Lee Lapin THR
Last ones I have seen any reference to were being made at a business called Great Lakes Arsenal by one Chuck Madurski ([email protected] ). That's been a couple of years ago, check and see if the email address still works if you want to see about getting one. He made the 'duckbill' spreaders and installed them too, at one time. Don't know if he still does.

Looks to be time for another history lesson... 8^).

According to Swearengen in _The World's Fighting Shotguns_, the US Air Force Directorate of Security Police in the mid-1960s developed a requirement for a spreader choke that would produce a wide elliptical shot pattern. This horizontal pattern spread was supposed to increase the hit probability from a shotgun on a moving target. Recall if you will that the Sixties were a time when the war in Vietnam was heating up, and civil unrest in the US was too. Lots of people in police and military circles were interested in many aspects of weapons both lethal and non-lethal. Shotguns came in for their fair share of attention, especially given their role at the time as the primary law enforcement long gun.

The Air Force request went to Frankford Arsenal for action, at the time Frankford was working on improvements to the military shotgun in general. Early experiments at producing a spreader choke were less than successful- the chokes split, patterned poorly and in various ways failed to produce te desired result. Ultimately Frankford ordnance engineer Charles A Greenwood developed the duckbill choke in answer to the Air Force requirement. It was subjected to a good deal of laboratory and field testing.

The original duckbill choke was simply a sleeve with a long V-notch cut on either side, the apex of the V toward the rear. The top and bottom of the sleeve were compressed toward the centerline at the muzzle, constricting the emerging pattern of shot in the vertical plane and forcing it to spread horizontally. The sleeve was permanently brazed onto the barrel so that it would not be blown off or rotated by firing the gun.

Early examples of duckbill- equipped shotguns were deployed to Vietnam in the hands of Marines and Navy SEALs. It was found that the open V- notches in the muzzle of the duckbill hung up badly on vegetation as the shotgunner tried to move through thick growth, so the duckbill was modified with a ring around its muzzle to exclude vines and branches. It was discovered that the spreader device worked as advertised, but in reality what was needed in a fighting shotgun was a way of producing dense, lethal patterns.

Spreaders in field testing produced patterns five feet high and twelve feet wide at 30 meters with #4 buckshot loads. At 40 meters, patterns were six feet high and sixteen feet wide. At 40 meters an average sized man would only be hit by a couple of pellets. But with a standard cylinder bored barrel shooting approximately a four- foot circular pattern at 40 meters, some 60% of the shot would strike an average man- sized target.

Still, the duckbill choke had its adherents, among SEALS especially. Development on the idea continued for several years. Clifford Ashbrook and Wilson Wing of Kexplore, Inc. in Houston, TX developed the A&W Diverter (pictured in my previous post) in the late 1960s using mathematical concepts, and received patent protection (# 3,492,750) in February 1970. The example I have is marked Patent Pending, I have no idea of its date of manufacture. It is an interesting artifact of a bygone era, I bought it as an oddity (and paid less for the barrel with the device installed than the spreader itself originally cost) and still consider it an oddity. I don't believe it to be practical save in very limited circumstances, but my preference for tight buckshot patterns should be pretty well known here.

Swearengen's last words (copyright 1978) on the concept of spreader chokes are: "It is expected that the controversy over spreaders and diverters will continue. It appears from available data that they will find little employment in actual combat."

If you have one and would be interested in trading for an HK 512 gas operated 7+1 shotgun. The shotgun is great but it is more of a collector piece and rare. I need a working man's shotgun that I can roll around in the dirt with. I would feel guilty doing that to the HK even though I know it can take it.

With the info I have gathered it was manufactured by Franchi for HK under a contract to supply an elite force in Germany (GSG9). Also called the "Anti-Terrorist Shotgun" They had an overrun and about 270 which were imported into the the US. These are the only ones known to be in the US. It uses a shot diverter that creates a rectangular spread which I think was also used on Franchi shotguns like the LAW and SPAS back then.

Below is a better look at the spreader or "divertor" (thanks Dennis) which can be seen with target patterns in the 1988 Gun Buyer's Annual article which can be seen on this site here. Note it consists of two parts -- a piece that screws on the end of the barrel and a second piece that screws over the first. Part one is tightened on the barrel, the second rotated till properly aligned and the set screw tightened. (Don't let anyone sell you just part two -- this happened to me!)

this does what it was intended to do, in that it increases the chance of hiting a target.

So how long do we have to wait for King Armory to put one of these in production? The S-12 modelw ould sell like hot cakes if you let the guys at forums.saiga-12.com know about them.

Vang Comp up next stay tuned