#M1941

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

The M1941 Johnson Rifle is certainly uncommon and underappreciated, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good piece of hardware. These unique short-recoil operated long guns served the United States well in World War II and were surplussed after the war, selling for less than surplus M1 Garands. In this run and gun episode, we try and see how the M1941 stacks up against others we have put to the test!

(This is Part 2 of the TFB Rifle Weight Omnibus. You can read Part 1 here.)

The M1941 Johnson Rifle is a strange footnote in US firearms history. Melvin Johnson was a lawyer by trade who decided to break into firearms design by founding the Johnson Automatics company. While his rifle would never see the success enjoyed by the M1 Garand, several M1941s did make their way into the hands of US fighting men in the Pacific during World War II.

Fifty-four years ago plus five days, nearly thirteen hundred troops of the paramilitary Cuban exile group Brigade 2506 landed in Cuba, in an attempt to overthrow the Communist Cuban government, led by Fidel Castro. Sponsored by the CIA, the Brigade was armed with a motley of weapons, many ex-US military examples left over from World War II. Historical Firearms has posted to their Facebook page an album of photographs showing a cross-section of the weapons used by both the Brigadiers and the Communist forces.