#JohnBrowning

Last year I had the opportunity to visit the John M. Browning Museum in Ogden, Utah and I was thrilled to see Browning’s hammerless 1911 prototype on display. Very little has been written about the development of this particular pistol. The pistol is briefly mentioned in John Browning and Curt Gentry’s 1964 biography of John M. Browning, explaining that during the US Army’s long process to select a new service pistol John M. Browning decided to provide two versions of his .45 ACP pistol – one with an exposed hammer and the other with a shrouded hammer similar to that seen on his Colt 1903 and 1908 Pocket Hammerless commercial pistols.

During the Second World War, Britain’s volunteer militia, the Home Guard, were extensively issued with American .30 calibre Browning M1917 machine guns. These water-cool medium machine guns contributed significant firepower to the Home Guard fighting units. They began to enter service in late 1940 and by November 1942 there were some 6,330 in service. For a force initially (and relatively briefly depending on the location of the unit) armed with makeshift weapons and old rifles, the M1917 Brownings were a formidable weapon.

As you can see, the M2 is air-cooled and feeds from a belt. It fires from a closed bolt, using the short recoil principle.

Photo Of The Day – We have a lot of hunters among our readers, and presumably most of you hunt with relatively modern firearms, optics and gear. Here’s an exception, with a Winchester 1886 chambered in .33 WCF. The dagger is homemade, and most likely the coffee as well.

In XX century very few weapons were truly ahead of their time. You can argue about many designs, and if they were actually innovative, but there is no doubt that when FN Herstal Browning HP was designed in 1935 it was way ahead of any competition.

Designed by John Browning, the M2 Machine Gun (Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun) is a heavy machine gun which has been in service since 1933. That’s the main subject for Today’s Photo, accompanied by the Barret M82, chambered to shoot the same round.

Previously, we looked at the most common type of locking mechanism for rifles, but what about handguns? Well, today we’ll be looking at tilting-barrel locking, a method used in virtually every modern locked-breech handgun today.

Earlier this week, my fellow TFB writer Pete M wrote a post arguing that a manual safety has no place on the modern defensive handgun. I think he’s right for the most part, but I’d like to explore something he didn’t consider.

Wilson Combat has announced a new full-size carry 1911 handgun, the “Tactical Carry”. The handgun comes loaded with luxury features like glare-reducing serrations, checkering, inverse angled crown, and high visibility sights. From the press release:

The Historical Firearms blog has a very interesting post on a forgotten John Browning patent for a (then-advanced) pump-action shotgun. The weapon features an enclosed hammer, dual extractors, and a tilting locking block reminiscent of the later M1918 automatic rifle. The gun in many ways foreshadows the “Perfect Repeater” Winchester 1912, but differs in a few tantalizing respects. First, the bolt locks via a separate block, like a BAR or MAG, not via tilting the entire bolt as in a Model 12. Secondly, the firing pin is raked at an angle, apparently to accommodate the low profile rear receiver. 

If you’re a gun person, John Browning probably makes the top of your list of “greatest firearms designers”, and for many, the 1911 handgun is his finest creation. There’s an argument to be made that (certainly for the time) the 1911 is as perfect a handgun as can be made by human hands, but it didn’t spring fully formed from the head of John Browning like Athena from the head of Zeus. A lot of development went into turning John Browning’s original creation into the “perfected” 1911. And there’s probably no better illustration of that online than the video Forgotten Weapons posted at the end of last month:

The Browning Hi-Power is a creation of the famous firearm designer John Browning, along with the legendary 1911 pistol. This handgun was designed in the 1920s and although less popular than the 1911 (at least in the USA) it has been continuously manufactured from 1935 until now and served as a standard service pistol in the armies of more than 50 nations. The Hi Power’s latest model, the Mark III, features an ergonomic grip, cast frame, forged slide, epoxy coating as well as a firing pin safety.