Growing up in Pascagoula, I had a neighbor that was an old GM2 (who one day became a GM3 out of the blue) who would regale and amaze me with sea tales of guns big and small. One weekend, he had a load of rifles and shotguns in his van that he had brought home to clean– from a small arms locker somewhere– and I dutifully helped him with that. Now, these weren’t Uncle’s guns, they were Browning A5s, bolt-action hunting rifles, plinkers, and the like. He said they were personal guns stored on ship. Before the weekend was over I helped him load them back up to take back to the Singing River Island.
Hey, it was the early 1980s, what can I say? Different time, I guess.
We’ve talked about non-standard weapons in lockers at sea before, for instance, trap guns for MWR use underway, and there are lots of images floating around the NHHC and NARA of unusual small arms being used informally.
Such as this:
A member of the Marine detachment assigned to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (CVN 69) prepares to fire an M1911 .45-caliber pistol during small arms practice from the ship’s fantail. NARA DN-SC-87-05848
With all this being said, check out this circa 1976 commercial Browning Hi-Power target model that we recently got at the shop:
The story from the owner is that he bought it new and often carried it on duty with the Navy in lieu of a signed-out M1911. An aviator, he carried it while flying King Ranch nighttime poacher patrols in the wilds of NAS Kingsville in 1982-83, then used it on in-port watches on board the USS Lexington (AVT-16) in the 1980s. Or so goes the story, anyway.
Hey, it was the early 1980s.