What an interesting story! Workers were cleaning out asbestos in an old factory stumbled upon a 57mm recoilless rifle. The same factory at one time made M3 grease gun parts and magazines.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008 12:01 PM CST

Blast from the past: Korean War-era weapon found at Chamberlain site

By JEFF REINITZ, Courier Staff Writer

WATERLOO --- Workers clearing out asbestos at the former Chamberlain Manufacturing building stumbled across a 50-year-old artillery weapon that had been left over from the plant's heyday as an ordinance factory.

"It doesn't look like much, but it looked like it might shoot some short of artillery shell of some sort," said Chris Western, an associate planner for the city, which owns the property.

"It was just leaning in the corner. We thought, what do we do with this? We need to not let this fall in the wrong hands," Western said.

Officers with the police bomb squad seized the weapon, which consisted of a 5-foot tube that was slathered in packing grease, and determined it was a 57 mm recoilless rifle, said Capt. Bruce Arends with the Waterloo Police Department.

The 57 mm recoilless rifles were heavier versions of the popular bazooka and had greater range.

Able to be fired from the shoulder or on a bipod, they were popular during the Korean War but are now obsolete.

"In the '50s, we developed some 57 mm, and then that particular weapon went out of favor," said Stan Smith of Cedar Falls, who had been Chamberlain's marketing manager.

The fate of the gun found last week isn't clear.

Police could have the weapon destroyed, but there is also interest in submitting it to a local museum or a military museum, Western said.

Chamberlain Manufacturing closed in 1994, and since then the building has been a frequent target for vandals and thieves.

"It's pretty well stripped," Western said.

He said it was amazing that burglars hadn't swiped the recoilless rifle, which until last week was locked in a 12-by-12-foot vault room with boxes of factory records.

"It looks like someone was trying to get in it for years," Western said. He said the vault door finally rusted through, and it fell off.

The factory made munitions for the United States military and often housed a number of weapons to test the products.

"Generally, when weapons systems were provided to us by the military, they remained government property ... At the conclusion of the work, they were 'demilled' and taken apart," said Gary Wilcox of Waterloo, a former Chamberlain employee.

He doesn't recall the 57 mm recoilless but remembers packing up .45-caliber Thompson drums and M3 "grease gun" submachine guns and a Browning Automatic Rifle to return to the military when the plant closed.

Smith said the weapon uncovered last week was provided to Chamberlain in a demilled --- incapable of firing --- form.

"I am positive that recoilless rifle is demilitarized," Smith said. "All we were interested in was the barrel of it."

Chamberlain developed a high explosive round that could be fired from the weapon, and workers needed the barrel to line up rifling grooves with the round's rotating band.

Before the 57 mm round could go into production in Waterloo, the Army lost interest in the weapon because the larger 106 mm recoilless rifle packed more of a punch when it came to targeting tanks, Smith said.

Contact Jeff Reinitz at (319) 291-1578 or jeff.reinitz@wcfcourier.com.Note: Blast from the past: Korean War-era weapon found at Chamberlain site