Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors 358 R&D gun... ??

not on here much setting home bored dealing with the VIRUS !!!

Under date of December 28, 1915, after another inquiry, Mr. Greene (sales manager) wrote:
"We acknowledge your letter of the 23d, in which you ask if we can furnish you with one Savage Lewis machine gun. We are, of course, most anxious to furnish the Department not only with one Savage-Lewis gun, but with a considerable quantity, but at the present moment our output is all engaged, deliveries just now being due the Department of Militia and Defense at Ottawa, and we do not feel at liberty to divert even one gun from the contract deliveries."

In response to another effort of the Department, Mr. A. A. Borie, president of the Savage Arms Company, wrote under date of January 27, 1916:
"I regret to inform you that such a sale at the present time is impossible on account of other commitments made by this company. We trust, however, in the near future to be able to deliver a Lewis machine gun to the Department for the purpose of test by the Department, and will notify you in regard to this as soon as possible."

Looks like it was likely due to ramping up Lewis machinegun sales to Canada. They must have caught up by 1917 and managed to hire some folks for doing civilian arms production - and then in later 1917 the US military started ordering Lewis machineguns and everything got shut down until 1919.

In regards to a query from the US Ordnance Department:

This doesn't sound very patriotic. What was Savage doing, holding out for more money?

This doesn't sound very patriotic. What was Savage doing, holding out for more money?

In 1916, (at the urging of Edward B. Cole, the “father” of Marine Corps machine guns) the U.S. Navy decided to adopt the Lewis light machine gun, which was then being manufactured for the British by the Savage Arms Co. in Utica, N.Y. An American invention, but produced and used overseas because of a long-standing feud between its inventor, Col. Isaac N. Lewis, and Gen. William Crozier, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Ordnance, the new American version of the bipod-mounted, shoulder-fired machine gun was, like the ’03 Springfield rifle, chambered in .30-’06 Sprg. Firing 47 rounds out of its distinctive top-mounted drum magazine, the air-cooled Lewis gun quickly became a favorite of Marines training at Quantico, and handcarts were developed (again by Cole) to carry the guns into battle.

However, after landing in France, the Marines’ Lewis guns were taken away from them and replaced with the questionable French Chauchat automatic rifle and the Hotchkiss heavy machine gun. Although, at the time, the Marines were furious at this the turn of events, in hindsight, the change is understandable. Maintaining a supply of replacement parts for Lewis guns would have been more than difficult for the single brigade of Marines within an Army division, and that division being one of at least 40 divisions within the Services of Supply for the entire American Expeditionary Forces. Moreover, Lewis guns were badly needed by the fledgling U.S. Air Service in France, and the Marines’ Lewis guns were used to arm observation biplanes.