Did Bonnie and Clyde rob Plattville Armory?

Kendall County law enforcement officials were perplexed. Illinois National Guard officers were alarmed.

During the night of April 19, 1933, the Illinois National Guard Armory in the unincorporated Kendall County community of Plattville, south of Yorkville, was broken into. Taken were four Browning Automatic Rifles (nicknamed with its initials, the BAR), along with 11 Colt Model 1911 .45 cal. automatic pistols and several hundred rounds of ammunition.

The pistols, the standard U.S. Army sidearm, were heavy, rugged and extremely dependable. The BARs were powerful, fully automatic weapons that served the U.S. Army as well as the National Guard as their standard squad automatic weapon. Each squad was generally equipped with one BAR to augment the firepower of the Springfield M1903 bolt-action rifles that were standard equipment during those pre-World War II days. Both the BAR and the Springfield rifles were chambered for the powerful .30-06 cartridge.

The question that concerned law enforcement and military officials alike, was who, exactly, had taken the guns and why?

In an entertaining historical non sequitur, the editor of the Kendall County Record commented in the paper’s May 3 edition: “Hope the person who stole the four [BARs] from the armory is honest; we’d hate to face these guns in the hands of a crook.” Hopefully, he had prepared himself for disappointment, because after a spectacular July 20 shootout between the notorious Barrow Gang and law enforcement officers just outside Kansas City, Missouri, some of the BARs and pistols were recovered from the motel rooms the gang had occupied.

The late 1920s and early 1930s were a particularly lawless time in the U.S. in general and in the Midwest in particular. And among the most famous, and most violent, of the gangs afflicting the region in the early 1930s was the Barrow Gang, made famous to a new generation in Arthur Penn’s 1967 film, “Bonnie and Clyde.”

Clyde Barrow was the leader of the gang, with his girlfriend Bonnie Parker (Parker was married to another man who was in jail at the time), Clyde’s brother, Buck, and Buck’s wife, Blanche, along with W.D. Jones comprising the most consistent members.

They were occasionally joined by Henry Methvin, Raymond Hamilton, Joe Palmer and Ralph Fults.

Although the gang garnered a lot of publicity thanks to Bonnie and Clyde’s knack for getting attention, they were notable for the short period of time during which they were active, a period that only ran from 1932 to 1934.

The gang primarily engaged in small business hold-ups early on, but then decided to add bank robbery to their repertoire. The gang was notorious for its ferocious counter-attacks whenever confronted by law enforcement. The BAR was Clyde Barrow’s weapon of choice, and easily out-gunned most lawmen of the era. Although limited to 20-round detachable magazines, the BAR on full automatic could fire more than 500 rounds a minute.

John Browning invented the weapon for U.S. troops during World War I, where it proved extremely effective, with its high rate of fire and long range – the BAR was accurate up to 1,500 yards and had a maximum range of nearly three miles.

It could also be loaded with armor-piercing rounds, another thing Barrow favored.

The automatic weapon with which most law enforcement agencies of the era were armed was the Thompson submachine gun – the famed Tommy Gun.

The Thompson, however, while having a faster rate of fire than the BAR, fired the same cartridge as the .45 cal. pistol, and had an effective range of only 170 yards or so.

On April 13, 1933, when police officers raided the apartment in Joplin, Missouri, where Bonnie, Clyde, Buck, Blanche and W.D. Jones were hiding out after a four-month crime spree, they thought they were raiding a bootlegging operation.

The police were caught by surprise when the Barrow gang opened up with a vicious barrage of automatic weapons fire, killing Constable John Harryman and police officer Harry McGinnis.

Although the gang escaped, they were forced to leave most of their belongings and weapons behind.

Six days later, the Plattville National Guard Armory was raided and the four BARs, 11 Colt .45 automatic pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were stolen. A week or so later, the gang hit a bank in Indiana.

During the next two and a half months, the Barrow Gang continued its wide-ranging campaign of lawlessness in Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. And then on July 20, they decided to find someplace to lay low, choosing the Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri, just outside Kansas City.

But their suspicious behavior caused people in the neighborhood to call the authorities. This time the police showed up in force armed with submachine guns, a car that had been armored, plus a mobile plate steel bulletproof shield.

The armored sedan pulled up to block the garage door behind which the gang’s car was parked, and Sheriff Holt Coffee rapped on the door of one of the two tourist cabins the gang occupied and demanded they come out. No dummy, he immediately ducked behind the steel shield.

Clyde and Buck Barrow and Jones instantly replied with a withering fusillade of BAR fire, literally driving Coffee’s shield backwards.

The gang also shot up the armored car, their armor-piercing .30-06 rounds perforating the car’s light armor, wounding the driver who backed up to avoid the shooting, allowing the gang to escape. But both Buck and Blanche Barrow were seriously wounded.

Amazingly, none of the dozens of spectators or police officers were badly injured.

When the dust and smoke cleared, police found some of the pistols and BARs stolen from Kendall County, which were later apparently returned.

Barrow and Parker were killed in a police ambush on May 23, 1934, on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They were shot in their automobile by a posse of six officers, four from Texas and two from Louisiana.

So, did Bonnie and Clyde rob the Plattville armory on April 19, or did one of their compatriots who then gave the weapons to the Barrow Gang?

They were in Joplin, Missouri, on April 13 and attempted a bank robbery in Indiana on May 12, and given Clyde’s love of long-distance high-speed driving taking random routes, it’s certainly possible. Maybe even probable.