Automatic WW2 BB Gun Fun!

The most fun I've ever had at Legacy Collectibles

Hey guys, today it's a really cool day at Legacy Collectibles. Honestly, probably the one of the most fun days I've ever had. I'm going to show you this Fully Automatic BB gun from World War II. Now this looks almost like an M60 browning and it does sit on a tripod. You'll see that in a minute. But it is a BB gun that works with electrical power and with an air compressor that hooks up here. I'm going to show you how to do that but first, this came in from a guy who's fairly local, he's only about an hour away. 

 

You have a what?

He said, I have an E13, would you be interested? I had no... A what? What's an E13? I had no idea what an E13 was. And then he said a fully automatic BB gun. The beauty of this is you don't need an FFL, you don't even need a CNR. This is just cash and carry. You just go in, pay the cash and walk out the door. Now unfortunately, they're really hard to find. The more I researched it, the more I realized how hard it was to find one of these. If you have one, let us know, because we'd like to get it working. That's what we did with this one. But I get ahead of myself, check it out. Come take a look at this gun and we'll talk about what it was used for.

 

Who used these BB Guns?

So you can see here it was training for aerial gunnery. And actually I saw where some went to the Navy, this one went to the Air Force. It was used for practice for pilots on planes or people on a ship where the goal is you want to learn how to lead the aircraft when you're firing at it. So with the BB gun, you can actually see the BBs coming out. You won't be able to see it that well but we used copper BBs and I could see them leaving the muzzle. I could see the copper BBs and that's how I could gauge my aim. But also you'll see when I shoot it that there was a learning curve that I picked up really quickly. So these were used by the Air Force and the Navy. This one I believe is from 1944, although the manual said they were made in 1942. So probably during the mid-World War II era, this was used for training. Now originally, this would be mounted on a plane simulator, this button was added. Well, I'll let John talk about all that. 

 

I'm sure John can fix it

If you remember, John was the one that we called on, when we had an infrared scope, it was an M1 Carbine with an infrared scope and nobody ever heard of getting that going. And yet he was able to do it. He got the infrared scope going, you can check it out. Here's the video about it. But when he was done with that, I thought okay, see you later John, not realizing how soon he would see me later. So when this came in, it was not working. Most of the ones that are out there now, you can't get them working. The parts are all fried. 

 

John the magician

So I mentioned that usually these are not working because the parts are also old. Most of them are no longer operable. But you can see here that this is what it looked like before. And then John did his magic. He's so mechanical and so smart, I can't even fathom it. But then this is the after the internals. Let's go check out what he did. 

 

Tom: Okay John, thanks for coming out again. We were just laughing and talking about the fact that last time we did the video on the infrared scope that people wrote in and said John's the best and I just wanted to say, don't keep talking about John, this is my channel. But John is the best. And so I can't I got this second project and it just came out of the blue, I had never heard of it. So as I said, this was made for the Air Force. I called John and said, did you have interest in that? Of course, does the bear do something in the woods? 

 

John: Absolutely, are you kidding?

 

Tom: Yeah, of course, he wanted to get his hands on it.

 

John: This is awesome.

 

Tom:  So I gave him this part. Let's start with this. So this is the actual gun and it is considered an air gun issued to the Air Force. So this was mounted, usually on a simulator and so it was just to learn how to shoot especially leading the aircraft.

 

John: It was mounted right in front of the pilot and he steered the plane into the target and then on his stick he had a button and that fired the gun.

 

Tom: Okay, so is it good to mention that this button, you added...

 

John: It had to be added, that was not original and on this particular model and the spade grips are not original to this model. There are other models, this is called an E13 and this was just for training in simulators.

 

Tom: Okay, and when I bought it had these grips and they were falling off and John restored that. So now the magazine. Or you tell me what's next? 

 

John: Well, we could we could look at the magazine. When I got the gun, it had a metal magazine in it. That's what the originals had, but this one for some reason somebody cut it off right about here. So this metal that you see inside here is the original, but it only comes up to here.

 

Tom: You know why they cut it off? The mag capacity in New York...

 

John: Ahhh, it could pass for the BB gun, that's right, it had to be cut down. So anyway, I got a piece of plumbing tubing here. I don't know, some kind of a black tubing and I made this little knurled cap for and that that goes out like that and you fill this thing with BBs, of course it sitting on top of the gun, I'll show you that. 

 

Tom: The BBs are remarkably heavy, and I'm dumping them. We're not going to actually load it here because we're going to shoot it later. So all I do is dump them on there. And then...

 

John: Now this is a little screw right in here that gets removed, I get that out of there. This is just a screw that retains the magazine. There's a little cut in the magazine right here and this slides on top here. There it goes. And then....

 

Tom: And that fit actually kind of snug. 

 

John: Yeah, it does. And then just screw those back in here. 

 

Tom: Okay, so the magazine is on. What's the next step?

 

John: The next step is to hook it up. This unit right here, which I had to make, it didn't come with a power supply. So let me get this out of here. This is just to the hold the... I used the vacuum cleaner cord for this because it's very flexible stuff.

 

Tom: Good to know. Note to self, get the vacuum cleaner cord. 

 

John: Vacuum cleaner cord is the way to go. And this connector here, this is not really original. It's just something that goes in there. This power supply here, we have 110 coming into it, and it converts the 110 to 24 volt direct current. And that feeds into the gun. That is what sets up the timing for the shooting. It's a rather complex mechanism in there but when the trigger is pulled, you push the button, it pulls a solenoid in which lets the gas, the air pressure go through and shoot the BB out the front. And there's a mechanism in there that times it.

 

Tom: Let's put it on the tripod. Now this tripod actually came with it but you were telling me -- excuse the guns, that's a different video. That's my next video, so we'll do that later. So let's take the tripod and what did you say this was too? A surveyor.

 

John: Yeah. A survey tripod.

 

Tom: So for a surveyor, but it does look like military issue.

 

John: Now I made this. This is called a pintle here. I made this up out of the bolt and metal and so forth so that it swivels on here, and that lets the gun swing around so he can play and this is called a quick disconnect pin. It's got a little ball in there that enables it to disconnect quickly. So here we have the connector on the gun.

 

Tom: I'm extremely mechanical, so I'm going to do this part.

 

John: You have to push really hard. There we go. That's it. 

 

Tom: There you go, great strength.

 

John: Okay, now the gun is all set up and ready to go. 

 

Tom: So cool. 

 

John: We'll just kind of set it up like this and let it dangle down like that.

 

Tom: Okay, now, we got the power supply, I'll take care of plugging it in. But why don't you work on connecting -- So what are we connecting to and why?

 

John: This is a hose that will go to an air compressor. This thing needs between 90 and 150 psi, pounds per square inch of air. And it uses about five or six cubic feet per minute. And so we need a compressor, fairly robust compressor in order to run this thing, which we'll get in a couple minutes. But this is just a normal, quick disconnect right here that you can buy in Home Depot, and it goes up in the here. There we go. And now we'll go get the compressor and hook that to the other end and we should be ready to roll. 

 

Tom: Great. So the compressor was in your truck. And I just want to point out we did have to buy this just to do this video. So if you're a patron, thank you so much. Well worth it. But in fact, so you bought the compressor and so for anybody who wants to own one, I just want to say we do see these online, they're fairly cheap, but you had to do modifications. They don't work. And as we saw from the pictures, the inside was just a mess and you said the parts were kind of blown out. So you had to not only make parts to make it work, you made the magazine. So again, you can buy this really cheap but they don't work just like the infrared scope. When people say a working infrared M1, they mean the rifle shoots but the infrared doesn't work.

 

John: The chances of the infrared working are very low. 

 

Tom: Yes. So all that is to say, don't be fooled. If you buy it cheap and they say it works, you probably need some modifications made and that gets me to the compressor. Alright. So we're going to turn on the compressor and I'm talking myself into it's worth it. Because I want to keep this.

 

John: Once you to try it, you will not be able to sell it. I guarantee you. It's so much fun. 

 

Tom: Meaning I want to let it go. 

 

John: You will not to let go. 

 

Tom: You will not be able to sell it. 

 

John: I think you can sell it in a heartbeat. I've had people already saying, Oh, I'll take that. I'll take that. We're going to supply 125 psi to this unit right now. And all we need to do we have it plugged in, we have the 24 volt unit plugged in already. 

 

Tom: Okay. Before we turn it on just a couple more specs, because it's a little loud. So we may not hear that well. You were saying how many feet per second, but also how many rounds per minute?

 

John: About 600 feet per second.

 

Tom: So that will sting a coyote, it's going to chase them off, it's not going to kill them? 

 

John: It could, it could.

 

Tom: Our viewers don't want to hear that. So you might change it to it would just give them a nice warning.

 

John: It would chase them off for sure. And it shoots between 400 and 600 rounds per minute. 

 

Tom: From the magazine not the clip?

 

John: From the magazine. 

 

Tom: Okay. Alright. Go ahead. 

 

John: So here we go. So we'll plug it in. If we go, we're up to pressure. Now, all we need is somebody's thumb on the trigger. 

 

Tom: That's why I get paid the big bucks. 

 

John: Okay. 

 

Tom: Alright. This is not going to endanger me in any way.

 

John: Probably not. 

 

Tom: Okay, so we're going to flip the switch on, the power unit here. It is fused, it's got a fuse in here. If something goes wrong, it'll blow out. Now we're on.

 

John: Okay, and for our viewers who get upset with me that this is not loaded. There are no BBs in it. We will do that later. But we just wanted to try it out. There goes the compressor, getting some more juice. Got to get some more juice. I got a Messerschmitt coming in over the horizon. So I got to get down. That means we're ready. Just one more time for the audience. That's very cool. 

 

Let's go outside

Hey, now it's time to go outside and crank this baby up. Okay, we have plenty of BBs. This is 6000 count and I can pretty much pour a couple of a thousand BBs in here. Take this off and we just pour them, a few sneak out but that should do it. Missed a few. Alright, and then let's line it up. There's really no aim to this because this is in the way but I can see the BBs I'm going to try not to shoot the balloon. Actually I don't want to shoot the camera down there. 

 

Training Outline

So I'm going to do a couple things. First, I'm going to pop some balloons, see if I can hit them, see what the accuracy is like. Then we're going to come up a little bit closer and shake up some soda cans and blow those up see what happens. Actually I don't even know if the BB will penetrate the aluminium, I think it will. And then thirdly I will have one of my employees put a balloon on their head and see if I can pop it off the top of their head just like William Tell. So let's take a few shots.

 

I'm getting better

I see a bad guy up in the tree. He's got a yellow face, let's see if we can get him. I got two for one. Hey, I'm getting better at this, let's just keep going. 

 

Definitely good for training

Okay that was a test for accuracy and if you notice I actually got better at it so that goes along with the theory that the Air Force used it to train pilots on how to lead a plane. Now I'm going to shoot to test the penetration to see if it will go through an aluminium can. I'm betting it will go ahead and make your bet. Put it in the comments will it or won't it?

 

Will it or won't it?

Well if you bet on it penetrating, that pretty much is what happens. If there's any leftover cans we can have a drink afterwards. Alright, there was a few that fell over but didn't get hurt. I just wanted to let you know we picked soda that was environmentally safe, so that no worms or grass will be injured during this filming. I'm out of ammo! 

 

The ultimate test

Okay, now the ultimate test of accuracy. I'm going to shoot a balloon off of Pam who works in our photo department. I'm going to shoot it off the top of her head.

 

The most fun I have had in a while

Hey, that was the most fun I've had in a long time. I wish all of you could have been there to check it out with me. 

 

Calm down, it was just a trick

Now, if that had been really us shooting a balloon off of Pam's head, that would have been an episode of Jackass. So just to put some of your minds at ease, because I know people get upset, and for any children who watched don't ever try this at home because it was a trick. And actually Randy who's behind the camera, he offered vacation just this past weekend, he went to Frontier Town and while he was there Annie Oakley was there shooting the balloon off of the guy's head and he figured out how they do it. It's all a trick, a magic trick. I can't tell you about it. And that's how he spent his vacation with his family. Here all along. I thought Annie Oakley was dead. But she tried the same trick except with a rifle. And I used a full auto BB gun. 

 

18 and older

Hey, thanks for watching. Make sure you like and subscribe to our channel. You can send this to somebody else but not anyone under 18 because they're liable to try this trick with a BB gun and moms don't like that.