Melvin Maynard Johnson Jr. (August 6, 1909 – January 9, 1965), nicknamed Maynard Johnson, was an American designer of firearms, lawyer, and

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

officer.

Biography

Born into an affluent Boston, Massachusetts, family, he was commissioned into the Marine Corps Reserve in 1933 as a Second Lieutenant and completed Harvard Law School in 1934. Johnson designed a recoil-operated rifle ( M1941 Johnson rifle) while serving for the Marines as an observer at the Army's Springfield Armory in 1935. Johnson received four U.S. patents on various design features. He also designed the Johnson Light Machine Gun, derived from the M1941 rifle, which was used in limited numbers during World War II and the M1947 Johnson auto carbine, also derived from the M1941 rifle and M1941 light machine gun. In 1942, he co-authored ''Weapons for the Future'', a book in The Infantry Journal series. Charles T. Haven of the Army Ordnance Corps was the other contributor. Johnson worked tirelessly to promote his rifle and machine gun throughout the war. Johnson transferred to the Army Ordnance Corps Reserve from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1949 and rose to the rank of Colonel. In 1949, Winchester bought the Johnson Automatics corporation and employed Johnson for a short period. While at Winchester, Johnson was employed alongside "Carbine" Williams though it is unknown if they worked on the same projects. He was later appointed as weapons consultant to the Secretary of Defense in 1951. Johnson's patents were used by

Armalite ArmaLite, or Armalite, is an American small arms engineering company, formed in the early 1950s, in Hollywood, California. Many of its products, as conceived by chief designer Eugene Stoner, relied on unique foam-filled fiberglass butt/stock fu ...

on the

AR-10 The ArmaLite AR-10 is a 7.62×51mm NATO battle rifle designed by Eugene Stoner in the late 1950s and manufactured by ArmaLite (then a division of the Fairchild Aircraft Corporation). When first introduced in 1956, the AR-10 used an innovative com ...

AR-15 An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporatio ...

, and later

M16 rifle The M16 rifle (officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16) is a family of military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States military. The original M16 rifle was a 5.56×45mm automatic rifle with a 20-ro ...

s. Johnson was hired by Armalite as a consultant to promote their rifle incorporating his bolt design.The Guns Of Miltech
/ref> Later, Johnson worked to improve the

M1 carbine The M1 carbine (formally the United States Carbine, Caliber .30, M1) is a lightweight semi-automatic carbine that was a standard firearm for the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The M1 carbine was produced ...

eventually developing the 5.7mm Spitfire cartridge in 1963 and starting Johnson Arms, Inc. The M1 Carbine can be converted to use 5.7mm Spitfire by replacing the barrel with modification of the

feed ramp A feed ramp is a basic feature of many breech loading cartridge firearm designs. It is a tightly machined and polished piece of metal which guides a cartridge from the top of the magazine into the firing chamber of the barrel. The feed ramp may ...

. While on a business trip to New York City in 1965, Johnson died of a heart attack. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Designs

Johnson's practice was to give all of his weapons a "pet" nicknames. * 1938 "Taft-Peirce" self-loading rifle * M1941 rifle ''Betsy'' * M1941 light machine gun ''Emma'' * M1947 auto carbine ''Daisy Mae''

Biography

Designs

References

Further reading