Winchester Model 12 navy, need help with ID, value.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

Texwing,

I have Bruce Canfiel's book "Complete Guide to COMBAT SHOTGUNS" and did some research on your gun.

The barrel date falls in line with your serial number. It appears that your gun was built from the beginning as a 'Training Gun' and never was a 'riot gun' or a 'trench gun'.

The M12 training guns are only mentioned on five different pages, but there is a section of the book that explains how the training shotguns from various companies were used. The Navy and the Army Air Force used them to train aerial machine gunners. They shot clay pigeons as practice and often mounted turrets on the top of trucks to have the gunners practice shooting clay pigeons from the moving trucks.

*** There’s an interesting photo in the book of sailors using Mod 11’s and they're shooting clay pigeons from the deck of the USS Yorktown!

Bruce Canfield doesn’t go into very much detail on each of the training guns, and states the scope of the book is about combat shotguns.

I had his book and was looking for information about a Remington Mod 11 I had been considering that had a long barrel. His book discussed it briefly, so I emailed him from his web site and he was very helpful. The seller of the shotgun I was looking at thought he had a long barrel Mod 11 ‘riot gun’ and was asking the price of a riot gun. With the Remington, the barrel is serialized to the receiver and Mr. Canfield told me to check if they matched and they did. The Mod 11 training gun was worth much less than a Mod 11 riot gun, even though they are exactly the same other than the barrel.
(Long story short, I used the book and eventually convinced the seller it wasn’t a 'riot gun', or 'trench gun', and I bought the training gun for about what Mr. Canfield said it was worth.)

Info from Mr. Canfield's Book –

Winchester records indicate they sold the government 61,014 M12’s from April, 1942 to March, 1944.
Serial numbers approximately 939,500 – 1,036,000

Chris is correct 100% about the production. Most of the M12’s were produced as trench guns, but there were many M12's produced as riots guns, and training guns at the same time. There weren’t any ‘blocks of numbers’ to distinguish them.

Your gun’s serial number, ‘922,xxx’ looks as if it would have been most likely produced in 1941, matching the ‘41’ on your barrel date.

I think you’ll enjoy Mr. Canfield book if you decide to get it. There’s a lot of interesting info, and knowledge is everything.

I hope this helps,
~ Harlan

PS -

Here are some photos of my Remington mod 11 training gun.
It's not a desirable trench gun, but these played a part in WWII history too.
Mr. Canfield told me that many people have cut the barrels off of these to make them look like trench guns, but the nomenclature stamped on them show they clearly are not, and the value is ruined as far as even being a training gun.