Pedersen Device M1918

About the Pedersen Device M1918

The Pedersen Device M1918 is a semi-automatic conversion unit that replaced the standard bolt of a specially modified M1903 Springfield rifle, transforming the bolt-action service rifle into a blowback-operated, semi-automatic carbine firing a low-power .30-caliber pistol-sized cartridge. Designed by John D. Pedersen of Remington during World War I, it was issued the deliberately misleading official nomenclature 'Automatic Pistol, Caliber .30, Model of 1918' to preserve wartime secrecy. Fed by a 40-round stick magazine inserted at an angle on the upper right of the receiver, the device let a rifleman lay down roughly 100 aimed shots per minute across no man's land, then reinstall the standard bolt for long-range bolt-action fire. The Armistice arrived before it could see combat, and almost all of the roughly 65,000 devices produced were later destroyed, making surviving examples among the rarest of American military firearms.

Demonstrated to US Army ordnance officers in October 1917, the device so impressed observers that it was rushed into secret production under a pistol cover-name. Pedersen reportedly fired rapid semi-automatic strings from a rifle that moments earlier had been a slow bolt-action, stunning the officers present. The Armistice of November 1918 rendered the weapon's surprise-assault role moot, and it never saw combat.

Pedersen Device M1918 specifications

The Pedersen Device is not a complete firearm on its own; it drops into the action of a modified rifle (the M1903 Mark I) featuring an oval ejection port, altered sear and cut-off. The M1918 designation covers the Mark I units built for the M1903 Springfield; a Mark II for the M1917 Enfield was ordered but the contract was canceled at the Armistice. After the war the US Army scrapped the vast majority of devices in the early 1920s.