Winchester Mystery Prototype: Melvin Johnson does Project SALVO?

[CountryGent]

Illegitimate love child from a Ithaca Mag-10 and an FN FAL?

In all seriousness, interesting relic with a mysterious origin.

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[cigars]

That's kind of like finding a missing link in the fossil records. A very interesting part of history in modern rifle development. FN-FAL was coming to mind too.

 

[eb in oregon]

The rear sight of the 1941 Johnson Light Machine gun (and Daisy Mae prototypes) was a Lyman manufactured product, so it was available for direct purchase and it wasn't necessarily only used on that machine gun. And as Melvin Johnson only worked for Winchester for a short time (after Winchester bought up Johnson's company) it isn't anywhere near a certainty he was involved with that prototype rifle. If so it was probably because he held a patent on that particular bolt design, which was one of the reasons Eugene Stoner hired Johnson as a consultant when he was designing the AR rifles.

And I'm wondering where the FN/FAL part comes from as there is nothing on that rifle that has any features of the FN/FAL except maybe some sort of looking the same.