Gun Digest 2011. Dan ShidelerЧитать онлайн книгу.
the barrel is stationary, does not move at all. Instead, the chamber is a separate piece of tube that is sleeved into the barrel and slides back and forth. At the shot, the recoil forces the chamber to jab backward and moves the breech block, which completes the cycle on its own inertia, ejecting the empty and reloading the chamber with a fresh round. This was a very simple and effective method of harnessing the recoil energy. Unfortunately the gun did not catch on. The Model 50 with a steel receiver was very butt-heavy because it had its recoiling mechanism in the buttstock. Most shooters found it to be not just butt-heavy, but simply too heavy overall. The Model 50 in 12 gauge weighed close to 8-½ pounds and in 20 gauge it was around 7-½ pounds! Although it was made in trap and skeet versions, it never gained popularity because it lacked proper balance for clay target shooting.
Winchester tried to change that and came out with a better version, the Featherweight Model, with an alloy receiver. This made the gun lighter and shifted some weight to the front. It was an excellent gun, but still it did not sell well. It was trying to compete with the Browning A-5, which had been in production for over 50 years and had become a legend with field shooters. Among newer guns, the Remington 11-48 was a sleek looking, popular autoloader especially with skeet shooters. And Savage’s take on the Model 11-48, the Model 755, was selling well in its own right.
Winchester tried harder and came out with the Model 59, which used the same system but had a barrel that even today would be considered revolutionary. The Winchester Model 59 used a thin steel liner that was wrapped with 500 miles of fiberglass thread to make what they called a Win-lite barrel. Together with the alloy receiver, this made for an excellent upland gun weighing in at 6-½ pounds in 12 gauge. But the Model 59 with its revolutionary barrel didn’t make it, either. One good thing came out of that attempt. Winchester introduced screw-in chokes for the Model 59 in 1961, calling it the Versalite chokes. The concept eventually caught on. (Contrary to popular belief, Winchester was not the first with the interchangeable choke tube. A Massachusetts gunsmith by the name of Sylvester Roper patented a choke device that attached to the end of the barrel back in 1866, and the Italian gun maker Breda had a choke tube system called “Quick Choke,” which made its appearance in the 1940s. The Simmons Choke, very similar to Breda’s “Quick-Choke” came out a year before Winchester, and Armalite had a similar system on their revolutionary AR-17. If you include choke tubes that did not attach directly to the barrel, but to a recoil chamber, then you can go back to 1922 when the Cutts Compensator first appeared. But Winchester could rightly be given credit for having made the first commercially successful “internal” or “screw-in” choke tubes in the U.S.)
Ironically, although the Winchester choke system survived, later to be reborn as the “Winchoke,” the floating chamber action did not, at least not in a shotgun. Like the short recoil system, the floating chamber system could be very reliable, providing the gun was cleaned and maintained properly. Most of the problems found associated with this system were simply caused by lack of maintenance and cleaning!
The Winchester Model 50 lasted only seven years. Introduced in 1954, a year after the Browning Double Automatic, it was discontinued in 1961. The Model 59 was introduced in 1958 and lasted until 1965. The Browning Double Automatic outlasted both Winchesters by staying in production until 1971. With the discontinuance of the Double Automatic, the choice in autoloaders was reduced to either the old long recoil or the newer gas operated system.
In 1967, a relatively little known company in Italy – Benelli – introduced their version of an inertia-driven system in an autoloader, the M-1. In 1983 Benelli further refined the system by providing a rotating bolt head. The first of the early Benelli shotguns began to appear in the U.S. around mid 1970s; these guns were brought in initially either individually or by small importers, but in 1977 Heckler & Koch began importing the Benelli shotguns in larger numbers. The Benelli is an extremely reliable, well-made, well-finished gun. In the Benelli system, the barrel is stationary as in the floating chamber, and only the breech bolt moves back at the shot and completes the cycle.
Top: Franchi 48 AL: long recoil system; Bottom: Benelli M-1: inertia system.
The inertia system, in different variations, has been around a long time. It seems that the Italians tinkered with it more than anybody else. In one form or another, it’s been in existence since the 1920s. Benelli is constantly tweaking the system, coming out with different variations almost annually. The Benelli is very popular here in the U.S. with hunters and seems to have caught on with the Sporting Clays shooters as well.
Today, except for Benelli’s inertia and Franchi 48AL’s long recoil system, there are no other non-gas operated shotguns available to the American shooters, except on the used-gun market. The Beretta UGB 25 Xcel, which operates on the short recoil system, for all practical purpose can be counted out of the equation, since it is made only as a trap gun. So essentially what we have today among autoloading shotguns is the inertia-driven and the long recoil-operated shotguns of Benelli and Franchi. All the rest are gas-operated. Are there other recoil operated systems? Yes, but their manufacture is not widespread.
Bernardelli Automatico VB – inertia system.
In the 1930s the German company of Walther experimented with an autoloader that employed the toggle system like the famous Luger pistol and there was also the Scandinavian Sjogren. In the 1960s Stoeger imported a Vincenzo Bernardelli produced autoloader that employed a different type of inertia breech bolt system on a one piece-stocked, box magazine-fed shotgun that looked more like a Rifle. Named the Automatico V.B., it was well-made but never caught on with the public, not here, not in Italy. It was made in 12, 16, and 20 gauges, but the smaller-gauge versions are extremely rare in the U.S.
The Cosmi is another non-gas operated system that has been around in Europe since the 1930s. It was developed as early as 1925 and has always been a strictly in-house, hand-made gun. Most shotgunners will never see a Cosmi, let alone handle one. It uses an inertia system on an action body that can be opened with a top lever like any break action gun! The magazine is contained in the buttstock. It is made in 12, 16, and 20 gauges and is, perhaps needless to say, very expensive.
The Cosmi: a unique inertia system with a break-open action. Expensive, too.
The earlier mentioned Armalite Corporation came out with a rather unique autoloading shotgun, the AR-17, which they called the “Golden Gun,” a lightweight gun made of “space-age”materials that weighed 5-½ pounds in 12 gauge. It worked on the short recoil system but unlike the Browning Double Auto, which had a loading port on the side, the AR-17 loaded from the bottom in conventional fashion and had interchangeable choke tubes. Unfortunately, it never caught on. It was, perhaps, a bit too futuristic looking with its gold anodized coloring and plastic stock. Parts for this gun were made between 1956 and 1962, enough for 2000 units. However, only a total of 1,200 units was sold during its lifetime.
Currently, the only shotgun that operates on a short recoil system is the rather expensive, previously-mentioned Beretta UGB25 Xcel. The UGB, like the Cosmi, has the unique break-open barrel like a double gun or a single shot, yet it also has a round that is held on the side, somewhat like the Browning Double Auto, and operates on short recoil. It is made only as a 12 gauge trap gun.
Armalite AR-17, short recoil system.
So, now we come to the question of, what possible advantage could non-gas-operated autoloaders hold over gas-operated guns. Most will agree that dependability is no longer the big issue with gas-operated guns, so that is not an advantage for non-gas guns. Possibly the biggest difference between the gas and the non-gas autoloaders is their respective handling characteristics, their dynamics. Some gas-operated autoloaders may very well weigh less than their non-gas-operated counterparts, but their balance points will be different and chances are their forearms