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By Will Dabbs, MD
Gordon Ingram designed his eponymous M-10 submachine gun in 1964. We gun nerds call it the MAC-10. Ingram and Co. never called it that.
As always seems to be the case, designing the product was the easy bit. Producing it at scale and finding willing buyers was the challenge. In pursuit of that goal, Ingram and Mitch WerBell III formed the Military Armament Corporation in 1969.
WerBell was himself quite the character. The son of a Tsarist cavalry officer in the Russian Imperial Army, Mitchell Livingston WerBell III was born in 1918 in Philadelphia. In 1942, WerBell fell in with the Office of Strategic Services, the WW2 predecessor to today’s CIA, organizing guerrilla units operating behind Japanese lines. After the war, WerBell worked as a mercenary and dabbled in sound suppressor design. The latter is what brought the two men together.
In 1970, Ingram and WerBell convinced a group of investors with the shadowy name of Quantum Corp to bankroll their enterprise. They intended to convince Uncle Sam to replace all of his aging M1911A1 .45 pistols with sparkly new Ingram submachine guns. There is literally no telling how many witless Army privates might have been inadvertently defingered on firing ranges had they ultimately been successful.
Quantum Corp did not much know guns, but they understood business. They needed money, and they needed publicity. They sought both out in the person of the most popular movie star on Planet Earth.
The Guy
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in 1907 in Winterset, Iowa. He weighed a whopping 13 pounds at birth. Friends knew him as “Duke.” Like Indiana Jones, he took his name from his dog. Wayne achieved unprecedented fame in motion pictures. He claimed that he patterned his characteristic swagger on that of Wyatt Earp, a man he had met through a friendship with film star Tom Mix.
Quantum Corp executives approached Wayne about the possibility of investing in the Military Armament Corporation. By 1970, Wayne was an objectively wealthy man. Hooking the MAC wagon to Wayne’s horse would have gone a long way toward getting the company name out in front of the public.
This relationship did eventually land the MAC-10 a proper cameo in the 1974 cop drama “McQ.” This rather forgettable “Dirty Harry” knockoff was not Wayne’s best work. However, the 9mm MAC-10 action was admittedly quite cool. It included properly-timed magazine changes and decent gun handling. The suppressor used in the production was a dummy specifically built up for the movie.
Back in 1970, however, Quantum Group wanted more from Wayne than some strategic product placement. As a result, a friend of a friend arranged for Wayne to meet the MAC sales crew at a shooting range near Newport Beach, California, to demo their nifty little submachine guns. The salesmen arrived in matching navy blazers emblazoned with the characteristic MAC Cobray snake logo.
Mr. Wayne legendarily enjoyed his adult beverages, and rumor has it the big man was already nicely lubricated as he positioned himself behind the firing line. The shooters demonstrated their wares, and everyone was duly impressed. Then it was time to exercise the MAC operational briefcase.
Somebody Has Been Watching Too Many Spy Movies
This thing was a freaking deathtrap. It looked like an otherwise-innocuous briefcase on the outside. However, the case contained a sound-suppressed MAC-10 submachine gun that could be fired via a hidden linkage in the handle. The hole for the bullets to pass through was covered by a business card in a little holder to maintain the covert fiction.
These guns cycled at 1,200 rounds per minute, and there was no decent safety. Strolling about in a crowd with this thing would be akin to packing a grocery sack full of rabid cobras to a college football game. However, it looked cool, and that was what was important.
When it was time to run the operational briefcase, something untoward occurred. The trigger linkage might have broken, or the hyperactive little beast could have simply gotten away from its operator. There was even a rumor that the nervous guy was inadvertently holding it backwards. Regardless, the demonstrator supposedly slathered the spectator area with a sleeting fusillade of .45-caliber bullets. Most all involved scurried madly for cover. Miraculously, nobody was hurt. Legend has it that the Duke was not unduly frazzled and never even spilled his drink. He did, however, return home without investing in the company.
The post John Wayne and the Runaway MAC-10 appeared first on Field Ethos.
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