William H Driggs was a US Navy officer who designed a number of improvements to rapid-firing guns starting in the early 1890s. By 1900 he had 15 patents for both complete guns and components, such as sights, mounts and breeches, along with one for a banding shell. He also had one patent jointly with his younger brother Louis (also an engineer), and one for a sliding breech mechanism jointly with Seaton Schroeder. On his retirement from the Navy he manufactured some guns, mostly 3-inch and Driggs-Schroeder 6pdr, on his own as the Driggs-Seabury Gun & Ammunition Company, and licensed the designs out to other manufacturers as well. The USN bought 259 and the Army 41 Driggs-Schroeder guns through 1909, and license-built 125 1pdr and 112 3-inch guns at the Washington Navy Yard.
His complete guns appear to have fallen out of favor with the introduction of the M1900-1903 series of guns, although some of his components continued to be used, and in 1902 the company barely escaped bankruptcy. In 1908 William Driggs died. Thus, by the time WW I came around Driggs-Seabury was primarily manufacturing smaller weapons, in particular Lewis MGs under license for Britain and Canada. This brought sufficient prosperty that in 1915 they acquired a majority interest in Savage Arms of Utica NY, although they chose to use the Savage name after that time.
In the meantime many of William's patents had passed by will to his younger brother Louis. Louis had not given up on the artillery side of the family business and to that end formed the Driggs Ordnance and Engineering Company, unrelated to the earlier Driggs-Seabury. Louis pinned his hopes on utilizing the Driggs systems to create a modern 3-inch anti-aircraft gun. Unfortunately, by the time he was ready to launch his project the war had ended, leaving the victors with huge stocks of weapons of all descriptions.
With very little money and no useable manufacturing capacity he launched two sales drives in 1928: one to Turkey for the 3-in AA gun, and one to Poland for the AA gun and a 47mm infantry accompanying gun. The Poles decided they did not have the money for the 3-inch, but did place an order for 3 infantry guns for trials purposes. The Driggs sales representative in Constantinople then told the Turks that Driggs had secured a contract from Poland for guns and that he would permit them to take advantage of the fact that Driggs was right now in full-scale production. He neglected to mention that the sale was only for three small guns. The Turks were wowed and signed a provisional contract for about 70 guns for $3.2 million. Unfortunately, they required a $240,000 performance bond.
The firm was unable to come up with the money and the contract revoked and went to Vickers instead. Shortly thereafter, having almost succeeded, the Driggs Ordnance & Engineering Co folded up.
It is really cool that you came up with a round for this very rare weapon.
