#Ww1

It is not a secret that Mosin-Nagant rifles are one of the most popular military surplus rifles in the USA. They are relatively affordable, .30 cal reliable rifles just to mention a few reasons of their popularity. The information about the history and various modifications of these rifles is readily available on the internet, so I’ll skip that basic information. The subject of this article are the strangest and rarest Mosin-Nagant rifles and accessories, which were designed until the end of WW2. This time period includes the active duty era of the rifle when it was in service in many countries, most notably in Russian Empire and Soviet Union. So below is the list of mentioned rifles and accessories:

In World War I, the Germans developed a secret technology that helped them dominate the skies during 1915 and early 1916. The tech? A device that synchronized the firing of a machine gun with the rotation of an aircraft’s propeller, allowing accurate low-mounted forward-firing weapons on warplanes for the first time.

One of the interesting finds pointed out to me by an ammunition collector at Knob Creek is this interesting tidbit of history. The .5 Vickers is a semi rimmed round that was invented in the last year of World War One by necking down a .600 Nitro Express round. It was intended for the water cooled Vickers heavy machine gun and was initially needed for anti-aircraft gunners to take down German bombers over London that could sustain multiple hits from the .303 cartridge being fired by Vickers anti-aircraft crews at the time. Although the round is the same caliber as the 50 BMG, the two are not interchangeable.

In the early winter of 1918, it seemed as though the Boche wouldn’t stop, and the war was sure to continue on into 1919. New, secret weapons were needed to complete the victory over Germany, and one of these was John Pedersen’s “device”, officially called “Cal. 30 Automatic Pistol Model of 1918”, a drop-in replacement for a standard (but modified) Model of 1903 Springfield rifle that would give every American infantryman autoloading firepower for close range engagements in the expected 1919 offensives.

These days, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time at the dawn of the smokeless powder era there was a huge variety of bolt-action repeating rifles being developed to re-arm the military powers of the world. While the Mauser 98 and its progeny eventually took the world by storm, in the early days of repeating bolt actions rifles like the Krag–Jørgensen, Mannlicher, and Belgian Mauser competed on the world stage for contracts.

A trend towards ever more powerful and longer-ranged ammunition was cut short by the realities of the First World War: Technologies not previously invented or accounted for, such as the man-reaping machine gun and the portable infantry mortar, made the existing infantry tactics of long-range volley fire not just obsolete, but quaint. Further, new essential small arms projectile designs like tracers, armor piercing bullets, and exploding observation rounds demanded more space in the projectile envelope, putting the previously cutting-edge small-caliber 6.5mm rounds at a disadvantage. The advantages of these small-caliber rounds were virtually negated, too, by the advent in 1905 of the German S-Patrone, a flat-based, pointed projectile that was vastly more efficient in supersonic flight than previous round-nosed designs. Although French engineers preceded this design with the superior (and top secret) Balle D round, it was the German bullet that became the pattern for military rifle projectiles worldwide.

The paradigm was established by the 1870s: Future infantry combat would focus on a combination of entrenchment, and long-range concentrated fire from well-drilled units to defeat the enemy beyond his own effective range. The arms race for a smaller-caliber, lighter-weight cartridge accelerated, but it was the Americans and the British that would discover a need for an even higher performance round that could outmatch any fielded by their enemies. Two key conflicts were the Second Boer War, fought between the British Empire on one side and the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State on the other, and the Spanish-American War, fought by the United States versus the Kingdom of Spain, most importantly in Cuba and the Philippines. These two conflicts shared one common feature: The opposing sides of each were chiefly armed with advanced quick-loading 7x57mm caliber Mauser rifles, firing high-sectional density 173gr round-nosed bullets at a nearly 350 ft/s muzzle velocity advantage versus the .303 and .30 caliber rounds fired by the British and Americans.

The gear of the US infantryman during World War I was some of the best in the period, from the ammunition pouches, to the uniform, and the rifles. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has taken a reproduction uniform and an original M1917 rifle and M1911 handgun out to the Two-Gun Action Challenge Match, to put them to the test:

Arcane Teutonic space magicks gave Imperial German assault troops the advantage in trench warfare during the first Great War, as the Kaiser’s sturmtruppen made deadly use of Arch-Industriemage Georg Luger’s fearsome Lange Pistole 08 “long Luger” semiautomatic handheld transforming death machines – err, I mean stocked pistols.

One of several interesting automatic individual weapon designs from World War I, the Winchester Machine Rifle was a concept for a dual-purpose anti-observation-balloon/ground weapon that featured several concepts that, for better or worse, were definitely ahead of their time. Matthew Moss of the Historical Firearms Blog posted an excellent overview of the Winchester Machine Rifle, both there and on WarIsBoring:

I recently gushed on what I consider one of the best YouTube channels out there *that is not guns-only, but is highly correlated. The Great War is a fantastic project documenting World War 1 week by week exactly as it happened 100 years later.

World War 1 is often regarded as one of the most barbaric conflicts of all time, given its implementation of mass-casualty weapons including poison gas, full use of artillery, machine guns, and the brutal depictions of trench warfare. While true, this simplistic overview (especially the version taught in American schools) vastly oversimplifies the conflict.

This week, C&Rsenal takes a look at the Italian Bodeo revolver, an interesting transitional type that served all the way through the 1960s.

The Fedorov Avtomat is an important milestone in the history of modern small arms. With the Federov, for the first time, an individual soldier could possess automatic firepower in a package small enough to move and fight with, while at the same time not significantly compromising the range or effectiveness of the bolt-action rifle. However, the weapon fell out of favor during the Soviet era, and was never produced in large numbers. By way of WeaponsMan.com (H/T to Hognose), we are brought yet more details of the Fedorov’s story, written by Alexander Vershinin for Russia Beyond The Headlines:

During World War I, manufacturers on both sides, including sporting arms manufacturers, lent their material support for the war effort. One of the more mysterious instances of this has come to be known simply as the “Beholla”, after its primary producer, the German sporting arms firm Becker & Hollander.