The Pedersen Device: The WWI superweapon that (almost) won the war
When America found herself in the brutal trench warfare that was the First World War, she needed lots of weapons—fast. One unsung inventor came up with a secret weapon that turned the standard bolt action infantry rifle into a fire-breathing dragon. This man was John Pedersen and he (almost) helped win WWI.
John Moses Browning is said to have told Maj. Gen. Julian S. Hatcher of U.S. Army Ordnance that Pedersen “was the greatest gun designer in the world”, yet too many gun nerds have never even heard the name. Pedersen was a behind-the-scenes type of engineer who, in some four decades in the gun industry was awarded over 70 patents. He designed most of Remington’s pre-WWII 20th century product line. Among these were the Model 51 pistol and the Model 12 rifle. He worked with Browning on a collaboration that became the Remington Model 17 shotgun—from which both the Browning BPS and the Ithaca 37 are descended.
In 1917, with the US entering the morass that was World War One, Pedersen tried to help give Uncle Sam a little something extra to take with him over there.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
