John Browning: Man and Gunmaker

by James Barrington

  It’s worth emphasising just astonishing Browning’s achievement was. In those days, for most firearms manufacturers the normal time between the design of a new weapon appearing on the drawing board to the prototype being available for test-firing was about two years, but John Browning achieved exactly the same result in under a month.

  The new rifle appeared in the Winchester catalogue as the Model 92 and continued in production until 1941, with over one million sold. It was often used in Hollywood westerns as a replacement for the earlier Model 73, and was carried in films by actors including John Wayne and Chuck Connors.

  A modified version called the Model 53 was introduced in 1924, ceasing production in 1932, after which the Model 65 succeeded it and continued to be sold until 1947. In all, over one million units of the three models were sold.

  The most successful Browning-designed Winchester models were the 1887 and 1897 shotguns, the falling-block single-shot Model 1885 and the lever-action rifle Models 1886, 1894 and 1895, most of which are still being manufactured and sold today in one form or another.

  7. SMOKELESS POWDERS

  1894 was a crucial year in firearms development, for it marked the beginning of the end for black powder weapons with the advent of the new, and very powerful, smokeless powders. Of course, the change was not immediate, for it took some time for old hunters to realize that the small-calibre lightweight rifles then being introduced actually had far more stopping power than their big-calibre weapons. The new .30/30, for example, boasted a muzzle velocity of 2200 feet per second, while the best that the old .50/110 could offer was about 1600 fps. When the much lighter weight of the rifle and its cartridges, the very much greater penetration and the flat trajectory were appreciated, the days of the black powder rifle were numbered.

  Every rifle made by Browning for Winchester, from the single-shot onwards, was initially designed to take black powder loads. What is perhaps surprising — though less so bearing in mind Browning’s preoccupation with safe and simple actions — is the fact that every weapon was successfully converted to smokeless powder cartridges by the simple expedient of increasing the tensile strength of the barrel steel. Just how good an indication this is of the inherent strengths of Browning’s designs can be appreciated when it is remembered that the old black powder .32/40 generated a breech pressure of about 25,000 pounds per square inch, while the nearly identical calibre .30/30 smokeless powder load produced almost 40,000 psi.

  The first American smokeless powder rifle was, predictably enough, a Browning-designed Winchester, the Model 94. Originally produced in .32/40 and .38/40 black powder models, it was swiftly reintroduced in .30/30 calibre with the same model number. And it was an immediate and lasting success, selling over a million and a half units by 1914 and over two and a half million by 1961. By the end of the twentieth century, well over seven million Model 1894 rifles had been manufactured, far more than any other centre-fire sporting rifle from any manufacturer. It’s often known as the Winchester 30-30, after the most popular cartridge used in it. Winchester advertised it, with not a trace of false modesty, as ‘the most popular hunting rifle ever built — bar none’.

  With the Model 94 established, Winchester introduced the Model 95. This was another Browning lever-action rifle, but this time with a box magazine in front of the trigger guard, which quickly became a popular big-game weapon. Its appeal was rather more limited than that of the lighter and cheaper 94, mainly because of the much more powerful cartridges for which it was chambered — from the .30/40 Krag up to the very powerful .405 — but it nevertheless sold more than four hundred thousand units before being discontinued in 1931.

  The weapon was adopted in 1895 by the US Army as the Musket .30 Army Model 1895. Interestingly, the weapon also saw war service as a .30/40 Krag musket with the US Army in the Spanish-American War and, when it was chambered for the 7.62 mm Russian cartridge, almost three hundred thousand were sold to Russia in the early part of the First World War.

  With the last weapon Browning designed for Winchester, his career came full circle, for it was another single-shot rifle. It had been requested by Bennett for one reason only — to drive the popular Belgian Flobert .22 from the market. John Browning did not find it a difficult request to comply with, as not only did he have a design for such a rifle, he had five different working models, all of which he sent to Winchester and all of which Bennett bought. Four of the weapons had been designed by Browning in 1892, but the fifth had been completed only a short time prior to Bennett’s request.

  It was this version which was chosen to compete with the Flobert, and was introduced by Winchester as the Model 1900, retailing for a mere five dollars. It was entirely successful in competition with the Belgian gun, driving the foreign weapon from the shelves in a single year, and went on to spawn a host of derivations, including a 9 mm shotgun version. All calibres of this model were discontinued in 1946, after almost one and a half million units had been sold.

  Interestingly, the four rifles that Winchester bought but didn’t manufacture were all variations on the same theme, and all covered by a single patent. This was one of the simplest designs ever for a firearm, possessing effectively only two moving parts: a combined hammer and trigger, and a single coil spring which acted as both a mainspring and trigger spring. And the reason Bennett bought it was simply to ensure that nobody else could come along and use the concept to start manufacturing a rifle that would undercut even the Model 1900.

  Overall, John Browning and Winchester enjoyed a 19-year working relationship, and in the four years between 1884 and 1887, Browning sold no less than twenty different gun designs to Winchester, far more than the company could actually produce commercially. But Bennett purchased everything Browning offered to him, keenly aware that if he didn’t there was nothing to stop Browning striking a deal with another manufacturer. In all, Winchester manufactured and sold seven Browning-designed rifles and three shotguns.

  Or, to be absolutely accurate, Bennett bought every weapon Browning offered him until the end of the century, when the tall American produced a radical new weapon design that would cause a permanent rift between him and Bennett.

  8. THE AUTOMATIC SHOTGUN

  Despite his numerous rifle designs for Winchester, John Browning was still experimenting in other fields, and in 1898 he began working on the weapon that was to cause his celebrated break with Winchester, and would become the most profitable of all the sporting arms he invented: the automatic shotgun.

  It was a difficult time to contemplate such a gun, primarily because shotgun cartridges were still in a transitional stage between black powder and smokeless loads, and the new cartridges proved very inconsistent even in a manually-operated weapon. In an automatic they often failed to eject properly.

  Then Browning invented the shock absorber, which effectively cured all his difficulties at one stroke. This tiny component, costing almost nothing to make, reduced the recoil of the weapon, permitted consistent functioning with all loads and, incidentally, gave Browning a total monopoly on the automatic shotgun market until his patent expired. It was to be a further fifty-four years, over half a century, after the introduction of the Browning weapon before another successful autoloader design was marketed, such were the difficulties of developing a mechanism that worked and which did not infringe John Browning’s patents.

  In fact, Browning developed two different designs almost simultaneously, and fired both exhaustively before selecting the second one as the better weapon, and it was this version which he took to New Haven in 1899 to show Bennett. On this occasion, Browning left without concluding a deal with Bennett, who was somewhat conservative in his thinking and regarded the radical new weapon with some suspicion, because he much preferred the idea of a pump- or lever-action weapon. Browning also left without the shotgun, which the Winchester engineers were going to study.

  Over the succeeding months there was considerable correspondence between Browning and Winchester, as minor changes were made
to the design and the patent applications — which Winchester had for some time been making on John Browning’s behalf — were filed. Although filed by Winchester patent attorneys, all the patents were taken out in Browning’s name, and this established procedure undoubtedly became a cause of considerable irritation to Winchester over the following half-century.

  By April 1900 Browning was getting irritated with the lack of any positive response from Winchester about the shotgun, and wrote to Bennett requesting a decision, but without receiving a satisfactory answer. Finally, in a somewhat heated meeting at New Haven in 1902, John Browning spelt out his terms. He was so confident that the weapon would be a success that he wanted a huge price outright which was to be an advance on royalties. In all his previous dealings with Bennett, royalties had never been discussed — Winchester invariably bought the weapons outright — and Bennett refused to discuss royalties on this occasion as well. John picked up his shotgun and left. The long and highly profitable relationship he had enjoyed with Winchester was over.

  In fairness to Bennett, he was in a difficult position. The automatic shotgun was a revolutionary concept, which worried Winchester. If they bought and produced the weapon, and it was a commercial failure, the reputation of the company would suffer badly, but if it was a success, then the sales of their well-established lever and pump-action shotguns would be hit. As far as Bennett was concerned, the best choice would probably have been to buy the gun but not manufacture it, as he had done with many other of Browning’s designs. But John’s demand for royalties, rather than a straight sale for cash, precluded his taking this course of action.

  With the shotgun under his arm, and his anger and irritation dying away, John Browning saw that he had two alternatives. He could either offer the weapon to another major American manufacturer, or he could take it overseas. He opted for the first choice, and arranged a meeting with Marcellus Hartley, the president of Remington Arms. On the afternoon of the appointment, while John waited in his secretary’s office, Marcellus Hartley died of a heart attack.

  John Browning’s decision was made for him by factors completely outside his control. He took his shotgun to Europe, and to the youthful FN group in Belgium.

  But well before he took this step, Browning had ventured into an entirely new field of weapon design — the machine-gun.

  9. AUTOMATIC WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

  The story is often told how John Browning, while out hunting, fired his gun near some bulrushes, and noted the disturbance this caused in the vegetation some distance away. This sparked his interest in the automatic operation of weapons, and led not only to the automatic shotgun, but also to his automatic pistol and machine-gun designs. The fact that John Browning’s middle name was Moses probably made the tale about the bulrushes almost inevitable, but actually the story is almost true.

  In reality, the incident occurred in the autumn of 1889 at the weekly shoot of the Ogden Rifle Club at the club range by the river to the east of town. John wasn’t firing at the time but was watching a friend, Will Wright, shoot, and noted the way the muzzle blast caused the movement of a clump of weeds between Wright and the target.

  Of course, he had noticed the same thing hundreds of times before, as any hunter would, but on this occasion he suddenly saw it as something else — a form of energy released by the action of firing that was being wasted, but which could be trapped and utilized. Ed and Matt were with John for the shoot, and they recalled that he immediately lost interest in the afternoon’s sport, summoned his brothers and returned to the Browning shop. He knew he had work to do.

  In the shop he secured an old .44 Model 73 to a board, took a block of wood through which he had drilled a hole slightly larger than .44 calibre, placed it by the muzzle, lined up the hole with the barrel and fired. The block bounced all over the shop and, as the smoke cleared, John remarked casually to his brothers that they might have a workable machine-gun in ten years. More to the point, he announced that he was going to make a gas-operated gun the following day.

  If any man other than John Browning had made such a claim, it would have appeared to be an idle boast, but coming from John, as his brothers well knew, it was simply a statement of intent, and by four o’clock the following afternoon the world’s first gas-operated rifle was undergoing test-firing.

  It was a crude and basic design built on the same old black-powder Model 73 John had used the previous day and relied on muzzle blast to operate a simple lever — Browning called it a ‘flapper’ — which in turn pulled an actuating rod connected to the repeater mechanism. But it fired 16 rounds a second fully automatically from a single pull of the trigger. As far as John was concerned, the gun was a success, because it proved the principle of the mechanism. With the knowledge that he had acquired, he had the opportunity to develop the concept into a marketable weapon.

  And develop it he did. The Model 73 was followed by a variety of other modified weapons as John Browning explored the new concept, and he filed his first patent application covering gas-operation of a firearm on 6 January 1890. That year, he built a working prototype machine-gun. It appeared rough and unfinished, with no tripod or firing grip, and neither a ventilated barrel nor a water jacket for cooling. But it worked, and worked well, and that was all that mattered.

  Further development followed, with two more patents being filed in August 1891. One of these proposed a small turbine to harness the energy of the expanding gases while the other embodied the complete mechanism for the first of John Browning’s machine-guns.

  By July 1892 Browning had conceived, and patented, the gas port — a hole drilled into the barrel which allowed the high-pressure gases behind the bullet to operate the weapon’s mechanism — which led indirectly to the automatic shotgun. But first he employed the knowledge he had gained to venture into yet another completely new field of weapon design: the handgun.

  10. BROWNING’S PISTOLS — COLT AND FN

  His first semi-automatic pistol, patented in 1895, was intended to demonstrate that the gas piston would function effectively in a handgun, which it did. More importantly, though, Browning realized the potential of recoil operation in small weapons, and within a year had filed three crucial patents which effectively covered the development of semi-automatic pistols for decades to come. These embodied the blowback action, the locked-recoil mechanism with a turning lock, and the same system with a pivoting lock.

  Crucial to all of his designs was the telescoping bolt, which integrated the bolt and the barrel shroud into a single component now known as the pistol slide. This telescoping bolt design is today found on almost every modern semi-automatic pistol, as well as a number of fully automatic weapons.

  John Browning had started work on pistols in 1894, and by July 1895 he was able to demonstrate his first finished design — a .38 calibre gas-operated weapon with an exposed hammer — to officials of Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company at Hartford, Connecticut.

  The result was an agreement, signed a year later, permitting Colt to produce Browning pistols on a royalty basis in the United States, and this agreement covered both Browning’s original design and an additional three pistols he had developed in the preceding year. It was one of these three weapons that appeared in 1900 as the .38 ACP Colt Model 1900, the first semi-automatic pistol to be commercially produced in America. This agreement with Colt was to prove as significant as Bennett’s purchase of the Browning single-shot rifle in Ogden, because from 1900 onwards every semi-automatic pistol manufactured by Colt has been based upon a Browning design.

  Browning’s agreement with Colt specifically excluded the sale of his pistols outside America, as it was his intention to arrange a separate contract with a European manufacturer. In this context, an extremely fortuitous meeting occurred at the Colt factory in 1897, between John Browning and a man named Hart Berg. Berg was the commercial director of a firm called Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre, located at Liege, in Belgium, and he had travelled over to America to look at so
me of the most recent innovations in bicycle manufacture.

  It may seem odd that the commercial director of an arms factory should be investigating bicycle production, but the FN company at that time was in a far from happy state.

  The FN group had been founded in 1889 by ten businessmen in Liege specifically for the manufacture of 150,000 Mauser Model 1889 rifles for the Belgian government. As this venture proved successful, the organization decided to continue working in the armaments field, but after that initial order, no other contracts had been offered to the company. FN had been forced to switch its focus, and had primarily been involved in the making of bicycles, motorcycles and munitions. As Berg explained to John Browning, it was the probably most modern and efficient arms factory anywhere in the world, lacking only weapons to manufacture.

  Browning could see the obvious opportunity. He and Berg got on well together, and when Berg returned to Belgium he took with him a light .32 calibre pistol Browning had developed, a draft production contract and considerable enthusiasm for the weapon. His colleagues at FN soon realized the potential of the pistol, as did various European firearms authorities who carefully examined the gun and then test-fired five hundred rounds through it without any stoppages.

  Of equal importance as the performance of the pistol was the simplicity of its construction. The Liege experts calculated that setting up for a production run would only require an outlay of around twelve thousand francs, a remarkably modest investment for a new weapon. The eventual selling price of the gun reflected the accuracy of their estimate: it retailed for only thirty francs, while the cartridges for it cost a mere fifty five francs per thousand.