January Dillon

[nhcruffler]

Reading the Jan. issue of the Dillon catalouge I enjoyed the article about grampa Dillons saddle gun, an 1888 Mauser. The author goes into the history of the 8mm mauser round. He stated that the germans were protective of their 7.92 x 57 and that is why they sold 7x57 amusers to South America and 6.5mm to Sweden and so on and so forth. He stated that the germans did not want to have to fight someone that had the same high power cartridge.
That all sounds good but I had always thought that the reason the South americans liked the 7x57 was because of the reduced recoil and slightly lighter rifles.
So does anyone have a take on this?

 

[Jim Watson]

The illustrated rifle is an 1898. There is a lot of padding about the 1888 in the text.

I doubt the legend, Mauser sure didn't mind selling 8x57s to Poland, Czechoslovakia, or China. Plus Turkey after they got over the 7.65 and Spain when they were the training ground for German arms.

 

[joem1945]

If the germans went to war with a country that used the 7X57 those countries couldn't use any captured ammo in their rifles. If a position is over run there are procedures to quickly make a rifle or pistol unable to be used by the enemy.

 

[Jim K]

That "using captured ammo" business is fiction. No army concerns itself with using enemy ammo or having its own ammo used by the enemy. One WWI myth even had the Germans using their ammo in captured American rifles while the Americans could not use captured German ammo in their rifles. (Read that a couple of times before commenting.)

Mauser was ticked off at the Prussian military because the M1888 was partly a Mauser design and he got no credit (or money) for it. Whether the army actually refused to let Mauser use its 8x57 cartridge, or whether Mauser didn't ask, I don't know, but in 1889 Mauser adopted its own cartridge, the 7.65x53, which was the round used in Mauser rifles sold around the world for years. The 7x57 was developed in 1892 and first used in a Spanish contract. The 6.5x55 was not a Mauser development at all, it was the product of a joint Swedish-Norwegian ordnance team.

Jim

 

[rcmodel]

There was a world wide effort to move to a smaller caliber military rifle following the widespread use of smokeless powder at that time.

For instance:

6.5 x53R Mannlicher-Schoenauer -1892.

6.5 x 54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer - 1900.

6.5 x 55 Japanese - 1897.

6.5 Swedish Mauser - 1894.

6.5 x52 Italian - 1891.

7x57 Mauser -1892.

At the time, it was a race of the worlds powers to find a flatter shooting small bore military rifle with the best ballistics.

It had nothing to do with South American solders getting kicked in the chops by a 8mm caliber rifle shooting the less ballistically efficient 220 grain round nose bullet of the time.

Compare what was going on then world wide to what was going on in the 1950's.

We got a 5.56mm rifle in Vietnam.

So it wasn't too long until the Russians had to have a .22 caliber AK-47 too! (AK-74).

They have already discarded it, and went back to .30 caliber.
We have not seen the light yet.


rc

 

[Jim Watson]

I had a Gun Digest with a reprint of an 1890s Mauser catalog.
It said they would be prepared to furnish rifles in any caliber down to 5mm.
Seems like nobody took them up on it.

There was a well known gunboard poster who asserted that the 7.7 Arisaka was designed to use captured .30-06 even though the user would have to kick the bolt handle down on it. One last shot?

It has also been Common Knowledge that the 9.2mm Makarov was meant to be able to use Western .380 ammunition... from who, the Italians?
And that the Warsaw Pact used an 82mm mortar that would handle our 81mm shells but we couldn't use theirs.


I have always thought the flipflopping of infantry rifle caliber was interesting.
The Great Powers used .30 - 8mm from the dawn of the smokeless powder era.
Smaller countries used smaller calibers. The ones who got into major wars upgunned.
The Japanese went from 6.5 to 7.7 mm but ended up having to support both.
The Italians tried to go from 6.5 to 7.35mm but gave up and stayed with 6.5.

And Sweden stayed with the 6.5 for GI rifles but provided 8mm rifles to machine gun squads, I assume so they could reload their rifles off the ends of MG belts.

 

[nhcruffler]

Well, I guess I did post this in the correct place. Thanks for the interesting and informative comments. I too believe that they would have sold any calibre to anyone for the right price.

 

[Jim K]

I think I may be the person who posted that 7.7 Jap (7.7x58) can be fired in a .30-'06 chamber (the reverse can't be done). So presumably the U.S., in 1906, designed the .30-'06 chamber so if we happened to go to war with Japan in 1941, American troops could use Japanese ammunition that would not be developed until 1938. Or maybe the Japanese designed the 7.7 in 1938 so it could be used in captured .30-'06 rifles just in case they went to war with the U.S. three years later!

Of course the whole business of using captured ammo is nonsense. Even if the ammunition were the same (e.g., Germany vs Poland in 1939), can anyone seriously imagine an army being sent into battle with no ammunition but with orders to capture and use the enemy's? Somehow, I think morale might suffer a little bit.

Jim

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

The German's did that with fuel during the Battle of the Bulge.......

BUT, I am pretty sure that the hierarchy of design criteria did not include the use of captured ammunition. There is a lot of "borrowed" design knowledge in the arms manufacturing world, if someone made something that worked well you copy as much as possible.