In the four years I have been blogging I don’t think I have come across a more obscure gun than the Parker Hale Rogun. I don’t know when the below prototype was made, if it was ever in production or even precisely how it functioned.

What I do know is that this pump action gun has a unique action. Its bold head is fixed to the back of the receiver. When it is pumped forward (it is operated by a forward then back motion, the opposite of most conventional pump actions today) the barrel is pushed forward (using, I would guess, a cylindrical cam/screw system so that the barrel is moved a shorter distance than the forend). While the barrel is moving forward, a feeding device is rotated and scoops up a cartridge from the magazine. When the forend is pumped back, the barrel is moved back toward the bolt head, scooping up and chambering the cartridge. I can only imagine how dreadful this gun must have been to operate. Instead of moving the bolt mass around like in a conventional gun, the entire mass of the barrel had to be cammed back and forward.

The stock on this gun is also interesting. It is clearly a copy of the British L1A1 SLR stock. Parker Hale did in fact supply parts for the L1A1 so this stock could simply be a modified L1A1 SLR stock. Because it is using a synthetic L1A1-style stock, this gun probably had to be made somewhere between the late 1950s and early 1980s.

The patents for the successful Winchester Model 1897 and 1912 pump action shotguns would have expired long before this gun was conceived. I can’t imagine why they did not utilize the proven pump action concepts invented by Mr Browning so many decades earlier. Then again, it was not the strangest shotgun invented by the British post-WWII. At the risk of offending my British colleagues, I think at that time the British arms industry was desperate to regain the prominence they enjoyed in days long past and so had a touch of Not Invented Here syndrome.

[Hat Tip: Mick Shepherd & Small Arms Illustrated]