[ S&W Chemical Company 37mm Gas Gun ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today courtesy of
a very cool patron by the name of Klaus,
we have a Smith & Wesson Chemical Company
37mm Gas Gun to take a look at.
This is a really cool thing, so let's dive into it.
This comes from the Bangor Punta era of Smith & Wesson,
which ran from 1965 until 1984.
Bangor Punta was a big multi-company conglomerate
that brought up the original Smith & Wesson Firearms Company.
And they owned a bunch of other companies at the same time of course,
and one of them was the Lake Erie Chemical Company.
Now Lake Erie Chemical was one of the two big companies that
developed manufacturing tear gas and related products for police and security forces.
This has its genesis in World War One.
Of course we're all familiar with the very lethal gases
that were developed and used in World War One, things like mustard gas.
However, that weaponisation actually began with non-lethal irritant gases,
basically tear gas, early in World War One (1915 as I recall).
After the war that tear gas, those irritant gases, were seen as potentially
a very valuable tool for law enforcement as a way to, say, do crowd control,
riot control, without having to resort to lethal force.
And this would become actually a very popular item during the 1920s and 1930s.
We of course had the Great Depression, there were a lot of labour movements and strikes
that provided a lot of fertile ground for police riot control,
as well as corporate and private security use, and tear gas became a very popular item.
So there were two main companies that were involved in the development of this stuff.
One was Lake Erie Chemical, the other was Federal Laboratories.
Lake Erie Chemical ends up being owned by Bangor Punta.
And when they also acquire Smith & Wesson, what they decide is that
the brand name "Lake Erie Chemical Company" really kind of leaves something to be desired.
They now own "Smith & Wesson", and so why not take your police equipment
and rebrand it Smith & Wesson, and give it that really excellent name recognition?
So that's what they do, they form the Smith & Wesson Chemical Company
to basically continue marketing all of the same things that
Lake Erie Chemical originally developed and had been selling.
So Lake Erie had a single-shot launcher for tear gas canisters
kind of the same form factor as this.
But in order to make it more Smith & Wesson,
they redesign the thing around the Smith & Wesson N-frame revolver,
the iconic Dirty Harry Model 629.
So this is probably the best quality tear gas / flare launcher ever developed.
Let me show you up close.
So one Smith & Wesson Chemical Company 37mm Gas Gun.
This is a single-shot projector.
They did make two different versions of this, both based on the same operating core.
There is this one which is the long barrel, that's a 14 inch barrel on there with a shoulder stock.
They also made a handgun version of it that doesn't have the stock,
it has the Smith & Wesson revolver grip, and only a 7.5 inch barrel.
However, those parts are all actually interchangeable,
so you can kind of just create whichever version you like.
The barrel is simply pinned in place with this easily removable cross pin.
So you can take the barrel off easily.
In order to open the thing we just have a top-break style of action here,
lift that up and it pops open.
We have a spring-loaded extractor down here
that will pull the cartridge case slightly out of the chamber.
So as you close the action that extractor sets down in,
and so once you close it all the way ... the shell is fully encased.
But as you open it you can see that extractor lifting out
to help make sure that you can get the empty shell out.
All of the lockwork and mechanics are straight off of a Smith & Wesson N-frame.
So this is actually a double action flare gun,
or you can manually cock it and snap it like that.
I say flare gun: flare guns and gas guns are basically interchangeable.
They're both 37 or 38mm, there's a little bit of variation between brands.
This is notably distinct from 40mm.
40mm ... barrels and projectiles, the barrels are typically rifled, they fire explosive projectiles.
38mm are much more specifically less-than-lethal projectiles,
in this case tear gas rounds.
So the barrel is smoothbore.
We have a tip up rear sight here. In fact the front sight is a shotgun style bead.
They did also make a version of this that has a blade front sight
and a sling swivel on the bottom of the muzzle.
This version is sort of the shotgun bead style.
And if you just line that up on the top of the locking block here, that's set for a 50 yard zero.
You can then lift up this rear sight and you have two apertures in there
that give you a 75 and a 100 yard zero.
We've got a few markings on here. The barrel is marked 37mm Gas Gun.
It is a Model 276, as denoted here on the side of the barrel.
And then we have a serial number that's on the frame,
and also here on the underside of the barrel lug.
And then on the right side of the barrel we have the full manufacturer's marking,
Smith & Wesson Chemical Company out of Jefferson, Ohio.
They made several different projectile types for different applications for these Gas Guns,
for both the pistol and the carbine versions.
And all of the different projectile types were available in three different loadings.
So you could get any of them loaded with CS, which is a really very potent irritant gas.
You could also get them loaded with CN, which is substantially less potent.
Or you could get them loaded with smoke which is, well, smoke.
Now the shells that they offered, they had a Number 17,
the designation, the model number from Smith & Wesson Chemical Co,
which was a 100 gram payload, kind of intended for long range, but just gas.
They then also had the Number 18, which was a 70 gram payload of gas crystals,
but also with a rubber projectile on top.
So that's sort of a direct fire type of thing that also releases gas when it impacts.
And then they had the somewhat frightening, what they called a "Tru-Flite",
the Number 12 projectile, which was actually a lead tipped finned dart
with a rather small gas payload that was intended to go through barricades.
And that was advertised as being ... capable of going through 5/8 inch plywood at a hundred yards,
... immediately upon which, it would release its payload of tear gas.
So you had a couple of different options.
These were all in ... relatively long cases, rather like this.
Some of the cases were short like this, some were ... rather longer.
This particular one is actually a 40mm rather than 37, and it's a "Super-Sock".
So this isn't a gas cartridge, this is a less-than-lethal or less-lethal projectile.
So it's a bag full of, I believe, polymer little pellets.
It feels soft in the hand,
but this will really change your mind about whatever you're doing if it hits you.
Now the original cartridges would have been obviously gas as described,
and they would have been colour-coded to designate what their payload was,
either CN, or CS, or just plain smoke.
These things are fired, at least the modern ones are fired,
by a .38 Smith & Wesson blank cartridge down in the bottom.
That sits right in there, in fact you can see it is head-stamped .38 Smith & Wesson.
So ... you've got a primer that fires off a .38 Smith & Wesson blank,
which then fires off the actual projectile.
So these got pretty wide usage with police agencies, SWAT teams, riot squads,
that sort of thing, through the late '60s, 1970s, and into the early '80s.
Bangor Punta sold off Smith & Wesson in 1984.
And I believe these went out of production when that happened.
For the record, a smoothbore 37mm launcher like this in the United States
is not considered legally a firearm, it transfers ... like a nothing.
However, that is only the case as long as it is used with signalling cartridges.
If it is possessed in tandem with an anti-personnel round,
whether it's lethal or less-lethal, then it is considered a destructive device.
So in addition to the pistol version and the shoulder stocked, I guess carbine, version of this,
they did also make a third pattern, and that was designed for nautical line throwing.
Because that's kind of the other application of a large-bore smoothbore thing like this.
That version just had a pistol grip, it had a little bit longer barrel.
And it actually had a big handle welded on top of the barrel,
so you could hold the thing and aim it kind of like this.
That version used a blank cartridge to fire a rope,
and ... you'd fire it from one ship to another to establish a line to, say,
help get people off of a foundering ship. So that version is also out there.
Now today, we don't refer to this sort of thing as "non-lethal",
we call this sort of stuff "less-lethal", and there's good reason for it.
So while I was doing some research for this video,
I came across a book from the 1950s on strike tactics
that described an event from the 1930s during kind of the early heyday of tear gas in police use.
We'll just dive right in here,
"The next day, July 5th 1934, became known in San Francisco as Bloody Thursday
because Roush, the munitions vendor,"
Roush was a sales rep for the Federal Labs Company, ...
both Erie and Federal Labs would send guys to riots.
And they were often very excited about good out-of-control riots
because it gave them a very good place to demonstrate this sort of tear gas weapon,
and to get really big contracts from police and security companies.
Anyway, "Roush scored a direct hit, he himself described it in these words,
'I might mention that during one of the riots I shot a long-range projectile into a group.
A shell hitting one man and causing a fracture of the skull,
from which he has since died. As he was a communist,
I have no feeling in the matter, and I am sorry that I did not get more.' "
So this sort of thing is less-lethal, not non-lethal.
We know for a fact, it's just human nature if ... there is any way
to kill someone with something like this, someone will figure it out.
So, a big thanks to Klaus for providing the Gas Gun here for video.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.