T12 Light Machine Gun

Sadly, there is little information available on the T12 Light Machine Gun. However, there are some Ordnance Corps photographs and several patents which show the weapon and its operating mechanism. 

The Ordnance Corps’ took photographs of the experimental T12 in late August 1934, they show a weapon with a locking action very similar to that seen in patent drawings for a machine gun design by Wiley T. Moore. Moore filed a patent for his design in April 1934, the US Patent office granted the patent in December 1937.

The patent lists Moore’s residence as Wright Field, Ohio, which at the time was the US Army Air Corps’ primary research and development center and armourer training facility. The patent begins with a stipulation that: 

“The invention described herein may be manufactured and used by or for the Government for governmental purposes, without the payment to me of any royalty thereon.”

By 1941, a Colonel Wiley T. Moore, was the chief of the engineering group of the Small Arms Division. It is likely that he was an officer working on various designs at Wright Field, while later patents suggest he was working at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. 

Moore filed a number of other patents including one for a disintegrating cartridge belt which the T12 appears to have used (see image #2, #5, #6). Moore gained a variety of patents for military inventions between 1933 and 1942 for everything from improvements for the BAR (turning it into a belt-fed light machine gun) to a carbine. Moore also filed two patents for a rifle grenade launcher which appears to have influenced the M7 Grenade Launcher adopted in 1943. In the 1940s it appears that he concentrated his efforts on developing fuses, projectiles and HE rounds, filing no less than a dozen patents.

Moore’s Disintegrating Cartridge Belt (source)

An immediately noticeable difference between the patent drawings and the Ordnance Corps photographs is the difference in configuration. The T12 pictured has a pistol grip rather than the pivoting spade grips shown in the patent (see image #7). This system must have proved impractical during the prototype stage.

The T12 light machine gun used a conventional gas-operated system with a gas piston below the barrel. The T12′s action locked with a flapper locking system which Moore’s patent describes as “...a pair of locking levers adapted to swing outwardly into pockets or recesses in the side walls of the receiver when the bolt is in battery” (see images #3, #4 & #8). Moore designed the T12's feed mechanism to be quickly reversible to allow its belt feed to feed from the left or right. In theory making the weapon well suited to a number of roles and applications. The patented design also featured a non reciprocating charging handle and an “automatic head-space adjustment with uniform loading pressure, by a feeding mechanism.” 

While the full history of the T12 prototype is currently unknown, it is a fascinating pre-war design utilising the flapper locking system. 

Sources:

T12 Light Machine Gun Photographs, ForgottenWeapons.com (source)

‘Gun’, W.T. Moore, US Patent #2101086, 1937-12-07, (source)

‘Disintegrating Cartridge Belt’, W.T. Moore, US Patent #2022685, 1935-12-03, (source)

John Browning’s First Magazine Lever-Action Rifle

While many of us will be familiar with the Browning-designed Winchester Model 1895 which combined a box magazine with the traditional lever-action this was not Browning’s first attempt at a magazine-fed lever-action rifle.

In 1891, probably following a request from Winchester, Browning submitted two patent application to protect designs for lever-action rifle which fed fed from box magazines rather than a more traditional tube magazine. Browning submitted the first patent in August (shown above), this would not progress beyond a prototype. The second was patented in November and went on to become the Model 1895.  According to the patent the first rifle appears to have been designed with the assistance of his brother Matthew, while the second design is attributed solely to Browning himself.

A Russian contract Winchester Model 1895 in the ‘Military Musket’ configuration (source)

The first rifle chambered the US standard rifle cartridge of the time, the .45-70, and the weapon was clearly intended for military service. The only existing prototype is in the typical ‘Military Musket’ configuration offered by Winchester during the period. This featured full-length handguards, military sights, a cleaning rod and a bayonet lug (see image #4).

Winchester purchased the design from Browning but as with many of the designs Browning sold them Winchester elected not to manufacture it. As can be seen in patent drawings above the rifle used a vertically sliding locking block similar to the Model 1886′s. However, instead of the hammer seen in earlier Winchester rifles this design utilises a striker (see image #3). This was a feature Browning included in a number of rifle designs, none of which Winchester produced after purchasing them.

The magazine design is simple with a spring follower pushing cartridges up into the action. The single-stack magazine itself appears to hold five rounds and is located well in front of the action, not below it as in the later Model 1895. This required the bolt to pick up a cartridge and pull it backwards (seemingly by the top of the round’s rim) to allow a carrier to lift them (once the lever was at full travel) into position for the bolt to push them into the breech. 

Diagram showing the basic action and magazine layout of the Model 1895 (source)

Interestingly it seems that Browning intended the rifle to be reloaded not with stripper clips or single loading - as was common at the time and was later used in the Model 1895 - but with numerous magazines. The patent explains: 

“One magazine may be readily removed from the gun and another introduced in its place, so that the person, using the arm may have at hand several magazines to be interchanged as the cartridges from one magazine are exhausted.“

This was a concept which would not be generally adopted by militaries until some time later. It remained the norm for box magazines to be internal (as in the Mauser), integral (as in the Model 1895) or habitually left in the rifle and fed from chargers or clips (as in the Lee-Enfield). While Winchester purchased both designs they chose to produce the second design with its simpler magazine system. With the increasing obsolescence of the tube magazine for military use and the introduction of larger, spitzer ammunition Winchester abandoned the tube magazine in 1895 when they began marketing the Model 1895. The August 1891 rifle prototype was part of Winchester’s collection and may now be at the Cody Firearms Museum.

Sources:

Images: 1-3

‘Magazine Gun’ J.M. & M.S. Browning, US Patent #465339, 15 Dec. 1891 (source)

‘Box Magazine Firearm’, J.M. Browning, US Patent #549345, 5 Nov. 1895 (source)

John M Browning: American Gunmaker, J. Browning & C. Gentry (1964) [Also source of Image #4]

Prototypes: XM106 Light Machine Gun

Following the Small Arms Weapons Systems study made in the mid-1960s the US Military began to consider the new 5.56x45mm rifle round for support roles. The US began the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) program in the late 1970s with four main contenders emerging. These were three belt-fed machine guns: the XM248 developed by Ford Aerospace, FN’s Minimi/XM249 and Heckler & Koch’s HK21/XM262. The other entry was the XM106 an open-bolt, magazine-fed adaptation of the M16A1 developed by the US Army’s Ballistics Research Laboratory under the direction of Timothy Brosseau who also developed the M231 Firing Port Weapon used in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The US Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations requested that the Colt M16 HBAR variant be included in the Squad Automatic Weapon trials in August 1977. The US Marine Corps had already provided $200,000 of funding for the development of a sustained-fire capable version of the Colt M16 HBAR in December 1977. The Ballistics Research Laboratory began work on what became the XM106 in January 1978 with the first prototype completed in May. The XM106 boasted a quick-change barrel system, forward pistol grip and a modified fire control group which allowed the weapon to fire from an open bolt. The M16A1′s standard buffer was replaced with a new one which lowered the weapon’s rate of fire to ~750 rounds per minute. The design moved the XM106′s sight post towards the muzzle in order to extend the gun’s sight radius. One of the main advantages of the XM106 was that if adopted training with a new weapon system would be minimised by the troops' familiarisation with the existing M16A1 rifle.

The XM106 during testing (source)

The XM106′s handguard was essentially cut in two to facilitate the barrel changing system. An M2 bipod (developed for the M14) attached to the top of the rear section of the handguard. To change the barrel the XM106’s barrel, gas block and gas tube as a whole were removed. One positive of the design was that a section of the handguard remained on the hot barrel making it easier to handle. The XM106 had a fixed headspace which made barrel changes simpler.  As with the M60, however, the changing of the weapon’s barrel inevitably changed its point of impact. The major flaw to the XM106's barrel change system was the M16's direct impingement system and the gas tube that fed it. Image #3 clearly shows how vulnerable the gas tube would have been in the field susceptible to bending, breaking and ingress of dirt.  

Another flaw to the XM106′s design was its magazine feed system, the Ballistics Research Laboratory developed a clip which would hold three magazines together (jungle-style). This in theory gave the gunner easy access to 90 rounds, in practice he would have to release the magazine and load the next as each of the three magazines were expended (see image #2). When compared to a belt-fed system this was woefully inadequate. Timothy Brosseau, however, also designed a 83 round drum magazine which could have been utilised with the XM106, a patent for this was granted in February 1979.

Despite being an indigenous design, something which had carried both the M14 and M60 to adoption in earlier trials, the XM106 was quickly discounted from the Squad Automatic Weapon program with FN’s Minimi/XM249 eventually winning out.

Sources:

Images 1 2 3

The Black Rifle: M16 Retrospective, E.C. Ezell & R. Blake Stevens (1987)     

The SAWs that never WAS: Intro, and XM106, WeaponsMan.com, (source)

National Infantry Association Honors Army Researcher, Armed With Science, (source)

SAW Tests, Infantry, (Vol.70, #2) [source]

’Drum Cartridge Magazine’, US Patent #4138923, (source)

My thanks to Daniel Watters for his help with additional research.

Maxim’s Prototype Recoil Operated Rifle

In 1883 Hiram Maxim designed a unique system which harnessed the recoil of a rifle. Maxim filed a patent for this system which, when it was granted in April 1884, became his first firearm design patent - a year before his now famous for machine gun concept patent.

To practically prove his ideas about using recoil to operate a firearm, Maxim modified a Winchester 1866 lever action rifle. He removed the rifle’s lever and installed a floating butt plate attached to a spring buffer system which linked to a proprietary trigger guard/operating rod, which then operated the action through a series of jointed levers in the receiver. Maxim explained that the system was intended for use with “heavy-loaded rifles such as are used for military purposes” which “rebound with great force and often do injury to the shoulder of the person firing.”

When the rifle was fired it would recoil back into the butt plate, compressing the two springs in the stock which act on the trigger guard pushing it forward and acting on a lever which worked the rifle’s bolt. This extracted the spent case and loaded another readying the rifle to fire again. Maxim believed that his system would allow rifles to be “fired with great accuracy and rapidity.” In his patent Maxim also hinted at the possibility of rapid automatic fire, which would become a reality with his later machine gun designs, saying that by pressing “steadily upon the trigger, when the full contents of the magazine will be rapidly discharged.”

Maxim’s ‘Mechanism for Operating Gun-locks by Recoil’ was little more than a proof of concept and the design shown in his patent - although ingenious - was far from practical or ergonomic. Maxim had high hopes for recoil operation proclaiming in the patent that the system could “operate equally well on any arm of the kind, or upon a revolver.” This proved to be prophetic as over the next decade other designers would harness the power of recoil to cycle the actions of both rifles and pistols. In the meantime Maxim continued work on the design which would make him famous - the Maxim machine gun. 

Sources:

Image One Source

Image Two Source

Image Three Scanned from Ezell’s Handguns of the World

Handguns of the World, E.C. Ezell, (1981)

‘Mechanism for Operating Gun-locks by Recoil’, US Patent #297,278, April 22, 1884 (source)

Beretta Model 12 prototypes

Here are several prototype submachine gun designs dating from 1952 - 1957, leading up to the inception of the commercially successful Model 12. The top two are Model 6 prototypes, followed by the Model 8 (center right) and the Model 10 (center left). The Model 12′s initial prototype can be seen bottom right, and the finished product is bottom left.

The Model 6, designed in 1952, was comprised largely of sheet metal stampings. The bolt was L-shaped; the long arm lay over the barrel whilst the short arm had a fixed firing pin and extractor. The sights were simple and it did not have a fire selector; rather two triggers for each firing mode. A subsequent prototype had grip safety and a redesigned cocking handle.

The Model 8 was basically an improved version of the 2nd Model 6 prototype with a wooden fore-end and a redesigned ejection port.

Thompson Look-a-likes 

The three submachine guns above all share a striking resemblance to John T. Thompson's eponymous submachine gun.  They share the same basic layout and configuration with a pistol grip, a forward vertical grip in the classic Thompson style and a wooden butt stock attached to the receiver.  

Classic Thompson M1921 (source)

The first, the Hyde Model 35 was designed by George J. Hyde in the early 1930s with the financial backing of Romanian businessman Jean Koree.  Rather interestingly Koree had made several attempts to purchase the Auto-Ordnance company from Thomas Fortune Ryan. However, unable to purchase an interest in the Thompson Submachine gun producing company Koree met with Hyde whom had his own promising design.   The weapon's design was subsequently patented under Koree and Hyde's names and Winchester was approached to produced barrels while the Hyde Arms Corporation was to assemble and sell the weapon. 

The Hyde Model 35's original patent drawing (source)

Hyde's submachine gun used a simple blowback action firing from an open bolt.  Unusually the charging handle was positioned at the rear of the receiver and while it was non-reciprocating it did move with the gun's recoil.  This was later reported during a number of trials as being distracting to the operator firing the Model 35 as the charging handle rested within their line of sight.  The weapon shares a distinct resemblance to the contemporary Thompson's however, it was considerably lighter weighing just under 10 lbs.     

The Model 35 was demonstrated to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who commented that the weapon had "little or no kick notwithstanding its lightness in weight" when compared to the heavier Thompson M1921's then used by the Bank. In 1939 the Model 35 was evaluated during the US Army's submachine gun trials at Aberdeen Proving Ground however it was found to suffer from a number of problems in the firing mechanism and magazine.  The British Army also tested the weapon and found many of the same issues.

Patent diagram showing the Model 35's internals (source)

It is thought that just over 100 Hyde Model 35's were produced by 1939 when George Hyde began working on other designs.  He developed the short-lived Hyde M2, the M3 submachine gun and the Bendix Hyde Light Rifle which was beaten in trials by Winchester's carbine which became the M1.

The second submachine gun pictured is the Ingram Model 6 in its police configuration, designed by Gordon Ingram of later MAC-10 & 11 fame. Again the gun's profile bears a striking resemblance to the iconic Thompson.  Developed in the late 1940s production of the Model 6 ran between 1949 and 1952. Manufactured by the Police Ordnance Company the weapon was sold to several US police forces as well as the Cuban Navy and the Peruvian Navy as well as the Thai military.  It is estimated that up to 20,000 were produced.  The weapon's design is straightforward using a blowback action fired from an open bolt.  It weighed 7 lbs 4 oz and was quick, easy and cheap to produce using steel tubing rather than stamped or milled parts.  

'Military' configuration Ingram Model 6 without the vertical 'police' foregrip (source)

The Model 6 was chambered in a number of calibres including .45 ACP, .38 Super and 9mm.  It had a two stage trigger that allowed semi and automatic fire depending on how far the trigger was pulled.   In 1952 the Model 7 appeared with a number of fundamental changes.  The Model 7 fired from a closed bolt and had a more conventional selector switch.

The final submachine gun is the Spitfire Submachine Gun, chambered in .45 ACP fed from M3 box magazines.  The Spitfire appeared in the in 1966 sold by the Spitfire Manufacturing Company based in Phoenix, Arizona.  It was produced in a number of barrel lengths including 16-inch.  It traded directly on its appearance being similar to the Thompson quickly becoming known as a 'poorman's Thompson' selling for just under $90.  

Spitfire Submachine Gun (source)

Production of the Spitfire ended in 1968 when the ATF deemed it a machine gun because of the ease with which it could be made to fire fully automatic.  In 1969, Volunteer Enterprises began producing the Volunteer Carbine as well as the Commando MkIII & MkIV chambered in .45 ACP and 9mm respectively.  The design was produced until 1978 by Commando Arms.   

Source:

Image One Source

Image Two Source

Image Three Source

Military Small Arms, I. Hogg & J. Weeks, (1985)