For reasons never made clear, Slavin took his dream to Toronto, Canada, a city directly across Lake Ontario from Buffalo, New York. Samuel J. Zacks, a Toronto financier, art collector and Zionist, helped organize the Toronto support, and enlisted the help of Norman Grant. Grant had been the General Manager of Toronto’s York Arsenals during the war. Under his supervision, millions of bullets and shells were dispatched toward the enemy. The only public trace of the company during the war was the occasional newspaper mention of the intrepid girls’ soccer team. York Arsenals vanished at the war’s end, cloaked in secrecy in operation and forgotten as soon as the doors closed. A small postwar booklet picturing the plant’s products and the corporate directors is sole testimony along with a fragment of the plant that serves as a grocery store today.

Grant also wondered why Slavin chose Toronto and suspected it was the lower wages of machinists. Keeping the project away from prying eyes probably played a role, but, Slavin was also an unapologetic and vocally self-styled “stereotypical Jew,” begrudging the cost of every coffee billed to his homeland. When Slavin had sent Alper around New York on various missions, he specified circuitous routes on subway and bus; very seldom a cab. Alper never doubted the careful routing was for security. He learned much later that the long routes, the crowds and the confusing transfers were actually to save a few pennies.

Satisfied Toronto was the place, Slavin called for Alper and Ekdahl to join him. Local connections found them space. Working over a luxury car showroom on Bay Street, their separate entrance and the constant noise of cars and car repairs was a perfect cover. Industrial Research Labs could set up as soon the landlord saw their references. Once again, Levine stepped in to co-sign the lease.

Where the Dror stampings were made. (Carl E. Ekdahl)

Throughout the war years, for miles around York Arsenals, sub-contractors turned and formed parts for bombs and shells. The most highly skilled workers sculpted precision tools. Most now thrived in peacetime. Grant knew them all. Ekdahl and Slavin pored over the gun’s design to identify what would be changed. Grant recruited Max Brown and they began ordering the custom tools for the 1,500 steps to make The Gun. They divided the work between the machine shops so no outsider could see the whole picture. Parts that couldn’t be explained away had to be made over the showroom. As the orders came in, parts were made and assembled.

The Gun had to be ready to build on arrival; there could be no experiments in Palestine. Slavin determined to build six prototypes with all the tools made, proven, labeled and coded for shipping.

There were a few hitches. Everything outside the tool room seemed to need community approval and local businessmen, Rabbis and others hovered around the clandestine work. Toronto’s Jewish community, terribly curious, was anxious to help the cause, but proudly avoided ‘shop talk’ at lunches and suppers with the mysterious strangers. All the attention came to a head one winter night when police stopped a truck on the highway and looked in the back.

The result was the next day’s news – and a hint of the storm to follow months later at the border – the truck carried surplus Bren gun parts. There was nothing illegal in this, but the community leaders threatened to pull the plug on IRL. The British were practically at war with the Jews in Palestine at the time and the Toronto leaders feared the disapproval of the Canadian government. In a loud meeting with Slavin, a handgun supposedly appeared and the nervous members acquired a new, quiet, resolve. The feared Canadian disapproval never materialized, but the work was only allowed to go on if Slavin stayed out of sight.

Several months into the work, Ekdahl received a secret offer. Egypt offered him $100,000 to do for them what he was doing for the Jews. Being the honest man he was, Ekdahl discussed the offer with Slavin. Being the business-like man he was, Slavin admitted it was a good offer. Carl talked it over with Hilda and turned it down.

In December, 1946, two months before the first gun was completed, Slavin was called back to Palestine. Ekdahl originally thought the project would take six months. With the new restrictions and Slavin’s absence it took a year.

Home in Palestine, Slavin took stock of the small arms in hand. Many of the Haganah guns were salvaged by Bedouins from the abandoned World War Two battlefields of the North African desert. The demand for guns had sent prices soaring for even battered relics.

The British Army had helped, albeit unofficially. With ridiculous frequency, British soldiers reported truckloads of ammunition and supplies bloodlessly ambushed or mysteriously stolen. Rifles and machine guns were lost by the appalling carelessness of patrols. In one case, a guard failed to notice a gang of strangers empty his unit’s entire armory. The man in charge of such matters later said Jewish agents spent over a quarter million dollars assisting various British friends.

‘Maxie’ Brown holds a Dror at the factory. This may be one of the smuggled prototypes. (Carl E. Ekdahl)

There were some home-made guns of various quality. Ta’as even produced artillery as well as Sten guns. The Lehi, one of the several armed Jewish bands, made over 600 highly serviceable copies of the Sten. An underground (literally) plant churned out 9mm ammunition. The lack of raw material was partly overcome by a large purchase of lip-stick tubes. These were forged into casings.

Finally, a deal was struck in Czechoslovakia by Ehud Avriel, another of Ben Gurion’s gun-getters, to import thousands of small arms and millions of rounds of ammunition. The deal thankfully took the pressure off the immediate situation, because the news reaching Slavin from Toronto was bad.

Max Brown had been released on bail, which was small comfort. After all the months and work and worry and money, The Gun was in mortal danger. Parts had been seized, Industrial Research Labs raided, Grant arrested and the tools, drawings and remaining parts seized.

And that, Slavin feared, might be merely the start. If the police took a closer look, they’d see Harry Levine had signed the IRL lease in Toronto. If they looked closer at him, they’d see he also signed for the Machinery Processing and Converting Co. in New York. If the two were put together, the entire arms smuggling effort would be revealed. U.S. Customs only had to check their files and they could hand the British a list of ‘machinery’ shipments from MPC, and, their destinations in Palestine. The raids that would follow in Palestine could uncover dozens of Jewish underground arms factories and storage sites.

A very short time later, in Washington, DC, two anxious leaders of the American Jewish community sat down with FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover listened patiently as the men explained the devastating consequences of further investigation into the border incident. Hoover then asked them if the United States were being imperiled in any way. Satisfied with their ‘no,’ Hoover nodded and the meeting ended.

So goes the story. In all likelihood the massive Jewish effort to arm was already well known to Hoover. Ekdahl family lore tells of a railway car meeting, where government agents not only approved of Ekdahl’s work, but, came close to ordering it.

Among Carl Ekdahl’s mementos from his time in Israel is this inscribed desk set. (David Nordin)

The captured gun parts were portrayed as the work of a few enthusiastic Canadians, impressive and clever, but nonetheless, minor. There was back-patting in court as the contrite Brown belatedly confessed his sins. A suspended sentence followed, and the entire issue deflated with a boys-will-be-boys shrug.

After the Toronto workshop and its contents were restored, to the utter disbelief of their owners, the clandestine work went on to package and ship, not merely a handful of guns, but the tools needed to turn out enough guns to arm a nation. And still, The Gun didn’t even have a name.

Finally, the finished guns, parts and tools were packed onto a private yacht. They sailed across Lake Ontario and into the U.S. The passengers sipped cocktails and tipped their glasses in friendly greetings to Customs. The planned test firing had to be skipped and the materials went straight to Schalit in New York for shipment to Palestine. According to the participants, 75,000 carefully jumbled pieces left, all so meticulously recorded, it was said, that not a single part was misplaced.

Magazine housing on the first model Dror. (Author)

But, after all the delays, it was too late. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted the State of Israel into existence, to take effect the 15th of May, 1948. If there was to be an Israel a week later, the fighters needed weapons and ammunition today. Manufacture of The Gun would need a real factory with concrete floors and high-voltage. At the time, a major Ta’as factory was akin to an underground car garage. Slavin had to focus on current production. The Gun had to wait.

In Palestine, the British Army pre-empted the date for Independence and began their pull-out a day early, abandoning police stations and installations throughout Palestine and marching swiftly to the coastal ports for evacuation. To the North, the East and the South, Arab armies closed in. Many Palestinian Arabs fled, encouraged by the surrounding Arab countries. Knowing there was no retreat and no surrender, Israel struck back. The Arab armies were stopped, battered, demoralized and defeated. The Palestinians who fled found themselves unwelcome. Their descendants remain refugees and fighting continues today.

The Gun finally saw daylight after the 1948 war. More than most nations, Israel needed to develop a self-sufficient arms industry. Israel was surrounded by enemies who would cut off resupply in war, and, they feared, their friends were not the most reliable either. Considerable investment in engineering, sweat, risk and expense had been put into The Gun. Men like Ben Gurion himself wanted to see the project bloom.

Inside the notebook, Israel thanks Carl Ekdahl. (David Nordin)

Schalit’s packing crates were opened in a Ta’as factory in Shemen, an industrial district in Haifa. The Gun would be the first post-war product of Ta’as. Yisrael Galili, later to co-design the Galil rifle named after him, was in charge of production. Galili soon found that the careful organizing of parts and tools was more wishful thinking than reality. In fact, he said years later, it was all a mess.

Max Brown and Carl Ekdahl arrived in Israel in 1948. The Gun at last began production. A grateful Israel sent them home with their thanks for all they had done. By now, The Gun had a name; the Dror. Literally translated, Dror means Freedom.

The first guns made on the Toronto tooling are close copies of the Johnson Model 1944, but in .303. Some less critical parts are made crudely, and the finish is hard to pin down, but it is a well machined and crafted gun where it counts. The combination folding monopod fore-end of the M1944 is replaced with stamped, folding, bipod legs.

The problem is, the gun is still a pig to use. It is all points and edges, hard to hold and hard to love. The loaded mag is quite noticeable as a visual distraction and an off-balancing weight. The folded bipod becomes the forward grip, but the legs are a lousy hold, too widely spaced with too little surface. When fired, the Dror is a sharply loud and busy gun: It kicks with great zeal and the straight in-line design seems influential mostly in theory.

One report said less than 400 first model Drors were made, another says between 800 and 1,000 before production was halted. Two reasons for the halt are given. The first cites a number of weaknesses in the design, the other, and deciding factor, recognizes the large amount of 8mm ammunition acquired from Czechoslovakia. The design team had just gotten the .303 working well when the unwelcome order to change caliber came through.

Outside the Dror Shemen factory. (Carl E. Ekdahl) Below: Looking through the gate into the Shemen Dror factory yard. (Carl E. Ekdahl)

The Dror underwent a thorough redesign. Whether the second version was an improvement or not it was, nevertheless, different. The switch to 8mm made sense for logistics alone, but, in fact 8mm is far better suited to automatic weapons than .303. The other major changes are still argued about. The barrel, left exposed by Johnson for cooling and balance, was now wrapped in a full-length barrel jacket for protection. The bipod was heftier and mounted near the muzzle. A muzzle booster was added to pump up the muscle and improve reliability. The feed system, that singular feature of the Johnsons with the lips built into the gun, was dumped in favor of the BAR magazine, possibly from an 8mm FN BAR Model D; and that was now mounted under the gun. The awkward job of replacing the side mounted magazine was now an awkward job of replacing a bottom mounted one with not enough space under the gun to do it. The resulting gun was even less handy, and, the 8mm also kicked like a mule.

Several tests pitted the .303 and the 8mm versions against the German MG 34 and the British Bren. The guns were compared on accuracy, usability, durability and most importantly, reliability.

The earliest test has the singular positive comment that the Dror was the most accurate in the single-shot mode. In automatic fire, the Dror kicked and sprayed more than the competition, throwing groups across 30 inches and more at 200 yards while the Bren and the MG34 did half that.

The Drors lacked interchangeability of magazines and had many hand-fitted parts. The familiar complaint of the Johnson’s tricky stripping and the potential loss of critical small parts came up. The gun didn’t do as well as the Bren or the MG 34 when it came to withstanding immersion in sea water or exposure to dust and sand. The troops said it was difficult and uncomfortable to carry and not much fun to shoot.

Mostly, though, it was simply a gun that missed its time. The Dror’s strongest point was to be there when there was nothing else, but, the War of Independence was over before the gun came to be. The handiness and versatility that made it ideal for the guerilla and the settler are never mentioned in the post-war tests.

Nonetheless, the Dror was fully explored. Even a rifle version was apparently produced in minute numbers. Production wrapped up with the completion of 1,000 of the second model guns. These were issued to training units and the Navy, where it was hoped they’d never be called on. Even this was done reluctantly. None saw combat.

The test reports slammed the gun and proclaimed short-recoil operation inherently less reliable than gas operation. The government was advised all future development should be of gas powered weapons. The decision to begin full production of the unproven Dror was roasted as irresponsible. Of course, with names like David Ben Gurion and Haim Slavin behind the project, it is hard to imagine how anyone could have stopped it.

Looking through the gate into the Shemen Dror factory yard. (Carl E. Ekdahl)

In the U.S., Johnson continued development of his rifle and LMG after the war, melding them into sleek and evolved models that unfortunately met little commercial success. There is no indication Johnson knew about the Dror. Johnson Automatics filed for bankruptcy in 1949. The auction of equipment took place in March the same year. Some machinery and tooling may have made its way to Israel to supplement the Toronto contribution. Johnson moved on to development work on several other military projects.

The Johnson guns might have been still-born were it not for Holland’s all-important order. A generation later, a Dutch firm would produce the AR-10, which used the multi-lug locking system from the Johnson. Johnson himself helped develop the AR-10. Without the AR-10, the AR-15, the M16, and the M4 family still in use, would not have evolved. Considering this, Holland and Johnson had a remarkable influence on American weapons.

The existence of the Dror was a secret until well into the 1950s, and by then, a mild embarrassment. By the time the Dror became public, the lawyers were baffled. If the ownership of the patents was not muddied by bankruptcy, there was the question of who to sue: Israel didn’t exist when the Dror was hatched. Considering the failure of the gun and the fact production was cancelled, it isn’t surprising no legal action is recorded.

Maybe the first picture to escape the Dror factory; before any public mention of the Dror. (Carl E. Ekdahl)

Epilogue

In 1950, the Dutch Johnsons were deployed in the Philippines against the Hukbalahap Rebellion and by the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea.

Hilda Ekdahl caught tuberculosis tending a sick relative and died tragically in 1949. Sadly missing her, Carl Ekdahl followed in 1952; but, according to his daughter, C. Elise, he died a man ‘happy with his legacy.’ A hundred years after he arrived in America, Carl’s descendants span America from coast to coast and north to south. He is remembered in Israel.

Melvin Johnson Jr. died in 1965, still working, of a heart attack. His memory and achievements are preserved by the Johnson family and known to millions.

Norman Grant, credited with running the Toronto operation, moved easily into manufacturing lighting.

Haim Slavin retired from Ta’as and kept on engineering. He developed some of the pre-fab concrete housing techniques seen throughout Israel today.

Yisrael Galili became known as the ‘Father of the Rifle’ in reference to the Galil rifle designed by himself and Yaacov Lior. He died in 1995.

Max Brown went to Palestine to serve in the War of Independence. He worked for Ta’as, likely with Ekdahl, then returned to Toronto and founded a chain of appliance stores. He passed away in 2013 in Miami. He is buried in Israel.

Between 1965 and 1969, Leonard Slater researched and wrote The Pledge recording the details about the development of the Dror and the broader effort to arm Israel prior to the 1948 war. Slater worked with NBC, Time and Newsweek, to name just a few. He died at 84 in 2005 at his home in Mission Hills, California.

Bruce N. Canfield, with Robert L. Lamoreaux and Edward R. Johnson, published Johnson’s Rifles and Machine Guns through Andrew Mowbray Publishers in 2002, illuminating the long untold Johnson story. Canfield, a premier authority on American small arms, continues to write.

However the story ended, the Dror is an incredible achievement by a small dedicated band led by Haim Slavin and Carl Ekdahl. Drors still exist in museums and the hands of collectors in Canada where the few released were sold as ‘Converted Automatics’ in the mid-1980s. Others were broken down for parts.

As a footnote, I dropped the butt of my .303 version on my foot, painfully blackening a toenail. In recorded history, this may have been the most significant wound inflicted by the Dror.

Melvin Johnson Jr. graciously thanks Carl Ekdahl. (Courtesy of John Ekdahl)

(Acknowledgement and thanks are due to Leonard Slater, author of The Pledge, Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre, authors of O Jerusalem and to Bruce N. Canfield, author of Johnson’s Rifles and Machine Guns with Robert L. Lamoreaux and Edward R. Johnson, (Andrew Mowbray Publishers). A special thanks to Carl Ekdahl’s descendants, John Ekdahl, David Nordin and Kirsten O’Brien for their guidance, information and photos of their Grandfather, to Richard Collins for providing the 2nd model Dror, Charles Taylor of Movie Armaments Group in Toronto, Canada for use of the facilities, Graham Robertson for his photo, and G. N. Dentay, Paul Wassill and R Blake Stevens, Collector Grade Publications, for their invaluable editorial input.)

Niagara Falls, N.Y., Monday afternoon, February 24, 1947. Parked by the wintry highway, Carl Einar Ekdahl took a sip of whisky to calm his embattled heart. Beside him sat Norman Grant of Toronto. Ekdahl passed him the bottle. Ekdahl and Grant had cleared U.S. Customs and now waited in vain for Max Brown in the second car. Finally, they accepted Brown wasn’t coming.

Max Brown held out for three days in the Erie County jail, refusing even to make a phone call. He had been caught red-handed at the U.S./Canadian border trying to smuggle parts of two machine guns into New York State. The guns had been hastily tucked under the front seat of Max’s car and fell easily into view. The plan had been to go on to Ekdahl’s Vermont farm and test the guns. But now, Customs, Police and agents of the Alcohol Tobacco and Tax Unit coached Max to start talking. He did not. Max heard how the Gestapo questioned Jews in Europe. His treatment by U.S. authorities was courteous: He could hardly yield to this.

The guns looked wicked… black and steel, pistol grips, perforated barrel jackets, hooked magazines and front sights like sharks’ fins. Combined with a hundred fresh rounds of .303, the display evoked mob massacres, assassinations, and blood-drenched insurrection. The authorities learned more about Max Brown. Still in his twenties, he was from Toronto, Canada, a World War II veteran who started the war as an aircraft mechanic and ended it as a pilot and squadron leader. He came home to study at University, and then quit to work for the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Toronto Daily Star front page March 13, 1947. (Toronto Daily Star)

Max held out stubbornly, but he knew others were being tracked down and arrested. He hoped his silence would buy time for some to escape and hide the evidence. He had every reason to worry: Their mistakes could doom the nation of Israel before it was born.

Grant was arrested when he returned home to Canada. By the time the story hit the front pages, several weeks later, the guns were mis-identified as Bren guns. The few people aware it even existed called it ‘The Gun.’

Soon, Brown was out on bail; tracks were being covered on both sides of the border, and key players had vanished.

For the authorities, it was difficult to pin down what they were looking at. The guns resembled a lesser known American wartime gun; the Johnson light machine gun. They shared the Johnson’s looks and features. The short-recoil principle of operation, side mounted magazine, the rotating multi-lugged bolt head, the round receiver and the distinctive barrel jacket with dozens of holes – even the feed lips built into the gun instead of the magazine. But, something had gone weird in the genes… they weren’t Johnsons.

Carl Ekdahl shoulders a Johnson LMG outside the factory. (John Ekdahl)

Genuine Johnsons, produced by Cranston Arms in Rhode Island, were slick and smooth. These guns were rough, scaly, hand finished and differed in details. The caliber was a change. The Johnson Model 1941 LMG used the .30-06 cartridge. The mutations before them used British .303. The other differences were more subtle, but the buttstock and forends jumped out for their absence. Instead of American walnut, the buttstocks consisted of tubes of epoxy and textile, capped with a steel plate. This butt plate swung up to store a cleaning kit in the lower tube. The guns more closely resembled the M1944 Johnson, a model that never saw mass production.

The guns did not have Jewish roots. Their story began before World War Two at Springfield Armory in Massachusetts. In the early 1930s, Melvin Johnson, Jr., a bright Army ROTC Cadet and later a reserve Marine Corps Lieutenant, visited the Armory to report on the upcoming production of the M1 Garand rifle. The gun was not only being made there, it had been designed there. John Garand himself still shepherded every step.

Young Johnson was born into the American aristocracy: Smart and driven to prove himself worthy of any privilege of his birth, he worked and studied hard. He loved guns, but had no formal engineering education. One can imagine Springfield’s thrill when a Harvard lawyer critiqued their baby. When Johnson left Springfield, he believed he could do it all better. There’s no mention of him being asked to the Christmas party. The U.S. Army adopted the Garand as the standard service rifle in 1936.

Melvin Johnson, Jr. and the Chief of Staff, General C. Marshall. (Library of Congress)

While Johnson’s world revolved around the best schools, summers at the lake, and his father’s law firm, Haim Slavin had been born and educated a half-a-world away in Russia. Fired by the desire to create a Jewish state, he moved to Palestine just after World War One.

The Great War had swept away the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In Palestine, that meant the British now oversaw the pungent rabble.

Before the war, local politics were left to the Arab population. The Arabs had helped the Allies, rallying famously behind Lawrence of Arabia. Promises of an Arab nation were made in return. But, the Allies had also been helped by many Jews. The British made both groups conflicting promises. But, more and more Jews arrived, buying land, starting businesses, and many Arabs wanted Britain to stop the influx. In their efforts to keep violence off the table, Britain forbade the Jews from arming.

In 1929, rumors spread that Jews were desecrating Arab Mosques in Jerusalem. Throughout Palestine, Jews were attacked. At the time, Haim Slavin was an engineer working for the Palestine Electric Corporation. Slavin set up to produce grenades. When the violence ended, hundreds of Arabs and Jews were dead
throughout Palestine.

Haim Slavin engineered the Dror and much of Israel’s military industries. Working secretly in the United States and Canada he acquired hundreds of tons of machinery and weaponry critical to Israel’s’ victory in 1948.

An arms race with the Arabs followed, undeterred by British gun laws. Slavin became more involved in making and acquiring arms for the underground
Jewish forces.

Most Jewish guns were bought from Arabs, which had the unwelcome effect of bankrolling the Arabs to buy better weapons. In 1933, what would become Israeli Military Industries was formed. IMI operated underground, in many cases literally. It was, and often still is, referred to in Hebrew as Ta’asiya Tzvait. Literally translated it means ‘Military Industry.’ It is commonly abbreviated to ‘Ta’as.’

Slavin’s efforts helped arm the Haganah. The Haganah was the predominant armed group, vetted and controlled by the Jewish Governance, but several other groups operated as well. The Haganah asked Slavin to quit his job and devote himself to preparing arms. Slavin became General Manager of Ta’as in 1937.

An operation in Poland saw munitions welded into hollow spaces of tractors and road rollers. In 1936, the Warsaw operation smuggled 3,000 rifles, 226 machine guns, 10,000 grenades, three million cartridges, hundreds of mortar shells, and three airplanes through British customs.

Carl and Hilda Ekdahl likely posed for this photo at the time of their marriage. (Courtesy of David Nordin)

While Slavin was running clandestine factories, Johnson challenged the now entrenched M1 Garand. Both rifles are .30-06 semiautomatics, but, the Garand is gas operated and the Johnson powered by recoil. In Johnson’s design, the bolt and barrel, locked together, recoil for a fraction of an inch and then part company with the delay allowing pressure in the barrel to drop. This wasn’t new, but Johnson refined the bolt head to use eight locking lugs instead of the usual two so the bolt only had to rotate a few degrees.

Recoil operation meant the gun didn’t have a piston and cylinder running under the barrel. There was no sensitive mechanism near the muzzle and this allowed Johnson to leave the barrel in the open. The gun pointed naturally and didn’t channel dirty gases to the interior. Detractors said the barrel was unprotected.

The Garand was loaded with steel clips containing eight rounds. The entire clip was pushed into the gun, and, when empty, popped out with the last empty case. The problem was the soldier’s dilemma when he’d fired four or five rounds in action. He then had to choose between making himself vulnerable while he unloaded the gun to make room for a new eight round clip, or, chance facing an enemy with only the three or four rounds remaining. Also, the Garand often caused a painful injury when the bolt slammed forward to punish an unskilled loader. Johnson’s first solution was to use a box magazine.

Melvin Johnson (left) and Carl Ekdahl hold prototypes made at Marlin Arms. The distinctive rotary rifle magazine and the side-mounted machine gun magazine have not yet been incorporated. (Courtesy of John Ekdahl)

But before an important test, untrained soldiers loaded the magazines backwards, creating havoc. Johnson answered with a rotary magazine. It could be topped up whenever the soldier wanted, and the feed lips, so easily damaged in removable magazines, were machined into the gun itself. It was difficult to mess up.

On the downside the removable barrel was lauded as a solution to over-heating, but, no-one carried a spare barrel, and it is possible to fire the gun with the barrel unlatched… with catastrophic results. Small parts were easily lost in field stripping. The barrel-mounted bayonet was light so it wouldn’t interfere with the recoil operation. It was light, and comical.

The Garand’s ‘en-bloc’ clip and the Johnson rotary magazine are both designs of Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. Mannlicher designed a machine rifle in 1883.

The Johnson LMG shares a remarkable, although coincidental, resemblance.

British soldiers struggled to keep the peace in Jerusalem, 1920. (Library of Congress)

Rudolph Sonneborn, the ‘wealthy New Yorker’ mentioned in the Toronto Daily Star’s headline poses in Israel with a Sten after the 1948 war. (Wikipedia)

In 1937, Johnson hired the Marlin Firearms Company to make four Johnson prototypes. Johnson was assisted by the very Carl E. Ekdahl who found himself parked on a New York highway a decade later. Ekdahl was born in Helsingborg, Sweden on March 12, 1892 and came to the U.S. in 1910, already a skilled tool and die maker. He gravitated to Gun Valley was soon a gunsmith, engineer and designer for several firms. He married Hilda Bjork and worked at Marlin during World War One. He was there in the 1930’s to help prototype the Johnsons. By the time he and Johnson met, Carl and Hilda had three children, C. Elise, born 1917, Carl
Gustav born 1920, and Thora, born 1923.

In the summer of 1938, an Army test was scheduled to compare the Garand to the Johnson. The test went well for Johnson. Johnson brushed up his design. The results were executed by another manufacturer, Taft-Pierce. As well as the new military prototypes, Taft-Pierce also made a handful of sporting rifles. Although Johnson deliberately designed his gun to be within the capabilities of smaller shops, the cost still depended on economies of scale and the sporters were prohibitively expensive.

The test of the improved models proved the Johnson to be a good rifle, but the argument was trumped by reality: The Garand in full production. Nice, but, no thanks, was the Army’s answer. But as the Garand went into service, it had teething problems. These were seized on by Garand’s political enemies. The anti-Garand forces said the Johnson hadn’t been fairly tested and the Garand was being shoved down the troops’ throats. Johnson personally tried to take the high road, but a bill was introduced in Congress to halt Garand production and force adoption of his weapon. All the arguments ended in a shoot-off in May 1940. The grasp at a political straw came to nothing. It was not about the guns; it was really just
the timing.

World War Two raged in Europe and other countries cried for semiautomatic arms. Holland had fallen to the Nazis and the government in exile functioned from London. The Dutch had colonies in the Pacific. Japan was eyeing the Dutch resources and the Allies were eager to see the Dutch defend them. The Netherlands Purchasing Commission was shopping in the U.S. The Dutch ordered just over 10,000 Johnson rifles and several hundred light machine guns.

Before joining Johnson, Carl Ekdahl was with Harrington and Richardson in the early 1940s. He is pictured on the left alongside H&R President Carney, center, and General Manager Loose. (H&R brochure)

Johnson never planned to enter the gun making business; he wanted to sell the design and have an established gun-maker do the work. But, maker after maker was simply too busy already and the order was too small. The Dutch promised a larger order. Universal Windings of Providence R.I. figured they had the resources and created Cranston Arms at their factory in Cranston, R.I.

Universal Windings had no experience with barrel making, but knew enough to see a quagmire. The problem defaulted to Johnson. Johnson recruited the helpful engineer he had met at Marlin. Carl Ekdahl, now at Harrington and Richardson, left to accept Johnson’s offer.

Most important to this story were the Johnson light machine guns. The Johnson Model 41 LMG has a 21-inch barrel, 42-inch overall length and a trim 12.5-lb. weight. Like the rifle, the LMG functions by delayed recoil and features a nearly straight-line design to minimize muzzle climb. The Johnson fire selector is on the left – up for safe, back for full-auto and forward for semi-auto. On full-automatic, the gun fires from an open bolt allowing cooling, but, flip to semi-auto and the gun fires from a closed bolt so there is no loss of accuracy from the action slamming forward to fire.

The single column magazine holds twenty .30-06 cartridges. A spring steel gate holds them in until the magazine is inserted in the well on the left side of the gun. Insertion lifts the magazine’s gate, allowing the cartridges to push into the gun and up against the feed lips. The magazine well is long enough to let the shooter load five more cartridges through the trade-mark loading gate on the right.

By 1943 Ekdahl and Hilda were living near the Cranston factory in Rhode Island. Ekdahl was suddenly stricken by a severe heart-attack and retired. He and Hilda moved to their farm in Vermont where he recuperated.

Only about 2,500 Johnson rifles reached the Pacific before the East Indies fell to the Japanese. With thousands of guns now orphaned and embargoed, production stopped. Around 30,000 rifles and 3,000 LMGs languished in storage.

The thousands of unused guns didn’t escape notice. The Marine Raider Battalion bought several hundred rifles from the Dutch and it didn’t hurt that Johnson was now a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Even the U.S. Army joint U.S./Canadian First Special Service Forces (FSSF), received a handful of Johnson 1941 light machine guns.

Two members of the First Special Service Force cleaning a Johnson M1941 at Anzio. (Library and Archives Canada)

Some Marines loved the Johnson rifles and the FSSF liked their machine guns. Most soldiers took what they were handed. While the guns are not weighed down by praise, any new gun seeing combat and coming away liked has done very well.

The Allied use of the guns affected neither the war nor the fortunes of the company: when the war was over, the Marines and First Special Service Force turned their Johnsons back in. The Dutch again took possession of the East Indies and the remaining guns finally crossed the Pacific.

Johnson developed a promising hybrid of the LMG and the rifle. Argentina pursued this model as far as a prototype but made no purchase.

The story might have ended there, but for Haim Slavin reading his newspaper in a Tel Aviv café in 1945. Whole American munitions factories were on sale. As General Manager of Ta’as, he wrote his friend, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the underground Jewish Governance.

Carl Ekdahl studies blueprints. (Courtesy of John Ekdahl)

Efforts to mobilize American Jews were already underway. In New York lived a prominent leader named Rudolf G. Sonneborn. He supported a Jewish state in Palestine and spent months there in his youth. He had recently hosted a gathering of influential American Jews and introduced them to David Ben-Gurion.

When Ben-Gurion sent Haim Slavin to the U.S. in the fall of 1945, he sent him to Sonneborn.

Sonneborn introduced Slavin to Harry Levine, a factory owner and wartime partner in a firm making Oerlikon parts. Levine was in his late forties, with children, widowed, and now remarried. He seemed an unlikely fit for subterfuge and that made him a perfect fit. He became the legal front man for Slavin’s company; Machinery Processing and Supply.

Slavin bought a vacant building at 4366 Park Avenue, New York. He hired two key men; Philip Alper, a 22 year old engineer from Berkeley, and Elie Schalit, also in his early twenties. Schalit handled the shipping while Slavin and Alper shopped. They visited Worchester, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Rockford, and Cincinnati and stormed Colt’s one-day sale. Slavin bought barrel making machinery and equipment to make 81mm mortar bombs. Alper bought six tons of machines and all the tools to make .303 from Remington’s Bridgeport plant. As a large number of Haganah weapons were in .303, the .303 was becoming Israel’s predominant cartridge.

Everything Slavin and Alper could gather in ended up going to Schalit in the windy building on Park Avenue. Out of sight and late at night, Schalit’s people cut and torched apart old machinery, stuffing the interiors with contraband.

But, it wasn’t enough for Slavin. He dreamt of arming every settler, every soldier, every brother and sister. Slavin had stood guard himself, alone in the shadows of stony hillsides on sharp cold nights. He knew the touch of a gun’s steel, or the solid weight of a grenade, was often the lonely sentry’s only friend and comfort.

The Ekdahl’s only son, Carl G. Ekdahl, survived shrapnel wounds on Iwo Jima and was featured in the New Haven Register. (New Haven Register)

Appropriately, considering its murky parentage, the conception of ‘The Gun’ occurred in a cheap hotel room. Levine brought Ekdahl to meet Slavin. How the meeting between Slavin and Ekdahl came about remains vague. In The Pledge, author Leonard Slater says Levine contacted Ekdahl saying he was a ‘friend of a friend.’ Johnson may well have given a tacit okay to the plan, but, the mysterious ‘friend’ set things in motion.

There was a man who fit the ‘friend of a friend’ description. One of Johnson’s corporate neighbors employed an engineer named David Dardick. Dardick would
later develop the unique gun named for him and worked closely with Johnson. Dardick was a Russian born Jew like Slavin, and the very kind of man Levine might reach out to. This is purely speculation and based largely on Ekdahl bringing an intriguing package to the hotel room.

Ekdahl handed Slavin a Johnson Light Machine Gun. There were a number of examples still kept at Johnson’s office. Since Ekdahl no longer worked there, if the gun came from the office, some insider must have loaned it. But, Ekdahl is also said to have owned one or more Johnsons after the war and it may well have come from his own collection. We may never know. The collection went to Carl G. Ekdahl but was broken up after his death.

Ekdahl checked off the gun’s features: It was lighter than almost any other light machine gun, but it fired full-sized rifle cartridges to hurl back an enemy charge. With the flick of a switch, it became an accurate semiautomatic, able to snipe across the hilltops. Slavin knew that with a gun like this, every man, woman and child would feel the strength of a lion.

Ekdahl proposed they redesign the machine gun, incorporating several changes he suggested, and the latest features of the Johnson LMGs. At a stroke, they would vault ahead of the world’s armies and produce the most advanced design on the planet. Built in secret under the haughty noses of the British, The Gun would be a triumph of courage, engineering and ‘chutzpah.’

Slavin didn’t need the sales pitch. He needed Ekdahl. Ekdahl took Slavin home with him and introduced him to Hilda. There were no kids still living at home, but Slavin was sick and worried about bringing in his flu. Hilda took him in and put him to bed with tea and aspirin. The reception touched the hardened Slavin deeply. Ekdahl was not Jewish but Slavin took him into his trust. For the next days he sat propped in bed going over the drawings with Ekdahl. When they finally talked money, Ekdahl agreed to a fee of $17,000.

Part two of The Secret Life of the Dror will continue with the continuing history of the development and deployment of this historic weapon.

Acknowledgement and thanks are due to Leonard Slater, author of The Pledge, Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre, authors of O Jerusalem and to Bruce N. Canfield, author of Johnson’s Rifles and Machine Guns with Robert L. Lamoreaux and Edward R. Johnson, (Andrew Mowbray Publishers). A special thanks to Carl Ekdahl’s descendants, John Ekdahl, David Nordin and Kirsten O’Brien for their guidance, information and photos of their Grandfather, to Richard Collins for providing the 2nd model Dror, Charles Taylor of Movie Armaments Group in Toronto, Canada for use of the facilities, Graham Robertson for his photo, and G. N. Dentay, Paul Wassill and R Blake Stevens, Collector Grade Publications, for their invaluable editorial input.