The story of the Kimball pistol starts with its creator, John W. Kimball.
As far as I can tell John W. Kimball was born in 1926 in Canada. His family emigrated to the U.S. probably during the depression as they were listed as living in Wayne County Michigan in 1940.
Little is known about John Kimball and every time I uncovered a tib-bit, the story got murkier.
It is not known at this time how Kimball got involved in the gun industry. There was a gun retailer in Massachusetts called the Kimball Arms Company, but I don't have any evidence he was in any way related to this enterprise.
We do know that he began applying for patents for some gun designs in 1954. His first patent was for the floating barrel, followed by the trigger design and then the extractor. Ironically most of theses patents were awarded after the company closed up shop.
Click on the pictures for a larger version.
One cannot help but notice the uncanny resemblance to the Hi-Standard and Colt Woodsman pistols
Kimball pistol:
Colt WoodsmanHi-Standard model B
It has been written that Kimball's plan was to build a gun that could fire the .30 Carbine round and replace the M1911A1 pistol as the side arm of the US Military. In theory this would make sense, because the military could eliminate the need for the .45 ACP....except the US Military had adopted a couple of carbines in .45 ACP, the Thompson and M3 "Grease Gun".
It also may be that he hoped to make a companion gun for the large quantities of M1 Carbines hitting the surplus market in the 1950s.
At any rate, making a pistol the size of a standard handgun shoot a .30 carbine would not be easy. The .30 Carbine round produces around 40,000 psi (SAAMI) which is in excess of the .44 Magnum (36,000 psi). Containing the pressure is not the biggest problem, the real problem is finding an auto-loading system that would work under that kind of pressure. The design would need to bleed off pressure, delay the action enough for pressure to drop or use springs so strong that the even the Hulk would have trouble racking the slide.
His plan to achieve this was two fold. 1. a free-floating barrel would recoil backwards a short distance to help absorb some of the recoil. 2. the chamber had a annular groove that, upon firing, the brass case would swell into, creating friction and slowing the extraction enough to allow the pressure to drop.
In still frame below you can see the groove in the chamber (still frame from Forgotten Weapons video, see it here)
The second part of the plan didn't quite work out, It was noticed early on that the surplus ammo (or ammo designed to be fired from a carbine) would leave deposits in the annular groove, rendering it useless in getting the cartridge to expand.
When this happened the slide velocities were too high and the slide stop at the rear of the frame was being beaten and broken.
The company included a typed note explaining the need for cleaning, suggesting that this problem was not discovered until after the owner's manuals had been printed up.
In Wiley Clapp's test report from the November 1988 issue of Guns and Ammo, he stated that the gun fired fine and didn't seem to suffer any damage, he thought perhaps his gun had better heat treating. It could also be Wiley didn't shoot enough to get the chamber dirty or was using clean aftermarket ammo (rather than the dirty surplus ammo)?
In order to produce the guns Kimball entered into a partnership with a local tool & die machine shop. I do not know if Kimball became part owner of the machine shop or if the machine shop owner became part owner of Kimball Arms.
According to one source, the partnership fell apart after enough parts had been produced to assemble 250 guns or so.
Only 50-60 of the guns had been assembled when things fell apart and the shop owner took the remaining parts and "tossed them out" (in his scrap pile behind the shop I assume). Kimball is said to have returned after hours to collect the parts (enough to assemble the remaining 190-200 guns).
Somehow the parts ended up in New Jersey, I am assuming that Kimball partnered with or sold the parts to the New Jersey shop.
The remaining parts were assembled in to complete pistols. Those guns were sold through an infamous New York dealer Mr. Ed Agramonte. I have no information if Agramonte was involved beyond the retailing of the pistols. It is possible Agramonte financed the operation to finish the guns as this was not an common practice among gun retailers prior to 1968.
Ed Agramonte, if you didn't know, had a pretty decent sized operation in Yonkers New York, selling guns nationwide via his store and mail order operation (this was before the 1968 GCA and federally licensed gun dealers).
Agramonte became infamous when it was alleged that he was supplying weapons to the I.R.A. and in 1972 was charged with several Federal gun crimes.
Back to our story: The agreement that led to the guns being built/assembled in New Jersey ended when they ran out of parts.
While this is an assumption on my part, it makes sense that roughly 200 guns were made in New Jersey and Kimball had parts to assemble roughly 200 guns.
After the New Jersey guns were assembled, Kimball set up a new shop, this time at his home in Milford, Michigan (NW of Detroit) and set about to start making the guns again. These guns had some improvements to them (grips, safety and a few other items).
By this time it had been discovered that the guns might be unsafe due to either barrel fouling rendering the delayed blow back ineffective or improper heat treating of the slide stop. The result of either could break the slide stop, sending the swiftly moving slide into the face of the shooter.
There were roughly 40 guns made in Milford. One source claimed the Milford and New Jersey built guns had overlapping or identical serial numbers.
I do not know if that is true, but it is generally accepted that only 238 Kimball pistols were "officially" produced, with perhaps another 10-20 prototypes.
In 1958 Kimball ended his operation and no more Kimball pistols were made.
In the advert above you can see they were offering a .22 Hornet, .30 Carbine, .38 Special and .357 Magnum.
Two barrel lengths were offered, the Combat (also called the "aircrewman") with a 3" barrel and the Target with a 5" barrel.
I have it on good authority that examples of the .22 Hornet and .357 magnum examples exist in private collections, but no pictures of these units have ever been shown online.
In addition one online forum member claimed to have seen a 9mm prototype.
I was told that Kimball made some full auto versions of the pistol, the pictures below were found on a web forum called Something Awful
Is the man in the photo below John W. Kimball??
The pistols came in a bright yellow box, the colors look similar to that of Super-Vel ammo
The owner's manual from serial #47, which was a combat model with a 5" barrel and fixed sights
Literature all listed "Wayne" Michigan as the address, but the guns were stamped Detroit. Wayne is a suburb west of Detroit.
Kimball went on to work on other gun projects, applying for a patent in 1966 for a recoil reducing stock for the M-14 service rifle.
It is rumored the John W. Kimball took his own life, the date or details of which are unknown to this author.
Sources:
A special thanks to the folks below who shared their knowledge of these guns and the men who made them
Leonard Hunter
Hermann Spoerle
Detroit’s Short-Lived Kimball .30 Carbine Pistol – Forgotten Weapons
KIMBALL ARMS COMPANY Semi-Automatic Pistol :: Gun Values by Gun Digest
Kimball .30 Carbine Pistol | The High Road
Kimball .30 Caliber Carbine Auto Pistol -The Firearm Blog
kimball 30 carbine pistol (karatestekly.cz)
Kimball carbine auto - Firearms identification - Bev Fitchett's Guns
Very Rare Kimball Arms 30 Caliber Carbine Semi-Automatic Pistol (rockislandauction.com)
directory-k.pdf (archivingindustry.com)
US2870562A - Cartridge case extractor for a firearm - Google Patents
American Rifleman | Wiley Clapp: What Killed the Kimball .30 Carbine?
Russell M. Catron And His Pistols: Buxton, Warren H.: 9780961402426: Amazon.com: Books
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