Pedersen Rifle - Legacy

Legacy

While the Pedersen rifle never achieved the status of a standard-issue weapon of the U.S. Army, the rifle did have a visible impact on the process by which the ultimate winner—the M1 Garand rifle—was selected. John Pedersen’s work in creating and improving his rifle was a coherent research and development process which significantly raised the bar for those trying to get a hearing from Army Ordnance regarding their designs. Significantly, the only serious competition that the Pedersen rifle had in the end was the rifle created by John C. Garand—like Pedersen, a talented designer and engineer with a solid grounding in the particulars of production tooling.

The initial success and ultimate failure of the Pedersen rifle has sometimes been interpreted as the simple workings-out of biased or overly conservative decision-making in the face of technological innovation. However, there is little in the historical record to support such interpretations. Simply put, the Pedersen rifle had shortcomings. The rifle was complex, making concerns about mass production to an exacting standard of parts interchangeability quite legitimate. Issues revealed in Army tests were serious and inherent in the design. Certainly the concerns expressed by the Semiautomatic Rifle Board regarding the vulnerability of the operating mechanism to sand and mud when held open were very real. However, what the rifle did succeed in demonstrating was that a semiautomatic combat rifle was a realistic proposition. The initial enthusiasm of the Infantry Board for the adoption of this rifle is certainly strong testimony on this point. Bias is certainly visible in the negative attitude taken toward what was unquestionably the most innovative aspect of the rifle’s development: the lubrication of the cartridge cases with Pedersen’s dry wax process. The implicit equation of this process with the messy and contamination-vulnerable case oiling system used in the Thompson Rifle (also a hesitation blowback design) certainly shows a degree of obstinate conservatism. This concept may yet have potential application in firearms development even now, but it was certainly not appreciated or even liked back in the 1920s.

Some writers have implied that the Pedersen rifle was effectively killed by Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur’s decision to require use of the .30-06 cartridge for the standard semiautomatic rifle. However, the record does not support such an interpretation. The Pedersen rifle was rejected a month before Gen. MacArthur pronounced on the subject, at a point in time when the caliber .276 T3E2 Garand rifle was the clear winner of the competition and ready for initial production. History shows MacArthur vetoed the .276 Pedersen cartridge for use in the Garand rifle.