doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com WW I & WW II years double guns.

My guess is there was a lot of money around in the war economy. Things appeared in our house I hadn't seen before. As a kid, I remember full racks in gunshops and department stores. My A&N, Sauer and Elsie were made during WWI.

That cutting tells it all for Ithaca.
Now I wonder if some manufacturers did not have military contracts & tried to make their way as normal before the war.

O.M

Great Ad. I once owned an Ithaca 1911. I presently have one of the last factory runs of an M37R 20 ga. made in 1941 just before the war. Gil

The ad certainly conveys a message . . .but it isn't dated. The SN list available on the home page here shows 900 Western Long Range doubles and 1,300 Lefever Nitro Specials dated 1942. But then it's entirely possible those guns were part of a govt contract and used to teach aerial gunnery. Walt Snyder's book shows a few dozen Knicks, also dated 1942. In both cases, it's possible that these were simply the tail end of civilian production before Ithaca converted its entire production effort to govt contracts.

Smith Corona made guns, a manufacturing company which made mail boxes made guns, sewing machine makers made guns or gun parts. And we just think about government contracts for guns used by the US but you had multiple foreign governments buying guns. Guns designs which our military passed on became sellers to overseas countries desperate to arm themselves. It must have been a great time to ge a manufacturing concern. Contracts with good profits, demand and cash to he made. Who needs to be making two bucks on a Sterlingworth when you could get a contract to make thousands of a item with a bigger profit.

While at the U.S. entry into WW-II the great bulk of Ithaca's inventory of entry-level guns went to the government, but they were still moving high grade guns out to the civilian market --



By the serial numbers on these No. 4Es they had all been in inventory for quite a while.

That ad shown above was a bit wrong as the Western Arms Long Range never reappeared after the war, a few Lefevers in 1946, and a few NIDs in Field Grade and No. 2 through 1948. The first time I visited Creekside Gun Shop in New York, in the early fall of 1986, Terry Turnbull had a big cardboard box full of fully completed 16- and 20-gauge NID Field Grade stocked receivers, but no barrels or forearms for them.


Here is a similar 1943 vintage ad from the Fox Gun Division of Savage Arms Corp.

Hey, Gil, the war started in '39. Canada declared against Japan a day before the US. By '41 my Dad had trained hundreds of Americans under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan before going overseas to be shot down in '42 and become POW in Stalag Luft III.

Interesting question. Certainly in the U.K. guns sales were hit in different ways. Most gun firms during WWI were contracted for government work. Gunmakers such as Purdey and Holland's were doing things like fixing scopes on sniper rifles. Most of the staff who were of military age were called up with many working as Armourers. Post WWI a lot of guns that had been on order did not have their customer anymore having become a casualty so that there we a number of already made up guns going second hand. The Government put huge restriction of gun making firms under The Defence of the Realm Act so that they could be fully utilised on war contract work. Similar in WWII with most on war work. I suppose that those that were made during this period were almost finished items that required little further work. Oddly, I have two Belgian guns with WWII war time date codes on them. Lagopus�..

Somewhat related to your post, Lagopus, is an August Lebeau 12b. BLNE that I've shot for some years that 'letters' from the present-day Lebeau-Courally factory as having been ordered/started in 1914 and finally shipped to the client in South America in 1918. That individual requested his name be tastefully engraved on both sides of the frame prior to shipment, which it was. Would be nice to know the full stories behind such guns.