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Posted: 11/25/2002 5:19:58 PM EDT
Can you post the story behind this rifle again? There are a lot of new members that would find it very interesting. I would love to read it again. Thanks.
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My pleasure, Stiker! Always been VERY proud of my dad. This is a very accurate match rifle built at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1947 for my father. He was the captain of the APG rifle team, as well as the local division chief of TECOM (Test and Evaluation COMmand). There are exactly three of these in the world. It started out as a pre-WWII training rifle, Springfield M2 - a .22 LR trainer for the 1903 Springfields. It was fitted with an Eric Johnson barrel (not the guitar player, the best match barrel maker of the day). This particular one is the very last barrel made by Johnson before he died. It has a modified Tymney trigger, and the hand made stock, trigger guard, sling perch, and single shot floor plate were made by my dad in our basement. The gunsmithing on the action and re-barreling was done by a guy named Dave Perrin, who was the head gunsmith at APG's small arms custom shop. This is the same Dave Perrin that built the .22 Gustafson Carbine shown on page 12 of "The Black Rifle". My dad had two of the rifles, and the third went home with Larry Moore, whose name is also all over the previously mentioned book. Larry and my dad were ranked #1 and #2 nationally in small bore competition in 1948 and 1949 with these rifles. This was just before the end of my dad's competitive shooting days (due to rules changes which pissed him off and made his team less competitive). It was also just before the SCHV experiments that led to the developement of the M16 in the first place. When Larry died, his wife gave the other rifle back to my dad, and it now resides with one of my brothers in Tucson. The third rifle is still in dad's safe. Here are some more (old) pics. I'll have to take some better pics now that I have a good camera...   |
Gus, since Striker has you going on this subject, how about telling of your Dad's involvement in the SCHV program and the move from the .222 cartridge, etc. All of this eventually leading to the original ArmaLite AR-15 and to the M16, etc. |
This one is just a .22LR match rifle. The rifles used in the development of the .223 were mostly pressure barrels and two modified M2 Carbines, which were referred to as ".22 Gustafson Carbines" by the Army. Those rifles shot custom ammo (Remington called it .222 Special) that was developed by my dad and a few others. There is a pic of one of those rifles on page 12 of "The Black Rifle". All of the gunsmithing work and die construction, etc., was done by Dave Perrin, who worked for William Davis (now the "Staff Balistician" for the NRA) who worked for my dad. My dad and Bill did a fair amount of damage to their careers trying to convince the Army of the merits of this kind of weapon to replace the M1 Carbine and most sub guns. It was all better once the Army was on board though! |
I'm kind of in a hurry, so I'll post an e-mail I sent to Armalite last spring. I got a response from Marc Westrom and ended up meeting him at the BRC. He called my dad and they talked for a good while. Westrom is trying to nail down the missing historical details surrounding early Armalite and this definately involves it! ____________________ To whom it may concern - I was reading the history page on your website when I encountered the following passage: "Basic infantry rifle *using ArmaLite developed .223 caliber ammunition*. The AR-15 was licensed to the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in January 1959. " My father is Gerald A. Gustafson, who was the engineer at Aberdeen Proving Grounds that actually did the majority of the developement work on the .223 ammo. All of his work (see "The Black Rifle" ISBN 0-88935-115-5, starting on page 12) along with Bill Davis and Dave Perrin, was done at the small arms shop at APG. This developement work caused him some problems with his superiors for several reasons, mostly political, but also due to the fact that APG is a test center, not a developement center. The SCHV experiments were carried out largely in their spare time, and resulted in a round that was different than the .223 only VERY slightly. It was based on a larger version of the .222 Remington, and the only changes I'm aware of that were made by Armalite were very subtle dimensional changes made by Eugene Stoner (also a friend of my dad's) to perfect reliability in the AR-15. Dad's ammo was a 55 gr nearly exact duplicate of the .223 (Remington temporarily called it the .222 Special, but never released it) and was intended to shoot from a 1 in 10" twist. Another act by my father made it possible for Gen Curtis LeMay to order the initial Air Force units. The Army controlled small arms selection for all service branches in those days and LeMay wanted the XM-177 (CAR) version for use as a perimeter defense weapon for the fly boys. The Army would not allow it, so my dad personally wrote a spec for LeMay that only the XM-177 could fit. Since no existing Army arms were able to meet the spec, and with LeMay's pull , the Army was forced to get out of the way. I am in possesion of a Remington Model 700 in .222 Remington Magnum (the immediate precurser to the .223) that was presented to my dad by the president of Remington in appreciation for his work. Umfortunately, I do not have any paperwork or other official records since the work became classified very quickly. My dad retired in 1972 as the National Director of TECOM (Test and Evaluation COMmand). The FOIA might make it possible to find some more information than was published in "The Black Rifle", but I nor have my brothers (or dad for that matter) have not tried to obtain any. There are so many stories from the days of the SCHV projects throughout the 1950's that I've heard everyone from Colt to Gene Stoner and now Armalite given credit for "designing the .223 round". In truth it was Remington and G.A. Gustafson. I just wanted to set the record straight. I would also like to say THANK YOU for what you did for the AR15.com Hero's Rifles project. I plan to purchase an AR10T one of these days soon, but as with anything else, only when funds allow! Thank You for your time. |
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Thanks! I was talking to dad the other day and he was telling me about another project he and Perrin spearheaded on their own, for a .17 caliber very high velocity (well over 3000FPS) automatic pistol! Kind of along the same lines as a mini Uzi (even had a folding stock), but with a lot more power, yet less recoil and controllability problems. They had prototypes and everything. The bullet was similar to the .223 in that it was designed to tumble and fracture in flesh. It was intended for use by security personel and others needing a compact but powerful weapon for emergency use (like tankers, pilots, etc.). This was in 1967. The Army showed no interest though, and since they were employees, dad and Perrin couldn't market it to other companies. All that's left now are some personal notes and scribbled drawings from the conceptual stage. That was the first I had ever heard of it! |
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