Reply #36: You would be wrong

[one-eyed fat man]

You may or may not remember an expedition to recover a P-38 fighter from the Greenland icecap where it had made a forced landing early during WW2. Aircraft mechanics, being the kinds of folks who enjoy machinery fired the aircraft armament while on the ice. After 50 some years it worked as well as it did when new.

The 20mm cannon on that particular airplane was of particular historical value. The gun was designed in the Twenties by a Swedish immigrant to the United States, Gus Swibelius. He later founded the High Standard Manufacturing Co., which some may recall as making Olympic grade target pistols. Neither the Navy nor the Army had any budget or interest for a new aircraft gun so he took the design to Europe where the French were not only impressed, they declared it "Secret" and placed into production by Hispano-Suiza. By 1936 the French are alarmed by their neighbor, Adolf and show the British their nifty aircraft cannon. The British show the us.

NOW the War Department wants this gun, but all the drawings and 15 years of production notes and changes conform to European machine shop practice. Someone will have to redo this and make it usable in our factories. Pioneer-Eclipse, in Sydney, New York gets the contract and produces 60 guns for testing and proof. Not long after the US is in the War and Oldsmobile makes the bulk of the 20mm aircraft cannon used.

The airplane was restored nearby in Middlesboro, Kentucky. The guns were destroyed under the direction of the Louisville Field office of the ATF. The Hughes amendment restricted the guns from being registered. As the NFA is a tax law and NOT a gun law, the owners could have asked their Congressman to sponsor a bill of relief and gotten Congressional permission to donate the guns to a military museum rather than destroyed as contraband. The ATF chose not to reveal those facts until after the ATF had put the torch to them.

No surviving examples of one of the 60 pre-production test guns exist. The Air Force museum doesn't have one. The Army's Ordnance museum at Aberdeen doesn't have one. Some bureaucratic drone decided unilaterally to have the last one extant torched while underhandedly failing to disclose any alternative.