Need A Movie Title

[Virginia Reb]

I need a title of a movie that is driving me nuts.  I believe James Stewart played the lead role.  He was a prisoner that created the first carbine rifle or something.  I remember watching it with my Dad when I was younger and I would like to see it again.  So, any help you can give me would be appreciated.

[Forty Rod]

Carbine Williams?

[Russ T Chambers]

I believe Forty has it!   James Stewart played David Marshall 'Marsh' Williams, the real life inventor of the world famous M-1 Carbine automatic riffle used in WWII. 

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[Virginia Reb]

Thanks, I really appreciate.  Now, I am going to have to find it on DVD.

[Free Hand]

‘Scuse me; I’m not trying to be a nit picker,  but wasn’t Mr. William’s creation (the M1 carbine) a semi automatic?     I’m not that knowledgeable about military weapons, but I do believe that the auto version was the M2. Was the prototype full auto perhaps?

[The Elderly Kid]

The coolest thing about it was that Williams developed the carbine surreptitiously while he was in prison! Saw the movie when I was a teenager and even then it seemed to me that the movie bent over backwards to portray Williams as an innocent man railroaded into prison. Well, maybe. It seems he was moonshining when the still was raided by revenoors. A Fed was killed, and the movie would have it that everyone was shooting and  Williams was convicted simply because he was known to be the best shot among the bootleggers. Again, maybe. Whatever, I'd say he earned his reprieve by inventing a fine weapon at a time when his country needed it badly.

[St. George]

Williams was a prolific firearms designer, and had worked in a blacksmith’s shop as a youth - giving him familiarity with metal work and design.

While in prison - having pled guilty to second-degree murder in 1921 - he was put to work in the prison’s machine shop repairing the guards’ weapons.

Working in secret on his designs - in the years between 1923 and 1928, he built four rifles which incorporated his two most famous inventions.

His first rifle he built from 'scrap iron and a walnut fence post.', while another was made from a tractor axle and the drive shaft from a Model T.

Williams’ first prison-built rifle used a floating chamber design that later became the basis for several designs that allow firearms to fire a sub-caliber round.

Perhaps the best-known example of the 'floating chamber' is that of Colt’s .22-.45 conversion kit, which allows a Government Model 1911 to fire .22 Long Rifle ammunition.

Williams received a patent for the floating chamber in 1936.

The invention that would earn him his nickname was the short-stroke piston gas system that was used in the M1 Carbine.

Williams had invented the short-stroke system while in prison, and in 1941 he went to work with Winchester on the Carbine Project.

He received a patent for the short-stroke piston in 1944.

The initial design of the M1 Carbine was semi-automatic and was the standard-issue carbine of WWII for non-Airborne troops, who used the M1A1, with its folding stock.

The fully-automatic M2 was a late-war modification (later type-classified) that saw considerable use in Korea and Viet-Nam.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!