Robert Hillberg
| Robert Hillberg | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 27, 1917 Anamosa, Iowa, United States |
| Died | August 12, 2012 (aged 94) Branford, Connecticut, United States |
| Occupation | firearm designer, deputy sheriff, expert witness |
Robert Hillberg (August 27, 1917 – August 12, 2012) was a firearm designer and the head of Research & Development at the High Standard Manufacturing Company. His designs included the folding shotgun stock, the Whitney Wolverine, the Wildey .45 gas-operated pistol, and the four-shot COP 357 Derringer. Hillberg developed a variety of insurgency weapons, primarily multiple barrel shotguns, which could be covertly distributed to partisan forces fighting in the United States' national interests.Gun Digest editors have described Hillberg as a "national treasure."
Born in Anamosa, Iowa on August 27, 1917, as a boy Robert L. Hillberg accompanied his father, Carl Walter Hillberg, on hunting trips in Minnesota and South Dakota. Although Hillberg did attend the University of Minnesota for several years, he was not formally trained in firearms design. He demonstrated a working prototype .357 Magnum submachine gun of his own design to Colt Firearms located in Hartford, Connecticut in 1938. Colt did not buy the gun, but they did offer Hillberg a job. In 1940 Hillberg accepted employment in the engineering department of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, in East Hartford, where he designed engine components.
Mr. Hillberg moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1942 to work as a project engineer for Bell Aircraft's ordinance division. In addition to aircraft projects (including the B-17) Hillberg completed a prototype .30 caliber carbine at Bell, which had been started at Pratt & Whitney. After the war, in 1947, he was placed in charge of Republic Aviation's armament division, in Farmingdale, New York. He worked on adapting weapons designed for use on the ground to aircraft, such as the F-84 Thunderjet as well as F-91 prototypes, with all the challenges inherent in that problem. While at Republic Hillberg designed several automatic pistols, including for the first time in the gun industry solving the problem of having interchangeable barrels for multiple calibers in the same gun.
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