Constance McLaughlin Greene
Beginnings of the Investigation
The story of the Springfield Armory’s connection with the development of
semi-automatic shoulder arms begins in early 1900. Even before the Ordnance Department
had issued requests or listed requirements for a semi-automatic suitable for
military service, one S. M. McClean of Cleveland offered to submit for test not
only an automatic gas-operated one pounder but a small arm model as well. Although
nothing further was heard in Springfield of McClean’s model for another
nine years, and the Armory files reveal no record of any models ever being presented
for formal test, the attention of the Ordnance Department nevertheless was thenceforward
focused on the possibility of developing a military semi-automatic rifle.1 In
October 1900 Colonel Frank Phipps, Ordnance, then Commanding Officer at the Springfield
Armory, wrote to the Chief of Ordnance urging the procuring of models of semi-automatics
being developed in Europe:
As the tendency abroad seems to be towards the introduction of an automatic shoulder
arm, as well as revolver, it would seem to be advisable [sic] for the Department
to be prepared to submit one, should there be any demand for such an arm in this
country. (S.A. 109, O.O. 35271, 2nd Ind., Incl. 10, Oct. 11, 1900.)
In the course of 1901 two models were considered at Springfield Armory, one
formally tested by a Board of Officers convened for that purpose. Test of the
Bergmann combination automatic pistol and carbine, a recoil-operated weapon,
resulted in November, 1901 in unconditional rejection of the model as being too
heavy and too badly balanced to be suitable for the service.2 Blueprints
of the second weapon, a trooper’s gas-operated automatic rifle submitted
by the Buescher Manufacturing Company of Elkhart, Indiana, indicated that the
design of their rifle was too complicated to merit formal test. In spite of the
Company’s assurance that the rifle could be used either as a full or semi-automatic
arm, and that its parts were simple and not likely to get out of repair, Colonel
Phipps reported it unsuitable because of the large number of small and weak parts,
its likelihood of clogging with dirt, and the objectionable feature of a gravity
cartridge feed.3
During the next two years considerable correspondence was carried on between
Colonel Phipps, the Chief of Ordnance, and American military attaches in European
capitals in an endeavor to obtain completed foreign models of semi-automatics.4 But
until midsummer of 1903 these efforts proved abortive.
Springfield Designs
Meanwhile, without waiting for models from abroad, the Springfield Armory staff
was working on the problem. In June 1902 J.L. Murphy, the mechanical draftsman
at the Armory, submitted a drawing of a gun which, it was hoped, might serve
as a basis for development.5 A
year later a blueprint and description of a simpler recoil-operated model was
forwarded to the Ordnance Office, a rifle designed with a telescopic bolt according
to a plan of Captain John Thompson, then stationed at the Armory. Requests from
the Ordnance Office for calculations to determine the action of the mechanism
before any work be undertaken upon the construction of a model delayed the developmental
work many months,6 and authorization
of the manufacture of a semi-automatic of this design was not granted until November
8, 1905.7 Murphy himself died in
December of that year. Lt. Wilford J. Hawkins, Ordnance Department, was then
put in charge of the fabrication and one rifle was completed in October 1906.8
The test conducted in November, however, revealed insuperable weakness in the
rifle. “…The friction developed between the cartridge case and chamber
walls is so great as to retain all or part of the case in the chamber under any
pressure obtained.” This was deemed a fundamental fault which obliged the
Board to label that type of gun impractical.9
This discouraging outcome of five years’ work was a less severe blow to
the Armory staff than might have been, because the Board was at the same time
able to render a favorable verdict upon the rough working model of a new automatic,
designed by Lt. Hawkins who had been directing work upon the Murphy rifle. “This
[Lt. Hawkins’] form of rifle is now so far as is known by the Board and
from its action in the rough, unperfected model, the design seems to show considerable
promise.”10 Complete drawings
and fabrication of a finished rifle were recommended. The new model was ready
by May 190711 and was reported
upon by the board in June. 12 Difficulty
in the bolt catch, which failed to retain the bolt as the barrel moved forward
in counter-recoil, led to the recommendation of redesign of the bolt catch before
continuing the test. That change effected, further modifications were experimented
with over a period of three years more.13 The
report of the Board upon the first modification of 1907 has not been located
in the Armory files.
But progress upon the Hawkins’ rifle was slow and not until mid-February
1910 could the Commanding Officer, Colonel S.E. Blunt, announce that the redesigned
arm would be shortly ready for testing.
It was found that in the original design of this rifle that sufficient
space was not allowed between head of bolt and end of cartridge where the former
was in its recoiled position. The space was so small that the cartridge did not
have sufficient time to rise before the bolt commenced its forward movement thereby
causing a jam. …The jamming was however overcome by…shortening
the cartridge… With the exception of occasionally faulty extraction which
can be easily overcome, the rifle now functions satisfactorily.14
If formal test of this modified rifle was conducted, no record of the report
has been found in the Armory files. But in February 1911 the Commanding Officer
declared that while experiments had been confined and several slight improvements
of design achieved, every effort to overcome overheating of the barrel and consequent
tendency of the barrel to remain in its recoiled position had been unsuccessful.
He recommended that the experimentation be dropped:
While the design of this rifle is ingenious, it is not believed that it
can be made to function satisfactorily, and moreover, a design having a recoiling
barrel has many objections for a service arm15
Again in the fall of 1912 Lt. Colonel W.S. Pierce, successor to Colonel Blunt
as Commanding Officer at the Springfield Armory, advised abandonment of endeavor
to develop any semi-automatic shoulder arm with a recoiling barrel, and meanwhile
a promising model with a fixed barrel had been tested at the Armory. So after
ten years of work the two first Springfield designs were abandoned.16 Later,
in August 1913, a totally new design was undertaken, the scheme of Captain Creedy
C. Sheppard of the Ordnance Department, then stationed at the Armory. Upon this,
work was carried on down to 1917.17
Specifications
Fortunately
in the interim considerable process upon models had been made by various other
inventors. In 1904 a printed form had been issued from the Armory entitled:
Program
of Preliminary Tests of Self-Loading Magazine Rifles and Carbines Submitted by
Inventors at the Springfield Armory18
Five years later a second circular appeared:
Program of Tests of Self-Loading Magazine Rifles and Carbines Submitted by Inventors at the Springfield Armory19
With this list of requirements to be met American inventors and foreign armsmakers could better
prepare their models. In the spring of 1909 at the request of the Ordnance Office
the Armory sent out a further sheet:
The Design of a Semi-Automatic Rifle
Should Embody the Following Features
Public interest was now more sharply than before concentrated upon the specific
problems involved in the development of semi-automatic shoulder arms. Not until
April 1913 was minor amendment to these official requirements made.21
So while men
at the Armory worked upon the design and construction of the Murphy and Hawkins
rifles, a number of independent inventors, American and foreign, developed their
own ideas. In the summer of 1902 Colonel Phipps, having studied specifications
and drawings of a design of a St. Louis man, J.J. Reifgraber, wrote in his rejection
of the proposed model: “Gas operated shoulder arms to date have not met
with success.”22 Both Springfield
experimental models of this early period were recoil-operated. But during the
first decade of testing more gas-operated than recoil-operated designs were to
be examined, and it is of some interest to note that in the 1930s Garand’s
gas-operated rifle was to be accepted as more useful than the rival blowback
model of John Pedersen.
Adaptations of Automatic Side-Arms
The Mauser Semi-Auto Carbine, made from a Mauser side-arm.
Inasmuch as automatic pistols had been familiar weapons for many years, it was not surprising
that the first types of semi-automatic shoulder arms were adaptations of automatic
side arms. Thus the Bergmann automatic carbine tested in 1901 was an automatic
pistol with minor modifications to transform it to a shoulder arm. The Luger
carbine tested the next year was a similar, albeit more successful, adaptation
made by lengthening the barrel and fitting on a removeable [sic] shoulder stock.
The test of the Luger model, like that of the Mauser carbine tried out in October
1903, was pronounced unsatisfactory because of difficulty with the ammunition
supplied. From the Armory came word that the cartridges for the Luger pistol,
theoretically useable in the carbine also, were not powerful enough to operate
the section of the longer-barreled carbine.23 The
Mauser carbine was briefly dismissed with the comment that since the action was
like that of the Mauser automatic pistol upon which a full report had been made
in Appendix 15 of the Report of the Chief of Ordnance for 1900, no exhaustive
test was considered necessary. The poor performance of the Mauser carbine was
attributed to the faulty ammunition.24
The Mannlicher Military Carbine.
One other
pistol-carbine was tested, the Mannlicher Military Carbine. The report of July
23, 1904, describing the arm as a recoil-operated semi-automatic, functioning
by a rectilinear retrograde movement of the barrel, receiver, and bolt, declared
the weapon liable to malfunctioning from dust and not having a strong enough
bolt spring, counter recoil spring or firing pin impact to withstand military
service. Unless redesigned it was therefore pronounced unsuitable for further
consideration.25 No further formal
tests of these pistol-carbines were conducted, presumably because in the interim
more serviceable types of semi-automatic shoulder arms were being evolved.26
The Schouboe Semi-Automatic Rifle
Attachments for the Service Rifle M1903
New Designs of Semi-Automatics, 1910-1914
The Bang Semi-Automatic Rifle
S.A./2, O.O. 22396 Incl. 21,
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Ind., May 12, 15, July 14, 1900, May 7, 1901; S.A. 109/g,
O.O. 38351-97, March 22, 1909.
S.S. 109, Report, Nov. 4,
1901
S.A. 2, Nov. 21, 1901, 1st,
2nd Ind., Dec. 2, 1901, Dec. 20, 1901, 2 Incls.
e.g. S.A. 109/a, O.O. 026791,
Jan. 23, 29, Mar. 5, 1902, Jan. 31, 1903; S.A. 109/e, filed under 109/g, O.O.
37392-2, June 19, 1902
S.A. 109, O.O. 37392-2, June
19, 1902
Ibid., 3rd, 4th and 5th Ind.
S.A. 109/e, O.O. 37392-2,
9th Ind.
S.A. 109/e, O.O. 37392-2,
10th Ind.; S.A. 109/e Oct. 15, 1906 (Col. Phipps to the Board constituted by
Paragraph IV, Post orders No. 53 of 1905)
S.A. 109/e Report of the Board
of Officers, convened in compliance with Post Orders No. 53, dated S.A., Mass.,
Sept. 25, 1905, Nov. 15, 1906, Par. VI.
S.A. 109/g, O.O. 37392-4,
6th Ind., May 14, 1907
Ibid., Report of a Board
of Officers… June 28, 1907
S.A. 109/I, O.O. 26791-0-1365,
1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th Ind., Sept. 20 1907, Apr. 1, 15, 23, June 25, 1908
S.A. 109/h, O.O. 38351-172,
3rd Ind., Feb. 14, 1910
S.A. 109/k, O.O. 38351-107,
4th Ind., Feb. 11, 1911
Ibid., 8th Ind., Nov. 21,
1912
S.A. 114-1, 3, 4, O.O. 38351/675,
684, 689, Dec. 29, 1913, June 19, 1914, S.A. 114-5, O.O. 38351-712, Jan 28, 1914;
Notebook of firing and adjustment data, June 19, 1914, Jan. 11, 1917 in S.A.
114-1 to 5
S.A. 109/c, O.O. 38543-11,
Nov. 28, 1904, 2nd Ind.
Ibid., 3rd & 4th Ind.,
March 23, 1909, March 29, 1909.
S.A. 109/k, O.O. 38351-593,
1st Ind., April 26, 1913
S.A. 109/a, O.O. 37739-2,
July 15, 1902, 2nd Ind..
S.A. 109/a, July 3, 18,
1902
S.A. 109/b, Oct. 10, 1903
S.A. 109/c, July 23, 1904
S.A. 111/c – O.O.
18884-58, April 14, 1905
|