What's that gun "Flying Leathernecks"?

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Backpacker33

Backpacker33

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It must be John Wayne Day on Turner Classic Movies. "Flying Leathernecks" is one, with scenes of some of my favorite WWII planes.

The story is of a US Marine unit flying against the Japanese.
John Wayne is carrying a revolver in a shoulder holster. Others are seen carrying what appears to be the same revolver.

Of course, anything Hollywood does is suspect, but,
Does anyone know what that revolver is?
 
The standard issue WWII Navy & Marine pilots handgun was the S&W Victory Model .38 Spl.

What John Wayne carried in a movie is beyond me?
But it probably wasn't period correct, because the USN/USMC pilots had all the Victory models S&W could produce at the time.

U.S.S. Franklin ready room:
(note three or more S&W Victory's in shoulder holsters hanging on coat hooks on the bulkhead behind the pilots.)
ship_franklin5.jpg

S&W Victory model in my collection that came off the U.S.S. Franklin.
Victory1.jpg

rc
 
M1917 Revolver designates the Colt New Service in .45ACP OR the S&W Second Model Hand Ejector in .45ACP. The butt in the stills at IMFDb looks like the Colt.
 
The fact that anyone or anything survived the Franklin is nothing short of a miracle.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is.

The USS Franklin was commissioned in Norfolk, Virginia in early 1944.
The ship was strafed on 13 October, and bombed on 15 October 1944.
It was again hit by three armor piercing bombs on 30 October 1944 off the island of Samar in the Philippines and heavily damaged.
Then on 19 March 1945, near the coast of Japan, it was hit by a Kamikaze plane crashing through the flight deck and nearly sunk.


The pilot who's estate I bought the gun from was in the air when it was bombed the first time. And in the air again when the Kamikaze attack happened.

He landed on another carrier the last time, and when he got back on the Franklin, he still had the S&W he had been issued.
And he found this brand new one laying on his bunk.

He told the relatives he turned in his issue gun and kept this one.
It was still loaded with 3 rounds & 3 empty's of WWII ammo when I got it.
In fact, it had never been fired when the pilot brought it home still loaded after WWII.

Until his great grandson shot three rounds of the WWII ammo the week before I bought it.
Just to see if it would work!!

OF COURSE it would work you 20 something dumbass!!

As an aside, my Seabee father rode the heavily damaged USS Franklin home from the Philippines when the war ended.
And this gun was on it!

rc
 
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I have known several Navy/Marine pilots and they were issued .38 Special revolvers, mostly S&W M&P (not necessarily "Victory" models, because that strictly applies only to those with "V" serial numbers). One man was issued a Colt, also in .38 Special, though he was not sure which model.

Of course, the movies only loosely depicted reality, as the pictures of Douglas Dauntless bombers attacking Pearl Harbor indicates.

Jim
 
I have a black GI issue shoulder holster from Vietnam that was used by pilots carrying S&W & Colt .38 Special's.

Both my S&W Victory and Colt Commando fit in it perfectly.

rc
 
I don't know how true this is but I remember reading somewhere that many Navy and Marine Corps pilots favored carrying revolvers because they believed that if they had to ditch at sea the salt water would render the M1911A1 inoperable. However with a revolver they felt that if need be they would still be able to manually index the cylinder and somehow get it to fire.
 
Like most members of the U.S. armed forces, pilots didn't get to pick and choose their weapons. They were issued .38 revolvers; that is what they carried, and that is what unit supply had ammo for.

Jim
 
^^

Mainly because they were issued tracers in lieu of pencil flares for signalling.

Think of the .38 revolver as a combined pencil-flare launcher and absolutely last ditch defense weapon. More for the former than the latter.


Willie

.
 
Now you gotta know the Duke wouldn't be packin' no weeny .38 when there was a .45 Colt that might have been feasible.....:evil:
 
Well who knows... In the book, "Currahee", by Burgett, Donald R., he wrote his father sent him a 1911 .45, nickle, plated, and he carried it through the war.

So I can see a Marine pilot, especially a squadron commander, getting permission to carry his own gun as long as it took GI ammo.

Deaf
 
But it probably wasn't period correct, because the USN/USMC pilots had all the Victory models S&W could produce at the time.
Click to expand...
"Flying Leathnexcks" was produced six years after the war ended.
 
Actually a friend just this morning sent me a link to 49 pages of mostly WWII aviation photos and on the first two pages at least four Navy pilots are carrying 1911 or 1911A1 pistols.

When in high school a buddy had a dad that flew off the Yorktown in Hellcats. He had a Victory model with smooth grips, lanyard loop and leather gear from his service. Much the same story in that he was in the water and when recovered the QM announced he had lost all gear at sea and handed him a new revolver. He cleaned the one he went in the water with and kept it. His sons and I shot it 25 years or so later and it was still in fine condition despite having been in the pacific. He once told me they were told the Hellcat would sink like a stone in the water so to get away from the downed plane as soon as possible. He thus got to bob around in a mae west for quite some time watching his Hellcat float away.......

Bill Jordan was allowed t choose a gun for his bunker clearing in the pacific in WWII. He cut a 1917 of one flavor or the other back to three inches and bobbed the hammer.

On the other hand I once met a USMC engineer who was sent ashore at Iwo Jima with only a Victory model and six extra rounds...... he was one of the folks that was to go to work on the airfield the moment they could. On his first field he had a crew at one end of the field and the japs still held the other end. He said the "real" Marines took good care of him and he never fired a shot. He had been a road and highway engineer in FLorida when the war started and oneday two marine officers strode into his office and announced he was drafted and made a Captain on the spot. He then spent a year building runways of crushed limestone or coral up and down the Gulf and South American coasts. Said they also would finish on of those fields and then the Navy would bomb it so they could figure out ways to repair them quickly. Given the success of the island hopping the practice must have worked.

-kBob
 
rcmodel said:
Yes, it is.

The USS Franklin was commissioned in Norfolk, Virginia in early 1944.
The ship was strafed on 13 October, and bombed on 15 October 1944.
It was again hit by three armor piercing bombs on 30 October 1944 off the island of Samar in the Philippines and heavily damaged.
Then on 19 March 1945, near the coast of Japan, it was hit by a Kamikaze plane crashing through the flight deck and nearly sunk.


The pilot who's estate I bought the gun from was in the air when it was bombed the first time. And in the air again when the Kamikaze attack happened.

He landed on another carrier the last time, and when he got back on the Franklin, he still had the S&W he had been issued.
And he found this brand new one laying on his bunk.

He told the relatives he turned in his issue gun and kept this one.
It was still loaded with 3 rounds & 3 empty's of WWII ammo when I got it.
In fact, it had never been fired when the pilot brought it home still loaded after WWII.

Until his great grandson shot three rounds of the WWII ammo the week before I bought it.
Just to see if it would work!!

OF COURSE it would work you 20 something dumbass!!

As an aside, my Seabee father rode the heavily damaged USS Franklin home from the Philippines when the war ended.
And this gun was on it!

rc
Click to expand...
Some great history there rc,I know you're proud of that piece of it
 
Jim K said:
Like most members of the U.S. armed forces, pilots didn't get to pick and choose their weapons. They were issued .38 revolvers; that is what they carried, and that is what unit supply had ammo for.

Jim
Click to expand...
Some pilots carried their own handguns during WWII. Mostly they carried what they were issued, but there were either no rules about personal weapons, or the rules were not enforced.

Army Air Corp pilots were issued mostly .45ACP 1911A1's.
 
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Harry Cosby, in his book, "A Wing And a Prayer" said he carried a 1917 .45 ACP revolver as bombardier in the 'Bloody 100th" Bomb Group in the 8th Airforce.

He said alot of them were issued .45 revolvers while others 1911s.

Deaf
 
Yes!
It does make it extra very special to me.

In my 50+ years of gun collecting, this is the only one I could trace back all the way to new, with the story they all wanted to tell me!

Very special indeed!

rc
 
Why did they not want to keep it in the family????? :banghead:

Though I know it has gone to a very good home, it amazes me when people sell off family heirloms like that.

Don't get me started on some of the people in "Pawn Stars"...

rc- Sorry for the rant. The story on that Victory is excellent!
 
Why did they not want to keep it in the family?????
Click to expand...
To make a long story short?

The Dive Bomber pilot who survived the war had two kids after WWII.
He also had two farms totaling close to a half section, on the outskirts of the city.
Those farms landed right smack in the middle of the real estate development around here 20-25 years ago.
They are now worth quite a bit more money then they were right after WWII!!!
Like 100 fold, or more!!

So, one daughter still lives here in town, and got to clean out & sell the house, barns, machinery, and livestock after he died.
She got the gun, and apparently has hated it ever since.
Guns are Bad! Mmmkayyy!

The other one lives in Chicago or somewhere, and got the land.
So, they both sued each other, because they both thought they got the short end of the Shaft!

And spent most of the value of the estate on lawyers, fighting each other in court.


To make a long story longer:
The local daughter married a hippie deadbeat, and they bought a large fancy home they couldn't afford on one salary. (She works a factory job, he doesn't work a tall.)

He is too busy watching TV, riding his Harley, and trimming the neighbor lady's bush, while his wife is at work trying to make the house payments.

In Short?
A typical American love story, after 25-30 years or so of marriage!

In Shorter?
She sold the gun to make a house payment on a house they never should have bought in the first place.

PS: To the OP, Backpacker33?
I'm truly sorry for the thread hijack!
But this was a story that needed to be told about a real WWII carrier pilots gun.
And I will tell it, every chance I get to tell it.

Hope you can forgive me?

rc
 
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