The History of Browning Firearms by David Miller

THE HISTORY OF

Browning

Firearms

David Miller CHARTWELL BOOKS, INC.

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Above: The album that was published in 1978 by Fabrique Nationale Herstal (FN) in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Browning company. Page 1: The Browning facility at Morgan, Utah.

Copyright© 2014 Pepperbox Press Ltd. This edition published in 2014 by CHARTWELL BOOKS, INC. A division ofBOOK SALES, INC. 276 Fifth Avenue Suite 206 New York, New York 10001 USA All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any other means, electmnic, mechanical, photographic or otherwise, without the prior written consent ofthe publisher and copyright holder. ISBN 978-0-7858-3119-8 Printed in China

CONTENTS

Introduction 6 CHAPTER ONE

John Moses Brow-ning - An Atnerican Hero 8 CHAPTER Two

Self-Loading Pistols 22 CHAPTER THREE

Brow-ning Rifles 60 CHAPTER FOUR

Shotguns 96 CHAPTER FIVE

Brow-ning Machine Guns 114 Brow-ning Knives 124

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THE HI STO RY O F BR OWNING FI REA RMS

Introduction

Above: The famous 'Four B's'- G. L. Becker, john M. Browning, A. P BigeLow and Matthew S. Browning During the 1890's these four Ogdenites were Utah's premier Live-bird team. Later they made nationaL history at the traps as a squad offour. O H N MOS ES BR OWN ING ( 1855- 1926) is wi d e ly acknowledged to b e o ne o f the greatest firearms designers of all time; indeed , many wo uld descr ibe him as the g reatest. His fath e r, J onathan Browning (1805-1879) was a gunsmith and designed several unusual rifles, but was simply no t in the same league as his son, w hose out pu t inc luded 128 paten ts a nd at leas t 8 0 separate designs . John and his brothe rs lived in the tiny frontier town of Ogden, Utah whic h was "Old Wes t " country and linked to the Eastern states by lo ng and tenuous roads and trails , a nd from 1869 by t he rai lroad. Desp ite suc h relative isolation and leaving school at fifteen afte r a typical rura l ed u ca tion , J o hn b ec am e a v e r y r es p ec te d businessman, first on a national scale, dealing with such well-established companies as Colt, Remington, Stevens and Winchester, an d later on th e in ternational stage,

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Above: Browning's Gun Store in Ogden, Utah.

I NTR O D UC TION •

regularly traveling to Europe to visit his closest business par tner, Fabrique Nationale of Liege, Belgium. He also beca m e closely in volved w ith t h e Uni t ed Sta t es government and with the army and navy, whose officers treated him with the greatest respect. Browning's designs covered the whole range of small arms, from semi-automatic pisrols, through single-shot rifl es a n d ma n y diffe re n t types of re peater ri fl es to mac hin e gu ns . His brain was constantly active and he conducted a never-ending search for perfection . One of his greatest assets was that he was a highly enthusiastic sh ot and practiced his skills no t only on ranges and in competitions , but also in the hills, fi eld s and fores ts around Ogden, where he was able to loose off thousands of rounds from each weapo n, detecting and analysing shortcomings and devising remedies which could then be imple me nted immediately in the workshop. In writing about the Browning story, it is important ro stress that the works hop in Ogden was not a firearms production facil ity. T h e s h op so ld and repa ir ed

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hardware, s uch as far ming im p lements and too ls, and the firearms business was confined to making and refining Jo hn 's prototypes, and to selling and repairing firearms which had been produced elsewhere. Apart from weapons designed by the father,Jonathan Browning, and, as will be explained, the first 600 of John 's Single-Shot Rifles, only prototypes of Browning weapons were made there. When John sold his designs to other companies, he also gave up the right to manufacture them. J ohn Browning's designs were made under license by both U.S. and fore ign firearms companies, b ut the re have also been many "clones" which are exact copies of Browning weapons, although all too often made to far Jess rigorous engineering standards. John Moses Browning collapsed and died in his office at the Fabrique Natio nale factory in Liege, Belgium, in 1926. He was surrounded by many of his famil y and by workers whom he respected, in a facto ry whose fortunes he had clone so much to secure. It was a fitting e nd to the life of a truly great man.

Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1850s was still the "Old West" when john M. Browning was growing up.

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TH E HI STORY OF BRO WN I N G FIRE ARMS

CHAPTER ONE

John Moses Browning - An American Hero

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I-l E B ROWNI NG FAM I LY a rri ve d in Virg ini a in the 1620s and remained there for well over one hundred years. Jo hn Moses Browning's grand father, Edmund Browning, was born there in 1761, but in his twenties he married and he and his bride then joined the trek westwards, settling in Brushy For k, Tennessee, where his wife gave birth to seven children. One of those children, Jo nathan, was born in October 1805, but u nlike his father, his interest was in blacksmithing and tanning rather than farm ing. Jonathan fo und his first work in a local smithy and then , at age 19, he went to Nashville, Tennessee, to work for a gunsmith in order to learn jonathan Browning the highly specialized art of making and truing barrels, a vital sk ill i n a society w here virtu ally every family had at least one gun and used them to shoot for the pot or for self-defense. Jonathan Browning returned to Brushy Fork, where he established his own business and married , but the work fell away as their neighbors answered the siren call of the West . In 1833 Jo nat h an and his family jo in ed th em , heading westwards and eventually finding a new home in Quincy, Illino is o n the banks of the Mississippi. In 1842 Jonathan made a fundamental change to his and his family's way of life, by converting to the Mor mon religion, whereupon they moved to Nauvoo, Illinois where he o nce again set up a new gunmaking business. Jonathan repeatedly volunteered to join his co-religionists in their march to the West but his church authorities told him that he was needed in Nauvoo and to continue to make arms. His persistence finally triumphed, however, and in 1852 he m oved with his family to Ogden in Utah , some 30 miles from Salt Lake City. Th ere he took a secon d wife and then a third, having an eventual total of 22 children, the last of whom was born when he was 71 years old. Jonathan was a respected member of the comm unity, becoming a l ocal co unci l o r and judge, b u t al w ays r et aini ng his gunsmithing business, although he never made a new gun after the move to Utah, concentrating instead on repair

work. In his earlier yea rs he designed a repeat i ng rifl e using a horizo ntal l y sliding, fo ur-round magazine, which worked well, but it was designed for use w i th percussion ca ps and had the ill luck to appear just as metallic cartridges appeared. Jonathan died in 1879 at the age of 74.

John Moses Browning John Moses Browning was the eldest of two sons o f]onathan Browning's second wife and was born in Ogden, Utah , on January 23, 1855. By the age of six he w as r eg ul arl y h el p ing his fat h er i n th e workshop and a year later he was also

]OH N MOSES BROW NING- AN AMERICAN HERO •

working in the tannery. He made his first gun at the age of ten, creating a rifle to his own design from components he found among his father's piles of scrap, and which he then used to shoot prairie chicken for the family table. He also repaired farm machinery, and, when driven by necessity, made moccasins and boots. When just past his thirteenth birthday he was given a broken but high-quality shotgu n by one of his father's customers and h is first act ion was to d isasse mb le it down to th e s mall est possible component. He analyzed every part, repaired or replaced those that were damaged and ended up with a thoroughly usable gun, of far higher quality than he would have been able to afford at that stage in his life. The town of Ogden was an isolated Western o utpost -a small Mormon community in outback Utah. The first major change came when the trans-continental railroad was completed in 1869, with the famous "Golden Spike" episode actually taking place only 50 miles away. The second, even more crucial change came in January 1870 when the Utah Central Railroad gave Ogden a direct link to Salt Lake City and thus to the outside world. John atte nded the local school which was a typical Western school with one teacher supervising a number of classes in one large room. John certainly learned to read and wri te and do a rithmetic, but he had prob a bl y learned little more than that, and when the teache r told him that he had nothing more to pass on to his pupil they both realized that it was time for John to leave.

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J o hn 's ear ly clays in the workshop we re , not surprisingly, devo ted to perfecting his skills, and he worked hard at repairing guns, although his enquiring mind and detailed examination of the various mechanisms that came his way led him to devise methods of improving them. Nevertheless, he did not move on into the realm of real invention un til 1878, when, at 23, he fi nall y got down to designing a totally new gu n, which was destined to become the famo us Single-Shot. As would happen repeated ly over th e com ing yea rs, h e prepared the whole concept, both in detail and in its totality, in his mind, before preparing drawings and then starting work on the prototype, the whole process taking him about e leven months. Th is was an incredible achievement, firstly because it was his very first design and secondly because he achieved in just under a yea r what it takes most people about five to comple te. Despite living in a remote Western town and his li mited knowle dge of the ways of the world , John knew that he had to protect his work with a patent, but had no idea how to go about it. Undeter red , h e turned to a mail-order company in the East whose goods he sold in the shop and they, very courteously, passed his query to a patent attorney. The latter treated the appl ication with the

in 1852 jonathan Browning and his family moved west along the Mormon trail.

10 • THE HI STORY OF BROWNI NG FIREAR MS

Nauvoo, Illinois RIGINALLY NAMED CoMMERCE, the Mormons renamed it Nauvoo - meaning a beautiful place of rest in Hebrew. The central building, the Temple, whose cornerstone was laid on April 6, 1841, formed the hub of the community. Within 5 years the town had been established but pressure from the Mormon 's neighbors forced them to undertake the vigil West in 1846 to find new freedom from persecution. Jonathan Browning was keen to make the trip West but Mormon leaders recognizing the need for maintaining arms for defense kept him back to repair the community's weapons. Observers who visited the town after it had been deserted reported a place with newly built houses surrounded by well tended gardens. The town has now been rebuilt and is an historic American Site.

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Above: The Browning workshop in 1·econstructed Nauvoo. jonathan set up shop he1'e in 1842 after converting to the Mormon religion.

Right: The Browning Homestead adjoins the workshop.

] OH N MOSES BROWN I NG - AN AM ERICAN H ERO •

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Left: john Moses Browning's parents. Below : A detail of jonathan Browning's repeating percussion cap rifle. Bottom: A revolving rifle made by jonathan on display in his workshop in Nauvoo.

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HI ST O RY O F BR O W N I NG F I RE A RM S

j OHN MO S ES BROWN I NG- A N AMERICAN H ERO •

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Above: john Moses Browning aged 18. Lejt: Union Pacific locomotive Number 82 and its crew between Echo and Evanston, less than 60 miles.from Ogden in 1872, two years after the railroad opened allowing the Brownings direct contact with the Eastern States. Left Below: A small local school/ike the one that john a/tended. serio usness it deserved, translated the inventor's Aowing p rose intO the correct dry legal termi nology and duly obtained U.S. Pate nt Number 220,271 of 1879, the first of many which would be gra nted to the Western inventor. It was duri ng this pate nt process t h a t Jonathan Browning died, leaving the shop to J ohn , but as he had already been ru nning it for two years the transitio n was sm ooth. Ind eed, bu s in ess was booming a nd John , together with his yo unger brother and s tepbroth e rs, moved and built new premises. Their first manufactured produc t was the Browning Single-Shot Rifle and they so ld 25 in the first wee k at $25 each , a lthoug h the y continued with the re pair business and also expanded the shop to deal in hunting and sporting goods.

Browning and Winchester By this stage Ogden, although by no means large, was expanding rapidly, mainly because of its status as a prime junction for the railroad system . The e ase of travel and co mmun ica tion was o f in es timabl e va lu e t o th e Browning brothe rs ' business, which was now in direct railroad contact with the Easte rn states. In 1882 John Browning took out two more pate nts , and by now th e

reputation of the Browning Single Shot was spreading, while back in Ogde n productio n proceeded steadily. In 1883, however, came one of those lucky breaks which all inve ntors need, whe n one of the Wincheste r Repeating Arms Company's salesme n chanced on a used Browning Si ngle-Shot Rifle and, immediately recognizing its merits, bought it for $15 and sent it to the Winchester factory. It so happened that Winchester had a serio us gap in its product lin e for s u c h a s in g le -s h o t ri Ae and t h e management board took less than a week to decide to buy the des ig n. Accord ingly, they dis patched the ge neral ma nager, T.G. Bennett, to d iscover whatever he could about the Browning company, which was totally unknown o n the East coast. That the general manager o f one of the wo rld 's greatest arms companies should personally und e rtake suc h a journe y is an ext ra o rdinar y compliment to both Jo hn Browning and the quality of his design. Bennett arrived unannounced and found the yo ung brothers busy at their lathes and anvils, but the discussion was short, sharp and to the point, and ended with Be nne tt writing the le tter of understanding on the shop counter. This first contract between John and the Winchester company granted the latter the sole man ufactu ring and

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THE HISTORY OF BROW N I NG FIREARM S

The Winchester dynasty: Thomas Gray Bennett, husband of OLiver Winchester's daughter, with his son Winchester Bennett and grandson T G. Bennett. Thomas was the Vice President of the company responsible for initiating the Link with Browning. sales rights and was for $8, 000, making the Brownings fa irly rich by the ge neral standard of the ti mes and fantast ica ll y ri ch by local Uta h standards. In today's te rms the contract wou ld be for between half and one million d ollars , d epend ing on the conversion factor used , but by any stan dard it was a huge a moun t of money for a tiny company based in remote Ogden. For Win chester the rifle was a god send and sales started in 1885. Browning's design was so inhe rently robust, reliable and adaptable that it was capable of adj ustmen t to take a wide range of cartridges from .50 Winchester Express down to .22 Short. A small proble m arose when Be n nett d iscovere d that, in all innocence, the brothers were continuing to produce Single-Shots in the ir o wn wo rks hop to meet exis ting orders a nd he courte ous ly exp laine d that they b a d t ra nsfe rre d all

production rights to him. As with all their contracts with th e Brownings , Winc hester's po licy was to purchase exclusive r ights to patents; they never agreed to pay royalties. This may appear one-sided at first glance, but it also bad some advantages for John Browning in that on many occasions the company purchased patents which they knew they wo uld not put into production for one reason or another. With his next design, a lever-action rifle ,John Browning decided that th is time he would take the prototype rifle to Winchester himself, even though the farthest he and his brother Matt bad eve r trave led before was 35 mile s to Salt Lake City. Now, however, they trave led by tra nscontine ntal train to New York City and, after a night seeing the sigh ts, on to New Have n , Conne cticut - a journey which in those clays took six clays. Winchester too k one

JOHN MO SES BROWNING - A N A ME RIC AN H ERO •

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Above: john M Browning's workbench at the gunshop in Ogden, Utah. Left: john Min 1890 when he was beginning his experiments with selfloadingfi1'earms. loo k at the rifle, realized that it was way ahead o f anything anywhe re else in t he world a nd bo ug h t it immed iately, as always with a lump su m rathe r tha n royalties, believed in this case to be $50,000. Having bought the production rights for five guns, now, for the first time, Winchester asked Browni ng to des ign a weapon, in th is case a lever-actio n, repeating shotgun. Browning agreed that it was possible but said that he would prefer to produce a slide-action weapon. Brown ing delivered the prototyp e in j une 1885, Winchester was delighted , tooled-up and entered the weapon in their catalog as the Model 1887. Thus in just three yea rs, j ohn Browning had produced three

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HI STORY OF B ROWN I NG F I REARMS

MarceLlus Hartley, Remington's President, whose death, while Browning was waiting to see him, caused john to offer his automatic shotgun to FN in Belgium.

outstanding des igns- the Models 1885, 1886 and 1887 Winch esters .

Set apart J ohn Browning was a Mormon all his life and when his Church called h im in 1887 to undertake two years' missionary work he did not hesitate, despite the fact that he was just starting to make h is reputation as a gu n designer. In obedie nce to the call he became a full-time missionary in Georgia, working there fro m March 1887 to March 1889.

Return to Winchester Jo hn Browning 's ret urn to Ogden was followed by a period of exceptiona l product ivity. Somet ime s he prod uced a new d esign on his own and sometimes he responded to suggestions fro m Winchester- fo r example, the Winchester Model 92 was the result of a request from Benne tt fo r an e ntirely new des ign built around the .40-40 cartridge, to replace the Model 73 . During one of John's visits to New Have n, Be nne tt offe re d him $10,000 if a prototype could be ready in three months time, but John d elivered it at New Have n within o ne month, which included both his trip back to Ogden and sending the rifle

to Connectic u t, two five-day tr ain journeys . J ohn Browning was paid $20,000 for his efforts, but, even so, that was a tremendous bargain for Winchester who eventually sold over one million copies. This was a time of accele rating development in the armaments business, and the appearance of smokeless powder in 1894 revol u tio nized the g un making and ammu nition fraternities ali ke. There was some in itial resistance but the advantages of the new powder and the rounds it fi red were so obvious that weapons were quickly developed to take full advantage of them. Winchester fo und that all of their production weapons designed by John Browning were easily adapted to accom modate the hig h e r p ress u res, t h e fi rst on t h e scene being the Winchester Model 94 firing the smokeless .30-30 round. Next came the big-game Winc hester Model 95, a leveraction box magazine rifle, firing a variety of rounds fro m .30-02 up to .405 . Over the years between 1883 ancl1900 Winchester bought 44 rifl e and s hotgun designs from Browning; not all of them were put into production, but those that were sold phen omenally well . During this period the Winchester patent department dealt with all Browning's patent claims, although he a lso produced designs which he sold to othe r companies on a royalty basis. Meanwhile, Browning's ever-productive mind had been worki ng on automatic weapons and machine guns (see below) , but in 1902 he designed the world's fi rst automatic shotgu n. Again , t he Winchester patent department processed his claim, but Bennett prevaricated for some two yea rs ove r accepting th e desig n for prod uction. Eventually Browning traveled to New Haven to resolve matters, but, after a short and frigid interview, Browning picked up the prototypes and h is relationship with Winc hester, which had b een so be ne fi cial and profitable fo r both, was at an encl.

A brief encounter with Remington On leaving t he Wincheste r factory, J o hn Browning immediately made arrangements to meet with Marcellus Hartley, the president of the Remington Arms Company, and at the appo inted time p resented himself at that com pany's head office . But, while he was waiting to be called in to Hartley's office, an ashen-faced secretary came to te ll him that his chief had just died of a heart attack. Thus, Remington, through ill-fortu ne rather than illmanagement, lost the oppor tunity to become the sole ma nu fact u re r of th e Au to-S, although they were to produce it later as the Remington Model 11 for the U.S. market only. The Belgian arms manufacturer, Fabrigue Nationale, had bee n producing John 's automatic pistol for several years and had been trying to persuade him to travel across the Atlantic to Europe. They did not s ucceed until the

jOHN MO S ES BROWNING -AN AMERICA N HERO •

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The FN Factory at H erstal in Belgium.

fa llin g-o ut w ith Winches t e r and t he dea t h of Remington's president in 1902 persuaded John to offer them his automatic shotgun. He traveled by ocean liner and for the first time found himself outside the company of Americans, especiall y arms experts, and felt a little isolated as a result. However, he fo und the time to spend a week in Paris, where he studiously visited all the sights and, as b e fitted his new statu s as an international businessman, purchased a nu mber of tailor-made s uits. The visit to Fa brique Na tionale was a reso unding s uccess . The com pany was a lread y manufac turin g Browning's .32 pistol which was selling well and they we re even m ore de lighted with the wo rld 's firs t e ffec tive automatic shotgun . A contract was signed o n March 24, giving Fabrique Nationale worldwide manufacturing rights in retu rn for royalty payments. Browning s tayed for three months to sort out the production de tails and the worke rs quickly learned to respect him as a gunsmith and to like him as a man , naming him Le Maitre (the mas ter). John Browning s howed his own faith in his weapo n by placing an o rder for 10,000 for the U.S . market and every one of them was sold within a year by Schoverling of New York.

Automatic weapons John Browning first glimpsed the possibilities of a weapon which automatically loaded its next shot in 1889 on a firi ng range outside Ogden, while watching a rathe r short man

firing a rifle. Browning noticed that when the man fired, a cl um p of weed s a few feet in fro n t of the m uzzle swayed in the blast . His inven tor's mind immediately told him that this represented energy which might well be put to produ ctive use and he rushed home to test his theory by securing a rifle to a rest and de mo nstrating that the mu zzle blast caused a wooden board placed near the muzzle to go spinning around the room . That night John designed a rudimentary gas-operated gu n in his head and the next day se t abo ut building it. This rifle had a "flapper" placed over the muzzle with a hole in it which was marginally greate r in diameter than the bore of the barrel. This flappe r was pivoted and linked to the mechanis m by rods . The prototype was completed by four o'clock that afternoo n a nd proved that the gas could indeed be used to reload the weapo n automatically. Its purp ose fulfilled, the prototype was discarded, its parts later being used in other experiments, and, sadly, does not survive. Browning's first patent for an automatic weapon was filed in January 1890 followed by two more in August 1891, a fo urth in July 1892 and a fifth in November 1892, all using differe nt mechanisms. John had two problems with his new automatic gun: the first was designing and developing a working prototype; the second was marketing it, since it was clearly only suitable for mili tary use and he had no prior ex perien ce of d e a li ng wi th gove rnment ar ms procurement. Whe n he judged the first prototype to be ready John

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THE H IS TO RY OF B ROW N I NG F IRE ARMS

Browning took it to Colt where, to the astonishment of the s oph is ti ca te d Eas terne rs, h e and h is brothe r Matt de mo ns trate d that it could fire four 50-round be lts in a minute without a sto ppage except to change be lts. The demonstration was spectacular and the Colt management spent two days d iscussing matters with the Brownings, as a re s u l t o f w hi c h so m e two m o n t h s later t h e Brownings demonstrated this new "machine gun" to two officers of the U.S. Navy. These two me n the n devised an ope ratio nal requ ire me nt fo r an au tomatic gu n which co uld fi re continuo usly fo r three minutes, supposedly simulating an actio n with two battleships close togethe r and seeking to repe l boarding parties . The requ ire me nt was ludicro us in both its tac tical setting and in its de mand for three minutes' continuo us firing, since the re was no weapon in the world which co ul d g o an ywhe re n e ar mee ti n g it , but Brown ing conducted the d emonstratio n in person , with the aircooled machine gun mounted o n a tripod to which he had attached a bicycle seat- a featu re which would become standard on virtually every MG throughout the worl d . By the end the barrel was reel h ot , but t h e g u n s im p ly ke p t go in g an d fired 1,8 00 ro u nd s in t h re e m inu tes w ith o u t a s in g l e mechanical stoppage, thus fully meeting the requireme nt. Despite his gun having de monstrated its superiority over th e o t h e r ma nua ll y-o p e rate d Gatling g uns th e n in service no o rde r was immediately forthcoming, which did at least give Browning the time to convert his gun to take the new smo keless and rimless cartridges with a minimum of fuss a nd d ifficulty. Afte r furthe r trials the U.S. Navy classified th e weapon as the Colt Mode l 1895 mac hine g un , named it the "Peacemake r" and ordered an initial quantity of fifty, which were delivered in 1897. They we re in use with the U.S. Marines during the Boxer War in Chi na and in the Spanish-American War, and so me we re also sold to South Ame rican armies. The Model 1895 was air-cooled, but in 1900 John began work o n a wate r-cooled weapon and in his usual way it took just three mo nths from telling his brothe rs of the project to a working prototype, which became the father of all subseque nt Browning machine gun designs, many of which are still in service over a hundred years later. The weapo n is sometimes identified as the Browning Mode l 1901, but despite numerous successful demo nstrations no order or Gove rn ment type classification was fort hcoming. Neve r t h e less, J o h n ke p t w or king o n th e des ign , revisiting it at intervals to modify and improve it, altho ugh even afte r the power of tripod-mo unted machine g uns had been clearly shown in the early years of World War I the U.S. Army Ordnance De partment still did not place any orders .

Despite the clear evidence of the impo rtance of large numbers of machine guns in the war, and the ever-growing like lihood of U.S. involveme nt, the army made no move until Fe brua ry 191 7, wh e n the twe nty-yea r o ld Colt Model 1895 was placed in urgent prod uction. Fortunately, the company had retained the tooli ng. The de lay meant that the U.S. Army went to war with a total machine gun in ve n tory of o nly some 200 Model 1904 wate r-cooled Maxims, 670 Bene t Mercie air-cooled machine gu ns, and 185 Colt Model 1895s. In 1910 Browning had a lso produced a totally new d esign of light machine gun, which would become the world-famous Browning Autom atic Rifle (BAR), and which, again , imp ressed the service authorities, but not s ufficien tly to make the m place o rders . In Ap ril 1917 with an order still in the balance, Jo hn Browning fired 20,000 rounds on the official range without any stoppages an d t h e n fir ed a furth er 2 0 ,000. Thi s was s u c h a p he nome nal performance that some refused to believe that the re had not been some for m of tricke ry (e.g., by switching guns) so Browning repeated the trial with a second gun, but this time under eve n closer observation, but the same result was achieved. Having de te rmined that it wo uld o rd er Brow nin g's h eavy m ac hin e g un , a uto ma tic rifle a nd .45 a u to ma tic p istol into u rge nt produ c ti o n , t h e U .S. Gove rnm e n t th e n so ug ht to negotiate a price with Browning for full manufacturing

]OH N MO SES BROW N ING- AN AMERICAN HERO •

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The Colt-Browning Modell895. Its mechanical simplicity made the gun an instant success.

Automatic Pistols

rights for the d uratio n of the war, a dea l which wo uld include J oh n 's p ersonal s upervision of a ll factorie s where these weapons were produced. The s um offered was $750,000, a frac tion of what h e wo uld have been earned under a royalty arrangeme nt, but there were no negotiations, since J ohn knew exactly whe re his patriotic duty Jay and accepted on the spot. He was also offe red the rank of colonel, but this he turned down witho ut a second thought. As soon as U.S. forces were in France they se nt back a requireme nt for a heavy .50 in machine gun. U.S. Army engineers first tried to convert the existing Browning .30 in machine gun to take the heavier Fre nch 11 mm round but witho ut success, although the efforts proved to be very time-consuming. So they asked J ohn Browning to design a new heavy automatic gun, which he did with his usual p anache and speed , but even he d id not ha ve sufficient time and it was already too late to see service in World War I. Known as the Browning .50 it was originally a wate r-coole d wea p o n but was late r converted b y Browning himself to air-cooling, in which form it is §till in production in 2006.

John Browning started work on a semi-automatic pistol in 1894 and his first four attempts were com p le ted in 1895-6 and s uccessfully tested by Colt, who signed a royalty agreement with hi m in 1896, but for production and marketing in the Uni ted States only. The n, in 1897 J ohn was visiting th e Colt factory when he chanced to meet Hart 0. Berg, an American-born businessman who lived in Belgi um where he wo rked for the Fab rique Natio nale d 'Armes d e Guerre (Natio na l Factory of Weapons of Wa r) , us ually know n simply as Fab ri que Natio nale or FN, and which was located at Liege. The com pany had been raised by a consortium and the factory built fro m scratch a few years earli er to manufacture weapons for the Belgian army, but had plenty of s pare capacity. When Be rg returned to Belgium he took one of Browning's automatic pistols with him and the FN board was so impressed that they quickly negotiated a contract and put it into productio n as the Browning .32 Model 1900. It was a tre mendous success, with half-a-million sold in te n years and in French-speaking countries it became known simply as "Je Browning." One of]ohn Browning's greatest contributions to semiautomatic pistol design was the slide , which covered the barrel and other working parts, as well as supplying the mass ne ce ssary to absorb th e recoil. In early 1900s he began work on what became the Colt Military Model, with concurrent work on a new .45 round to provide the stopping power needed. The result was s ubmitte d to Ordnance tests in 1911 where it was required to: fire a total of 6,000 standard rounds in series of 100 followed by 5 minutes cooling, with cleaning and oiling afte r 1000 rounds; fire a nu m ber of d o ctored rounds to simulate fault y a mmun it io n w h ic h mig h t b e me t in bat tle c o ndition s ; and pass a " ru s t-a n d- du s t" tes t . The

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THE HISTORY OF BROWNING FIREARMS

Browning pistol passed with flying colors and was, in fact, the first automatic weapon ever to pass government tests with a 100 percent score. The outcome was a production order a pistol which remained in full service with the U.S. military for over 50 years, and which is still in wide-scale use today.

37mmCannon Prior to World War I the U.S. Government tried to develop a 3 7 mm anti-aircraft cannon , which resulted in two mod e ls, both of which failed their tests. After the war, the government asked Joh n Browning to look at the problem; initially he demu rred, b ut eventually agreed . He started work in J anuary 1921 an d , in his usual fas hion, finis hed the prototype in just th ree months; indeed, he was so quick that the government was unable to s upply him with any ammun ition for the trials. So impatient was Browning for progress that he started his own search and discovered some stock in an army depot o nl y a f ew m iles south of Ogden. The ca nnon s uccessfull y passed stringen t Government tests, b ut Browning was the n asked to design a more powerful and higher velocity bullet. So, as always, he persevered and produced, first, a weapon firing a 2,000 ft/sec bullet, and in response to yet further requests another firing a 3,050 ft/sec round. All these weap ons p assed their tests with flying colors, but the ser vices then found themselves starved of money and with little interest in Congress, so the project was put on hold, with no fu rther progress until well after John's death .

Death In 1926 John Browning made his sixty-first Atlantic crossi ng, accompan ied by his wife , with the aim of visiting FN and also meeting up with their son , Val, who was resident in Liege. One morning they went into the factory to look at development of a new shotgun, but on arrival J oh n complained of chest pains and was forced to lie clown. After on ly a short period he died- he suffered little, was in a gun factory, at work on one of his designs, and with his wife and son. It was a sad but fitting e nd to a very great man. Following John's death production of his various designs continued, with all the family interests controlled, as in his day, from Ogden, but in 1964 the Browning Arms Company moved from Morgan , just a few miles away and still in the state of Utah , whe re it remains today, located in Cottonwood Canyon, just outside the village of Mountain Green . As it has done since 1885, it continues to buy-in and marke t firearms, but not to manufacture the m, and has also branched out into bows, knives and other sporting goods, together with running a profitable commercial mink ranch .

Fabrique Nationale FN was badly affected by World War II. The factory had been taken over by the German weapons procurement organization in 1940 and new management was installed so that selected weapons, such as the Model 35 Hi-Power pistol, could be produced for the German armed forces . In 1944, d urin g the fi n a l weeks of occupation , the Germans s hipped out as mu ch of th e production machinery as possible and after they had left attacked the factory w ith V-1 and V-2 missiles. Even so, production qu ickly restarted and FN-made Hi-Power pistols were soon being exported to the United States where they were sold under the Browning label. This relationship between the U.S.-based Browning Arms Company and FN remained unchanged until 1976 when FN, in partn ership with Japanese company, B.C. Miroku (see below), pu rchased 90 percen t of th e Browning company's shares. The main shareholder in the FN group at this time was a Belg ian bank, la Societe Generate de Belgique, but in 1991 both FN and its U.S . subsidiaries were bought by French state-owned defense gian t, GIAT Ind ustries. This arrange men t d id not last very long and in 1997 the State Government of Wallonia, in which the factory is situated, purchased the Herstal Group fo r $303 millio n, bringing ownership back into Belgian hands.

B.C. Miroku B.C. Miroku, based in Kochi, J apan, s tarted making hunting guns in 1893 and concentrated on the domestic marke t until undertaking production o f military weapons in 1940- 45 . When it restarted operations in the post -war p e r iod , Miroku's produ cts were initially intended, as be fore, for the Japanese market, but in the early 1960s they began to make weapons to sell on the U.S. market, the ir first known custome r being the Charles Daly company, which had been importing German and Italian weapons for many years. But, in 1976 Miroku combined w ith FN to buy th e Browning Ar ms Com pan y, whereupon Miroku ceased making guns for Charles Daly and switched to Browning models , with production of various weapons, including the Auto-S shotgun and the .22 caliber Self-Loading Rifle being transferred from FN to their Japanese partner. Today Miroku has a workforce o f some 1 ,000 people a nd con ti nu es to produce weapons for Browning although it also exports a small, but increasing, number of weapons under its own name. Curi ously, a l tho ugh expe rt opinion is virtually unanimous that the quality of the Miroku-macle Brownings is, at the ve ry le as t, as good as any made by any other manufacturer, U.S.-basecl firearms collectors tend to rate Mi ~ oku g un s b e lo w U.S. - or Be lgian-made g u n s for collectability, a view which is reflected in their sales prices.

] OHN MO S ES BR OWN I NG- A N AMERICA N HERO •

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Other makers Most of the semi-automatic pis tols sold in the United States under th e Browning la b el have been (and continue to be) made by FN, but some o ther models have been sourced elsewhere. The Model BDA-380 (Browning Double Action .38 Caliber) , for example, was made for FN by Beretta, Italy from 1977 to 1997 , and then marketed in the U.S. by Browning . The simil arl y named Model BDA, manufactured between 1977 and 1980 for Browning by German/Swiss company, SIG-Sauer, was a totally different design and virtually identical to the SIG-Sauer P- 220. It ha s s ince b een restored to production for the U.S. marke t, but in .45 calibe r o nly and under the SIG-Sauer (and not the Browning) label. Another company which manufactured weapons fo r the Brown ing company in the post-war period is Sako of Rihimaki, Finland, which produced the High-Power Bo ltAction Rifle between 1961 and 1975.

John Browning's life J o hn Moses Brown ing was, by a ny standard, a most re markable man. Brought up in a re mo te town in the Old West, his inte llect, drive and inventive genius turned him in to a world-re n owned e n g ineer who ear ne d universal respect and admiration. Those who have bad the privilege of working with inventors know that they look at things in a totally different way from the mass of humanity. Most people, on encounte ring a proble m or on seeing a need, e ither back off or painfully and slowly find a way around. Inventors, on the othe r hand, are blessed with a me ntal process wh ich e nab les them to see the ir way straight to a solution. Thus, Jo hn Browning was able to observe a pheno me no n such as the shock wave from a bullet swaying the grass and go straight to its application in an automatic system. Not only that, but he was always able to see solutions in both totality and in detail, right down to the smallest component. Of course, he was not always right the first time. For example, his "flapper" demonstrated how gas cou ld be used in recocking and reloading a weapon, but it was not a practical solution and tu rned out to be just one step in the rig ht directio n rather than the comple te answer. Also , a few of his ideas turned o ut to be im practicable. In o ne example, h e s pent some time in the 1890s on a "pull-apart" mechanism for repeating rifles and although he produced working prototypes, the idea was never accepted. In addition, much additional work was often needed to turn his concepts into weapons which could be mass-produced and sold at a reasonable price and the e ngineers at Colt, Winchester and Fabrique Na tionale worked hard and successfully to achieve this. One of the keys to his phenomenal success was that he was w hat wo uld today be called a " hands-on" man,

john M.Browning shortly before his death in 1926.

because he not only designed the weapons but he also built (o r h e lped to bui ld) the prototypes, and then tested the m by firi ng them himself o n the ranges and hills o uts ide Ogden. Also, as a regu lar hunter and participant in shooting competitions he unde rstood guns and the men who fired them. On top of all that he also conducted the business negotiations with prospective manufacture rs, even whe n they we re as far away as Belgium . The re have been many men who have made significant contributions to the design of weapons and the advance of firearms technology, but none to equal John Moses Browning.