RIAC is offering up spy guns & military firearms from a bygone era to the collecting public in August

Rock Island, Illinois - In advance of its summer flagship event, Rock Island Auction Company has compiled a list of spy guns and military firearms from a bygone era that will be available to the collecting public the weekend of August 25 to 27. Weapons were owned by OSS and CIA agents, and a heroic flyer, were contained in police inventories, and intended to defend democracy. They are all available in Rock Island Auction’s August Premier Auction.

Spy Guns and Other Tools of the Craft

Officially known as the Sedgley Mark Two “Fist Gun” Hand Firing Device with Fitted Glove, this weapon was never an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) spy gun but made for the U.S. Navy. Stanley M. Haight patented the single-shot gun in 1944. People may recognize the gun from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” when two of the protagonists have to take out a pair of Nazi guards. Only 50 to 200 were produced as a weapon of last resort and there doesn’t appear to be any recorded instances of the gun being used in combat because of the weapon’s impracticality.

The Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t acknowledge this spy gun exists. However, in the early 1960s as the Cold War and Vietnam War started heating up, the Central Intelligence Agency was looking for a clandestine weapon to drop to allies. It took inspiration from the single shot Liberator that was made during World War 2, and created the Deer Gun. These spy guns bore no serial numbers and were packaged with Styrofoam with rounds of ammunition and illustrated instructions. The CIA ordered 1,000 Deer Guns on a contract for $300,000. Of the original guns made, about 20 remain in circulation. A Deer Gun is available in RIAC’s August Premier Auction in a solitary lot.

During World War 2, pilots were issued Escape & Evasion Kits, with gold coins and jewelry that could be used to barter for safe passage if they came down behind enemy lines. Each “barter kit” was individually serial numbered so pilots had to sign them out and return them for each mission.

No one had to barter for their freedom so the Escape and Evasion Kits were collected and sat until 1979 when they started going up for auction with the highest bid coming in at $4,000. The kits’ original cost was $30 each.

A hush-hush mission, code named Operation Tidal Wave, was planned using B-24 Liberators flying from Libya for a mass low-altitude bombing attack against Romanian oil fields at Ploesti. The operation was considered a failure, and the mission cost 54 bombers lost and 440 aircrew killed, and 220 captured or missing. Lt. Homer S. Gentry was a navigator on one of the B-24s who returned from the mission safely.

In April 1944, Gentry, as navigator of the B-24 “Patriotic Patty,” was killed in action, setting course after a raid as he bled to death, wounded by anti-aircraft fire. Among his personal effects were a Remington Rand Model 1911A1 pistol, a flight jacket, and other personal artifacts that are available in the August Premier Auction.

Rex Applegate was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and was recruited by OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan during WW2. Donovan gave Applegate the task of building a training camp for OSS officers in a remote part of Maryland. He coordinated instruction in hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting, and shooting spy guns. The training camp was initially called Area B, before becoming the presidential retreat of Shangri-La, and then Camp David. Applegate retired as a lieutenant colonel at the end of World War 2, and spent the rest of his career teaching riot control tactics. A knife and gun collector, Applegate’s Al Mar Knives 10th anniversary commemorative Bowie Knife is available in RIAC’s August Premier Auction.

Birch O’Neal was a CIA agent who served as the Guatemala station chief during the CIA’s 1954 coup who moved on to the Special Investigations Group. He opened the file on Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1959, which brought him into the sphere of John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists. O’Neal, who little is known because of his work for the CIA, owned a Registered Smith & Wesson Magnum that will be on offer in Rock Island Auction Company’s August Premier Auction.

Initially conceived as a trench gun, the Thompson submachine gun didn’t make it into service in World War 1, but the Tommy gun found a home with gangsters and the police that fought to stop them. The Tommy gun could be found in the United States military arsenal and police armories, with more than 1.5 million of the M1928A1 and M1A1 produced during World War 2.

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