Bunny's preferred weapon" This response, from the New York Sun, was typical: "It is hardly necessary to point out how ridiculous is this protest from a government that has used in war every foul means known to a foul mind. The inventors of poison gas objected to the use of a clean bullet!"
1:00 On September 15, 1918, the German government officially protested the use of the shotgun in a note verbale—an unsigned diplomatic note—transmitted to the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, then to the Swiss Embassy, and eventually to the American legation in Berne, Switzerland. The note asserted that the use of shotguns by U.S. forces violated Article 23(e) of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions and warned that any American captured with a shotgun or shotgun ammunition would be executed.
2:00 When fired the new American gun sprays the contents of each shell over an area measuring nine feet horizontally and about three feet vertically, so that it is almost impossible not to hit a large number of enemy infantrymen coming to the attack in the typical mass formation of the Germans.
2:50 “the chief purpose of employing it in combat is, of course, the highly necessary one of killing or putting out of action at close range as many as possible of the enemy in as short a time as possible.”
4:00 The Model 97 “trench shotgun,” as it quickly came to be known, was the brainchild of William G. Eager of Valdosta, Georgia, who had a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and was working as the general manager of a local lighting company.
5:00 known as "trench sweepers", Germans were aghast when they found out our boys killed 3-4 with one shot at the first Battle of Bella Wood (thats why the krauts kept bitching)
5:00 Benedict Crowell, Secretary of War and future president of NRA responds..
next 3 minutes, the hypocrite krauts (the inventors of mass killings by train and exterminations camps) kept whining like little girls to the State Dept..
Javol Fritz. War is Hell. No?
Another John Browning creation, along with the 1917/1918 machine guns, the 1911, and the M2.
I have one, my grandfather’s legacy
The shotgun is very heavy
Right? They weren’t too particular about the wide spread of poison gas.
Not to mention the submarine warfare on anything that floated. A lot of luminaries back then decried the sub as a sneaky and uncivilized method of killing people.
20.5” barrel “killing 3-4” with one shot? I suppose, if they all hugged as if trying to fit a large family into one photo...
Ref. one of a nearly infinite number of shot spread tests, this from an 18.5” barrel and no choke. https://www.guns.com/news/reviews/12-gauge-shotgun-pattern-test
Pershing threatened to execute German POW’s on a one to one basis and they backed down.
Of course what is not mentioned is that the US Army learned from direct experience from the Confederate Army just how effective shotguns could be at close range. Before that everyone had only thought of them as sporting arms. Though, they really should have realized how effective they could be given that crude blunderbusses had been used commonly in naval combat to take out densely packed swarms of boarding parties or overcome densely packed defenders when boarding. They put nasty things down the barrel of those - nails, broken glass, etc.
To this day several NATO militaries use shotguns for house to house fighting.
I know nothing about the history of the shotgun- but it had to be invented before 1917 (??)
The same concept in artillery, grapeshot, was used at least since the Napoleonic wars.
Johnny got his gun, got his gun, took it on the run, on the run.
Thank you for an awesome history lesson!
Sounds like the krauts just wanted an excuse to shoot POW’s, not that they needed an excuse. It’s ironic that purveyors of mustard gas would have the chutzpah to complain about shotguns.
If anything, we were too nice to the Germans.
Bunny's preferred weapon“DASS NACHT FAIR!!..”
- says the guys who introduced POISON GAS to the battlefield…
That is both fascinating and informative. I had never heard of the shotgun in WW1.
The shotgun is horrifically underrated by the tacticool crowd who fantasize they will be sniping from 800 yards with their 338 Lapua.
But reality is that a lowly 12 gauge pump is one nasty weapon, and the rest of the world agrees.
It’s also the classic load for hunting Jaguar.
And despite the hit western movies, the vast majority of the guns headed out west were shotguns. It was the everything gun to most people.
Now days...our pols would require our military stop using the weapon, apologize to the enemy, and arrest the US troops that were using said weapons.
The muzzles of some of the low-cost gun barrels look familiar...
When SCOTUS, in “Miller” refused to take judicial notice of short-barrel shotguns having any military use, they were being exceptionally dishonest.