Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. RIMFIRES • HOLT BODINSON • Space GUN redUx Return of the Whitney Wolverine. pening your mailbox in March, 1958, you would have been O greeted with the cover of GUNS magazine illustrating the most futuristic looking handgun on the market, the Whitney Wolverine. The Wolverine appeared to many of us to be across between the exotic Luger and our cherished Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers atomic pistols. The impression it left on me has lingered for 50 years. No sooner did the Wolverine arrive on the market than it disappeared from the market — the victim of a devastating marketing contract. Now, thanks to the persistence of Bob Schuetz, CEO of Olympic Arms, the Whitney Wolverine has returned. It still gives the impression of being the most rakish, space-age, .22 sporting handgun on the market plus, as I learned, it handles as well as it looks and is a lot of fun to shoot. The original Wolverine design was the brainchild of a gifted arms designer, Robert L. Hillberg. Over his career, Hillberg worked designing military armaments and sporting guns and was associated with Colt, Pratt & Whitney, Bell Aircraft, Republic Aviation, and High Standard before launching Whitney Firearms, Inc. in 1955. Some of his more familiar sporting designs include the Browning BPS shotgun, the Wildey gas-operated pistol and the first semiautomatic, short stroke, gas shotgun to use a coaxial gas piston around the magazine tube, a revolutionary design marketed by Sears, Roebuck and Co. as the J.C. Higgins Model 60. The Wolverine design had been rolling around in Hillberg’s mind for years. As an arms designer in the 1950s, he was frustrated by the state of the firearms industry. He felt it was in a rut. It wasn’t incorporating modern styling into its products, and it was bogged The futuristic lines of the Wolverine are as down with outdated manufacturing captivating today as they were 50 years ago. processes. As the head of Research and to manufacture interchangeable parts. Development at High Standard in the With the Wolverine, Hillberg early 1950s, he developed a close working achieved what he had been striving relationship with the Bellmore-Johnson for — a modern looking sport pistol Tool Co., a subcontractor manufactured using High Standard was using the latest materials and at the time to make the processes. Its styling T-152 tank machinegun was radically modern, under a contract with the quite unlike any other Springfield Armory. handgun on the market. Joining BellmoreIt fit the hand like a Johnson in 1954 as its chief glove and pointed like engineer, Hillberg was a laser. In fact, the only not only to take the T-152 design feature Hillberg contract with him but was admitted borrowing able to convince the officers from an existing of Bellmore-Johnson to set handgun was the round, up a subsidiary company checkered, cocking ears to manufacture a line of from the Luger’s toggle modern sporting arms. The The original Whitney Wolverine joint action. eventual name of the new graced the cover of the 1958 issue The heart of the company was Whitney of GUNS. original Wolverine was Firearms, Inc. of New an aluminum frame cast Haven, Connecticut, named in honor as one piece by Alcoa. By casting the of Eli Whitney of New Haven, who had frame, Hillberg was able to achieve an revolutionized firearms production in overall style and lines too prohibitive to 1798 by using patterns, jigs and fixtures machine Assembled into the shell of the frame were two sub-assemblies —the barreled action secured to the frame with a futuristic looking barrel nut and the fire control system. There were only three screws used in the gun, two for the grip panels and one for the sideplate, otherwise the Wolverine was designed and assembled so one part held another part in place, much like the Mauser Broomhandle. A nice shooting still futuristic-looking pistol, Extensive use was made of extrusions the long lost Whitney Wolverine 1950s-era for parts like the barrel nut and trigger. pistol is being reproduced by Olympic Arms. The extrusions came in 15' to 17' lengths, The Wolverine fits your hand like a glove. and the parts were literally sliced off and WWW.GUNSMAGAZINE.COM • JULY 2009 20