Today I am in the Wurlitzer Factory and Wulitzer Park neighborhood in North Tonawonda NY. Look at the size of this place-
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0597479,-78.8416726,3a,60y,331.4h,89.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5lGmu61OOjXlEnUEpmFR2w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
and
The factory made organs jukeboxes and Proximity Fuses during WW2 untill 1973. It was served by 2 main line railroads NYC and Lehigh Valley. "New York Railways"had interurban service to the plant as well. The Interurban Line is still in service as a power plant branch off the NYC Niagara Branch to Sodus Bay NY.
The proximity fuses don't surprise me, during World War Two some companys made things they never thought they'd make, such as the Rock-Ola juke box company making M-1 carbines, at least 250,000 of them.
They're good shooters too. I should know, I own one!
I well remember looking down at my 'loaner Stoner' during a PTX and discovering to my amusement that it was the product of the Hydra-Matic Division of General Motors.
Was that by any chance the radio proximity fuze described by SF writer George O. Smith (note: not radar in the usual sense, radio) complete with vacuum tubes that worked after being shot from guns? That was yet another of the 10 best technological achievements of the 20th Century, not quite up there with using a 19-cent needle to play color television off a stamped black vinyl record ... but still.
Proximity fuses with vacuum tubes are exactly the way they were made during World War Two.
Artillerymen were still using proximity fuses when I was in the Marines 40 years ago, except they were called VT fuses, for "variable time." I don't know how they were made, I'm assuming they'd progressed to solid-state technology by that time. I assume they're still being used today.
Quite true, a proximity fuse comes with every nuclear device.
Firelock,
Am surprised you own the ROCK-OLA produced US Military rifle M1 carbine! You didn't say if it was "original" and unrestored or a bastardized US Millitry rebuild after extensive use in WWII - with only one or two remaining parts?
I have seen one "original" M1 Carbine made by ROCK-OLA and they are quite distinctive and a bit crude. At that time - about 20 years ago - this used but original rifle was going for around $2000 at a Detroit gun show.
My dad, a Corps of Engineers Officer who landed on the beach with Gen MacArthur in the Philippine invasion of Leyte Island recollected the use of two of the M1 rifles. The first he recounted a Japanese sniper dressed as a woman about to kill him but he fired first. This same rifle later shot out of his hands by a Japanese fighter plane straffing him. He later found the M1 Carbine shot in two by the machine guns on the plane. This he returned to US Army Ordinance for a replacement rifle. Both were I believe General Motors Inland Division produced weapons.
Personally, I have collected a few including an original "Saginaw Stearing Gear" and mint early "Underwood Typewriter" completed by "Winchester" when the government dropped the contracts with most of the small builders. I also have an original folding stock "paratrooper" M1A Carbine made by General Motors Inland Division that came out of the back door of the Detroit Police Department.
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When I visited London, England, I was quite interested in the one or two M1/M2 Carbines kept for display in the Tower of London as war relics by the British Government. This is one of the few places of in the world where absolutely "mint" new condition versions these weapons are on public display.
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Although the combined US contractors produced over 6,000,000 of these guns for the war most have been re-manufactured and dispersed across the nations of the world as "foreign aid." I have seen the Costa Rican military using them for guarding the nations banks, but to my knowledge few were ever sold and or released to the American public.
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However, owing to the "confusion of war" many US soldiers mixed up their weapon with those of others and of course many were dropped on the battlefield as "casulties of war" - and subsiquently came home illegally as "war souviners" in the bottoms of US military foot lockers.
The collecting of a full set of these small light US Military rifles remains of course a modern challenge. How the heck did you ever find a ROCK-OLA juke box produced M1 Carbine?
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Doc
Firelock76Artillerymen were still using proximity fuses when I was in the Marines 40 years ago, except they were called VT fuses, for "variable time."
I don't think a VT fuze and a proximity fuze are the same thing.
The VT fuze is like a glorified version of the timer in a hand-grenade. You set it (or the ballistics computer sets it) to run a particular time after the shell arms itself, and then detonate. This can give very accurate "proximity" detonation if the target is being tracked by high-frequency radar to give range and bearing (so you can figure the exact resultant distance at the end of the anticipated firing trajectory) and you have reproduceable ballistics from your propellant and tube, etc. But the shell knows nothing about where the target actually is. And that is what the radio proximity fuze did.
(Before anyone brings up FlAK as an example of either VT or proximity fuzing, I believe those shells were originally optimized to detonate at a particular barometric altitude range, which is another approximation that crews could take advantage of by bobbing up and down (the barometric approximation of jinking). That's not the same thing, either, even if a targeting system like the ones in the Korean War could set the baro to a radar-reported altitude range...)
Older atomic/nuclear weapons used radar proximity fuzes (with IIRC a simple baro for initial de-safing), and the proximity detection didn't have to be all that accurate, as the contribution to effective CEP over the sort of expected variation in firing altitude, even on depressed trajectory, is not all that significant. Modern weapons use a combination of techniques which are perfectly adequate to whatever the operational use of the device would be. (An interesting case was the ground-penetrator redux, dumb as the idea was, which needed to figure out a relatively precise depth after what was presumably very variable but always severe shock and deceleration...)
RME, 40 years back (and has it REALLY been that long?) the way the cannon-cockers at an artillery demonstration explained it to us was the VT fuse was proximity-based, that is it was used to facilitate airbursts at the optimum height over the ground. No muss, no fuss, no guesswork, get the co-ordinates of the target, say infantry in the open, set up the fire mission and let the fuse do the work. The took us down to an observation post so we could see the target area and lo and behold the VT's worked as advertised. Not being an artilleryman myself I can't give you the mechanics, but it WAS cool to see, to say nothing of hearing the "wooosh-wooosh-wooosh" as the shells came past. Let me add these were the old 105 howitzers of World War Two vintage, although they'd been rebuilt several times since then.
Ever sit behind a 105 when it's fired? It's cool! You can see the shell going downrange like a drop-kicked football!
Hello Dr. D!
First off, my congratulations to your father for being a good shot!
Second, how did I latch on to a Rock-Ola carbine. Welllll, if you worked for a gun company and firearms importer as I did back in the 80's it was easy! We'd imported a number of M-1 carbines from Isreal, former IDF weapons, and there was a whole conucopia of makes in the bunch, Winchester, Inland, Saginaw, IBM, Quality Hardware, Underwood, and Rock-Ola. I grabbed a Rock-Ola as I loved the irony of a juke box manufacturor making rifles, can't get any further from juke boxes than that! A buddy of mine who was a professional data processor bought one of the IBM's.
The "intact from the maker" versus "arsenal rebuild" controversy is one I've never concerned myself with. As an old Marine I can tell you that when a weapon goes to a repair depot the armorer doing the rebuild doesn't care who's parts he uses, all he cares about is when he's done the thing has to WORK, because if it doesn't some poor guy's going to die, and he doesn't want it to be his fault.
Personally, I don't mind rebuilds because all that means to me is the rifle's been where the action is and has a story to tell, as opposed to one that's museum quality and hasn't gone anywhere or done anything. Depends on your point of view I suppose. I've got an M-1 Garand that has a WW2 Springfield reciever, a Winchester trigger housing group, and a 1966 produced Springfield barrel but I don't care, it shoots beautifully.
Don't believe the old husbands tale of some carbines were better than others, they were all made to the same specs, and if the manufacturor couldn't meet those specs, like the Pedersen company, they lost the contract.
Nothing crude about the Rock-Ola I've got, it's first rate.
Lady Firestorm and I even got an M-1 carbine as a wedding present! It's a post-war Universal made from GI parts, and Lady F shoots it like a demon from hell! It's her "toy" as she puts it.
There's plenty of carbines out there but the problem now is with World War Two collectables being as hot as they are (and in a way they always were) the prices have gone up to the cardiac arrest stage.
PS: My Rock-Ola's got a Rock reciever and a Rock barrel, everything else that's in there I don't know nor care.
54light15I've been getting quite a lesson here on WW2 rifles. Rock-Ola? I had no idea. Awesome, I say!
You know, without forgetting the heartbreak, terror, and misery that's what makes World War Two such a fascinating study for so many, and that fascination shows no sign of abating. Consider the weapons, the equipment, the personalities, and the sheer scale of the war itself.
There was a joke years ago: Ed Sullivan's closing his Sunday night variety show and shouts to the audience, "Next week, World War Two! With the ORIGINAL CAST!"
Have you noticed? WW2 is approaching the level of legend that the American Civil War reached many years ago, at least to my observation.
Here's the production numbers for the M-1 carbine, listed by maker, and the numbers include all variants.
Inland Manufacturing (GM) 2,632,097
Winchester 828,059
Underwood 545,616
National Postal Meter 413,017
(In late 1944 NPM changed their name to Commercial Controls Coporation and produced 239 carbines before the end of the contract. If you see one, caveat emptor! This one gets faked!)
Quality Hardware 359,666
IBM 346,500
Saginaw Steering (of Saginaw) 293,592
Standard Products 247,155
Rock-Ola 228,500
Saginaw Steering (of Grand Rapids) 223,600
Irwin-Pedersen (They lost the contract due to poor quality, the individual components were sent to other outfits for final finishing. "Total," 3,542
Quite an illustration of American industry at the height of its power, don't you think?
Firelock76,
The railroad police that were photographed in WWII on guard duty always seemed to carry the venerable Winchester 94 lever action Cowboy rifle design dating back to the Civil War. The M1 Carbine was a front line military rifle at the time and was impossible for civilians to get until after the war.
Even though my dad used one in the war he had to resort to the civilian commercial copies to own one - Sears Roebuck sold the Universal Firearms version made in Hialeah, Florida I believe.
The military M1 Carbine was indeed a formidable weapon and unbelievably well built - most parts like the reciever were milled forged steel, other parts were cast steel and heavily quality machined - all the parts from all the manufacturers were entirely interchangable. The government put so much quality into the building of these weapons, I believe the remaining ones will never wear out - at least not with the use collectors will give them.
Unlike the M1 Garand 30-06 high powered Battle Rifle the M1 Carbine was only supplied ammunition with non-corrosive primers. These weapons from WWII mostly have amazingly good rifle barrels - unfortunately the M1 Garand Battle Rifles kept the corrosive primers from WWI and most had their barrels destroyed by moisture found on the battlefields.
Regarding the M1 Carbine, it was built in 4 basic variations - (1) the M1A which only General Motors Inland Division built - had a folding metal stock allowing it to pass for a large pistol. (2) The M2 Carbine built only by General Motors Inland Division and Winchester Repeating Arms - was selective fire capable - i.e. a machine gun or a semi-auto rifle. (3) The M3 Carbine was equipped for night fighting with a infra-red heat reading scope for night sniper work.
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The M1 Carbine was designed as a defensive weapon for use by officers, or any non front line troops that would usually be issued a pistol. For this purpose it was highly successful. Somewhere along the way, probably because the German Army used carbines for its airborne parachute troops the US Army decided to equip the US Airborne with this under powered weapon. It lacked substancial power in the cartridge.
Desired by post war police departments the M1 Carbine found a real home in civilian police work after the war because it was so loved by the returning GI's. Especially because the low powered bullet would not over penetrate walls and kill inocent civilians.
A friend of mine in the Detroit Police Department Narcotic Squad had two modified rifes. He chose the M2 Carbine - Select Fire version - sawed off the gunstock and retaining the pistol grip part of the stock - in effect creating two large "fully auto" machine gun pistols. He had the barrels sawed off short. Both guns could be emptied in less than a second when using 15 round magazines - with 30 round GI magazines that made for 60 rounds of ammunition fired almost instantly.
This was always amazing to see on the gun range because all 30 rounds of exhausted ammunition would be in the air at one time - the gun was empty before the first shell case hit the ground!
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M1 Carbine was also often used as a childs rifle - I got mine at 17 years old. Another military M1 Carbine I collected came out of the back door of the Saginaw Steering Gear manufacturing plant - a grandpa had apparently acquired it and hand carved a short childs gunstock for it complete with carved dog image on the side of the stock. This gun had one of the few "entirely worn out barrels" I have ever seen on a M1 Carbine and that lucky grandson shure must have put a lot of rounds through it to good target practice use.
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It's not surprising to me that Lady Firestorm finds it such a pleasant weapon to shoot - she would make a formidable opponent so armed.
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For any of you travelers in Michigan the Saginaw Steering Gear plant is still used in automotive production near Michigan Highway 46 and Interstate 75 on the east side of the freeway - east of the city of Saginaw and just south of the famous Zilwaukee Bridge over the Saginaw River.
The M1 Carbines were shipped from this factory by railroad - boxcars full of them - 250,000 rifles in total - each rifle was proof test fired at the plant and sighted in before it was shipped. Teams of employees worked the gun range in the plant for hours every day - if they didn't "proof" fire on target they were sent back for adjustment. Racks and racks of finished rifles that need sight corrections - all handled on schedule! These were superior American products.
I think these Saginaw Steering Gear employees were some of the best shots of the war - and they never saw combat.
So many gunstocks were made they used up most of the Black Walnut trees in America - General Motors pioneered the use of Cherry Wood for these gunstocks and eventually Birch Wood became the standard substitute for Black Walnut - it was lighter in color and required wood stain to get the regulation walnut coloring.
Also early in the war Winchester Repeating Arms was using European Walnut M1 Carbine gunstocks which had a more distinctive orange color to the wood. These European Walnut gunstocks were confiscated from Germany as war reparations at the end of World War I and ended up going back to Germany in the hands of the American service men to conquer the Fatherland where they grew 100 years earlier.
All this designing, manufacturing, shipping, and travel by soldier to war was done on the railroads of America.
Any Idea were the orginal plant for Rockola was in Chicago. Instresting to compare size of Rockola -plant vs Wulitzer plant. BTW Rockola is alive and well in Torrence CA
http://www.jukeboxhistory.info/RockOla/ROC-factory.html
This place is HUGE! Unfortunatly the location is now a blah strip plaza see
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8964158,-87.7066266,3a,75y,224.72h,90.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqZe-Llywj4FbNH380sqU9A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
CandOforprogress2,
The manufacture of the many M1 Carbines for the US Government by war contractors was not as easy as it might seem. The war came upon everyone very quickly and the contracts were given. The challenges to make this weapon were difficult to say the least and the time was short. First off the design of the rifle was an entirely new technology and the quality of its construction was demanding.
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For example the M1 Garand 30-06 Battle Rifle was designed by the US Government in the 1930's and was a semi-automatic rifle of great significance. General Patton described it as the "finest battle impliment for war ever devised." NO nation in the world could field such an advanced weapon - 8 round en block clip fed gas operated rifle. The rifle could fire 8 cartridges successively on each pull of the trigger and would reload each time - then suddenly eject the cartridge clip and lock open for another 8 round clip block.
The 30-06 American cartridge was a battle developed round that came out of the failure of American's battle rifle in the Spanish American War. It was well tested in WWI in the bolt action Springfield Rifle. Then quickly placed into producton on the Garand Rifle in time for WWII. My point here is the factory and production was already set up maybe 7 to 10 years before WWII.
The MI Carbine was developed as WWII started and the US Govenment wanted the weapon NOW! Winchester Repeating Arms and Springfield - the US Government Arsenal were already in full production and had no extra manufacturing capability. Winchester had the advantage because it designed the M1 Carbine based on an idea worked up by David Marshall Williams an incarcerated felon serving time in prison!
Hollywood did a movie on the M1 Carbine in which Jimmy Stewart plays the role of the pardoned felon who got out of jail just so he could develop the rifle for the war. It was that advanced of a concept technologically - "the short stroke piston" was the idea Williams came up with while in solitary confinement to keep from going crazy. He was known as David "Carbine" Williams. Winchester executives found him a challenge to work with because of his stuborn and criminal nature.
Contracts were quickly let out to 9 manufacturers - General Motors, Winchester, Underwood Typewriter, Quality Hardware, International Business Machines, National Postal Meter, Irwin Pedersen, and Roc-Ola Music.
Most of these companies except General Motors and Winchester quickly found the manufacture much more difficult than was originally thought. The rifle reciever - its heart was a challenge to get right because of the necessity that its steel and machining be done right. If not the rifle would blow up in the face of the soldiers. Heat treat and steel alloy were demanding challenges for the technology. Barrel boring was also a challenge for companies not used to doing this.
General motors ended up producing the bulk of the weapons and about mid war just as the companies were beginning to see a profit the US Government canceled all the contracts except for Winchester and General Motors.
That's right Rock-Ola, Underwood, Quality Hardware, etc. they all had a few days to end production. Winchester Repeating Arms which was in the firearm business quickly went around to the other manufacturers and bought out what they had for "10 cents on the Dollar."
For this reason many of the weapons from mid war onwards had a variety of parts included from different small manufacturers. Winchester took already marked recievers with Underwood stamped on them and would mark a W also then complete the rifle with Winchester parts and stocks.
Rock-Ola never produced barrels and all their rifles carried Marlin barrels I believe. Quality Hardware ran out of recievers at one point and bought Underwood recievers to keep in production these joint manufacture rifles carried boths markings giving the unique name "UN-Quality" to the weapons.
Irwin Pedersen Co. of Grand Rapids, MI - one of the M1 Carbine contractors - had earlier been a huge contractor for the US Govenment designing a secret weapon for WW1. This weapon was a semi automatic rifle bolt that could be placed in the US Govenment battle rifle the Springfield 1903 used in the First World War. This secret weapon was - "the Pedersen Device." When inserted in the WW1 rifle it then became a semi-automatic rifle. Mass murder on the battlefield was thought to follow.
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By the time of the Second World War this huge pile of government "secret weapons" - the Pedersten Device - was obsolite and the US Army junked the entire lot of them without ever using them - including several millions of rounds of ammunition. I am sure Irwin Pedersen thought the M1 Carbine manufacture would be easy for them using their Grand Rapids, MI weapon production plant.
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Irwin Pedersen Co. turned out to be wrong and incapable of the M1 Carbine production job and most of their early rifles were sub standard products and did not pass the govenment inspection and were destroyed.
In typical Federal Govenment style, the Fed's went into the war plant in Grand Rapids and took-over shutting down Irwin Pedersen Co. The War Production Board then asked General Motors if they could come in and fix things at Irwin Pedersen. Saginaw Steering Gear then opened up a second manufacturing plant at Irwin Pedersen Co. and manufactured the M1 Carbine there giving them two production facilites - the other in Saginaw MI - at least up until the contracts were canceled in about January of 1944.
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All of this weapon production - everything - went by boxcar in the greatest use of railroads in world history! ~ the demands on the supply of cars, the transport on time and massive use of trains must have been absolutely unbelievable. One wonders if it could ever be done again - the instant mobilizing of America - of an entire nation totally for war.
Proximity fuses were developed by Dr. James Van Allen when he was in the Navy during WWII. This is the Van Allen Radiation Belt scientist. One of his proximity fuses is currently on display this year at the new "Hawkeyes in Space" exhibit in the basement of the Old Capitol at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Ken Vandevoort
As I have read in various media, Van Allen and others such as Merle A. Tuve and Capt. (later) Admiral William S. "Deak" Parsons worked on development of the Proximity Fuse.In August 1945, Parsons , as weaponeer on the Enola Gay armed the Little Boy bomb in-flight before its use over Hiroshima.
Firelock76 Have you noticed? WW2 is approaching the level of legend that the American Civil War reached many years ago, at least to my observation.
Interesting observation.
Consider timing, "Gone With the Wind", the movie, was released about 75 years after the events dramatized in the movie. At that time, there were a few Civil War vets still around. The 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor is coming up in two months and there are a few Pearl Harbor survivors still around.
When I was growing up, a good fraction of my paranets generation were WW2 vets, including my dad and his two brothers (though his younger brother was the only one who was in a combat zone). Heard a lot of stories from them and others of their generation about the war. My dad and his older brother passed away in the 1990's, my last uncle made it to 2013
One interesting memory was hanging out with some of the OERM gang watching the movie "Away all Boats", where one of the gang, Wally Richards, was sharing his experience working with landing craft during the war. One comment was that the movie was fairly accurate in the portrayal of operation of the boats. Sadly, very few young people will have the experience of watching a WW2 flick or TV show with someone who was there.
We'll have people who remember regular steam operations for a bit longer. We have a few more decades before we lose people who remember pre-Amtrak passenger trains.
As for M-1 carbines...
After the war, Remington Arms had a huge stockpile for the brass cups that were the first stage of making the .30 carbine cartridge case. Mike Walker was assigned thetask of figuring out how to make use of them and came up with a varmint round that was a good compromise between the 22 Hornet and 220 Swift, namely the 222 Remington. Varmint shootrs wanted something with a bit more punch, so Remington responded with the 222 Remington Magnum. About this time the DoD was investigating use of high velocity 22 center fire rounds for service use, with the 5.56mm NATO round (AKA 223 Remington) being very similar to the 222 Remington Magnum.
Proximity fuze...
Deak Parsons is probably the most central person for the development of the proximity fuze - of course there is no way that he could have pulled it off without a lot of help from some very capable. His reputation as being the #1 ordnance expert in the US is what led him to be chosen to be chief Ordnance developer at UCLA -er- Los Alamos, essentially being equal in rank with Oppenheimer.
The VT fuze was a really neat piece of work, getting vacuum tube circuitry to withstand being shot out of a cannon. The production tubes were about the size and shape of AG-1 flashbulbs (probably more accurate to say the other way around) and at the end of the war, VT fuzes were showing up on 40mm rounds. Somewhere about 1948, a stockpile of these tubes were declared surplus and there was a brief flurry of articles on making portables radios and such with these tubes.
The VT fuzed rounds were something like 5 times more likely to bring down an aircraft than the ordinary fuzes - first combat use was at Guadalcanal. The USN was so paranoid about the secret getting out that the rounds were only to be used where dud rounds will fall into the ocean. The first use by the US Army was during the Battle of the Bulge - and greatly impressing Gen. Patton.
"The railroad police that were photographed in WWII on guard duty always seemed to carry the venerable Winchester 94 lever action Cowboy rifle design dating back to the Civil War. The M1 Carbine was a front line military rifle at the time and was impossible for civilians to get until after the war. "
It would be a neat trick to have a Winchester 94 dating from the Civil War! The "94" refers to 1894, a few years after the unpleasantness ended.
The things we learn here is like wow
Dr. D mention the Winchester '94. Now here's something really wild for everybody.
Railroad police carrying '94s at the beginning of WW2 isn't much of a surprise, chances are they'd had them for years. However, when the war began the Navy's blimp squadrons at Lakehurst NJ were caught flat-footed as far as armaments were concerned, the blimps didn't have any!
So, armed with government purchase orders Navy personnel cleaned out all the general stores for miles around Lakehurst for any hunting rifles in stock, and back in those days that meant Winchester '92s, '94s, and any Marlin lever action deer rifles! Lever actions were a lot more popular than bolt actions in those days.
Picture it in your mind, a Navy blimp making a high-speed pass over a surfaced U-Boat off the Jersey coast with the sailors leaning out of the gondola windows workin' those Winchesters like cowboys! It happened!
Needless to say, that situation didn't last too long. Eventually the blimps were respectably armed with machine guns and depth charges, but talk about the American genius for improvisation!
I wouldn't be surprised if a few monkey wrenches bounced off a U-Boat conning tower as well.
Big Bill,
Allow me to explain about Winchester Repeating Arms! Winchester was a "haberdassher" - Winchester made men's shirts. Winchester was an investor who bought out the Henry manufacturing rights and renamed the company after himself.
During the Civil War many advanced arms were designed and developed - Abraham Lincoln allowed these designs into the US Military who objected to anything untried and advanced.
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In 1848 Voliton Repeating Arms (fires like a volcano) designed the early lever action repeating rife which fired its own unique caseless "rocketball ammunition." This early rifle designed by Walter Hunt was redesigned by Lewis Jennings. Production ceased in 1858.
Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson the guys who later started Smith & Wesson Pistol Co. took over the Lewis Jennings operation and hired his forman Benjamin Tyler Henry. This company called the its rifle the "Volcanic" lever action rifle. This early Smith and Wesson company went bankrupt. One of the investors was Oliver Winchester who reorganized the company as the New Have Arms Company in 1860.
New Haven Arms manufactured the Henry redesigned rifle through 1866 - with a total production was 14,000 arms. Benjamin Tyler Henry was the designer who improved the "Volcanic" design and gave his name to the famous weapon as - The HENRY RIFLE.
This lever action Henry "cowboy rifle" first appeared in the American Civil War and was known by that name the Henry. Some Union soldiers were equipped with this rifle by company and some companies bought their own Henry Rifles so that they could be supplied ammunition in large lots lots.
It was the Union soldiers and their Confederate opponents coined the famous phrase for the Henry Rifle - "Load on Sunday and shoot all week!" Most had never seen a rifle with 16 rounds of firepower in the magazine - it was a "17 shooter" if one was in the chamber.
In the Civil War most soldiers were equipped with a single shot .58 muzzle loading Springfield Rifle that required a paper packaged cartridge of 80 grains of back powder and lead "minie ball." Each round had to be torn open with the teeth the powder poured down the barrel and the waxed bullet rammed down the barrel. Each time the rifle was fired a primer cap had to be placed under the hammer of the musket by hand.
In contrast the Henry Rifle was a .44 caliber weapon with 40 grains of black powder in a modern brass rim fire cartridge. The magazine of 16 rounds was a tube hung under the barrel of the rifle and loaded by opening a gate in the front of the magazine.
The first Henry Rifles were brass framed with octagional steel barrels and no wooden handguards - which was a common way of manufacture at that time.
Henry felt he was not earning enough considering the success of the New Haven Arms Co. Oliver Winchester was overseas and Henry attempted a takeover of the company. Winchester returned in time to seize the company and redesigned the Henry Rifle to include a side loading gate in the reciever and wooden front handguard.
Oliver Winchester renamed the company the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Engineers redesigned the same rife with hardend steel recievers after 1866. Several more redesigns for larger cartridges became the 1873.
Oliver Winchester died in 1880 - John Browning came on board at Winchester in 1883 and finally the US military cartridge 45-70 could be fired in the the 1886 design.
The "cowboy rifle" was redesigned again in 1892, 1894 and 1895. Winchester continued to manufacture these lever actions rifles into the 2012 era when Winchester finally folded up its American production.
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Early cowboy Winchester lever action rifles usually shot the 44-40 cartridge as originally designed or they could be ordered with the 45 Long Colt round. This way the cowboy Colt 45 "six shooter" and the companion "Lever Action Winchester Rifle" could use the same ammunition. The indians who killed General Custer and the 7th Calvary at Little Big Horn, Montana were using the Henry Rifle. The 7th Calvary was still using single shot Springfields.
Today a new company in the United States has revived the Henry Rifle name and is now producing the lever action "cowboy rifle" in America and finally giving credit to the first successful designer of the weapon - who was not Oliver Winchester.
Oliver Winchester, however, has branded his name on the "Old West" - but he was a New England business man who's real contribution was first producing mens shirts.
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It's not hard to see why the weapon of American Railroad Police was the venerable Winchester 94 - most of the rest of the weapons in America - Springfield 03, Krag Rifle, M1 Garand, M1 Carbine - were strictly military.
I learned Morse Code for my ham radio license on a classic J-38 key maunfactored by Lionel. It even has the Lionel "L" on the bottom of the base.
The smallest round that the proximity fuse would fit into was the 40 mm Bofors AA gun. That is why later on in the war the US Navy went away from the 20 mm Orliken guns and started mounting quad mounted Bofors guns instead.
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