Welcome to in the present day’s Photo of the Day! Here we’ve a particularly uncommon behemoth of a pistol. This is the Mars Semi Automatic Pistol designed by Englishman Hugh Gabbet Fairfax. The Mars was mainly the AMT Automag of its day however not even to the purpose that it was marketed or bought in giant quantity. No one Mars pistol is like one other and all had been hand constructed. They had been manufactured in several chamberings, most notably within the 45 Mars cartridge which was the most important of its day. This explicit one is chambered for the .360 Mars cartridge which is analogous in dimensions to a 9mm projectile. They had been submitted for army trials and rejected swiftly each time for his or her ginormous measurement and violent recoil. The authorities’s official advice to Hugh Gabbet Fairfax was that he scales the pistols down considerably for a good shot at trials however he had no curiosity or intentions of ever doing so.
“These early automatic pistols utilized several very unique designs, namely they had a round, rotating bolt with three opposed locking lugs, it utilized a clip/magazine that loaded through the pistol grip itself with the cartridge being loaded via an elevator/carrier in the receiver which actually stripped the cartridges out the magazine backwards and then lifted it up and into the chamber of the barrel. A very unique and certainly one of a kind mechanism. The pistol itself is extremely well made with all hand fitted parts with a fine British rust blued finish and wonderful checkered walnut grip panels. This is an extremely early version with the serial number “4” stamped on the underside fringe of the journal properly/pistol body with the left hand facet of the body marked: [“MARS” PISTOL 360]. It has a full-length rib integral with the barrel with a tangent rear sight with 4 elevation steps and a beaded entrance sight blade. The again strap was initially manufactured for a shoulder inventory (not included with this pistol), and it’s full with one unique journal with the lanyard loop on the bottom. Although these pistols had a complicated, tremendous excessive velocity cartridge, in addition they had an unusually very sturdy recoil. The design of the pistol, having all the recoil mechanism on the rear of the gun, additionally exacerbated the recoil, creating an nearly uncontrollable recoil each time it was fired.”
Lot 1438: Mars Semi Automatic .360 Gabbet Fairfax – Exceptionally Rare Serial Number 4 Gabbet Fairfax Mars .360 Semi-Automatic Pistol. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. {photograph}. Retrieved November 7, 2022, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/64/1438/mars-semi-automatic-360-gabbet-fairfax.
