Posted on 04/25/2009 12:53:59 PM PDT by 7jason
Lewis and Clark brought an airgun on the Voyage of Discovery. When this fact became widely known after World War II, while air rifle manufacturers were mass producing and marketing inexpensive models for boys throughout America, the revelation seemed profound. A pellet rifle? A BB gun on that famous expedition by Thomas Jefferson's Corps of Discovery? Well, not exactly. The airgun Lewis and Clark brought along was a powerful weapon, hardly a Daisy Red Ryder.
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I'll stick to my SOCOM however...
Alas ... no SOCOMs in 1803.
Also worked great as a club!
I never knew.
Heh. It was the best gun they had on the voyage. This is the one Lewis grabbed when he thought they were under attack. It was used by the Austrian military, and was a repeater that could fire 20 rounds in a row, something no other gun of the time could do. Read the article. Very interesting stuff.
Repeating airguns were used by European armies centuries ago.
Beat me to it! L0L
Looks like something we will have to make when the government takes our guns
The speed one could fire is exactly as described. Not quite up to semi-auto, but close to bolt or lever action in repeat shots. Don't recall that loud a report; I remember hearing the sound of the ball impacting the target making nearly as much noise as the report of the gun, and saw it flatten a lead ball (50 yds.) when starting with a full charge of air.
You can bet there was an EXTENSIVE Q&A after the demo. I think they spent something like 20K reproducing the rifle. They found while trying a range of materials for the air seal, only horn would work properly.
Well dunno about the rest of Europe, but for sure by the Austrians around the time of Napoleon.
My first realization that an air-gun could do more than “put your eye out” was reading the collected Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
Someone took a pot shot at the great detective with an air-gun, a very powerful and deadly weapon evidently.
It’s sort of mind boggling to realize such weapons had been around for nearly 100 years, when Moriarty tasked his henchman to murder Holmes.
The Beeman disassembly article noted that the reproduction being made for the Beeman family was reproduction #4.
I would assume this means there are at least 4 working models out in the world.
Slick!
There’s a couple of custom big bore airgun makers out there, but I think their waiting lists are a year or more. The Dragon Slayer, from Korea, is a .50 caliber model available for well under $1,000.
http://www.pyramydair.com/p/career-dragon-slayer-50-caliber-air-rifle.shtml
I'm pretty certain the Swiss Army used them as well.
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