The Pederson Device: The Coolest Springfield Part You’ve Never Heard of

The Springfield 1903 is a fine rifle and it might be argued that it’s one of the better platforms that ever saw service in the hands of American infantrymen.

There’s just one thing. Despite the power of the .30-06 Springfield cartridge with which it was paired, it required a long action and it had to be manually cycled.

That was a decided detractor to performance. Something had to give, and by 1918, something did, although it required a concession to the chambering.

Enter the Pederson device, the coolest Springfield part you never knew existed, till now.

What Is the Pederson Device?

You’ve heard of John Moses Browning, one of the most influential firearms designers that has ever lived, who was personally instrumental in the development of the Colt 1911 original pistol.

But have you heard of John Pederson, who John Moses Browning himself quipped was the “greatest gun designer in the world”?

It was he - Pederson - for whom the eponymous device is so named.

In essence, the Pederson device was a conversion device that replaced the bolt of a Springfield 1903 rifle; but it also contained a barrel and other parts necessary to sustain operation. Basically it was like a whole pistol minus the pistol frame or receiver.

With this device, which was effectively a direct blowback pistol action with a barrel that could nest entirely within the chamber of the M1903, a soldier could increase his firepower dramatically in as little as 15 seconds. 

The Pederson device was fed by a 40-round magazine that protruded from the top right-hand side of the action. Each magazine had cut-outs enabling the operator to see how many rounds he had left.

If it sounds like such a device would require fairly extensive modifications to the rifle, it did. Each equipped rifle needed an ejection port to be cut into the left side of the receiver, as well as stock modifications to allow for clearance.

The rifles also needed a few other modifications that did not otherwise interfere with the operation of the rifle with the standard bolt inserted. As a result, the Pederson device is not compatible with just any old 1903 Springfield; only the ones that were developed for use with it. The overarching idea here was that the rifles could be converted before entering an enemy trench and used effectively for close-quarters combat.

One interesting thing about the Pederson device is that though it did transform the operation of the rifle, it was built not around the .30-06 but around a much lesser-known cartridge, the .30-18 Auto, also known as the 7.65x20mm Longue, a pistol-caliber cartridge developed by Remington in 1917 for use in World War I.

Though this is a relatively unknown cartridge nowadays, and it’s hard to find information on it, it’s not too different from the .30 Super Carry, which is said to offer power comparable to 9mm, with potentially lower felt recoil. Some have also compared it to the 32 ACP.  

The device immediately transformed the Springfield 1903 into a semi-automatic platform with expanded capacity and a much higher rate of fire - despite the fact that it required a soldier to carry different ammunition, and that the power of the .30-18 was not comparable to the power of the venerable ‘.06.

As for the Pederson device itself, the United States’ Army was so impressed by this development to the design of the rifle that they put plans in place for production to the tune of 130,000 of them, along with orders for millions of rounds of .30-18 Auto ammo.

They were intended to be used in the slated 1919 Spring Offensive, which never materialized because Armistice was reached at the end of 1918. The war ended after only 65,000 Pederson devices were manufactured, and production effectively ceased.

The units that were produced were kept in storage as surplus after the war ended, until the United States government no longer wanted to pay to store them and destroyed nearly all of them. Only a few Pederson devices escaped official destruction and today they are extremely rare pieces of American military history.

One final interesting fact about the Pederson device is that this is not the only conversion kit that Pederson designed. He also produced a design for the M1917 American Enfield, as well as for the Mosin-Nagant, although neither of those designs ever made it to production.

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