American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms

by Chris Kyle

  Though an excellent shot, Bradley is not known to have brought down a plane.

  Then again, the German pilots missed him as well.

  Much of the Springfield’s service in World War II was as a sniper weapon. Army sergeant William E. Jones used it in Normandy with great success. So did many others. While not initially designed as a sniper weapon, its inherent abilities of sure fire and long range made it a good one. Jones credited much of his success to his scope, which provided 2–5× magnification. It was a huge advantage over iron sights, even though it’s a far cry from even the less expensive civilian hunting sights we use today.

  Inevitably, improvements in technology made the Springfield obsolete as a sniping weapon. Still, its influence lived on, as did its ammunition. Legendary Vietnam-era sniper Carlos Hathcock—the greatest American combat sniper ever—shot a .30–06 from his Winchester Model 70. Even today, the longer range weapons preferred by most snipers can trace their roots back in some way to the bolt-action long gun and its ammo.

  Most of my sniper kills in Iraq were made with weapons chambering a .300 Win Mag. The Winchester Magnum round was developed after the 30-06, and in fact the round was first wildcatted, or made privately, after Winchester introduced the cartridges in three other sizes. The new ammo gave more punch to the Model 70 rifle, letting it reach out and touch someone just a little farther than before.

  Over the course of my career, I used a number of different bolt-action weapons chambering that particular ammo. Early on, my best combo was probably a gun that used McMillan stocks, customized barrels, and a Remington 700 action. Later on, I shot a weapon from Accuracy International that had a slightly shorter barrel and a folding stock.

  I would imagine that most serious hunters are familiar with the Remington 700 rifle and its bolt-action. Running through all the possible variations would take the better part of a day; that’s how popular this particular platform has been. Another measure of its success is its adoption by many military forces, police departments, and SWAT teams as the weapon of choice for their long-range shooters. Most famously, the Army’s M24 Sniper Weapon System is made by Remington and based on the Remington 700 rifle. The Navy’s MK13 sniper weapon is also based on the Remington action, though it uses a different chasis.

  The Remington family is so popular that many manufacturers make a ton of accessories, add-ons, and replacements for it. From the days of the Revolution and our friend Tim Murphy, shooters have always wanted to have a little personal touch on their weapon, with customized triggers, stocks, cheekpieces; you name it. You’ve got to constantly look for an edge anywhere you can find it.

  Remington’s recent ad campaign puts this gun’s popularity in perspective. Above a photo of a modern stainless sporting version of the Model 700 the headline reads, “Over 5,000,000 sold. The world’s largest army ain’t in China.”

  One of my favorite personal sniper weapons was a highly customized Mk 13 put together just for me by a friend and fellow SEAL named Monty LeClair. I met Monty when he was a sniper instructor. I’d already seen some of the work he’d done on guns for himself when I picked up a rifle of his one day. As soon as I held it, I knew I had to have one for myself.

  We ordered a bunch of parts and went to work. Monty started by taking a Remington 700 action and truing it. This meant going over the workings until they were to exact specifications, removing what for most people wouldn’t even be considered blemishes. He put a Rock Creek barrel on it, and then added a number of other high-tech, top-shelf parts. One of Monty’s little personal touches had to do with the way he bedded it into the Accuracy International chassis he used. There’d been the tiniest external warp to the action, and he cured any flaw that might have caused.

  When he was done, the weapon was a sub-half MOA gun, or accurate to within a half-minute of angle when fired at a target at one hundred yards away. It’s a standard snipers and marksmen use to gauge a gun’s accuracy without interference from the shooter. In this case, it meant that five military spec bullets hit less than a half-inch apart when fired. Rifles have been improving steadily over the past few years, but that’s a damn good grouping by any measure.

  Monty’s been building guns since he was a teenager, and taking them apart before that. He probably hasn’t met a weapon he doesn’t think he can improve on. Chief LeClair is still in the Navy, but he ought to eye a career as a gunmaker if he ever retires.

  Toward the end of my service as a SEAL, we started working with guns that fired the .338 cartridge, a larger round that in the right weapon has tremendous power and range. The .338 Lapua Magnum round is a great option; in fact, it’s the ammunition I was shooting when I got my longest kill, at some 2,100 meters outside Baghdad. I was able to use both a McMillan and an Accuracy International version of the 338; I was on the McMillan when I made that shot. The bullet shoots farther and flatter than a .50 caliber, weighs less, costs less, and will do just as much damage. While the guns are heavier than those designed to fire a WinMag, they’re a good sight lighter than a .50. They’re awesome weapons.

  In case you’re wondering, the round is named Lapua after the Finnish company that developed it in the 1980s. The bullet was first intended for a gun being developed by Research Armament Industries in Arkansas to meet a Marine Corps requirement for a new long-range sniper weapon to replace .50 caliber sniper guns. The gun, known as the Haskins rifle after its designer Jerry Haskins, influenced a new generation of designs.

  To stand up to the round, the gun required a thick bolt and a wider frame for the action; one of the first companies to produce such a weapon was Mauser, which came out with a .338 Magnum SR93. A lot had changed in a hundred and twenty years since their rifles buzzed past TR’s ears, but the company, now a subsidiary of Sig-Sauer, still aimed for the cutting edge of gun design.

  Since we’re talking about sniper weapons and the cutting edge, I should mention that some of the most important developments in the technology have come in the area of optics. There’s no sense having a gun that will shoot 2,000 meters if you can’t see what you’re aiming at. Improvements in scopes and guns are being made every day. And then there’s this: One system I looked at recently allowed the gun—or more specifically its computer—to decide when to take the shot. With that system, say its developers, anyone can be a sniper.

  Here I am with my Lapua .338, a distant relative of the bolt-action M1903.

  The Kyle family

  I don’t know about that.

  The sighting system sure is sweet, and the gun definitely packs a wallop. Is it the future? I guess we’ll find out.

  The Springfield M1903 enjoyed a long run. It lives on today not only in the hands of collectors and shooters who like its solid feel, but in movies and classic novels. Steve McQueen handled a Springfield in The Sand Pebbles, and an M1903 with a telescopic sight was used by the sniper played by Barry Pepper in Saving Private Ryan. Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut wrote Springfields into their stories, and in James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, soldiers drilled with Springfields and fire them at Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941.

  But another gun developed in the pre–World War I era had an even greater role in movies and popular culture.

  I’m talking about the M1911 pistol, standard sidearm for the U.S. military from 1911 to 1985, and the gun that defined semi-automatic pistol for several generations of Americans.

  6

  THE M1911 PISTOL

  “Beyond a doubt, there is no other service handgun made in the lifespan of the Colt .45 that can equal—or even approach—that of the M1911 Government Model when it comes to resolving conflicts, stopping fights, and keeping Americans alive and fighting.”

  —Wiley Clapp, American Rifleman

  On October 18, 1918, a tall, red-haired American Army corporal found himself behind enemy lines in the Argonne Forest in France.

  German machine gunners on a nearby ridge were sweeping the bushes around him with bullets. A slug slapped a hole in his helmet, though i
t somehow left his skull intact.

  The corporal had two weapons: a rifle and a handgun. The first was an M1917 Enfield bolt-action rifle, a British rival to the Mauser and Springfield that was a little cheaper to make. The second was a .45-caliber, semiautomatic Colt service revolver with the official name of “Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, Model 1911.” It was a weapon that in the right hands could turn bad luck good. It simply kicked ass.

  Just like the guy holding it.

  The trapped U.S. Army corporal’s name was Alvin Cullum York, and the pickle he found himself in had materialized quicker than a New York minute. Bare moments before, the soldier and sixteen other men from Company G, 328th Infantry, 82nd Division, had surprised a group of German troops and taken them prisoner behind the lines. But before they could organize the POWs, the Americans came under concentrated machine gun fire. Nine, including the sergeant leading the three squads on patrol, fell to the ground, all dead or severely wounded.

  They were spotted and pinned down by a force that outnumbered them by 20 to 1. Six Americans were shot dead.

  “The Germans got us, and they got us right smart,” remembered York. “They just stopped us dead in our tracks. Their machine guns were up there on the heights overlooking us and well hidden, and we couldn’t tell for certain where the terrible heavy fire was coming from. . . . And I’m telling you they were shooting straight. Our boys just went down like the long grass before the mowing machine at home.”

  York grew up in the mountains near the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Before the Army, he’d been a hard drinker, a brawler, and a bit of a redneck goof-off. Somehow, he’d grown into a gentle, God-fearing Christian. He’d also become a pacifist, and tried for conscientious-objector status. In fact, it had taken a long talk with his unit commander before he decided his duty as a soldier didn’t conflict with his beliefs.

  Crouched on the ground, York held his bolt-action Enfield with one hand as bullets flew over his head. He waited for the machine gunner above to stop firing and look down. York was between the prisoners and the machine-gun nest, so close to the enemy that the German had to pitch the barrel down sharply to get at him. The nearby POWs made things tougher for the gunner; he had to get a good fix on his target before firing or risk killing his own people.

  Sure enough, a head popped up. York squeezed the trigger.

  The German disappeared, dropped by a .30-06 round from York’s rifle. York waited. Up came another head, York fired, and the enemy vanished.

  “That’s enough now!” he yelled out in his hillbilly drawl.“You boys quit and come on down!”

  The Germans didn’t take his advice. They’d been in the war long enough to know that his Enfield had only five rounds in the magazine, so maybe when a lieutenant and five men jumped out to take him with bayonets, they figured they had numbers on their side.

  Problem was, York didn’t use his rifle next. He switched to his M1911 pistol. And instead of taking down the first man in line, which might’ve sent the others scurrying to the ground, he worked from back to front, popping them one at a time until finally it was the lieutenant’s turn. The German officer fell with a scream, gut-shot.

  “You never heard such a racket in all of your life,” said York, talking about the battle after it was done. “I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush. . . . There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off [shoot them down] just as fast as I could. I was sharp shooting. . . . All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn’t want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.”

  Finally, York sensed someone behind him. He spun around to see a German officer in the woods with an empty Luger pistol. The German had been trying to shoot him, but missed every time. Spooked and sure that York would kill every last member of his unit, the man offered a deal; If you don’t shoot anymore, I’ll make them surrender.

  Above: Sgt. Alvin York after receiving the Medal of Honor. Below: Sgt. York in winter 1919, “standing in front of hill where 132 German prisoners were taken in Oct. 1918.”

  Library of Congress

  Covering the officer with his M1911, York told him to go ahead. The lieutenant blew a whistle, and fifty Germans emerged with their hands up. More followed.

  One die-hard threw a grenade at York and the six other Americans who’d survived. The grenade missed. York didn’t. Another German stalled when told to leave his machine gun. York shot him, too.

  “I hated to do it,” he said later. “He was probably a brave soldier boy. But I couldn’t afford to take any chance so I let him have it.”

  York ordered the officer to guide them toward American lines. The mass formation marched off, with the seven Americans using the Germans as human shields. They gathered more prisoners as they went.

  After they reached safety, York reported to battalion headquarters. “Well, York, I hear you captured the whole damned German army,” said his brigade commander, General Julian R. Lindsey.

  “No sir,” said York. “I only have one hundred and thirty-two.”

  When someone asked the corporal how he did it, he gave them a Tennessee smile. “I surrounded ’em.”

  York’s shooting had been honed through thousands of hours of practice in the mountains where he’d grown up. There he’d hunted with a muzzle-loading Kentucky rifle his granddad had used. The gun was an authentic American long rifle—ball, black powder, and all. He also had an old-fashioned cap-and-ball revolver he shot for target practice while riding a mule. Like many guys from backwoods, rural America, he was a crack shot. But probably the high point of his unofficial training had to be the hidden-turkey shoot.

  It went like this: York and friends would tie a turkey behind a distant log. The shooter would have to knock it down with the first shot as the bird poked its head up. That itself was pretty hard—turkey heads aren’t too big. But just to make it interesting, his friends could do anything they imagined to distract him in the act of shooting, short of actually touching him. Crack jokes, holler, whistle—it all taught York to shoot with supreme focus and aim.

  A day after his tromp through the enemy lines, York went back to the scene of the battle. He was shocked by the corpses still lying there. He stopped and said a prayer for his dead friends, then thanked God for letting him live.

  “I prayed for the Germans, too,” he admitted later. “They were all brother men of mine.”

  As word spread, York’s actions seemed just too incredible. A thorough military investigation was launched. But eyewitnesses and German reports largely confirmed the events. York’s division commander, Major General George B. Duncan, said “the more we investigated the exploit, the more remarkable it appeared.”

  A legend was born. York was soon promoted to sergeant and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion of Honor.

  “What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe,” declared French Commanding General Ferdinand Foch. Before returning to Tennessee, York received a ticker-tape parade in New York City and was carried on the shoulders of Wall Street stockbrokers. Offers from Hollywood, publishers, and companies seeking his endorsement streamed in.

  Sergeant York lives on in American mythology as one of the toughest soldiers who ever lived. The “Government Model” 1911 pistol he used to pop those Germans has a place right next to him too. The M1911 is a true warrior’s tool. It figures into quite a number of war stories, and for its time and place was probably the greatest handgun ever made. We’re a hundred years from its birth, but it’s still going strong. It’s the basis for any number of customized models, including a SEAL commemorative by Para-Ordnance that’s one of several M1911s in my personal collection. Even when gun makers don’t use it as their model, it’s the design they’re looking to beat.

  Many gun experts agree it rules the roost. When American Riflema
n recently named their top ten guns of all time, they practically gushed over the weapon. “It fits the hand like a trusted tool,” wrote Brian Sheetz. “It functions without fail. It has proved itself in brutal service throughout two world wars. It works just as well on the firing line and on the front lines of combat today as it did the day it was adopted.” Editor Wiley Clapp added, “I cannot name a handgun that delivers more mud-and-sand reliability than the Government Model.”

  The gun’s roots go straight back to the last days of the nineteenth century. The U.S. Army was deep in the jungles of the Philippine Islands, which they inherited after the Spanish-American War. Our soldiers were fighting a fierce counterinsurgency war against radical Islamist Moro tribesmen. The tribesmen had a habit of charging Americans with long knives while wearing wood-and-leather body armor. The Moro fanatics supposedly fought under the influence of powerful narcotics, which made them almost immune to pain. Shoot them, and they just kept coming. It was like something out of a zombie movie. The regulation firearms at the time, .38 Long Colt revolvers and .30 Krag rifles, didn’t have the man-stopping power for this kind of an attack.

  Humbled by the experience, the Army soon conducted experiments on some unfortunate live animals and human cadavers, and decided that American soldiers needed a larger caliber weapon on the hip. What they wanted was something that would stop a horse.

  Literally.

  Philippines, 1899: “Kansas volunteers firing from trench.”

  Library of Congress

  “The cavalry doctrine of those days was if you could drop a horse in its tracks, you got rid of the rider as well,” explained military historian Edward Ezell of the Smithsonian Institution. It was two for the price of one. So the military went looking for a handgun that could do the job. A historic “bake-off” was held by the Army. Weapons from five companies were put to the test. After years of trials, the championship match was conducted on March 3, 1911, when two finalist handguns faced off against each other in a competition somewhere between Survivor and American Idol, Pistol Edition.