“Cynics are right, nine times out of ten.”
Mencken
The last 150 years of military rifle development.
How we got here!
Progressive-burning, high-energy smokeless propellant was invented by a French chemist, Paul Eugene Vieille, in 1884. Vieille’s invention instantly rendered all black-powder firearms obsolete, although it would take at least the next three decades for that axiom to sink-into the minds of the world’s war planners!
Black-powder residue is mostly particulate, hence the characteristic dense white cloud and excessive fouling. By contrast, smokeless propellant residue is almost all gaseous, and the gas is mostly transparent.
Some early bolt-action metallic cartridge (black powder) rifles, like the American Ward-Burton (1871), featured locking lugs to the rear of the bolt, in an effort to get them as far away from the chamber as possible to avoid them becoming fouled. Forward locking lugs provided a stronger action and enhanced accuracy, but would not become popular until the advent of smokeless propellants.
Cylinder pins (revolvers) were commonly grooved, and for the same reason. Grooves provided a place for black-powder fouling to accumulate, so it didn’t get near critical moving parts and thus cause the gun to stop working.
“Oval rifling” was used on some black-powder pistols and rifles in an effort to reduce fouling, since conventional cut-rifling produced sharp right-angled grooves inside the bore which would quickly fill-up with black-powder residue.
Thus, a smokey cloud no longer revealed a rifleman’s position. Weapons no longer went down nearly so quickly due to fouling. Bullet diameters were reduced as velocities increased. Bullet shapes were streamlined. Ranges, velocities, penetration, and accuracy virtually tripled!
The French tried to keep Vieille’s invention a secret, but within a decade smokeless propellant, and new metallic cartridges to make maximum use of it, were in hectic development worldwide!
However, like the Russians, the French were (and are) pathologically secretive with regard to national security, so subsequent French military firearms were developed exclusively by French designers, all of whom were state arsenal employees, and were all regarded as “state secrets,” (many still are) and they thus were neither copied, nor purchased, by anyone else (unlike the Germans).
Private French arms designers and manufacturers therefore had scant chance of selling their wares to anyone but the French government, and thus most remained small-scale. The three French Arsenals were Tulle (MAT), Saint-Etienne (MAS), and Chatellerault (MAC). All three are long-since (1960s) decommissioned (in 2001 the Saint-Etienne Arsenal Complex was taken-over by Giat (Nexter Group), a private cooperate entity, the same corporate conglomerate that owns FN in Belgium. Giat did make an unsuccessful effort to sell the French FAMAS Rifle internationally)
Conversely in Germany, Paul Mauser’s box-magazine (surpassingly superior to the French Lebel’s tube magazine) , and stripper-clip-fed rifle chambered for superior (rimless) cartridges, was purchased, as well as shamelessly copied, by nearly everyone and subsequently saw service (in one form or another) around the world for at least the next century!
Paul Mauser worked on autoloading rifles and pistols (“flapper-lock” was a Mauser invention) since the first decade of the Twentieth Century, never quite perfecting a copy before his death in 1914. In fact, Paul severely injured his right eye testing one of his prototypes! Brother, Wilhelm Mauser, died long before, in 1882.
Mauser’s magazine-fed, autoloading flapper-lock M06/08 (“FSK16,” for FliegerSelbstladeKarabiner) never saw use on the ground during WWI. German War Department regarded it as too complicated, too delicate, and too expensive. But, a small number were used (along with the Mexican-designed Mondragon Rifle, called the FSK15) by early aircraft (fixed-wing and zeppelin) crews
The first military rifle to use smokeless-powder, loaded into metallic cartridges, was the French Lebel, adopted in 1887.
The Lebel replaced earlier French Gras and Chassepot (black powder) breech-loading, single-shot, bolt rifles. The Chassepot (named after Antoine Alphonse Chassepot) was “needle-fire” and used an advanced paper cartridge that significantly outclassed the earlier Prussian Dreyse System (the first “needle-fire” rifle system). A modified cigar-making machine was recruited to manufacture paper cartridges!
So, the Gras was nothing more than the Chasspot, converted to fire metallic cartridges.
In fact, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), the Dreyse repeatedly showed itself vastly inferior to the Chassepot, in range, accuracy, and rate of fire. In the end however, it was poor French tactics, combined with superior Prussian artillery, that turned the tide in favor of the Prussians (Germans). Curiously, so highly regarded was the Chassepot Rifle that many captured Chassepots served in the Prussian army for at least a decade after the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War!
The single-shot (no magazine) Gras Rifle (for Colonel Basile Gras) superseded (1874-1884) the Chassepot in French military service and used a black-powder metallic cartridge, 11x59R caliber. However, the “Gras Conversion” (metallic cartridge upgrade of existing Chassepots) was able to re-use much of the (now obsolete) Chassepot, all of which was considered by French war planners to be better than enduring the high cost of an entirely new rifle (a trait shared by all nations desperately trying to equip their troops with the latest technology is an attempt to “convert” or “upgrade” to current technology existing outdated rifles that were already in the system in great numbers; these mostly-failed (albeit ingenious) attempts, going all the way back to the first decade of the 20th Century, particularly at “converting” bolt-action rifles into autoloaders, proved themselves non-starters in almost every case, and the abortive effort only delayed the ultimate development and production of the next generation of military rifles)
Multiple millions of Gras Rifles were produced during the ten years it was in French service, but the Gras was never involved in any major war, and was thus confined mostly to colonial service in North Africa and Indochina.
The Italians also had a needle-fire system, actually a converted muzzle-loader, called the “Carcano Needle-Fire Conversion.”
Both the Chassepot and the Gras Conversion used an 11mm (43 caliber) cartridge, the rimmed “11mm Gras.” French weapons designers, under severe time pressure from the newly-appointed War Minister (1886), who was over-anxious to exploit the new smokeless-powder technology, simply necked-down the existing 11mm Gras cartridge to 8mm, gave it an aerodynamic spitzer bullet, and it suddenly became the “8mm Lebel,” after Lt Colonel Nicolas Lebel of the French Army.
There was no time to design a new rifle to shoot this new cartridge, so French designers took the existing Austrian Kropatschek Rifle, which was a tube-magazine-fed upgrade of the single-shot Gras (small numbers had been made for the French Navy), re-chambered it for the new (still rimmed) 8mm Lebel cartridge, bolstered the locking system to accommodate increased chamber pressure of the new smokeless propellent, made a few other minor changes, and shoved it out the door!
The Lebel’s magazine tube (eight rounds) was charged, one cartridge at a time, from the breech. It was a slow, tedious process, far inferior to Mauser’s stripper-clip-fed box magazine.
By 1887, the Lebel Rifle, and 8mm Lebel cartridge, were in full production. By 1893, nearly thee million Lebel Rifles had been manufactured, every one at one of three, above mentioned, state arsenals in France!
When WWI broke-out, the 8mm Lebel, already obsolete, was the rifle the French took to war!
Unfortunately, as noted above, it proved vastly inferior to the ubiquitous Mauser.
And, when the Lebel Rifle was shortened to carbine length, much magazine capacity was lost, and it was difficult for a cavalryman to re-charge tube magazines while on horseback, so there was never a “carbine version” of the Lebel that went into major production (until much later).
Instead, the Berthier (always a carbine) was hastily substituted.
So, box-magazine (three-shot, en-bloc), bolt-action Berthier Carbines (after Emile Berthier, a civilian design engineer who introduced his rifle in 1907), still in 8mm Lebel, entered mass production, in the middle of the WWI.
The Berthier was easier, cheaper, and faster to manufacture than the Lebel.
The three-round (later, five-round) Berthier en-bloc (Mannlicher-style) clip drops out the bottom of the rifle, as the last empty case is ejected. Same with the 1916 upgraded Berthier rifles.
Rim-lock in the box magazine was seldom a problem with the Berthier, because of the heavy taper of the 8mm Lebel cartridge and the Berthier’s steep feed-angle. Rims almost never got close enough to each other to interfere with feeding.
Neither the Gras, nor the Lebel, nor the Berthier had a manual safety, but the Lebel and the Berthier did have a magazine cut-off!
The Lebel Rifle was declared “obsolete” in 1920, but continued to see active service in colonial areas for most of the rest of the 20th Century!
The Berthier (sometimes called the Berthier 07/15) continued in active service until 1939.
Remington, in the “neutral” (until 1917) United States, was one of the Berthier’s manufacturers, the only one outside France.
The 1916 upgrade of the Berthier went from a three-round en-bloc clip, to a five-round en-block clip, although the old three-round clips still worked in the 1916 version of the Berthier.
The 1916 Berthier upgrade included a wide front sight (with a tiny notch in the top for when precision was required). French Troopers complained about narrow front sights that were difficult to pick-up in active fighting, particularly in low light. Tiny sights were, of course, preferred by target competitors (most of whom, like today, never in their entire lives fired a shot in anger). Most 07/15 Berthiers were upgraded to the 1916 pattern as the War progressed.
The 1916 Berthier “upgrade” also included the addition of an upper handguard (covering the top of the barrel), as an exposed barrel where the shooter’s support-side (forward) hand grasped it became a problem when the barrel got hot! The issue with an upper handguard is that it has to be sufficiently loosely-mounted, so that it does not put pressure on the barrel and thus compromise accuracy.
France’s new bolt-action rifle, the MAS 36 (in rimless 7.5×58, later 7.5×54) was finally approved in 1936. By that date, France (and all of Europe) was getting nervous with Germany’s rapid re-emergence and re-armament!
France intended for the MAS 36 to be their second-tier rifle, while a new autoloading rifle would be issued to first-tier troops. They never got the autoloader into production before Germany invaded (1940)!
So, it was the MAS 36, and various remnants of previous systems, with which the French went into WWII (to the degree they actually participated). Production of the MAS 36 picked right up after the factory, Manufacture d’armes de Saint-Étienne (MAS), was liberated by American troops in 1944, and the rifle remained in production until 1957. Over a million were ultimately produced. Many can still found to this day in former French colonies in SE Asia, North Africa, et al
The MAS 36 used five-round (Mauser-style) stripper-clips, has its locking-lugs in the rear, and its reputation for ruggedness, simplicity, and durability was exceedingly good. However, it never enjoyed any particular reputation for accuracy (owing to the rear locking lugs). The MAS 36 was zeroed at the factory. There is no user-level windage adjustment on the rear sight.
Like its antecedents, the MAS 36 had no manual safety!
Curiously, the French were way ahead of everyone else in development of autoloading military rifles, going back to WWI (the French “RSC”), but they were unable to get any eligible design actually produced and issued to troops until after WWII (MAS 40, 44, 49, and 49/56)!
MAS autoloaders had a ten-round, detachable box magazine and did feature a manual safety (finally).
During WWII, French engineers at the MAS factory cleverly (and successfully) hid from Nazis evidence that the MAS 40 autoloading rifle had actually begun production!
When French war planners decided to adopt the NATO standard cartridge (7.62×51) in the early 1970s, conversion of the MAS 49-56 from French 7.5×54 to the new NATO caliber was thought to be a simple matter, but it proved utterly unsuccessful. Parts breakage, slam-fires, and other problems lead to the eventual abandonment of the entire idea.
The MAS was essentially withdrawn from French service in 1978, replaced by the French FAMAS Rifle in 5.56×45 caliber. The MAS was finally declared “obsolete” in 1990, and all copies were withdrawn from service.
The MAS series of autoloading rifles (40, 44, 49, and 49/56), with its direct-gas-impingement/tilting-bolt system, during its French service tenure (after WWII), garnered an excellent reputation for reliability in rough environments in many far-flung places. It was, and is, a very good rifle, but only in 7.5×54 caliber. On the MAS 49, user-level windage adjustment was finally added to the rear sight.
As noted above, none of the subsequent conversions to 7.62×51 NATO, both military and commercial (Century Arms imports), met with success, and the French 7.5×54 cartridge never enjoyed a following outside France.
The only other production military rifle to employ a legitimate “direct-gas-impingement” system was the Swedish Ljungman 42, or “Automatgvar M42” (translates: “automatic rifle”), officially adopted at the end of 1941, but first issued to Swedish troops only at the end of 1943 (while WWII was still going-on). Like the MAS above, it employed a tilting-bolt locking system and featured a ten-round, detachable magazine (6.5×55 Swedish caliber)
During the War, the Liungman was never produced in sufficient quantity for “universal issue.” Most Swedish infantry squads only had one or two. The balance of squad members were equipped with conventional K98K bolt-action Mausers.
Within the Swedish military the Ljungman was considered overly-temperamental and thus never highly regarded. Most copies were refurbished in the early 1950s, in order to address some of the rifle’s annoying issues, but the Ljungman still enjoyed only a relatively short tenure and was replaced with a Swedish version of the German G3 and eventually the FAL (late 1950s), although some Ljungmans remained in service with the Swedish military into the 1970s.
The Ljungman was briefly copied (under license) by the Egyptians (later by Iraqis) as their domestically-produced “Rasheed Rifle” in 7.62×39 Soviet (a gas-regulator was added, owing to sandy environments), but otherwise never enjoyed much notice outside Sweden.
Egyptians quickly exchanged their Rasheeds for SKSs, and eventually domestically-produced (Maadi) Kalashnikovs, as Abdel Nasser (1956-70) moved his nation within the Soviet sphere of influence. The Rasheed used the same stripper-clip as the Soviet SKS.
Egyptian King Farouk (Nasser’s immediate predecessor) shunned British and French rifle technology, because both nations had colonies in Africa and elsewhere. Conversely, the Swedish had no colonies, nor any apparent interest in colonization, so Farouk selected the Swedish to do business with, and Nasser continued the relationship.
Several thousand Egyptian-made Rasheeds were eventually surplused and ended-up in the USA. A few others were captured by Israelis during the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973), and some of them also ended-up as “surplus”
That’s probably enough for now!
A lot of audacious development had to take place, via many unsung heroes, in order for us to have in our hands the formidable weapons it is our honor and privilege to posses and train with in our generation.
“There’s a thousand ‘Can’t-be-done-ers’ For the one who says ‘It can!’
But the whole amount of deeds that count is done by the latter clan. For the ‘Can’t-be-done-ers’ grumble, hamper, oppose and doubt, while the daring man who says, ‘It can!’proceeds to work it out.
There isn’t a new invention beneath the shining sun that was ever wrought by the deed or thought of the tribe of ‘Can’t-be-done.’ For the ‘Can’t-be-done-ers’ mutter while the ‘Can-be’s’ cool, sublime, make their ‘notions’ work till the others smirk, ‘Oh, we knew it all the time!’
Oh, the ‘Can-be’s’ clan is meager. Its membership is small, and it’s mighty few who see their dreams come true, nor hear fame’s trumpet call. But, it’s better to be a ‘Can-be,’ and labor and dream- and die, than one who runs with the ‘Can’t-be-done’s,’ who haven’t the pluck to try.”
Berton Braley
/John
