Prototype 9mm Clement Military Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
•
10m
Charles Clement is best known for a series of civilian pocket pistol made in the years before World War One, but today we are looking at a prototype Clement military pistol from 1914. This gun retains most of the same mechanical features of Clement's pocket guns, but is scaled up to the 9x20mm Browning cartridge for potential military use. It is a shrouded-hammer, simple blowback action, with a single stack magazine and a quite long barrel (probably to complement the shoulder stock which it is cut to fit). Only two examples of these are known to exist today, and probably only about 15 were originally made. They were trialled by the Belgian military, but not adopted - probably in part because of the outbreak of World War One.
For much more information on Clement and his guns, I recommend this excellent collaborative article by Ed Buffaloe, Bill Chase,
Dr. Stefan Klein, and Dr. Dirk Ziesing
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
8mm M1915 Chauchat Fixing and Range T...
Well, my 8mm French Chauchat finally cleared transfer, as did my application to reactivate it. This was a "dewat", or "Deactivated War Trophy" - a machine gun put on the NFA registry but modified to be non-firing. This is not the same as legal destruction, as the receiver of the gun remained inta...
-
Pancor Jackhammer: The Real One
The Pancor Jackhammer was a select-fire combat shotgun designed by John Anderson in the 1980s. He was a Korean War veteran who had used a pump shotgun in combat, and while he liked the shotgun concept, he felt there must be a more efficient way to make a shotgun than a single-loading pump action....
-
Winchester 1893 & 1897 Pump Shotguns
The Winchester 1897 was the gun that really set the standard for the now-ubiquitous pump action shotgun. It was designed by John Browning, but was not the first pump action designed and sold. That credit goes to Christopher Spencer, who put the first pump action on the market in 1882. His patent ...
