World War 1 Firearms. Who built and used what and why?

[miletus12]

I hope to generate discussion on this topic. As I found out from doing the Spanish American topic, the history of what arms a nation uses does not necessarily follow best practices or common sense. Human beings do influence choices because they either make mistakes or acquire ideas that they think will work when reality shows it does not work. The Spanish American War showed that the American Krag was a functional disaster. The Spanish Mauser was "superb".

So: to look at the Great War in this light, let us begin, by using a found resource that I discovered is unusual in this regard, that they give the history, cover the technology of the firearm, and test fire it a bit.

The resource is C&Rsenal. Their conclusions are from a certain bias, but they do try to be consistent.

 
  

Enjoy.

[simon darkshade]

The prewar British plans to change over to the .276 are I think an example of drawing the wrong lesson from the last war. The SMLE was the better rifle for the Great War. What could have happened differently?

[miletus12]

Jun 20, 2022 15:00:45 GMT simon darkshade said:

The prewar British plans to change over to the .276 are I think an example of drawing the wrong lesson from the last war. The SMLE was the better rifle for the Great War. What could have happened differently?

I think these British segments will answer your question. 



My own knowledge about the Long Lee and the Medford starts from the two US Navy Lees.  This origin knowledge is not from where you should start if you want to properly understand what the British were about. So here I defer to Othias and Mae.



My contributive comment about the SMLE and the retention of the .303 or rather the British service 7.7 mm is a physics one. Like the Americans, the British wanted a bullet that would carry inertia downrange and punch through sloppy earthworks and ill prepared improvised field fortifications.  What the British learned in the Boer War and the Americans also in the Spanish American War, was that a "short" universal rifle would be advantageous in crossing broken ground, but something that could reach through 18 inches of Boer earthworks or through a tree to get a Boer sniper hiding behind it, or punch into a Spanish blockhouse to get the Mauser toting tercio within, required a large mass bullet on the order of the British .303 or the American .30. Somewhere along the way, was the thought that the Benet Mercier portable machine gun that both services adopted for suppressive fire purposes, could and should use the same bullet as the service rifle. How that worked out is a different story (The British adopt the Lewis gun and the Americans were a complete set of ninnies thanks to the feud between Lewis and Crozier and did not listen to their own guy, Benet and botched both the training and the gun's manufacture.). But back to the rifle(s)... both services would discover that a short rifle mated to an over-powered bullet would beat up an average infantryman something awful due to recoil forces and wear him out. Both armies would have to wait a few decades to zero in on a lighter mass bullet that could do what the earlier 20th century bullets could do in the way of piercing obstacles to get the enemy hiding behind those obstacles.        

I will add, about the British lessons from WWI, that they still wanted a lesser mass bullet if it could retain the .303's carry downrange and end inertia effects. They were not prepared to discard the SMLE if it could be chambered and re-barreled and magazine welled to the smaller bore bullet provided the .276 could do what the .303 could. Money was the stumbling block. There was none available for a relatively low military priority.  

The Americans wanted a new rifle... period. The British designed Pattern 1917, which was their WWI service rifle was a better combat rifle than the Buffington botched Springfield 1903 (Sights were overcomplex and the idiot who calculated ballistics on that Buffington ladder sight was 200 to 300 yards wrong on flyout and also botched the windage gauge. This was not really detected until later. What a mess. M.); but it was too heavy, and it had some ergonomicsfunction issues not troops well liked. The Americans should have worked postwar on a decent light machine gun, too, but as I already mentioned... US Army Ordnance were in a default perpetual stupid condition labeled "ninny". 

[miletus12]

This is the "proof" that the French were and are clever innovative infantry rifle designers. I do have a warm fuzzy for the Berthier. This is one time I do not exactly agree with Othias and Mae. M.

[miletus12]

You think American army ordnance is screwed up? Meet the ROSS RIFLE!

[miletus12]

Meet the German version of the Ross Rifle.

The Germans have a reputation for good engineering and excellent chemistry and good metallurgy and good weapon design. HAH! Of course the Gewehr 88 was not defective because the 1888 Germans in Ordnance and manufacture were just as incredibly incompetent as the 1892 Americans with the Krag... it was the fault of the favorite hate group target in that era of German history (Well, WESTERN history, because the Dreyfus Affair was a thing and the Russian Czar had a pogrom in progress, and the American and British "Establishments" were what they were and so forth. M.). At least the Wilhelmine Germans jailed the hatemonger who generated the despicable sabotage and conspiracy rumors about this rifle. Later, that racist clown was run down in vehicle traffic.

The Germans made actual mistakes in nitrocellulose powder formulation, in steel alloys for gun barrels, in the shell case extractor, failed to weapon proof lot production, and did not rifle the lands and grooves in the first production runs properly. Just for comparison, the back-fixes the Germans implemented to weapon improve the Gewehr 88... The Americans went through those same fixes in the 1894, the 1896, the 1898, the 1901 versions of the Krag and finally abandoned the Krag in 1903 when a better rifle appeared to take its place.

Just so you know... history has congruence... and convergence...

The Germans try to modernize the Gewehr 1888...



The rifle went from enbloc to Mauser stripper clips; and the new bullet was a Spitzer or pointed bullet and how did this improvements program work out? Well, more barrel bursts, more frauds, and the Germans unloaded this trash rifle as fast as they could on the Romanians, the Greeks, the Turks, the Chinese or anyone who was dumb enough to buy this garbage rifle.      



The Germans got their replacement for their Gewehr 1888 dud in 1898. It was the Gewehr 1898, an improved Spanish 1892 Mauser. Makes an interesting contrast to the 1903 Springfield ... Mauser. 

[miletus12]

The British incompetence in this program is stupendous. The Americans were handed a half-finished series of hand-made British prototypes and a sample run of bollixed British ammo. The Americans were expected to figure it all out from there. The Americans spent a year tearing their hair out until they got their versions of the guns to run. The British finally sent this disaster to the front, and rejected it. The British soldiers really preferred their SMLE.

The British tried it out as a sniper rifle and it Ross'd out on them. The American-produced Winchester version finally made it to the British front in .303 as a sniper rifles around the end of the war, but it had little impact since its success was limited to the last two months.

Now, presently, the Americans were caught with their federal arsenals shut down by that idiot, Woodrow Wilson, before they entered the war in 1917. They were suddenly short 2 million rifles and they had no cadre of US government civil service gunmakers to make the standard Springfield 1903 Mauser rifle in those kinds of numbers.

And that is why the United States wound up making two million of these things. The companies of Winchester, Remington and Eddystone had three assembly and manufacture operations running to make the Pattern 14 at a projected 2 million rifles. 



The US Model 1917 was the developed Americanized Pattern 14 in USG 30.06. They (Winchester) were able to make a passable rifle out of the gobbler that was the British incompetently designed Pattern 14.

Basically, as the Americans understood, it came down to the British trying to run British rimmed ammunition through a Mauser designed action. That mistake (and the British compounded it when they sent three sets of unique hand fitted and shop made totally out of spec and function rifles to the three different American manufacturers, Remington, Winchester and Eddystone) and expected them to make an interchangeable parts universal rifle.) was easy to fix. Also incorporated into the error chain was the prototype process. It never occurred to the British to use blueprints and standard charted specs, and as such the American companies were forced to do that work themselves. Each manufacturer had to measure what it had been provided as a prototype in hardware. Remmington rifles could interchange parts with Remmington rifles based on the British supplied model they received, Winchester made rifles from that model could only interchange parts with Winchesters. Eddystones, could interchange parts with Remingtons and Eddystones from their British supplied prototype but not with Winchesters. Remington, apparently did the measurements on their own British supplied prototype hardware model and also the Eddystone model, found the errors and made the corrections for both and thus Remington and Eddystone made rifles could interchange parts.       

Plus, the British Tommy loved his SMLE and did not understand the Mauser action.

As much as American army historians despise William Crozier as an egomaniac, and an opinionated poltroon who let his personal prejudice get in the way of usually getting the mission done, he did manage to supervise the conversion of a British turkey into an acceptable and rather good American rifle. The key to getting it all to work was to change the bullet casing to a rimless or indented rim type to solve the extractor rips and rim stacking jams. (The US 30.06 would suffice here as the indented cartridged round.), stiffen up the magazine spring and accept that Winchester was going to make an oddball rifle, because they hated Remington, and accept that the Remington and Eddystone rifles would work with each other's parts because they were parts of a conglomerate, and that Winchester, being its own thing and way of doinmg, would not. Crozier was a nutjob, but he was a practical nutjob. He let the quartermaster corps run two lines of spare parts and crossed his fingers.

The upshot was that the American army had 1 million Springfield Mauser 1906s for the war and 2 million Americanized Pattern 14s. Which was the better gun? Historians have answered that one. The one in the hand NOW, which worked, was the better gun. That means the US Model 1917 was more present than the original Springfield 1906, because the Wilson administration had screwed up the federal arsenal system that Teddy Roosevelt put in place. The Model 1917 was not quite loved at all by the Doughboys because of its weight and poor combat ergonomics. The Springfield was more user friendly. Mechanically, however this gun worked as well as a Springfield Mauser, and that was what mattered when something in the hand was better than nothing.   

Another lesson from this Anglo-American debacle, you can take away, is that maybe what worked for the Spanish in 1892 and for the Boers in 1895, might have been good enough to deal with the Mauser 1898. Overthinking a combat rifle, like overthinking a machine gun, (The examples are France and Italy here. M.) can only have poor results in the WWI trenches.

[miletus12]

The FN1910 pocket pistol in Browning .380 was the pistol that the Serbian Gabriele Princeps, the absolute maniac, used to assassinate Franz Joseph and set off World War II. THIS was the most advanced type of blow-back pistol in the world at the time.

The pistols used in the assassination were by serial number:

19120
19126
19074
19075

Those pistols of this model were excellent point / shoot weapons. It was almost ideal for an anarchist or Serbian revolutionary or Austrian policeman. Only better pistols were the Savage Model 1907 or the Browning Colt 1903 for that bore / caliber.

[miletus12]

What do Toronto, Canadians, the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Fenians, and the Americans all have in common? They all have been shot (sometimes deliberately, but more often by accident...) by this ridiculous pistol.

No kidding. If you are a circus clown, Canadian fireman, an Irish Fenian terrorist, an Irish policeman or an American visiting the old country at the wrong time and the wrong place, you could be on the wrong end of a 455 just by looking funny.

[miletus12]

Good grief, this pistol is a suicide by accident, waiting to happen. How did any military accept this disaster?

[miletus12]

What do you get when you hire a no good rotten yellow dog coward, cashiered from the American army for incompetence and an affinity for the rear when the Confederate bullets come his way, Colt Firearms, as a design house to turn his patents into prototypes, and British Small Arms as an incredibly inefficient and utterly incompetent manufacturer of the first production run of the Pattern 2 Berdan rifle?

You obtain the single shot Berdan bolt action rifle, Patterns 1 and evolved 2 which eventually become Russia's main infantry rifle for a while, before the Mosin Nagants show up. As for the replaced Berdans: well; if you are an Italian infantryman, you curse the idiots who invented the things, because the Ethiopians are going to shoot you with the rifles with great gusto. From all accounts of the Battle of Adwa, the Berdans worked quite well.

[miletus12]

Were the Webley revolvers as good as the history suggested?

No. Colt, as bad it was, was better at the time. Webley was justly famous for adapting Smith and Wesson technology and methods which they stole. If You know of the Schofield, then you know of the origin of the British Service Revolvers.   

Pay attention to the safety warnings. These Webley Mark 5 revolvers cannot or should not be modified or use American .45 ACP ammunition. British .455 Webley type two with light loads is about the limit with these old revolvers.

Ergonomically these revolvers are "unacceptable".  

[miletus12]

Arguably this piece of crap was in a neck and neck race with the Reichs revolver and the Webley Fosbery for being the worst WWI handgun.

[miletus12]

Maybe the best revolver ever made by anyone.



The evolved Smith and Wesson in British .455 Mark II is arguably by an order of magnitude better than ANY WWI revolver both ergonomically and mechanically. Colt... pfui.

[miletus12]

Aptly named... Savage.

This pistol is based on the Borchardt C-93 action as its generis *(See the Lugar for a similar action. M.) but the Americans did not care. It was a lucky Frenchman who got one.

Otherwise, he would be stuck with this piece of junk.



It is a Spanish stolen IP copy of the Browning 1903 hammerless semi-automatic. It works well enough. The Spanish make about a MILLION of them.

a. No parts interchangeability.
b. Feed jams from the magazine.
c. Broke easily. It was considered a throwaway item.

For what it was as a trench pop-gun, it worked. Its chief good characteristic was that it was "cheap".