American Rifle - Alexander Rose [156]
Over the course of the year Pedersen made rapid progress with his envisaged semiautomatic rifle, which he intended to use in tandem with the new .276.38 Gunsmithing seems to attract obsessive technical perfectionists like John Hall, the first of the species. John Pedersen was of like temperament. Ensconced in his new office, Pedersen followed in Hall’s footsteps exactly, designing every single tool, jig, fixture, and gauge by himself and forgoing the scores of production specialists and engineers usually required to test successive prototypes, adjusting them minutely as problems and weaknesses were identified. Pedersen was fanatically intent on getting his rifle right the first time.
Eccentric as he was, Pedersen’s reputation was second to none. Major Hatcher, the former works manager of Springfield before moving on to take over small-arms ammunition manufacturing at Frankford in 1923, once complimented John Browning on his mastery of gunmaking, only to be told that he regarded Pedersen as the greatest living arms designer. But, protested Hatcher, you are still alive. Ah yes, replied Browning (who was never overly modest about his talents), but I am an old man with his best work behind him while Pedersen is still young and yet has accomplished so much.39 High praise, indeed.
Finally, in late 1925, the experimental Pedersen .276 was ready. Weighing eight pounds and two ounces and equipped with a ten-round clip, it was, said Hatcher, “a very finished-looking article, with all features such as the sights . . . worked out to the last detail, and in a form which fitted military requirements better than they ever had before been suited.” With this gun “there was no cut-and-try,” and it “worked well and looked good.”40
On May 10, 1926, preliminary testing started and opinions were almost universally favorable, so much so that both the infantry and cavalry were keen to begin distributing samples to troops for field trials.41 Pedersen may well have been disappointed by the slow death of his device, but his rifle at least looked a sure thing. Then John C. Garand came along.
Born the son of a farmer in the Quebec village of St. Rémi, just outside Montreal, on January 1, 1883, Garand moved to Denisonville, Connecticut (and afterward Jewett City) when he was eleven. With just four years’ education under his belt—he was following the lead set by America’s greatest gunsmiths—Garand quit school at twelve and, like Christopher Spencer, became a floor sweeper and bobbin boy at a textile mill. Also like Spencer and the other greats of American gunsmithing (as opposed to gun-selling), Garand was almost wholly uninterested in any intellectual pursuit beyond the practical arts: he never subscribed to any other journals but Engineering, The American Machinist, Machinery Magazine, Metal Progress, and those of similar bent.
By the time he was fourteen he had patented a new type of screw and by eighteen had worked his way up to the rank of machinist. Between 1908 and 1914 he worked for Brown & Sharpe as a tool-and gauge-maker, then moved to Providence, Rhode Island, as foreman and machine designer of the Federal Screw Corporation.
Modest, bespectacled, unassuming, permanently befuddled, and never quite losing his Quebecois accent (a fact he discovered only in 1940, when a friend played back a recording of his voice), Garand possessed an improbable competitive streak. In Providence he became a keen motorcyclist and, deciding that current machines were too slow, designed his own engine for racing. (In 1912 he won 19 of 21 starts.) He used to challenge auto racers to duels and regularly accelerated past 85 miles per hour.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, he again moved, this time to New York to work at a small micrometer firm and, motorcycle racetracks being in short supply in Manhattan, spent his weekends relaxing at a shooting gallery in Coney Island. (A place on Times Square, impressed by his aim, offered him