M1941 Johnson Rifle
KNWGM NEWS
Eugene Stoner Special Editorial
Gary Sneed
The Story of the ArmaLite Rifle
Our story begins before Eugene Stoner is born, 1894. A rifle is developed by a man named James Paris Lee. He had previously developed the first bolt action, magazine fed rifle. This would later become the Lee-Enfield. This new model of 1895 rifle, called the Lee-Navy Rifle is chambered for a revolutionary new 6mm cartridge, far smaller than the roughly 7.5mm, or 8mm cartridges of its day. This was a 135gr bullet at 2,500fps. The rifle itself was also a straight pull design, unusual for the period. 220 of these new 6mm cartridges would weigh the same as 160 of the standard Army .30-40 rounds. Standard loadouts for a Marine would be 180 rounds of 6mm, nearly double that of the 100 rounds of .30-40 allotted to Army soldiers. A report of the era stated “the change in the Navy caliber from 0.45 to 0.236 will result in a lighter gun, less shock of recoil, almost double muzzle velocity and danger space, more than double penetration, and a more than double quantity of ammunition carried on the person.” In the Spanish-American War, about 1,000 Marines attacked 5,000 Spanish, and after the battle the Spaniards claimed they had been attacked by nearly 10,000 Americans. The tremendous amount of fire they were able to lay down let them punch far above their weight class. Other engagements in the same conflict led to outcomes where the Spanish would simply run out of ammo while the Marines were able to continue shooting. The rifle was to be short lived, as the ammunition was expensive to produce and the rifles frequently required spare parts. The Navy adopted the M1903 at the same time as the Army.
Skip forward to the 1930s, Marine Lieutenant Melvin Johnson has received multiple patents for firearms technology, and has developed a rifle based on them. By 1941 the rifle was ready for production, prototypes losing in U.S. testing to the John Garand design late in the 30s. The Dutch purchased a number of these M1941 rifles for use in the East Indies against the Japanese. By the time their order was fulfilled the fighting there was over. The U.S. Marines then made tactical acquisition of a number of “surplus” rifles from this order, issuing them to the Paramarines. The rifle actually replacing the M1 was never really in the cards, but those who used it had a high opinion of it. It was a short recoil operated rifle, where the entire barrel would move backwards to drive the action. The magazine was a rotary type, fixed permanently inside the receiver. It held 10 rounds internally and was fed by stripper clip through the side of the rifle. It was chambered for the standard .30-06 cartridge of the day, but could be quickly adapted to others due to some quirks in its design. The main design feature of concern for us is its bolt. 7 lugs, one of the nominal 8 eaten up by the extractor. This 7 lug bolt would rotate about 1/8 of a turn during the recoil stroke of the barrel to unlock and continue its reciprocation. The bolt itself resembled an 8 lugged cog. The Johnson rifle would be developed into the Johnson light machine gun, with a detachable side loaded magazine, like a STEN, otherwise nearly mechanically identical with the M1941 rifle. The machine gun operated in closed bolt when firing semi-auto, and would swap to open bolt when fired in full auto. These two features made it quite similar to the FG-42, however neither design influenced the other. However, the primary difference in operation between the Johnson rifle and light machine gun was that the LMG raised the line of the stock to be inline with the bore. This led to less muzzle rise in full auto. This also necessitated raising the sights a great distance off the bore. So the Johnson LMG had pronounced sights that stood off the barrel unlike the rifle it was developed from. This design feature was also shared with the FG-42. The M1941 Johnson LMG was followed up with the M1944 LMG. The stock changed even further to be tubular in nature, replacing the old style wood. The bipod was also replaced with a fat monopod.
The 1941 and 1944 machine guns saw little use by any fighting force. Israel copied the 1944 as the Dror LMG, but otherwise it fizzled out. This is until Johnson was contacted by a machine shop named ArmaLite in 1955.
Eugene Stoner was a former U.S. Marine armorer and WW2 veteran. He had gone to work in 1945 for an aircraft equipment manufacturer, and later encountered George Sullivan at a shooting range in Hollywood, California. Sullivan was the president of a small company named ArmaLite, itself a subsidiary of Fairchild Aircraft Corporation. ArmaLite was based out of a small machine shop in Hollywood and was meant to only produce so much as ideas, not weapons. Their first design to bear fruit was the AR-5, a survival rifle for shot down pilots. Sullivan was testing this rifle when he ran into Stoner in 1954. He then hired Stoner as head engineer at ArmaLite, making him the company’s 9th employee. Stoner went to work on a new rifle chambered for the still current .30-06 cartridge. The emphasis of the design was inline construction. All forces should move straight backwards. Typical gas pistons sit above the bore and their forces act somewhat at an angle. Recoil operation was suitable but the accuracy did not hold up to scrutiny. Stoner designed a gas system where the bolt itself would act as the piston for the carrier, driving it backwards. Gas would be tapped off the barrel and injected directly into a chamber in the bolt carrier, expanding against the bolt, forcing the carrier rearwards. The design for the rotating bolt was lifted from a Melvin Johnson patent.
7 lugs plus an extractor. The exterior design of the rifle also borrowed heavily from the earlier Johnson attempts.
The stage was set. NATO soon adopted the 7.62x51mm cartridge, which Stoner adapted his second and third prototypes to, shortening the receiver and action by a significant amount.
The future was taking shape, and the U.S. Army was looking for a new rifle. The AR-10 as it came to be known, showed up late in the testing cycle. Hand made prototypes were presented in the Autumn of 1956. The final submitted prototype possessed many of the now familiar AR-10 characteristics such as the trigger type charging handle, and hinged receivers. It weighed in at an astonishing 6.85 pounds empty, far less than any wood and steel rifle of the time. Accuracy in testing was found to be 2MOA on average, and sometimes sub-MOA However, one of the prototypes possessed a composite barrel, constructed of aluminum with a steel liner. Stoner objected to its submission to the trials but was overruled by George Sullivan. The barrel burst and the rifle was rejected by the Army.
On July 4, 1957, ArmaLite sold a license to Artillerie Inrichtingen Corporation in the Netherlands to produce the AR-10 for 5 years. A.I. actually had the capacity to produce rifles, unlike ArmaLite and their 9 employees. Their first customer was Sudan. An order of 2,500 rifles was placed along with about two dozen sniper rifle versions, where the wings of the carry handle were machined off to allow the mounting of a proprietary scope. The Sudanese pattern weighed in at 7.3 pounds with empty magazine. Small orders at this time were placed by Guatemala, Burma, Cuba, and Portugal. A 7.62x39 model was prototyped for Finnish military trials against the AK-47. A small batch of 30 rifles was produced with 16 inch carbine barrels for KLM Airlines out of the Netherlands for use against polar bears should one of their planes be forced down over the Arctic. Germany trialed the rifle against the G1 FAL, G2 SIG 510, and G3 CETME as the G4. The most interesting customer at this particular time was Cuba. The Batista government ordered 100 for use by their Secret Service. By the time the rifles had arrived, Castro had taken over. Upon learning that another nation had fallen to Communism, ArmaLite’s sales agent was horrified, that they hadn’t been paid. He got ahold of Castro by mail, explaining the situation to him. Castro invited Cummings to Havana to demonstrate the rifles to him as he had done for Batista. Having an audience with not only Castro, but also his brother, and Che Guevara, Cummings convinced him to not only pay for the order of 100, but to place an order for more. Castro said “The revolution would have been over 2 years earlier if we had these”. However, the U.S. Naval “quarantine” led to an unfulfilled order. As time went on, improvements were being made to the design, different patterns of AR-10 were not interchangeable with one another, but production numbers were so small that this wasn’t a major concern. Sudanese guns weren’t the same as Cuban guns and so on. Portugal was the last large purchaser of the rifle. They bought 5,000 for use in Africa with their paratroopers. By this time the rifle had put on a significant amount of weight. The barrel was made heavier, integral bipods were equipped and the bolt carrier group was enfattened. The Portuguese pattern weighed just a hair under 9 pounds. By this time, A.I. decided to exit the small arms business altogether, as Dutch export laws had changed, and nobody was buying the rifle.
By this time, the Army was acting retarded again. Continental Army Command (CONARC) commanded by Willard Wyman sent out an RFP for a .22 caliber rifle weighing 6 pounds loaded. The .22 round it fired needed to perforate a steel helmet at 500 yards and provide better wounding potential than the existing .30 carbine. ArmaLite responded, and two engineers, namely Bob Fremont and James L. (Jim) Sullivan, scaled down the AR-10 into a new design, the AR-15. This was to fire the .222 Remington cartridge, with a new special load developed by Stoner. When Stoner requested a batch of this ammunition made from Remington, they were unhappy with the pressure this would develop in the case, so they worked with Stoner and developed a new .223 Remington cartridge, with greater internal case capacity. The rifles were reworked to fire this, and were submitted to Army testing in 1958. They found that a five-to-seven man team with AR-15s were more effective than an 11 man team with M14s. They would also carry three times the ammunition, and the rifle itself was three times more reliable. This directly echoed the results found 60 years earlier with the Lee-Navy and its small bore, lighter weight ammunition. Dissatisfied with this result, Army Chief of Staff, Maxwell Taylor, vetoed its adoption. ArmaLite, then sold the rights to both the AR-10 and AR-15 to Colt.
The firm that brokered this deal between ArmaLite and Colt was named Cooper-McDonald. And part of their end of the deal, was to receive license fees for every single Stoner rifle sold. So they became a pseudo marketing department for the AR-10 and AR-15. Bobby McDonald went around the world attempting to market the two rifles to different nations. McDonald was somewhat of a specialist in Asian countries. Marketing the rifles there, the AR-15 is wildly popular, India, the Philippines, Thailand, and Burma all really like the AR-15, meanwhile, McDonald ends up just giving away all of his 7.62 ammunition instead of carrying it around, as nobody looks twice at the AR-10 in comparison. Finding this, he calls Colt, who is tooling up to make AR-10s, and convinces them not to. He says put it all into the AR-15. The president of Fairchild Aircraft was also still financially vested in this. ArmaLite still made money from every rifle sold, so he, being friends with the Chief of Staff of the Air-Force, Curtis LeMay, goes to LeMay in 1960. He asks him to take a look at the new ArmaLite rifle, and McDonald demonstrates the AR-15 to him by blowing up some watermelons with it at LeMay’s birthday party, and LeMay, sufficiently impressed, orders 8,500 of them for use by Air-Force security forces still using the M2 Carbine.
After this adoption, Army testing continues. Marksmanship testing in 1961 finds that soldiers could shoot Expert twice as easily with the AR-15 as with the M14. LeMay requests officially an order of 80,000 AR-15s. Maxwell Taylor, now Joint Chief of Staff, again, has his request terminated. This same year, ARPA sends 10 AR-15s to American advisors in Vietnam. After exceptional praise, another 1,000 are sent. At this point, the M14 is canceled, not because of pressure from the AR-15, but because its a piece of shit. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara concludes that with the ARPA reports, and LeMay’s incessant requests for the rifle, that it was the only logical option moving forward. McNamara orders its adoption for all branches of service. 1963, the Army orders 85,000 and the Air-Force was authorized another 19,000. The Secret Service was armed with AR-15s during the Kennedy assassination that same year. Stoner was still working as a consultant for Colt, and testified before congress during the controversy later in the 60s. During this time he also designed a forward assist that was built into the charging handle, so it could be easily removed when the Army realized they were retarded. Stoner would later found his own armament company, ARES, in Port Clinton, Ohio in the 1970s. His work there may require its own article. In the 90s he would go to work for Knight’s Armament, working on AR-10 derived rifles there, leading to the adoption of the Mk 11 and later M110 by the U.S. military.