Tales of The Gun???

[Zeke Menuar]

I was watching "Tales of The Gun" for the umpteenth time and saw a gun I had never seen before. The gun was shown for a couple of seconds in a dramatization of a Machine Gun Kelly bank robbery. It was a 1911 pattern machine pistol. The gun had a heavy barrel that extended about 6-8" beyond the slide and a Thompson style pistol grip forearm. No shoulder stock that I could see. Looked like a very interesting piece. Did that gun really exist? Anyone know anything about it?

Thanks
ZM

 

[doctorhumbert]

I believe he actually used an illegaly converted Full Auto 1911 with a custom (thompson?) grip in the front. He also had other hi-powered arsenals such as short barreld Browning Automatic Rifle.

 

[MrMurphy]

I've seen that episode, and yeah, that's what it was. Not the only one out there either, I've seen pics of several, they were World War One trench conversions of 1911s (and several other pistols) with a fore-grip, an extended magazine and sometimes a wire stock to turn them into a submachine gun (before the real ones came out) but they were apparently hard to control. For inside-a-trench distances though, they did well enough for trench raiding. The one I really remember well had a 25-round stick magazine, home-made, and a foregrip with a slightly longer than normal barrel (say 8" ? I think). It was in a book on World War One Ordnance. Interesting machine pistol conversion, so his wasn't unique.

 

[dfariswheel]

The Dillinger 1911 was a conversion by Baby Face Nelson, who apparently did gunsmithing work for many of the "motor bandits".

It used a front grip from a 1921 Thompson SMG, and a rare WWI Air Corp extended magazine. It had no stock, and as I remember the "longer barrel" was actually just an extension to keep the muzzle blast in front of the hand holding the forward grip.

Since it was full-auto with an extremely high cyclic rate, accuracy was nonexistent.
The gun was just "spray and pray" and if you were unlucky enough to be in the way....TOUGH.