The “Bigot” was a dart-firing modification of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol developed by the Office of Strategic Services during WW2. The OSS was a clandestine operations service, the predecessor of the CIA. The Bigot was intended as a way for commandos to quietly eliminate sentries – although we are not sure what advantage it might have had over a silenced pistol. Questionable utility doesn’t prevent it from being a pretty interesting piece of equipment, though.

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15 Comments

  1. Awesome. Thank you very much. I had never heard of the Bigot pistol conversion. What were the fins made of? Aluminum or steel? If they are steel, they would probably be devastating on unarmored targets.

  2. I suggest this is a conversion to underwater use, the dart idea is similar to the Russian APS. Putting the cartridge in the dart head avoids risking damage to pistol itself due to abnormal pressures in the chamber on firing. The fins might well provide a solution to the lack of stabilization in the Russian weapons.

  3. I just had a conversation with some friends in DoD, we discussed a recent scandal involving Isreali assassin who used a poison dart. I was suprised to hear but darts are still commonly used in place of suppressed guns in cloak and dagger operations because they are less messy in public areas

  4. like the bulgarian umbrella it shoots a ricin poisoned platinum ball once the victim is hit he will get a fever and after three days he is dead. and there is no cure therapy or antidot.

  5. once a guy told me a story about such a 1911 dart gun, and that it was used ,in the vietnamese tunnels to take out vietcong.
    in my opinion this gun seems to be very effective against vampires.

    • No – the one in the photos and video here is an original, made by the OSS sometime between late 1944 and early 1946. The Sons of Guns TV show used it as the basis for making a reproduction.

  6. I watched the SOG episode featuring the ‘Bigot Gun’ recently, which was great, but noticed a problem with the ‘dart’ design. In the high-speed videos it can be seen that it has a stability problem. As far as I can tell this caused by the fin unit not locking to the rear when fired. The result when fired being that its base hits the rear of the shaft, rebounds off it and then travels back up along the shaft to the head. This will result in the wrong distribution of pressure (the center of pressure is in the wrong place) and mass for correct flight. Then again, as the center of mass is pretty far forwards it should at least fly roughly straight, but the tail will ‘waggle’ as seen. Has anything been done to ‘fix’ the darts so the tail now locks back?

    • The reproduction Bigot made for the show wasn’t worked on at all after the show filmed. Part of the reason for the issue you saw was that the repro fins were machined from an aluminum block, while the original darts used much lighter and thinner stamped fins. The originals did not have any mechanism for locking the fins to the rear, though. I don’t think stability was a major concern with the design, as long as the darts didn’t actually tumble. The maximum range was literally about 15 feet, so it didn’t have to provide much accuracy compared to a conventional firearm.

  7. I’m thinking a conventional crossbow would work better.
    If ya got caught with one of these Fritz would most likely experiment with it on your rear end.

  8. If my memory is correct a variant of this was also shown during the 70s era US House of Congress Hearings on Assassinations.

  9. I read somewhere, that the weapon was constructed to be completely silent. When the blank fired, it was accelerated down the shaft drivind the dart off the spigot. The shaft had a choking point at it’s rear end. The blank wedged into it trapping the gas inside the shaft. So there should be no audible noise. That’s what I read…
    By the way: My cat wants to know the name of the cat, that can be heard.

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