Armed Citizen vs. The Dillinger Gang: the Harry Berg incident

American Handgunner, Nov-Dec, 2006 by Massad Ayoob

Situation: Dillinger and his gang hold up the bank down the street with automatic weapons. You only have a small-caliber revolver. Should you take them on?

Lesson. History tells us that one courageous armed citizen did exactly that. We can learn from his tactics, and his survival of intense return fire.

John Dillinger was the quintessential desperado of the Depression years, the Jesse James of his time. Lionized by an anti-establishment public as a heroic Robin Hood, he and his band of distinctly un-Merry Men were as feared and hated by bankers and businessmen as Al-Qaeda terrorists are today.

In a time when the public followed the exploits of "name" criminals and treated them as celebrities, Dillinger had become the Number One Furtive on the Most Wanted list of the Division of Investigations, later known as FBI, and J. Edgar Hoover had established a "Dillinger Squad" headquartered at the Chicago office under the command of star agent Melvin Purvis. Dillinger had formed an alliance with Lester Gillis, a.k.a. "Baby Face Nelson."

The gang members were a striking contrast in character. Dillinger himself was described by almost all who met him (other than across a gun) as a likeable "people person," an Indiana farm boy who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. He was said to have felt great remorse for the one man he had ever killed, a cop who had been shooting at him when Dillinger cut him down with a burst from his trademark weapon, a Thompson sub-machine gun. "Nelson," on the other hand, was a psychopath who seemed to enjoy killing: a man with a trigger-quick temper who acted out his rage instantly and with gunfire. Dillinger's righthand man, Homer Van Meter, was a gaunt-faced sociopath who didn't seek opportunities to kill as Nelson did, but never hesitated to pull the trigger on anyone who stood between him and his goals of money and escape.

All were said to be skilled marksmen, and both gangs favored the high-tech weaponry of the period. Many weapons had been looted from police stations, along with body armor that the gang members wore on bank jobs. The Thompson was a favorite of Dillinger and Nelson alike. Though Dillinger was famous for having said, "Never trust a woman, a district attorney or an automatic pistol," he carried Colt automatics almost exclusively, usually Government Model .45s and Pocket Model .380s. Nelson was also a Colt man, using .45s and, toward the end of his career, .38 Supers. Van Meter was likewise partial to the .38 Super. It had been developed for police for shooting through auto bodies and "bulletproof" vests, and appealed to outlaws for the same reason.

The Robbery

On Saturday, June 30, 1934, just before noon, a large brown Hudson sedan pulled up near the Merchants' National Bank at 229 South Michigan Street in South Bend, Indiana. It double-parked around the corner on Wayne Street, west of the bank. Five heavily armed men emerged from the big sedan. All were packing handguns, all were wearing ballistic vests, and four carried long guns crudely concealed under white cloth.