Slamfire Perfection

Every now and then, a piece of technology comes along that is just about perfect.  Either a genius comes up with a wondrous design, a unique group of craftsmen labor over a masterpiece, a product that perfectly reflects the needs and uses of the people of its time,  or something comes along that can never really be improved upon.   Even more rarely, all four things happen at the same time.

It's not very hard to come up with such a list:  the 1957 Chevy Bel Air, the DC-3, the Swiss Army knife, the 1911 Colt .45 automatic, or the original Willy's Jeep.  All of these are classics, all will be useful forever, and for each of them, there is an army of devotees that endlessly think, "Why don't they make that again?"

My personal favorite would be the Winchester Model 1897 pump shotgun.  This is yet another fantastic firearm evolved from the brilliant designs by John Browning, a man who seems to have designed almost every good gun in history.  It is amazing that guns designed more than a century ago are still being used regularly, despite the fact that Winchester stopped manufacturing them when that Chevy Bel Air I mentioned could still be purchased--new--from your local dealer.

(By this point, I can almost "hear" readers everywhere whining--"Not another blog about guns!"  Relax, it is not really about guns--I promise you won't be subjected to a bucket of boring facts. Stick with me and I'll tell you a story about Roy Rogers.)

This old Winchester was an ugly, heavy brute made of machined steel--this was long before the process of using stamped aluminum parts to lower the weight became standard.  While it could never be called pretty, the gun sported an exposed hammer, could carry 5 rounds in a tube magazine (and one in the chamber), and possessed absolute reliability.  The gun proved so popular, that in 1912, Winchester began making a hammerless version of the gun, called the Model 12.

Hunters loved these guns, and in just a few years, after the start of the World War I, so did the military.

Winchester quickly made a special version of the gun, now universally called the Model 97, just for the army.  It had a shorter barrel, a sling, and a lug to mount the Model 1917 Bayonet.  Called a trench gun or a trench broom,  it was the perfect weapon for the kind of warfare the Doughboys suddenly found themselves thrown into.  Americans were the only soldiers in Europe using shotguns, and the unorthodox weapon quickly proved very effective.  You can imagine the shock of our Allies when soldiers actually used the guns to shoot and deflect the flight of grenades thrown by the Germans!

But it was the American use of these shotguns in the offense that got us into a little comic opera of diplomatic trouble with the Germans.  These guns didn't have a trigger interlock, which meant that soldiers charging an enemy position could hold the trigger back and work the slide as they ran.  This technique, called slam firing, was both frightening and devastatingly effective.  Since the guns were loaded with 6 rounds of 00 buckshot, and each round contained nine .32 caliber bullets, this meant the soldiers  could fire the equivalent of 54 rounds from a .32 caliber pistol in less time than it took to read this sentence. 

One of the "actions" to which the Germans objected occurred on 27 September 1918.  Sergeant Fred Lloyd, using a Model 97, advanced alone into a German-held village and began methodically clearing it, pumping and slam firing the shotgun as he moved. He finally collapsed with exhaustion after routing thirty German soldiers.

Germany, through the neutral Swiss, informed the Americans that they believed we were in violation of The Hague Convention by using illegal weapons capable of inflicting overly harmful wounds during combat!  Further, the Germans announced that, henceforth, any American captured with one of these illegal weapons would be summarily executed.

Illegal weapons?  Shotguns are one of the earliest gunpowder weapons developed by man.  And consider this: the Germans had pioneered the use of poison gas during this war, had introduced portable flamethrowers, had bombarded English coastal towns, and had torpedoed passenger ships from submarines, all of which were specifically banned by the Hague Convention...and they protested the American use of an overgrown bird gun?

Actually, the Hague Convention did not mention shotguns, and in future wars, every army would use them.

General Pershing let it be known that if the Germans executed Americans found carrying shotguns, he would order the execution of captured Germans armed with flamethrowers or knives with saw-blade edges.  The Germans did not respond, and there is no evidence that any Americans so armed were ever executed.

The Model 97 and the Model 12 served with all branches of the military through the Vietnam War, even though Winchester stopped production of the shotgun in 1957.  The gun was still a damn fine weapon, but production costs could no longer compete with cheaper shotguns using aluminum receivers.  Though Winchester stopped making them a long time ago, it is not hard to find these guns nowadays.  They are still regularly being used by hunters about a third the age of the guns they carry.

There is a great story about one of these Winchesters.  I'm not quite sure how accurate the story is, but you should never let a great story be ruined by too much extraneous truth. 

It seems that there was an annual celebrity skeet shoot in Hollywood that was both organized and regularly won by the television actor, Jameson Parker.  Every year, Parker would invite Roy Rogers to come out of semi-retirement and shoot in the tournament, and one year, Roy finally showed up--probably as much to be polite as out of any desire to shoot clay pigeons.

Roy Rogers was a little underarmed, at least as far as style goes.  He brought his Winchester pump shotgun.  Most of the other competitors, including Jameson Parker, were carrying custom-fitted, over and under double-barrel shotguns, specifically designed to murder skeet and other dangerous clay critters.  The cost of such a weapon is in the mid-five figures, and it usually comes with a handmade leather case.

Obviously, Rogers won the match, despite being about twice the age of Parker.  Not only that: he won handily, despite using a shotgun--roughly about the same age as he--that when new sold for about the cost of a good lunch at the club. 

Parker--who had no idea what the gun was--walked over to Roy Rogers and asked, "Roy, where did you get that shotgun?"

Roy Rogers smiled at Parker and answered, "I won it in a poker game from Clark Gable."

It's kind of hard to verify all the details of that story, but I can tell you for certain that next June in Denver, there will be a gun auction that features a Model 12 that used to belong to Roy Rogers.  It seems that the original paperwork that comes with the gun includes a name tag that shows that the original owner was Clark Gable.