The Lee-Enfield series of rifles was born in 1895 as a marriage between the magazine and bolt action, designed by the J. P. Lee, and the new pattern of barrel rifling, designed at the Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) at Enfield. Originally known as Lee-Metford, this design was adopted by British army in 1888 and used a Metford pattern rifling with shallow groves, intended to be used with ammunition loaded with black powder. Introduction of the smokeless powders in the form of the Cordite showed that the Metford rifling was very short-living, so it was soon replaced with Enfield rifling, with 5 traditional land and grooves and left hand pitch. Early Lee-Enfield rifles, officially known as a “.303 caliber, Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Enfield”, were carried by the British army through the Boer war (South Africa) of 1899-1902, and Boers, armed with their Mausers, taught to the Brits some hard lessons. And, unlike some other Empires, Brits were quick lo learn. In 1903, they introduced a new design, which improved over the older Lee-Metfords and Lee-Enfields in some important respects. The main improvements was the introduction of the “universal” rifle idea. The common thinking of the period was to issue the long rifle for infantry and the carbine for cavalry, artillery and other such troops. The Brits decided to replace this variety of sizes with one, “intermediate” size, that will fit all niches. This “one size fits all” rifle was called “.303 caliber, Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield, Mark 1″, or, in short SMLE Mk.I, where “short” referred to the length of the rifle. This rifle passed some improvements during the following pre-WW1 years, finalizing in the 1907 as a SMLE Mk.III. Read the rest of this entry »

The M1 carbine is an interesting little weapon. The original request for a compact and lightweight shoulder arm to replace service handguns for second-line (non-fighting) troops was first issued by US Army in 1938. The idea behind this request was that a shoulder arm, such as carbine, firing ammunition of moderate power, will have more effective range and will be much simpler to train the users to fire it accurately, than the standard .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol or revolver. This request was probably the first recognition of the need in the Personal Defense Weapon in the modern sense. Request was shelved for some time and re-issued in 1940. It included the new cartridge of .30 caliber but of power far less than of US general issue .30-06 ammunition. The cartridge, officially named the “cartridge, ball, .30 caliber, M1″, was developed by the Winchester company. It was a straight-case, rimless design with round-nose bullet weighting 110 grains (7.1 gram) and muzzle velocity of 1860 fps (~ 570 m/s). Muzzle energy was about 2 times more than of .45ACP pistol cartridge but still almost 3 times less than of .30-06 rifle cartridge. In the modern sense the .30 carbine cartridge can be called an “intermediate” but the lack of the muzzle energy and round nosed bullet limited the effective range to about 200 meters or so. Anyway, it had still much longer range than any pistol round of its time, along with moderate recoil. Many companies submitted their designs for US Army trials but the winner eventually became the Winchester. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mauser company, established by the two Mauser brothers, established its reputation in firearms making in the last decades of the XIX century, and continued to build a very well thought-out and skillfully built firearms until the end of the World War 2. Some years after the WW2, the Mauser company was restored in the West Germany and continued to build firearms, but mostly a larger-caliber ones, like the aircraft cannons etc. But some of earlier Mauser works became the standards against which all others designs are judged, even after some 100 years after its introduction. One of such designs, is undoubtfully a Mauser model 1898 rifle, also known as Gew. 98 or simply G98 (G = Gewehr, rifle in German). This rifle was designed from the experience, gained on previous Mauser designs, and was first appeared in 1898 as a standard German army infantry rifle. It was carried by Germans through the First World war, along with carbine shortened version, known as K98 (or Kar-98, from Karbiner = carbine). In the 1904 Germans were first to introduce the new, “spitzer” bullet (with pointed tip, instead of the older blunt, round-shaped tip). New bullet had much better long-range ballistic, so all sights were regraduated for new ammunition.

During the interwar period this fine design was slightly altered to became the K98k – Karbiner Kurz, or short carbine – a somewhat shorter, lighter and handier version of the original one. This version appeared in 1935 and was manufactured until the 1945 in large numbers not only by Germans, but also in numerous countries, occupied by Germans. Many versions of this design also were licensed to other countries, which also used to build their own versions of the G98. Most famous of those “foreign Mausers” are Persian Mausers, Turkish Mausers, Czech VZ-24 Mausers, Yugoslavian Mausers and some others. The list of the vast variety of the Mauser-type versions could easily cover a number of pages, but, for the sake of compactness, I will describe only the basic, German model. Read the rest of this entry »

French army was among the first to adopt the smokeless rifle ammunition in the form of 8mm Lebel cartridge in 1886. By the early 1920s this rimmed cartridge became obsolete, so French began to develop a more modern, rimless cartridge, more suitable for proposed lightweight machine guns. By the 1924 French army had the new 7.5mm cartridge, but this proved to be unsuccessful, and by the 1929 the updated version of the 7.5mm ammunition has been adopted as 7.5mm Cartouche Mle.1929C (7.5×54mm). By the same time, French also developed a lightweight machinegun, the MAC 1929. Initially, French tried to convert earlier 8mm Berthier rifles for new ammunition, but it was apparent that the new rifle is desirable for French infantry. In 1936 French military officially adopted the MAS Mle.1936 (MAS-36) bolt-action rifle, developed by the Manufacture D’Armes de Saint-Etienne. Later on, French forces adopted the modified paratrooper’s version, known as MAS-36 CR 39. This version differed from basic rifle by the aluminum buttstock, which can be folded down and under the forend. This rifle served with French armed forces until the semi-automatic MAS-49 and MAS-49/56 replaced it in service during 1950s and 1960s. The MAS-36 rifle was in production up until the mid-1950s. The MAS-36 action also served as a platform for FR F-1 and FR F-2 sniper rifles, which are still in service with French Armed forces. Since 1951, some of MAS-36 rifles were converted or made into MAS-36/51 pattern, by adding the permanently attached grenade launchers and rifle grenade sights. Grenade launcher was attached to the muzzle of the gun, and was used to launch rifle grenades using special blank ammunition. Folding grenade sight was attached to the left side of the front sight base. Read the rest of this entry »

The Steyr M1895 rifle, also known as Steyr-Mannlicher M95 straight pull rifle, was developed by famous Austrian arms designer Ferdinand Ritter Von Mannlicher. Based on his previous M1890 design, this rifle was manufactured in Austro-Hungarian Empire at state arms factories in Steyr (Austria) and Budapest (Hungary). More than 3 millions of M95 rifles were produced between 1895 and 1918. This rifle was issued to Austro-Hungarian army, and, after the fall of the Empire, to the Austrian and Hungarian armies. Originally produced in 8×50R caliber, in 1924 some of M95 rifles were converted to the German 7.92×57 Mauser (also known as 8×57 Mauser) ammunition. These converted rifles featured shorter 58 cm barrels, were designated as M95/24 and used in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. This conversion gave away with original Mannlicher en bloc clip, and replaced it with Mauser stripper clips. Since 1930 Austria converted most of the M95 rifles to the more powerful 8×56R M30 ammunition, using the same Mannlicher en bloc clips. These rifles were designated as M95/30, and marked with the letter “S” on the receiver ring. Hungary started to convert their rifles to the same 8×56R ammunition in 1931, with the upgraded rifles being marked with the letter “H” on the receiver ring. Many of the M95 rifles were used during the Word War 2 by the Hungarian, Bulgarian and Italian armies, as well as by some German police forces. Read the rest of this entry »

Melvin C. Johnson, an American arms designer, developed his semiautomatic rifle by the mid-1938, and submitted it to the US Army trials. Trials and development of the rifle continued until the early 1940, when the Army Ordnance Board finally rejected the Johnson rifle as being too long and heavy, and potentially unreliable with the bayonet attached. Same year Johnson submitted his rifle for trials to the US Marine Corps, where it was tested against M1 Garand rifle. First tests results were good for Johnson, but later on the M1 Garand rifle was found superior to it. Read the rest of this entry »

The origins of the Ross rifle lie in the late-1890s patents of the noble Canadian Sir Charles Ross, who developed his own pattern of the straight pull rifles, broadly based on Austrian Mannlicher M1890 / 1895 system. British and Canadian forces tested Ross rifles circa 1900-1901, but these rifles, while being quite fast in action, completely failed the reliability tests. The only fact that Britain refused to supply Canada with enough Lee-Enfield rifles during the second Boer war resulted in adoption of the .303 caliber Ross Mark I rifle in 1902. First rifles were delivered to Canadian military and Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1905. These rifles were manufactured at the Ross Rifle Co, in Quebec. In 1907, Ross introduced a slightly improved Mark II rifle. Between 1907 and 1912, Ross turned out several star-marked modifications of the basic mark II pattern, which differed in barrel lengths, safety arrangements and other such minor modifications. Read the rest of this entry »