seen the SCAMP at the Colt plant and tried to interest his service in a modified version of it. Ormann says, “We were looking for a personal defense weapon that was fast, accurate and small enough to stow in the tight confines of our aircraft. We looked at the Colt design, but, only unofficially; there were no trials or other tests that I know of.

“As I recall, it looked somewhat like that later Steyr TMP with that grip magazine and the low-mount compensated barrel. The one we had had an 18-round magazine and fired a bottlenecked .22-centerfire cartridge. It was a fairly high velocity round, compared to the .38, 9mm and .45 pistols our people had in those days.”

He says the SCAMP shown to the air force personnel was in competition with the design known as the Davis Gun, after Dale M. Davis of the USAF Armament Laboratory at Eglin AFB. The Davis Gun, which rested along the firer’s arm, rather than a traditional stock, later evolved into the Bushmaster design, which was subsequently developed into a series of military and civilian firearms. Ironically, too, Colt’s designers developed their own version of an arm gun known as the Lightweight Rifle/Submachine Gun, known as the IMP because it used the .221 IMP cartridge.

Unhappily, though, for Colt, M/Sgt White, and the USAF, the official military line was that the SCAMP was not the answer to that better “man trap” handgun they had been trying to build since 1911. Thus, the SCAMP project did not evolve beyond the original prototype, so that no cost estimates were even generated.

Happily for ordnance historians, though, veteran Colt engineer, Ed Zalewa kept track of that SCAMP prototype, insuring its safekeeping in the company’s archive vault. He told me, “the firearms industry is not real good about retaining historical records and valuable prototypes. We are in our department, and that is why you can see this one-of-its-kind SCAMP today.”

by J. David Truby

You’ve seen them on all of the Vietnam War movies and TV shows, on the combat/terrorism/SWAT/peace-keeping news footage on CNN, non-firing replicas are sold to collectors. But, look closely and you might just see a few turn up on your local gun club firing range as collectors discover the M203 40mm grenade launcher.

Originally designed to mate with the M16 for tactical military and police use, the initial M203s were built in limited numbers for the civilian collector and esoteric sport shooter market by Jonathan Arthur Ciener, and, more lately by Randall Shivak.

“BATF classifies the M203 as a destructive device and they are completely legal to own under the classification. With signal and other recreational loads they are totally safe and nondestructive,” Randy Shivak says.

Ciener, an innovative Florida ordnance engineer who is no longer in the M203 business, adds, “That good old M203 is just the thing for the imaginative gun buff who wants to go to the next level of collector’s stratosphere. It’s the adult boy’s ultimate expensive and totally fun toy!”

The standard M203 unit is a breech loading, pump action, single-shot 40mm projectile launcher that is mounted under the barrel of a rifle. It’s 15.52 inches long, and adds just a little over 3 pounds to its host AR15 or M16, 3.6 pounds when you include the standard 40mm round. Maximum range is 500 meters, although its most effective results are within 300 to 350 meters.

One of my fellow advisers to some Central American military units in the 1980s said of the M203, “It’s like having your own brass knuckles in a barroom brawl.”

The 781 40mm practice round is easily reloadable for long term continued use. A variety of signal and pyrotechnic loads are available to the civilian shooter. Credit: J. David Truby

Five standard types of ammunition are produced for the M203: The M406 HE (High Explosive) round, M433 HE armor-piercing, M576 buckshot antipersonnel round, and the M407 and M781, which are practice rounds. In addition there are also tear gas and various signal loadings readily available to military and law enforcement users. According to Randy Shivak, there is no operational 40mm ordnance available to the civilian market, both for legal and liability reasons.

The velocity using the M406 HE cartridge is 245 fps. This is the most common military round used, an antipersonnel load with a lethal radius of 5 meters. The M433 round will penetrate 2 inches of steel armor plate before showering its lethal fragments.

Attaching the M203 to your own M16 is not quite the happy task that the Colt sales literature promotes, although it is hardly a major challenge to the average user. It’s basically a matter of a couple of mounting screws and the military manuals are very easy to follow in this regard.

You load the M203 by depressing the barrel release and pushing the barrel forward. This opens the breech and automatically cocks the unit. However, an automatic safety sear also activates at this point to prevent an accidental discharge. Insert the round carefully. Aim, fire, observe and repeat.

The M203 entered US Army service in 1970, to replace the M79, the fabled Blooper that looked essentially like a short, fat, single barreled shotgun that fired 40mm grenades.

The major problem with the M79 was that the user generally didn’t also carry a rifle and certainly couldn’t use both weapons at the same time if he did. By replacing the old Blooper with the M203, the grenadier once more became a rifleman. Although R&D and initial contract cost numbers are unavailable, a 1978 commercial production contract let to Colt by the DoD listed each M203 at $231.88. In addition to American use, the early units were also issued to South Vietnamese troops, plus hundreds were sold to Australia, New Zealand and to the United Kingdom during the Vietnam years. Later, the Pentagon sold and gave thousands of M203s to our allies as military and law enforcement assistance.

The M203 was developed by AAI Corporation at the direction of the US Army Weapons Command to replace to the M79, which had its beginnings in the early 1950s at Aberdeen and Springfield.

The original design, though, had come from Colt in 1964 with the development of their CGL-4, which the Army called the XM148. Nearly 1,800 XM148 units were field tested in Vietnam in 1967. Although well liked by some troops, the units officially “failed” the field-testing and were withdrawn.

Ironically, in 1972, while representing Interarms in Vietnam, the late Dr. Edward Ezell said that he saw a battered XM148 recovered from a VC unit that “was probably happy to have this wonderful firepower that the Americans didn’t want.”

Despite that history, R&D began on a replacement in the Fall of 1967 and AAI won the competition with its M203 design. By April of 1969, 500 XM203 units were sent to Vietnam for field-testing. One of the many, many glowing testimonials to the XM203 was the number of units that attempted to replace their M79s with the new test weapon. The XM203 won enthusiastic endorsement.

Because AAI was a small company and the military needed massive amounts of M203 units, manufacture was undertaken by Colt in 1971 on a license purchasing agreement. Obviously, by that time supplies of everything to those American forces that were still in country were slowing down, although the new launcher did make it into combat. Most accounts estimate that Colt has produced between 500,000 and 800,000 units for US and friendly foreign governments.

At the 1992 meeting of the American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA) meeting, Colt showed its M203H, which is essentially a standard M203 with a fixed pistol grip and butt stock. It also uses a 250-meter ladder sight. The M203H is stand-alone weapon.

According to Ciener, back in the mid 1990s, there was new interest in the M203 from some US-friendly middle eastern nations that want to add this relatively inexpensive and useful bit of ordnance to their national defense and law enforcement systems.

“I was approached by some folks in our government to build several hundred M203s for one our allied nations in that region,” Ciener says. “But, that really did not work out.”

As serious users will attest, Ciener’s version of the old bloop tube is rugged. Each unit’s receiver is constructed of high strength, forged aluminum. Although it is almost always attached to an M16, it can be operated independently.

Randy Shivak moved into the M203 community in 1994. The year before he was a roofing contractor with a great business as well as a self-taught machinist who found he enjoyed that better than his day job.

“I got bitten by the Class III bug in 1993, loved machining, had an M16, and wanted to go for more, “ he says.

He studied federal and state law, talked with some friends, bought some more machining equipment, then got his manufacturer’s Type 10 license and began to produce M203s and M79s.

What had been a hobby quickly grew to a business. He was using GI parts and building his own receivers. As demand quickly grew, he added more machining equipment, and realized this new business was outdistancing his day job.

“In 1998, I went out of the roofing business and began devoting my full time to my fully functional 40mm weapons and accessories. I now have a very active website, too, and have expanded offerings again, selling real M79s, real M203s, parts, all sorts of practice rounds, repair facilities and I am doing some contract work as well.”

Randy said there is a very loosely organized “users club” of 40mm collectors and hobbyists who are trying to get a 40mm competition included at Knob Creek. His customers come from all walks, trades and professions, including one federal officer who lives in a very gun-unfriendly state.

. Rather than give you today’s BATF drill for legally owning an M203, which may change tomorrow, my advice is to personally contact Randy Shivak or Dan Shea, the two experts in this matter, as noted at the end of this article.

In the meantime, enjoy the civilian side, where the emphasis is clearly on sport, fun and recreation. The late USMC Gunnery Sergeant Donald Steffey, who knew the M203 well from firsthand Vietnam experience, championed the sport value of the civilian collector’s use, saying, “These bozos that say that military equipment has no sporting or recreational use are simply ignorant of the truth, or lying.

“Private collectors who own M203s use them safely, carefully and totally within the law, simply as outdoor recreation, to send an inert (non-explosive) or flare round harmlessly up in the air.

“There is a literal analogy with firecrackers, rockets and the 4th of July…recreational use of explosives. I guess it’s tough for some of the anti-gun paranoiacs to see that when they have their heads wedged so far up where they do,” Don added.

Dr Tom McCoy is a civilian who owns one of Jonathan Ciener’s classic M203s, and has been enjoying this hobby for some years now.

Tom brings his M203-laden M16A1 up to the firing line amid the time-honored cry of “Let the games begin.” Thus, on a nearby field and quarry area, Dr. McCoy and friends enjoy afternoons of blooper-style competitive sport and entertaining pyrotechnics.

Military and civilian prices for the old and remade M203s ran about $700 for the entire unit. By 1998, prices for civilian-manufacture M203 receivers were about $950. Today, receivers for the M203 cost nearly $2,000, while those for the M79 run around $1,700. Within the past year I have seen ads for a used Ciener unit for $3,000, two of Shivak’s units at $3,200 and $2,900, respectively, and an original Colt M203 in mint condition for $4,300. Of course, there are still bargains to be found out there.

Sources of Equipment, Parts, Accessories

Mr 40mm
Randall R Shivak
Elyria, Ohio
(440) 284-1044
www.mr40mm.com

Long Mountain Outfitters
Dan Shea
631 N. Stephanie St. #560
Henderson, NV 89014
(702) 564-0948
www.longmountain.com