SCATTERGUN ALLEY THE SHOTGUN AT WAR

From the Civil War to the trenches of Europe and jungles of Asia, scatterguns have served Americans in combat.

STORY BY LARRY CASE

The shotgun as a weapon in wartime doesn’t get the notoriety that an infantryman’s rifle or one of the many machineguns does. There is no doubt that the rifle has ruled as a weapon of war, but in the right circumstances, the shotgun has more than proven its worth. The value of the shotgun as an effective weapon in war comes under some of the same constraints we have talked about here before for home defense and other “fighting” shotguns. Range and firepower are the key here. When devastating firepower is needed at short range (usually inside 50 yards), the shotgun becomes very handy.

IN AMERICA, THE shotgun certainly had a place in battle as early as the Revolutionary War. American soldiers would routinely load their smoothbore muskets with a single musket ball and several buckshot pellets. Hence, the name “buck and ball.” Coming out of a .69-caliber musket, one can imagine how devastating this load was at close range. Shotguns were even more widely used during the Civil War, especially by the Confederate Army cavalry. Coming from the rural South, most Confederate soldiers were familiar with and had their own firearms, and often this was a shotgun. It is reported that a lack of firearms was a problem from the start for the Confederate Army, and soldiers would often bring their own weapons. At the beginning of the war, long-barreled shotguns that were used for hunting were common and these gave way to some being sawed off. Later, the Confederate Army would purchase shotguns made with shorter barrels so as not to be so unwieldy on horseback.

John Moses Browning’s Winchester Model 1897 pump shotgun saw lengthy service as a military weapon. It was first used by military forces in the Philippines as they were fighting the dreaded Moro tribesmen. This was textbook close-quarter jungle fighting and the American forces soon saw the worth of the shotgun in these conditions. (These battles in the Philippines spawned the beginning of the search for a better sidearm for the military, which brought us another John Browning masterpiece, the 1911 .45 ACP pistol, but that is another story.)

WHEN WORLD WAR I started, with its ghastly trench warfare, the need for the shotgun here did not go unnoticed by one General “Black Jack” Pershing. Pershing had fought with his men in the Philippines and remembered how the Winchester Model ’97 shotgun had performed. Pershing asked the ordinance department to make modifications to the original long-barreled ’97s. These included shorter 20-inch barrels; heat shields over the barrels, as they soon became hot in battle (the ’97 could be “slam fired,” where the shooter holds the trigger down and the rounds are fired as fast as he can work the action); a bayonet lug; and sling swivels. The iconic Model ’97 “trench gun” was born. While the Remington Models 10 and 11 were also used during WWI, the majority of shotguns that saw combat in France were Winchester ’97s, with over 25,000 delivered.

As a side note, incredibly, the German government protested the use of shotguns in the trenches as inhumane and a violation of the Geneva Convention. The Germans went on to say that because of this, American soldiers captured on the battlefield with a shotgun would be executed. The complaint was denied and may have had something to do with the fact that the Germans were using flamethrowers and poison gas. No Americans were reported to be executed for having shotguns, and General Pershing reportedly told the Germans that if the US forces captured any Germans with flamethrowers they would execute them.

Shotgun use during World War II may not have been as widespread due to the aspect of more open areas in the European theatre of war. They did see use in the Pacific in jungle fighting and for clearing Japanese bunkers and other fortifications. Six different models of shotguns were accepted by the US military in WWII, the most popular of which was the Winchester M97 and the Winchester M12. One disadvantage of the shotgun was its ammo issues, as paper shotgun shells would often swell after being in damp and humid conditions and would not fit into the chamber even after drying out. Military shotshells were often made with brass casings to avoid this until they were replaced by plastic shotshell hulls in the early 1960s.

WHEN THE US entered into the fighting in Vietnam, the need for the shotgun in jungle-style warfare arose again. Many military shotguns from the WWI and WWII eras were pulled out of storage, refurbished and sent to the troops in Southeast Asia. These included the Winchester M97 “trench gun,” the Remington 870, the Winchester Model 12, the Stevens M520-30 and the Ithaca Model 37 pump gun. The military contracted with Ithaca to Parkerize the metal on these guns to better stand up to the climate and conditions in Vietnam.

Interestingly, this list also included the Stevens Model 77E. Stevens contracted with the military to produce combat versions of their 77E pump gun. These shotguns had 20-inch barrels and were stamped “U.S.” on the receivers. The guns were Parkerized and fitted with rubber butt pads. Many of the 77Es sent to Vietnam had shorter stocks to fit the South Vietnamese soldiers, who were typically smaller in stature than the American troops. The

77E had a large ejection port on the receiver, which no doubt helped with functioning and ejecting empty hulls in combat situations. The Stevens 77E is the forgotten combat shotgun of this era and even though few have heard of it, more of these guns – 50,000 – were delivered and used in Vietnam than any other shotgun.

The shotgun continued to be used by the US military in the Middle East in Iraq, Afghanistan and for the Global War on Terrorism. The Mossberg 500 shotgun and its variants soon came to the forefront as the shotgun used by American troops when Mossberg passed the US Army’s Mil-Spec 3443E test involving dropping the weapon repeatedly and firing over 3,000 rounds of buckshot. The Mossberg 590A1 remains a favorite with its thick-walled barrel, a bayonet lug, a metal trigger group and an extendable magazine tube.

The venerable Remington 870 stayed in the game and evolved into the Modular Combat System, or 870 MCS, providing a modular shotgun that users could easily modify to do different jobs, such as breaching doors. The 870 MCS can be used as a standard fighting shotgun with a fixed stock and an 18-inch barrel, or a shorter 14-inch barrel with a collapsing stock for close-quarters combat. A 10-inch barrel for door breaching with a pistol grip is also available.

In 1999, the Marine Corps endeavored to find a new combat shotgun and after lengthy testing settled on the Benelli M4. Prior to this, semiautomatic shotguns had