The Firing Line Forums

Go Back   The Firing Line Forums > The Hide > The Dave McCracken Memorial Shotgun Forum

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old October 30, 2005, 11:27 AM   #1
Wingbone
Senior Member
 
Join Date: September 23, 2005
Posts: 136
Philippine "Guerrilla" Gun?

I have what has been described to me as a Philippine "Guerrilla" Gun. Has anyone ever heard of it? It is a single shot 12ga. shotgun with a grip on the barrel. You remove the barrel from the receiver, place a shell in the back end of the barrel, and replace it in the receiver. Instead of pulling the trigger and sending the pin to the shell, you slam the shell into a fixed pin in the back of the receiver. Obviously there are no sights. lol On the stock is stamped "pat. applied for" 10336.
I found a mention of Philippine improvised shotguns in a book called "Guerilla Warfare Weapons". In brief it states "....Philippine home-made shotguns are horrible looking things that appear to be every bit as lethal to the user as to thier intended target".
So? Any thoughts or ideas about obtaining info on it? Thanks in advance,
Ken
Wingbone is offline  
Old October 30, 2005, 04:25 PM   #2
Dave McC
Staff In Memoriam
 
Join Date: October 13, 1999
Location: Columbia, Md, USA
Posts: 8,811
I posted a thread over on THR about a "Palintid" shotgun. This is what you're talking about. Basically, two pieces of pipe and a nail.

Some Army guy who had been working with the Resistance in the Phillipines tried marketing these as utility shotguns just after WWII. With thousands of European shotguns dufflebagged back and our factories shifting back from war production, they attracted little interest.

This is more curiousa than shooter.

HTH....
Dave McC is offline  
Old October 30, 2005, 05:40 PM   #3
Lee Lapin
Senior Member
 
Join Date: September 7, 2004
Location: SE NC
Posts: 1,239
Richardson Industries M5, most likely. Too bad yours isn't USGI property marked (is it?????)- take a look at http://www.gunsamerica.com/guns/976529904.htm and
http://www.militarygunsupply.com/sho...itemid=CRUSLIB .

There's another one, apparently not GI, at http://www.joesalter.com/detail.php?f_qryitem=2548 .

A couple or three pages on Iliff D. Richardson and his guns are in Thomas F. Swearengen's _World's Fighting Shotguns_ (pp. 36- 40). This section also includes material on the Philippine paliuntod and paltik guns, improvised there for decades. Ensign Richardson (USNR) was a WW2 guerrilla leader fighting the Japanese on the island of Leyte after the Philippines fell. After the war he tried manufacturing this sort of gun in the United States, but there was no market for it and the enterprise failed. Swearengen does not mention GI marked guns of this sort being dropped to guerrillas in the Phillipines or their manufacture during the war in the US. Where the examples in the first two links above came from, I don't know- but I have seen them mentioned before.

No matter what else, your gun is an oddity in today's world and a memento of times gone by- take good care of it and enjoy owning it. Find more on Richardson at

http://www.hbo.com/apps/band/site/cl...y.jsp?exid=173

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/Web...srecno=1%7F%7F

lpl/nc (used to study war for a living...)
Lee Lapin is offline  
Old October 30, 2005, 05:47 PM   #4
chemist308
Senior Member
 
Join Date: July 28, 2005
Location: Pocono Mtns, PA
Posts: 587
OMG! Those things look like zip guns. And our gov thought they'd be able to fight a war with those things! There were pump action models back then...
chemist308 is offline  
Old October 30, 2005, 09:11 PM   #5
Wingbone
Senior Member
 
Join Date: September 23, 2005
Posts: 136
Thanks for the info guys. The only marking on mine is the about the patent application. Does that make it an early Richardson? An attempt at a patent before Richardson? If it werent for that marking Id guess a home made copy. I take it your advice would be NOT shooting it? I was thinking of taking it the skeet range tommorrow. Anyway, thanks again guys
Ken
Wingbone is offline  
Old October 30, 2005, 11:39 PM   #6
Lee Lapin
Senior Member
 
Join Date: September 7, 2004
Location: SE NC
Posts: 1,239
Chemist,

This was the Philippines, in WW2, under Japanese occupation. You might say the environment was a bit... austere. And dangerous. And difficult. Our government could barely even REACH the Philippines during a lot of the war, and could only smuggle in some few supplies by submarine to help the guerrillas. Times were kinda tough in that area at the time. Ever hear of the Bataan Death March, for example?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March

Yes, they fought a war with those things. That was all many of them could GET as far as firearms were concerned. Even a single shot homemade shotgun is better than a blade or a stick, after all. But those shotguns made it easier to kill an enemy soldier, take his rifle and ammunition, and pass the paliuntod along to a new recruit in the guerrilla ranks who could then go harvest his own rifle from the Japanese. They STILL make them in the Philippines in fact. They have been using them there since well before WW2 came along. They are crude but they are cheap and they will shoot. In fact, lucky folks can shoot them more than once without losing any fingers or facial features.

The WW2 history of the Philippines was little short of amazing. There were a good many Americans stranded there who either never got word to surrender- or decided not to, and fought on. Thousands of brave Filipinos joined the guerrilla ranks and fought the Japanese for the duration of the war. No supplies came in for most of them, no support, and little encouragement. They had to fight a make- do war. But they did it. It's easy to be cavalier about WW2 in the here and now. But halfway across the world in the early 1940s when the contest was yet to be decided and victory was not assured, it was an awesomely brave thing to do to join the ranks of the guerrillas. A LOT of people died doing it.

The world well remembers MacArthur's famous "I shall return" speech after he arrived in Australia after departing his dougout (not a spelling error, either) at Corregidor on a PT boat headed for Mindanao, where he boarded a B-17 for the rest of the trip. Yes, the president had ordered him to leave.

A young US Army officer by the name of Russell Volckmann was not terribly impressed with Macarthur's famous remark. He was one of the officers who chose not to follow the orders to surrender at Bataan, and went off into the jungle to take his chances with the guerrillas. When Volckmann wrote his own book about his wartime experiences as a guerrilla leader on the island of Luzon, he titled it _We Remained_ as a jibe at MacArthur's famous remark.

Volckmann went on to serve on the staff of General Robert A. McClure in the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare (OCPW) at Ft. Bragg, NC in January of 1951. Volckmann was tasked with writing guerrilla warfare doctrine and the first two field manuals for a tiny organization (one officer, one warrant officer and seven enlisted men) that would be stood up in June 1952 under the command of a former WW2 Office of Strategic Services Jedburgh Team leader named COL Aaron Bank.

That organization was (and is still) known as the 10th Special Forces Group, US Army Special Forces. The seeds that grew up to be Special Forces were in large part planted in the guerrilla resistance to the Japanese on the islands of the Philippines in WW2. A number of other American guerrillas with roots in that war led stellar but often little known careers in the world of US Army special operations as well.
http://www.psywarrior.com/mcclure.html

So, please show a little respect- OK? 8^)

lpl/nc (used to teach this stuff to SF guys who didn't know their history either)
Lee Lapin is offline  
Old October 31, 2005, 12:51 AM   #7
Harley Quinn
Junior member
 
Join Date: August 30, 2005
Location: State of KALI
Posts: 1,531
The great raid

Anyone see this flick lately it was out for a few weeks and gone off to the shelf of videos (I think)...

I enjoy the information found on this web site. Amazing the stuff that gets talked about. I have been involved with Filipino Martial Arts for quite a while,
pretty interesting to talk to the old Filipinos and the ones who are aware about their culture and what happened in WWII.

Many stories about those islands... I think the Japanese would like to have us forget the thing and it seems there is a concerted effort to do that. Lets never forget, OK...

The story about the Filipinos and the new world, New Spain and the way these people came to the Americas years and years ago...It is a good read.

Harley
Harley Quinn is offline  
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:10 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
This site and contents, including all posts, Copyright © 1998-2021 S.W.A.T. Magazine
Copyright Complaints: Please direct DMCA Takedown Notices to the registered agent: thefiringline.com
Page generated in 0.06979 seconds with 7 queries