Tag Archives: winchester model 12

That scattergun love

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“PFC. Art Burgess, a candidate in the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP), 2nd Battalion, 75th Infantry (Ranger), fires a Winchester-built Model 12 combat shotgun during special weapons training at Range 31, 13 January 1982.” The gun has been modified with a heat shield over the barrel, a bayonet lug/sling swivel, an over-folding buttstock, and pistol grip.

Dig the early PASGT kevlar vest with the old-school M1 pot. Soooo early 1980s. (DA-SN-83-09168 Via NARA)

The U.S. military fell in love with the Winchester 97 as a trench shotgun in WWI but soon augmented those with the much more widely-sold Model 12. The Army and Marines brought these guns to the Great War (700) World War II (over 68,000) and Vietnam.

They served as riot guns with military police, trench guns in the front lines, and in support duties. While officially replaced by newer Remington 870s and Mossberg 500s since then, these old vets still continued to get spotted in pictures of US soldiers in harm’s way as late as the recent conflicts in Iraq. Odds are, there are some still in armories somewhere, especially in reserve and National Guard units.

The Winchester Model 12 Shotgun: Once loved, now forgotten

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When you say Winchester shotguns, most people think of the Model 97 Trench gun, the Model 1200, or the elegant double barrel Model 21. But what if we told you there was a gun marketed for almost a century that was more advanced than the 97, better made than the 1200, and sold many times as much as the 21. Well it happened, and it was the M12.

In the late 1890s, John Browning had perfected a pump action shotgun for Winchester, the Model 1897 that proved to be one of the best scattergun designs in history. It was a pump-action gun with a under barrel tubular magazine, but as the years ticked by, there was one glaring, antiquated flaw—it had a hammer.

Between 1904-1908 both Savage and Remington came out with ‘hammerless’ designs that replicated Winchester’s gun performance, only with the hammer hidden inside a streamlined receiver. Winchester found itself rapidly losing market share to the more modern designs.

Winchester engineer Thomas Crosley Johnson, a man credited with more than 120 patents and much of the groundwork that led to the legendary Model 70 rifle, was tasked to come up with this new hammerless model.

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

the winchester 12