Allegedly, according to the wikipedia page, the Winchester Model 1897 was a favorite in the American Military. So much so that the Germans in World War 1 called for it to be banned due to it causing “Undue suffering”. Posted on 02/10/2017 8:13:09 AM PST by w1n1
Allegedly, according to the wikipedia page, the Winchester Model 1897 was a favorite in the American Military. So much so that the Germans in World War 1 called for it to be banned due to it causing “Undue suffering”.
Even cooler than that, however, was its (alleged) preferred use: Shooting hand grenades! While in the trenches, they would keep a few soldiers skilled in Trap shooting, armed with these shotguns. When a hand grenade was tossed their way, the trap shooters were tasked with shooting them away from the trench while they were in the air. P-TING!
I wonder, which was more stressful: shooting stationary targets from hundreds of yards away that wanted to shoot you back, or trying to shoot little future explosions out of the air for the safety of yourself and your teammates? Read the rest of the story here.
I'm jealous. That's my dream rifle.
I haven't priced them in a while, but the last time I checked, they were going for around $2,300. Way too expensive for a po' boy like me.
“The Germans in WWI were real sticklers for international law when it might benefit them. I’m sure trench sweepers did cause undue suffering for German troops. At one point they threatened to execute any GI captured with one. They executed any civilian caught firing back at German troops as terrorists. When a U-boat attempted to attack a freighter and the freighter turned and rammed the U-boat, they declared the freighter’s captain a terrorist subject to execution.”
Sounds like a bunch of Democrats: “It’s okay if we try to kill you but it’s INSENSITIVE if you defend yourself!”
I don’t think that they actually did execute soldiers captured with shotguns, but they did threaten to. I believe we let them know that we’d retaliate if they tried such a thing. WWI Germans were a bit tone deaf when it came to wartime PR. Their execution of British nurse Edith Cavel for helping British POWs escape and their execution of Captain Charles Fryatt who tried to ram a U-Boat as an “illegal combatant” didn’t win them many friends.
Sometimes British of that period had odd notions of what war should be. After our civil war, we understood war was a existential struggle. The British sometimes treated it like a boxing match writ large. “Marquis of Queensbury rules” and all that.
CC
They weren’t deterred by any such notions during the Second Boer War when they forced non-combatants into concentration camps.
Yup - I'm just toweling off now. :-)
I own one of these. It was inherited from my dad. He used it while I was growing up for hunting. When I picked it up from the storage cabinet, it was covered by a newspaper, with a picture of Henry Kissinger on the front proudly sporting mutton chop sideburns. It still had a piece of wooden dowel in it to limit the quantity of shells it would hold.
Defender, and all Winchester 1300 variants are more a continuation of the Model 12. They were discontinued, with the Model 94 and Model 70 some years ago. Some ‘70’s came back. I think the current Winnie pump is the SXP.
Looks like several Defender models available.
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