Forgotten Weapons: The World War II Lethal Dart Gun That Never Quite Worked Out
"Bigot" was the code name of a very interesting and creative-if not ultimately practical-OSS clandestine weapon developed at the end of World War II. It was a conversion of a 1911 pistol to silently fire 6" long step darts. How's that for unique?
The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) was the American organization responsible for covert operations behind enemy lines, involving espionage, sabotage, and all manner of sneaky cloak and dagger schemes. Shortly after the end of the war, it would basically become the CIA. Many of the OSS's weapons and gadgets were given code names, and in this case "Bigot" came from the basic operation of the weapon-a spigot mortar scaled down to handgun size.
The actual conversion itself was remarkably simple. It was of a breech plug that fit into the chamber of the pistol and a long rod that would be inserted in the barrel and screwed into the breech plug. The rod contained a long firing pin, so that when the pistol trigger was pulled, it would detonate a cartridge at the end of the rod.
The ammunition for the Bigot consisted of point steel darts with sliding fin assemblies. In the nose of the dart were .25 ACP blank shells, and the center of the dart was hollow, and exactly the right diameter to fit tightly on the rod in the pistol's barrel. To load the weapon, one would simply slide a dart onto the rod all the way into the pistol barrel.
Upon firing, the firing pin would hit the blank .25 cartridge, which would be blown back down the length of the dart and seal at its base. This would throw the dart forward out of the gun, and also seal all of the firing gasses inside the body of the dart, making it silent. Presto! A perfect weapon for covertly killing guards … or maybe not.
While these guns were actually developed and tested by the OSS, they never went into service -and there is a reason for that. I have not found any testing reports on the Bigot's original performance (and probably never will, given the agency's secrecy), but I did have the opportunity to fire a modern reproduction of the Bigot and that gave me some insight into it's practical applications, or lack thereof.
The opportunity came as part of the now-cancelled television program "Sons of Guns,"and there were a number of differences between the reproduction system and the original. For one thing, the fit of the darts to the rod was not as tight as on the original, and in addition the reproduction used a lighter powder charge to avoid blowing the dart heads off. Due to time constraints in the television production schedule, it was not possible to test and improve the dart design to be as strong as the originals.
At any rate, the reproduction darts had a maximum range of about 10 feet. I fired a total of six darts at a glass bowl target roughly 8 feet away, and the result was two darts hitting and breaking the glass, two darts hitting the glass and bouncing off, and two darts failing to make it to the glass bowl. Not exactly lethal.
Now, of course, the original darts with a better gas seal and more powder would have had a higher muzzle velocity and a longer range, but I suspect that the reason the project was eventually abandoned was an inability to get the darts moving fast enough to be useful at any reasonable distance. Some people have speculated that the Bigot was designed to throw lines or for use underwater, and my experience suggests that it would have been radically underpowered for either of those uses.
Ultimately, the tried and true sound suppressor used on a standard .45 ACP 1911 pistol would have been much more effective, even if it caused the pistol to malfunction. The Bigot certainly is an interesting James Bond-ian of piece of hardware to look at, though!
Ian McCollum is the founder of ForgottenWeapons.com, a website and YouTube channel dedicated preserving the history of rare and obscure guns from around the world.
