Maxwell Atchisson’s Disposable Grenade Launcher
Perhaps best known for the AA-12 automatic shotgun Maxwell Atchisson was a prolific inventor experimenting with everything from rifles and shotguns to sound suppressors and light machine guns.
One of his most interesting designs is a small disposable 40mm grenade launcher. Arguably, the launcher is more akin to a rifle grenade than the contemporary underbarrel launchers such as the XM148 and the M203. Developed in the early 1970s, Atchisson sought to give every infantryman the ability to launch grenades from a lightweight, inexpensive launcher. Atchisson appreciated that “the launcher must be relatively light of weight and small of volume, so as to minimize the burden which must be carried by the man.“
The launcher attached between the M16′s flash hider and bayonet lug with a short barrel and simple trigger mechanism. Atchisson’s 1974 patent for the launcher explains how the design worked:
“Both the front support and the rear support are deliberately designed to undergo a predetermined amount of structural deformation when subjected to recoil force produced by launching a projectile from the apparatus, and this predetermined deformation absorbs a portion of the recoil force. A hammer in the form of a spring is cocked by a pair of levers which pull the hammer back and which become disengaged from the hammer, so that the hammer and associated firing pin can fall to discharge the round. A safety mechanism prevents cocking of the hammer unless the launching apparatus is installed on a bayonet lug.”
Ingeniously the attachment point of the launcher were designed to deform on firing to reduce recoil. The operator would pull the trigger ring, while gripping the rifle’s sling, to trip the firing mechanism with one movement. Once fired the launcher would be removed from the weapon and discarded. The boresight of the launcher, once attached, was sighted-in at a predetermined distance, such as 100 meters. Atchisson made no allowance for additional aiming apparatus and the shorter barrel of his launcher would have limited the weapons range and accuracy. However, it would have arguably greatly increased the average infantryman’s firepower with relatively little additional weight.
The US military were apparently uninterested in Atchisson’s design preferring the underbarrel M203 launcher, and today Atchisson’s grenade launcher is largely unknown today.
Projectile Launching Apparatus, US Patent #3782021, M.G. Atchisson, 01/01/1974, (source)
Maxwell George Atchisson: Firearms Designer, Small Arms Review, F. Iannamico, (source)
