Re the destruction of The Pedersen Device

I have a 1903 Mk I, my first centerfire rifle.
The ejection port is in the left receiver rail.
Mine does not have the trick sear and cutoff.
Oddly enough, it has a stamped follower, although it retains a pretty good 1918 barrel. Army Ordnance just had no consideration for future collectors.
 
IIRC, the Army did not "sell what was in the bin to one of the regular scrap dealers" when the Pedersen devices were involved. I believe even at the time the devices were disposed of they were still considered classified (or whatever the term was at the time) so they would not have been sold as scrap, even cut up.

They disposed of them on base, by burning them, with Army officers as witnesses. Then they buried the residue.

(No, I don't know where the devices are buried, so put away the shovels!)

Jim
 
James K:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that a few, don't know how many Pedersen Devices escaped the fire, sort of akin to the Luger pistols chambered for the 45 ACP round that were submitted for the 1911 trials. They sort of just disappeared, who knows to where.
 
I doubt the Pederson devices were destroyed to keep enemies from developing it...
After all, converting manual actions to semi was not a new idea. John Brownings first semi was a Winchester lever action converted to gas operation.
And the Australians converted some Lee Enfield No1MkIII's into light machine guns when faced with a probable Japanese invasion and a lack of machine guns.
Allied planners thought the first war would continue into 1919-1920, and the war had changed to one of fire and maneuver by 1918...the Pederson device might have proved useful.
What really killed it, I think, was the end of the war, and full examination of captured Bergmann SMG's, as well as evaluation of The role of LMGs like the Lewis and Chauchat.
Then, as the first BAR's were tested, it was obvious that the Pederson was a dead end.
 
IIRC, the Army did not "sell what was in the bin to one of the regular scrap dealers" when the Pedersen devices were involved. I believe even at the time the devices were disposed of they were still considered classified (or whatever the term was at the time) so they would not have been sold as scrap, even cut up.

They disposed of them on base, by burning them, with Army officers as witnesses. Then they buried the residue.

(No, I don't know where the devices are buried, so put away the shovels!)
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At Anniston Army Depot today, the Army feeds metal rifle parts into a metal shredding machine. They were breaking wood stocks in another machine. There are specific procedures for the destruction of military hardware to prevent them from being reassembled. After sufficient disassembly, parts then go into rail cars which are sold to scrap dealers. DoD may have trusted scrap dealers with whom they deal with on the remains of highly classified hardware, it is possible that the stuff is required to go directly into a melting pot.

Prior to WW2 the military buried a lot of stuff, never going through the motions of sorting, disassembly. Removal of chemical weapons, unexploded ordnance has been very expensive when old military bases were turned over to the public. Literally, no one knows what is under the ground.
 
They disposed of them on base, by burning them, with Army officers as witnesses. Then they buried the residue.
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From at least one account I have read about the Pedersen devices, it was speculated that a very few of them were retrieved (surreptitiously, most likely) from the edges of the fires used to burn them, and later refurbished and refinished by some surplus dealer, possibly Bannerman's. Can't vouch for the veracity of the article, but I suppose it is possible.

Also, a number of years ago in a Gun Digest, there was an article which featured supposed prototypes of the Pedersen Device made for the 1917 Enfield and the Mosin Nagant.
 
Brophy mentions the device for the Model 1917 rifle and says it was called the Mk II. There is a picture of an "Enfield" with the Mk II device installed. There have also been reports that devices were to be made for the Russian Nagant, presumably when the Russians were still our allies, but I know of no actual devices.

I did err in saying that the devices were still classified at the time of destruction, but the Confidential classification was removed in March of 1931. It didn't do much good, evidently. After WWII, a complete Mk I rifle with the device and ammunition was found in the RWS factory collection in Nurnberg; it had been there for over 25 years.

The device was patented, but not until October 1920, and it is likely that those patents would have been available to anyone searching the patent records.

In April 1931, 64,893 devices were destroyed, along with 60 million round of ammunition. The ammunition is often seen on the collector's market where, the last time I checked, it was bringing $8 a round.

Jim
 
I have seen that comment before " rather than sell them to the public, they destroyed them ". Curious that, who would they have sold them too, at that time in history the US was going through a "the Great Depression ", people were much more interested in feeding their family's and them self than buy any type of surplus arms. people were lined up for blocks just to get a bowl of soup. I've heard a lot of stories from my parents and grand parents about that time, any firearm they had was used to poach just to live. That had no use for some type of low power pistol thingy. The government had a large pile of scrap metal that they were paying much needed cash to store, at that time and date it was the right decision, no conspiracy to deprive the public from the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. HE double L, after WWII they dumped new Jeeps, still in their crates over board, They also dumped millions of rounds of cartridges, all calibers into the sea, They even piled up new fighter aircraft and bull dozed them. No conspiracy involved, just cheaper than storing it or bringing the stuff back to the US. JMHO
 
A friend of mine was in the USMC on their Rifle Team as a matter of fact. At one point he was stationed on Okinawa

He once mentioned that barge loads of National Match 30-06 ammunition were taken out to sea and dumped over the side.

The ways of government are,, to use a polite phrase, strange.
 
Slamfire:

Re the facilities at Anniston, that would be, as I recall "Captain Crunch". The presence of Bill Clinton is still felt.
 
It seems to me that the fact that no one in the Army could really think of a future application for the Model 1918 pistol casts some doubt on the need for or utility of the thing in the first place.

Wartime is a fertile period for ideas on weapons, many excellent but, sadly, most were either very limited in applicability or completely worthless. Three "wonder weapons" that come to mind are the famous SeaBee "glove pistol" (often erroneously thought to have been for the OSS), the "Liberator" pistol, and the Great Panjandrum, an explosive filled wheel that was going to roll up to German defenses in Normandy and destroy them.

Jim
 
There have also been reports that devices were to be made for the Russian Nagant, presumably when the Russians were still our allies, but I know of no actual devices.
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IIRC, the author of the Gun Digest article of many years back (though it doesn't seem that long ago) had photos of all three types of devices and their respective rifles. I could be wrong, but I'm just too old and lazy to go looking for that issue right now.
 
The Pedersen device had two primary purposes, not one.

The first was to provide fire volume while advancing through no man's land. While we scoff at the concept today, that's 100% perfect hindsight allowing us to be all smug and sniggly, but without particular purpose or point.

We can argue all day long whether the concept of walking fire is valid or not (personally I think, for trench warfare, the only walking fire that was ever proven to be remotely valid was the walking artillery barrage), but remember that's exactly how the BAR was envisioned to be used.

The second, and perhaps more, useful role envisioned for the Pedersen device was to provide a decisive edge in firepower once US troops got into the German trenches.

In that role I think it would likely have been a lot more successful.


As for the "Army not being particularly impressed with the device or the ammo", remember that this is the same Army command structure that had its head so far up its keister that it was unable and unwilling to see the very clear lessons of World War I regarding small arms.

In fact, these dolts were so unable to see those lessons that when the Garand was originally developed for a cartridge of lower power than the .30-06, there were some grumblings that a cartridge MORE powerful than the .30-06 should be adopted.

After all, with that puny .276 Pedersen, how can every American soldier be what he by nature really is, a hyper deadly long-range sniping machine?

Which we all know is perhaps the biggest military lie ever told about the American soldier.
 
...this is the same Army command structure that had its head so far up its keister that it was unable and unwilling to see the very clear lessons of World War I regarding small arms.
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Funny thing, I expect that those lessons are so very clear to you because of that 100% perfect hind sight you were sneering about earlier.
 
Hey, Hey, when I was young and in my prime ( oh, so long ago ) and first started wearing the army green, I used to tell the gals that I was a " Hired Killer ".:D:D:D
 
"Funny thing, I expect that those lessons are so very clear to you because of that 100% perfect hind sight you were sneering about earlier."

Nice try.

There were visionaries (read that as people who actually had a bit of experience in the current war, as opposed to "I last took the field fighting Geronimo!) who saw that full powered battle rifles were largely useless in trench warfare, and who clearly understood that the concept of each individual soldier being the long-range dealer of death was fantasy.

They were, when they brought their experiences and ideas to the forefront in the 1920s, ignored or, worse, shouted down.

"No! The American soldier are by birth natural snipers (even though we don't train them, and basic training during WW I showed that less than 5% of soldiers could consistently hit a 600 yard target), so we must have the proper weapon to allow him to practice his deadly arts!"

Even after World War II American brass refused to recognize the changed nature of warfare and went right out and designed and adopted the next (last) generation of full power, long-range capable battle rifles, a concept which worked out dismally in Vietnam.
 
There were visionaries (read that as people who actually had a bit of experience in the current war, as opposed to "I last took the field fighting Geronimo!) who saw that full powered battle rifles were largely useless in trench warfare, and who clearly understood that the concept of each individual soldier being the long-range dealer of death was fantasy.
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Cool! Then you should be able to tell me who some of these visionaries were and what new intermediate cartridge weapons systems they proposed following on their WWI battlefield experiences.
 
Another nice try, another swing and a miss.

I've already given you the example of the .276 Pedersen, which while not an intermediate power cartridge was still a step in the correct direction, and certainly a far cry from those (admittedly few) who proposed even more powerful cartridges.

The concept was attacked on a number of levels before, being abandoned on strictly economic grounds in the middle of the Depression.

One only needs to look at the examples of Billy Mitchell and George Patton to see how those who rattle the "old line" can be treated.
 
The .276 Pedersen is a non-starter. Unless you have primary source verification that Pedersen had the same ideas in mind as the designers of the 7.92mm Kurz later did, I'm going to have to go with this being a retcon.

The articles I have read point towards the light cartridge, along with lubricated cases, being more about trying to get his rifle to work reasonably well without beating itself to death.
 
After WWII, the Brits developed a pretty decent .280 cartridge that was nixed in favor of the .308, by the U.S., then the big "wheel" in NATO.
 
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