Читать книгу Guns Illustrated 2011 - Dan Shideler - Страница 8

THE VOLUNTEER ARMS/COMMANDO MARK 45 CARBINE BY DAN SHIDELER

That’s no Thompson! It’s the Mark 45 Carbine by Volunteer Arms.

I’ve always had a thing for Thompson submachineguns. It’s one of the few truly iconic firearms in the world, one that you can immediately identify only by its silhouette. Alas, I have a phobia of governmental red tape, so I don’t care to own a genuine Thompson. But a semi-auto Thompson clone? That’s more like it!

My latest acquisition along these lines is a Volunteer Enterprises Mark 45 carbine, and though it’s certainly no Thompson, it does go a long way toward scratching an itch that goes back almost 40 years. Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was a kid, every year I eagerly awaited the day when dad would come home from work, take off his coat and hat and plunk down the new Gun Digest for his two sons to devour. It was better than Christmas.

It was from one of those mid-’60s Digests that I first got bitten by the Thompson-clone bug. Its catalog section included what had to be the coolest gun ever, one that had apparently been made to appeal to a seven-year-old kid in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was called the Eagle, and it was a bastardized tom-mygun knockoff chambered in .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum. I can close my eyes and still see the picture that appeared in the Digest four decades ago: it showed a gun with a Thompson M1 buttstock, a tubular receiver like that of an M3 Greasegun, a vertical foregrip like that of a 1921/28 Thompson and a carbine-length barrel.

The Spitfire Carbine by Spitfire Mfg. of Phoenix, one of the earliest pistol-caliber semi-auto carbines (PCSAC).

For a kid raised on comic books starring Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos, I spent untold hours fi guring out some way to get dad to buy me an Eagle carbine. Alas, the gun appeared in the Digest for only one more year and then went bubbling away down the river of time. I know now that the Eagle was actually called the Eagle Apache Carbine and that it was made by the Eagle Gun Company, Inc., of Stratford, Connecticut. Moreover, it was the first of what gunsmith J. B. Wood calls “pick-sacks”: Pistol Caliber Semi-Auto Carbines (PCSACs).

Another PCSAC appeared around the same time as the Eagle Apache. This was the .45 ACP Spitfire, made by Spitfire Mfg. of Phoenix, Arizona, and it was very similar to the Eagle Apache, at least to the untrained eye. Michael Winthrop of Hollywood, Florida, is an authority on these early PCSACs, and he summarizes the key differences between the Eagle Apache and the Spitfire thus:

“Subtle differences included the extractor (a fl at style, as opposed to the Eagle’s,which has a crescent shape clip to attach it to the bolt; the ejector, which on the Eagle is an extension of the disconnecter [whereas] on the Spitfire there is a separate tang welded to the bottom of the receiver tube which protrudes up into the channel under the bolt; the Spitfire’s front sight is cast aluminum and the end of the barrel is turned down to a smaller diameter, whereas the Eagle has a machined front sight (probably from another surplus firearm) and the barrel is untouched. Lastly, the vertical hand grips are aluminum on both models but the Spitfire’s has a smoother finish and is slightly smaller, more Thompson-looking.”

So there you had the Spitfire and the Apache Eagle, both of which today have a dedicated cult following. But there was yet another entry in the late-’60s PCSAC Sweepstakes: the Volunteer Carbine made by Volunteer Arms of Knoxville, Tennessee. Michael Winthrop notes that the Volunteer, the lineal ancestor of the Volunteer Enterprises/Commando Arms Mark 45, was “a 95-percent copy of the Spitfire.” Like the Eagle Apache and the Spitfire, the Volunteer used M1 Grease Gun magazines and shared the Apache’s and Spitfire’s tubular receiver and overall M1/Thompson appearance. Soon after the Volunteer was introduced, it was superseded by the Volunteer Mark II, which differed from its predecessor in the method by which its barrel was joined to its receiver.

The Eagle Apache, the Spitfire and the Volunteer/Volunteer Mark II had one supremely important feature in common: they fired from an open bolt. An open bolt operates just as the term suggests: when the bolt is retracted to chamber the first cartridge, it stays in the open position until the trigger is pulled. Then the bolt slams forward, scoops up a cartridge from the magazine, fires it, and returns to the open position as the fired cartridge case is extracted and ejected. Guns using an open-bolt arrangement are sometimes known as “slam-fires,” a descriptive term that usually refers to a type of malfunction, at least in genteel circles.

Over the years, quite a few commercial carbines were based on open-bolt designs, including the French Gevarm .22 of the 1960s and one or two early Marlin semi-auto rimfires. Open-bolt rifles picked up some unwanted baggage in the anti-gun late 1960s, however, and the BATF was not supportive of manufacturers who built such guns. What the BATF found so worrisome was the fact that with some minor modifi cations, most open-bolt designs could be rather easily converted to full-auto operation. Legally, such a modifi cation could be made only by a properly-licensed manufacturer, and the BATF felt that open-bolt designs were just too tempting for some home gunsmiths to resist.

A federal ruling in 1968 spelled an end to the Spitfire. To quote our friends at the BATF:

It has been determined by tests and examination that the Spitfire Carbine is a weapon which is capable of automatically firing more than one shot without manual reloading and by a single function of the trigger, and therefore is a machinegun as defi ned by section 5848(2) of the Code. . . Accordingly, it is held that the Spitfire Carbine, manufactured by the Spitfire Manufacturing Co., Phoenix, Ariz., is a weapon which comes within the purview of the National Firearms Act.

The BATF’s ruling made the Spitfire subject to all the administrative restrictions that ownership of such entails, including registration. Their market severely curtailed, Spitfire Mfg. bit the dust with only around 3,000 units produced. Probably for similar reasons, Eagle Arms also went out of businesss around the same time -- but Volunteer Enterprises did not.

One side of an original promotional brochure for the Commando Arms Mark 45 showing available accessories. Courtesy John Torelli of Jersey Small Arms Gunsmithing.

Rather, Volunteer totally redesigned the Volunteer, replacing its tubular receiver with a square design that was modeled after that of the original Thompson. The change was the brainchild of an inventive gunsmith named Lee R. Frix.

The name of Lee R. Frix is not as well-known today as that of John M. Browning or Samuel Colt. In fact, all I have been able to discover about him is that he lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and was granted patent 3,695,143 on October 3, 1972, for “a firing mechanism for semiautomatic firearms including positive disconnect means.”

Frix, who assigned the patent to Volunteer Enterprises, described his patentable invention this way: “[A] firing mechanism [in which the] disconnect comprises an elongated fl at portion disposed in a plane substantially parallel to one side wall of said trigger housing and contiguous thereto, and a lateral projection intermediate the ends of said elongated portion and extending substantially horizontally therefrom across said cavity in said trigger housing.” Well, now I get it!

Basically, Frix was saying that his patent covered a simple, semi-auto mechanism that incorporated a positive semi-auto disconnect. I would quote his patent application at length here, but there’s no humane reason for me to subject you to further passages. Patent examiner Stephen C. Bentley, who heard Brix’s application, certainly earned his pay on October 3, 1972.

Thus as early as 1972, Volunteer Enterprises owned a semi-auto design that was not likely to give the BATF any serious heartburn. Frix’s design entered production as the Mark III carbine. Chambered in .45 ACP and firing from a closed bolt, the Mark III had a 16.5-inch barrel and was loosely styled after the Thompson M1. Unlike the M1, however, the Mark III’s lower receiver incorporated an integral magazine well quite unlike that of the Thompson. As a result, the carbine could accept Thompson stick magazines but not the higher-capacity M1921/28-style drums. The overall resemblance to the Thompson was further emphasized by the Mark III’s faux compensator, modeled after the famous Cutts. (The Mark III’s barrel was not vented, so the “compensator” could haven’t have had much effect on muzzle climb except for adding a little weight.)

“For just plain plinking, it’s a blast.” Flip side of an original promotional brochure for the Commando Arms Mark 45. Courtesy John Torelli of Jersey Small Arms Gunsmithing.

Left receiver view showing the left-side bolt handle, the crossbolt safety, the funky pistol grip, the plastic lower receiver and the fi nned barrel shroud of the Mark 45.

Rollmarks on the left receiver of the Mark 45.

Oh, and one other thing: the Thompson’s lower receiver was made of steel, while the Mark III’s was made from plastic. Yes, plastic. Today’s marketing potato-heads would undoubtedly call it “high-impact polymerized ABS” or something, but it was plastic -- a highly specialized thermoform plastic called polybutylene terephthalate, marketed by General Electric under the trade name “Valox.” The Mark III wasn’t the first production rifle to have a receiver fashioned partially of plastic -- I believe that distinction belongs to Remington’s Nylon 66 .22 rifle of 1959 -- but you have to give credit to Volunteer Enterprises for having the chutzpah to tool up the mold. According to Michael Winthrop, the Mark III’s plastic receiver was molded in Italy, where it was cheaper to do so. (In another cost-cutting measure, the Mark III was designed to use Thompson stick magazines, unlike its predecessors that used Grease Gun mags. Volunteer Arms got a good deal on war surplus Thompson magazines from a European supplier -- so good a deal that it made sense to redesign the receiver to accept the less-expensive tommygun magazines.)

The Mark III was superseded by the short-lived Mark IV, and I must confess that I’ve been unable so far to find out exactly what the differences were between the Mark III and Mark IV. The Mark IV in turn gave way to the Mark V, which is the same gun that we know today as the Mark 45 carbine. However, it seems that a company named Weath-erby already owned rights to the “Mark V” name, so Volunteer Enterprises quickly rechristened its latest carbine as the Mark 45. The company even ginned up a 9mm Parabellum version of the Mark 45 called the Mark Nine.

It’s not known precisely how many Mark 45s were made under the Volunteer Enterprises name, but it is known that around 1978 (some sources say 1982) the company changed its name to Commando Arms. I remember seeing the Mark 45 in the gun magazines of the period, and although I was married with a small daughter, I wanted one just as I had wanted the earlier Eagle carbine.

Thanks to my new friend John Torelli of Jersey Small Arms Gunsmithing of Millville, New Jersey (856-825-5766), I have been able to learn quite a bit about the Volunteer Enterprises/Commando Arms Mark 45 Carbine. As a promotional slick for the new gun explained, “This Mark 45 Carbine, originally designed for law enforcement use, is built to operate reliably in conditions in which other guns could fail. If not beautiful, it’s practical, inexpensive and it works.” Commando Arms further explained that the Mark 45 carbine was meant, not only for police, but for practically everybody who spent time outdoors: “For you four-wheelers, it’s good security in your vehicle’s gun rack. For farmers, guides and others in remote areas, the Mark 45 is often life insurance. For just plain plinking, it’s a blast.” Thus the Mark 45 carbine was one of the first centerfire rifles to be marketed as what we might call a Fun Gun, one whose primary application was just the good, clean fun of shooting.

Like the earlier Volunteers, the Mark 45 was loosely modeled after the Thompson, but any such resemblance was purely superfi cial. In addition to the fake Thompson-style compensator and squared receiver, the Mark 45 used what was apparently a reconditioned Thompson buttstock. Its pistol grip, however, was an oddly-proportioned, stubby affair only 2/3 as tall as the Thompson’s. The fi ns on the Mark 45’s barrel were a separately-machined shroud fitted over the barrel proper, and the bolt handle was situated on the left side of the receiver whereas the handles of the 1921/28 and M1/M1A1 Thompson were located on the top and right side, respectively. The 8-lb. Mark 45 also featured a loosely-fitted sliding crossbolt safety, quite unlike the Thompson’s swinging lever safety.

Commando Arms offered the Mark 45 with an incredible number of accessories that would make many of today’s manufacurers blush. For a retail price of around $150, you could get the basic Mark 45 carbine with a matte-blued or nickel-plated barrel and upper receiver and a 30-round stick magazine -- but that was just the beginning. You could also buy a vertical or horizontal foregrip and a sling swivel for the latter; a Weaver Quik-Point sight; a “heavy-gauge vinyl carrying case” or a fitted Packard Professional hard case; a web sling; and a variety of magazines. The magazines merit discussion.

Optional magazines for the Mark 45 included two half-length magazines of either five- or 15-round capacity; the standard 30-rounder; and a monstrous 90-round magazine that consisted of three staggered 30-round magazines spot-welded together! I can’t imagine how the carbine would balance with either the right or left side of the 90-round magazine inserted, but it must have been a handful. All of the stick mags were made from modifi ed mil-surplus Thompson magazines. The 30-round stick on my Mark 45, for example, is marked “S-W CO,” one of the more commonly-encountered Thompson mags.

The Mark 45’s front sight is integral with the faux compensator, which is pinned in place and therefore nonadjustable. The rear sight is a winged peep assembly allen-bolted to the receiver and adjustable for elevation only by bending it up and down. Such an arrangement hardly promotes match-grade accuracy, but let’s be serious.

Operation of the Mark 45 is as simple as it gets: simply insert a magazine, retract the bolt, release it, move the safety to the FIRE posiiton and blaze away. Counterintuitively, the FIRE position for the safety is all the way to the right; moving it to the left puts it on SAFE. This takes some getting used to for anyone who was brought up on Remington products, as I was.

From what I can tell by my own carbine, the quality of the Mark 45 wasn’t quite up to modern standards. The thin bluing is all right, I suppose, but the polymer receiver shows rather obvious mold flash marks. The trigger is an obscenity: a broad, stamped-metal blob with entirely too much play and over-travel. I’ve owned several capguns with better trigger pulls. The crossbolt safety is a loose fit in the lower receiver and its ends aren’t even polished, displaying obvious pits and toolmarks. Oh, well! What do you expect for $150 retail?

To take down the Mark 45 for cleaning or repair, make sure the bolt is fully forward and remove the two Phillips screws that hold the buttstock to the receiver. Pull the stock free. Remove the slotted screw on the underside of the receiver and pull apart the upper and lower halves of the receiver. Then carefully remove the allen screw that secures the rear sight; this allows you to remove the recoil spring plug and the spring. Now slide the bolt rearward, aligning it with the takedown recess in the upper receiver, and slide the bolt out the rear of the receiver.

Commando Arms was in business in Knoxville until the mid-1980s, when it finally fi zzled out and went gently into that good night. My Mark 45 bears a serial number in the 59,000 range, so Volunteer Enterprises/Commando Arms apparently made at least that many of them and probably a great many more. Commando Arms was succeeded by the short-lived Manchester Arms, an enterprise so obscure that most references don’t even list it. Manchester Arms Company was located in Lenoir City, Tennesse, about 25 miles southwest of Knoxville, and they continued to manufacture the Mark 45 for a brief time. The company also made a pistol variant of the carbine with a truncated barrel and no buttstock. It too accepted the 90-round magazine, and I’d pay good money to see someone fire one like that.

The Manchester Arms pistol seems to be as rare these days as the much earlier Apache Eagle carbine, which is to say pretty rare, and even the Volunteer Enterprises/Commando Arms Mark 45 carbines aren’t especially common. The value for one in Very Good or better condition is between $400 and $550 for the blued version, with the nickeled version bringing slightly more. This is downright cheap, though, compared to the earlier open-bolt Apache Eagle, which has skyrocketed in value. In October of 2008, for example, an Eagle Apache in Excellent condition sold for over $3,000 at an online gun auction.

Whether one is worth that kind of money is strictly up to you but speaking as a former kid, I find it awfully tempting.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Courtesy John Torelli of Jersey Small Arms Gunsmithing.