Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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World War II provided some relief for the financially troubled Ithaca. They produced a number of .45 Colt 1911-A1 service pistols and M3 grease guns between 1943 and 1945. This activity served only as a temporary band-aid, however. They were hurting for a new product to augment their only winner, the rock-solid Model 37 pump gun. Ithaca’s president, Sheldon Smith, and his brother and director of manufacturing, Charles Smith, made a valiant attempt to create a business turnaround after the great war by producing a .22 autoloading rifle which developed numerous function problems, and they also made an ill-fated attempt to have MIT personel design a semiautomatic shotgun for them. As one might expect, it was a brilliant study but thoroughly impractical to mass produce as a competitive sporting shotgun.

These post-war failures made Ithaca understandably cautious despite the fact that they were extremely anxious to produce a single-shot .22 rifle that I designed, the BJT Saddle Gun, after witnessing a flawless demonstration of the prototype rifle. The Smiths personally contacted a large number of leading firearms merchandisers and surveyed their estimate of the volume sales at different price levels. Because of the extremely low direct labor and low cost material to produce the rifle, the retail price was established at an amazingly low $21.95. This price was established extremely low to dramatically produce a very high sales volume at a minimum profit. This was in stark contrast to prior Ithaca sales philosophy. In 1960, the Ithaca Model 49 sold for $21.95 – and the Ithaca single barrel trap gun sold for $2,500!