George J. Hyde Sr. (born Heide; January 4, 1888 – December 2, 1963) was a German-born American machinist, gunsmith and gun designer best known for his submachine guns. He was born in Apfingen, Germany. Already a skilled machinist, he immigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1927. His family followed the next year. Before 1935 George J. Hyde was a machinist and shop foreman at Griffin & Howe. He quit Griffin & Howe and went on to become the co-owner of Leonard & Hyde in New York. He partnered with Samuel A. "Harry" Leonard, an expert shotgun and rifle stock maker, who had trained at

James Purdey & Sons James Purdey & Sons, or simply Purdey, is a British gunmaker based in London, England specialising in high-end bespoke sporting shotguns and rifles. Purdey holds three Royal Warrants of appointment as gun and rifle makers to the British and oth ...

of London. Hyde also did contract gunsmithing work for Roberts and Kimball in Woburn, Massachusetts. (The latter was an early semi-custom maker of rifles chambered in

.257 Roberts The .257 Roberts, also known as .257 Bob, is a medium-powered .25 caliber rifle cartridge. It has been described as the best compromise between the low recoil and flat trajectory of smaller calibers such as the 5 mm (.22") and 6 mm (.24"), and ...

Hyde's gun designs

Hyde was the chief gun designer for the Inland Division of General Motors (GM) during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. He also did gun design work for

Bendix Aviation Corporation Bendix Corporation is an American manufacturing and engineering company which, during various times in its existence, made automotive brake shoes and systems, vacuum tubes, aircraft brakes, aeronautical hydraulics and electric power systems, av ...

. Among others, he was the designer or co-designer of these guns: * The Hyde Model 33, a prototype submachine gun.The World's Submachine Guns, Volume 1, by Thomas B. Nelson, Pages 70-72. * The Hyde Model 35, a prototype submachine gun. A patent was issued to Hyde for this model on August 4, 1936. * The

M2 Hyde The Hyde-Inland M2 was a United States submachine gun design submitted for trials at Aberdeen Proving Ground in February 1941. Work was undertaken by General Motors Inland Manufacturing Division to develop workable prototypes of George Hyde's de ...

submachine gun.Canfield, Bruce N. ''

American Rifleman ''American Rifleman'' is a United States-based monthly shooting and firearms interest publication, owned by the National Rifle Association (NRA). It is the 33rd-most-widely-distributed consumer magazine and the NRA's primary magazine. The magazi ...

'' (August 2008) p. 52 * The

M3 grease gun The M3 is an American .45-caliber submachine gun adopted by the U.S. Army on 12 December 1942, as the United States Submachine Gun, Cal. .45, M3.Iannamico, Frank, ''The U.S. M3-3A1 Submachine Gun'', Moose Lake Publishing, , (1999), pp. 14, 22� ...

submachine gun.Iannamico, Frank, ''The U.S. M3-3A1 Submachine Gun'', Moose Lake Publishing, , (1999) About 700,000 were produced at a unit cost of around $20 each. * The FP-45 Liberator pistol.Bruce N. Canfield "Desperate Times: The Liberator Pistol" ''

'' August 2012 pp.48-51&83-84 About 1,000,000 were produced at a unit cost of $2.10 each. * The Bendix Hyde carbine. (A prototype he designed for Bendix Aviation Corporation that never went into production.)

Personal life and death

Hyde was married in Germany about 1917, to German-born Margaretta ("Greta") Levy (1895–1985). Their first child was George J. Hyde Jr., born 9 March 1918 in Germany. He died in 1999 in Florida. They also had a daughter, Giselle, born about 1924 in Germany. George Sr. died on December 2, 1963 at

Adelphi Hospital Adelphi Hospital was a 146-bed voluntary hospital that opened in 1929 at 50 Green Avenue and closed in 1974. It "served the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn." The hospital was in "a seven-story, fireproof building" and was located at "the corne ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyde, George J. 1888 births 1963 deaths German emigrants to the United States Weapons scientists and engineers Firearm designers 20th-century American inventors Bendix Corporation people