MANUFACTURER – Winchester Repeating Arms Company, New Haven, CT
STATUS – Obsolete
SERVICE – U.S. Military, Police agencies, and commercial sales
This modification was based on the 1897 pump-action design by John Browning as manufactured by Winchester. As the need for a repeating combat shotgun was put forward by the American Expeditionary Force in France, and the basic weapon was already in US Military service, the Model 97 riot gun was fitted with a barrel shield that included a bayonet lug to become the Model 1917 Trench Gun. The Model 1917 Trench Gun was very popular, so much so that the U.S. Army had the all-brass M19 Buckshot round designed to help feed the weapon in the wet environments of combat in the trenches of WWI. The paper-cased shells most common at the time would often swell up and be useless from absorbed water. The waterproof M19 round did not have this problem and was the preferred round for combat when it was available to the troops.
The use of the Model 1917 Trench Gun in combat was awe-inspiring to the European troops that had rarely seen a shotgun used as a military weapon. The repeating shotgun was so terrifying that the German Government lodged an official protest that the weapon, firing lead buckshot (deforming bullets), was illegal according to the Hague Declaration of 1899 and that any captured troops found using such a horrendous device in the Trenches would be summarily shot. Tradition has it that US General John J. Pershing stated that if such an action against US troops took place in the Trenches or anywhere else, there would be no further German troops captured, ever.
