In 1969, Carroll Childers, a weapon engineer at the NSW Center started work on what he hoped would be a radical new design to give less fucks. Based on the needs and feedback from Navy SEAL teams and Marine reconnaissance troops in Vietnam, he came up with the Special Operations Weapon or SOW.
This shotgun’s features made it an attractive weapon for specialized units that often had very specific requirements.
During the Vietnam War, Marines complained about how contemporary scatterguns needed to be constantly reloaded during firefights, couldn’t reliably hit anything — let alone kill — at even modest ranges and couldn’t stand up to the abuse of a patrol.
The SOW prototype looked fearsome and crude, but it solved many of these key problems. The gun was fully automatic and fed from a 10-round, detachable magazine. Unlike the fixed tubular designs on most shotguns of the day, a shooter with an SOW wouldn’t need to reload one shell at a time, and they could swap out ammunition types — pellets, solid slugs and more — with relative ease.
Childers’ gun was also compact compared to the other types of firearms troops took into the Vietnamese jungle, at least in length. With its simple stock folded — or removed — the SOW was shorter than the pump-action Remington Model 870.
Development of the Childers SOW and its 12-gauge ammunition never went into full scale production due to funding being rescinded. #facelifts