Browning’s Flapper the holy grail of machine guns
Dave Clark installs the "Flapper" rifle into a display case at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Clark restored the 1873 rifle that was modified by John and Matt Browning to become the first ever gas powered machine gun.
The "Flapper" rifle is a modified 1873 Winchester that the Brownings designed in Ogden in 1890 to be the first gas powered machine gun. The newly restored firearm is now on display at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station.
Leon Jones displays the "Flapper" rifle to the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Some members of the club described the original rifle as the "holy grail" of historical machine guns.
Dave Clark, left, holds the "Flapper" rifle at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Clark restored the 1873 rifle that was modified by John and Matt Browning to become the first ever gas powered machine gun.
The "Flapper" rifle is placed on display at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. The first ever machine gun was built by the Brownings in Ogden in 1890.
Dave Clark holds the "Flapper" rifle at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Clark introduced the rifle to the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club after restoring it.
Dave Clark cleans the "Flapper" rifle before installing it into a display case at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.
Leon Jones displays the "Flapper" rifle to the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Some members of the club described the original rifle as the "holy grail" of historical machine guns.
Leon Jones displays the "Flapper" rifle to the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Some members of the club described the original rifle as the "holy grail" of historical machine guns.
Dave Clark cleans the "Flapper" rifle before installing it into a display case at the Browning Firearms Museum in Union Station on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.
OGDEN — The lowly vegetation growing right here in Northern Utah may have helped the Allies win World War II.
In early 1890, famed Ogden gunmaker John Moses Browning was out sport shooting with his brother, Matthew. He noticed that as he fired his rifle, the nearby salt brush, bulrushes and assorted weeds moved. Realizing that the energy from this blast of muzzle gasses could be harnessed, Browning and his brother headed back to the family’s Ogden gunmaking shop. Over the course of the next couple of days, they designed the “Flapper,” a gas-powered machine-gun prototype that would eventually lead to the AK-47 and the M-16 — not to mention every automatic weapon used by the Allies in the Second World War.
And now, the Flapper is finally back home where it belongs –on display in the Browning Firearms Museum at Ogden’s Union Station.
“It’s really quite historic,” says Union Station museum manager Amanda Woolley. “For any gun enthusiast, this is the holy grail. This was the beginning of (Browning’s) machine guns, and that was a game changer in the war.”
The Flapper was unveiled on Tuesday morning at the station, during a meeting of the Browning Firearms Museum Gun Club.
• RELATED: Utah foster teen again denied firearm by judge, plans to appeal
In his introduction at the meeting, club president Kay Hargis admitting to having a touch of butterflies in his stomach.
“I think we’re going to see history that was made a hundred-some-odd years ago,” he told the crowd of about 50 who had gathered for the unveiling. “We get to see the birth of the machine gun.”
The idea behind the Flapper was genius in its simplicity: Attach a mechanism to a gun that would use the pressurized gases escaping the barrel after firing to automatically fire it again.
IF YOU GO
• WHAT: The Browning Flapper
• WHEN: On display 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday
• WHERE: Browning Firearms Museum, Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave., Ogden
• ADMISSION: $5/adults, $4/seniors and students, $3/ages 3-12, $15/family pass. Tickets include admission to all four museums. 801-393-9886, www.theunionstation.org.
As the story goes, the Brownings first tried to shoot a bullet through the center of a block of wood with a hole in it, according to Leon Jones, president of the Ogden Union Station Foundation.
“But the block went flying all about the shop,” said Jones, who made a presentation on the prototype gun at the club meeting Tuesday.
Eventually, the Brownings attached a metal cup, with a hole in the center, to the end of the barrel of an 1873-model Winchester rifle. The hole allowed the bullet to pass through, but the cup caught the pressurized gases and operated a hinge-and-lever system that cycled the weapon and fired the next round.
As far as anyone knows, only one Flapper was ever made, according to Jones. The Brownings used it to demonstrate the “proof-of-concept” of a gas-powered machine gun.
“This flapper concept was, in the beginning, to show you could do fully automatic weapons,” Jones said.
And then, at some point, the Flapper disappeared.
Most assumed it had been lost to time, but in recent years it turned up in western Illinois, at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, the Army’s second-oldest museum. Eventually, that museum returned it to the Brownings.
By the time Jones and the foundation got hold of it, the Flapper was not in good shape. It was missing the stock, hammer, trigger and part of the flapping mechanism. They turned to David Clark, who has been restoring and repairing guns for more than 35 years in the small town of Richmond, a dozen miles north of Logan.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that is interesting, but what a piece of junk,’ ” Clark recalled upon seeing what remained of the Flapper.
But Clark also saw beyond the rust and missing parts, and believed he could restore it to its original functionality — even though he’d been told it would be impossible because there just wasn’t enough detailed information on the original modified rifle.
“This sounds corny, but as soon as I held in in my hands, I knew I could do it,” Clark said. “My wife, when she saw it, said, ‘Are you sure you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew?’ “
For Clark, the restoration was a labor of love. He calls it “the pinnacle” of any firearm he’s ever worked on.
“It’s the first machine gun in existence,” he said. “I’ve been a follower of John Browning all my life, so to work on something he worked on is astounding to me.”
Clark’s wife can attest to the emotions her husband felt in restoring the priceless rifle. Indeed, she says tears were shed during the process.
“He’s a perfectionist, and this is a very proud moment for him,” Judith Clark said. “I wouldn’t say he’s obsessed over this, but he is in awe that it came to him, and why it came to him. He’s been a fan of Browning forever.”
With no detailed specifications to work from — only patent drawings — Clark had his work cut out for him. There wasn’t even an existing photograph of Browning’s Flapper.
“This is my concept of his concept,” Clark said. “I reinvented the wheel, so to speak.”
Jones points out it took Browning about three days to design and build the Flapper. And how long did Clark’s restoration take?
“A little longer,” he admits.
Clark spent five or six months collecting original, period parts for the weapon; he then spent a month and a half, off and on, in the restoration work. He returned it to Jones and the foundation last fall.
Hargis calls the Flapper “almost, but not quite as important, as Columbus.”
“It was a major, major, major breakthrough,” he says. “It was an earth-shattering moment.”
Hargis said if you consider the Wright brothers’ airplane to be the most important discovery in powered flight, a close second would be the invention of the jet engine.
“Well, this is the jet engine of firearms,” he said of the Flapper.
And while some might consider the machine gun an implement of war, Hargis sees it as an implement of peace.
Every one of the machine guns on the Allies’ side of WWII — on the ships, in the air, and among the ground troops — were all Brownings, according to Hargis.
“Did John Browning save the world?” he asks. “Well, in his diaries, Hermann Goring, the Nazis’ No. 2 commander, makes the statement that if the Germans had had the Brownings, the Battle of Britain would have turned out differently. John Browning changed the course of history.”
And without Browning’s gas-powered Flapper?
Says Hargis: “Without it, maybe we’re all speaking with German accents.”
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.