Why the military around the world did not like Winchester rifles

Despite the fact that the Winchester rifle (as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company line of repeatingly charged rifled carbines was called) was very popular in the United States at one time, it was never adopted by the American army. At the same time, the military in other countries even preferred single-shot mechanisms to it, for which there were reasons.

The first and, perhaps, the most important is the insufficient power of the .45-40, .44-40 and .38-40 caliber cartridge. The latter made it possible to effectively hit targets at ranges up to a couple of hundred meters, while army single-shot rifles could boast many times better results.

Another extremely unpleasant moment was the unreliability of the lever bolt and its contamination through cutouts in the receiver.

Ease of use is also an important factor. weapons. In this regard, the military disliked the Winchester rifle because it was extremely difficult to reload such a carbine in a prone position.

However, loading the magazine with cartridges was not the most “pleasant” experience. Despite the fact that, at first glance, the capacity of 13-14 cartridges is an advantage, loading the carbine took quite a long time, since the cartridges were “driven” one at a time and rather inconveniently. In combat conditions, this does play a critical role.

By the way, about multi-charging. With the advent of Spitzer cartridges, which were used in many armies of the world, the advantage of the Winchester rifle became a serious disadvantage.

The thing is that the aforementioned cartridge is equipped with a pointed bullet. Taking into account the fact that the cartridges were located one by one in the tubular clip of the Winchester repeating carbine, the very sharp bullet would rest against the primer of the previous cartridge, which is fraught with a spontaneous shot if the fighter drops the carbine or hits it hard.

About stories creating the legendary carbine:

Comments

[Senior seaman]

The Turks purchased a number of Winchesters for their light cavalry.

[faiver]

so ours were bought in WW1, if memory serves, but no longer with a tubular magazine

[sergej_84]

which is also considered the world's first hunting smokeless cartridge

Here the authors of the video are misleading the audience. The .30-30 Winchester cartridge is "the first smokeless powder hunting cartridge in the United States", which began production in 1895.
And the "first in the world" was the 7 × 57mm Mauser cartridge, the production of which began in 1892.

[Altmann]

In accordance with the Russian order, the American plant was supposed to produce about 300 thousand M1895 rifles in an updated configuration. At the request of the customer, the rifles were redesigned for the Russian three-line cartridge, could be loaded using Mosin-Nagant clips, and also received an elongated barrel and stock of suitable sizes, modeled on rifles of that time. . In addition, it was necessary to equip the weapon with a bayonet, since it was used not only for shooting, but also for hand-to-hand combat. To install the bayonet under the barrel, a tide appeared, reinforced with another collar. He covered the barrel and butts. The modifications of the rifle turned out to be quite complicated and took too much time, so the first batch of weapons was sent to Russia a little later than the deadline. Along with rifles, new bayonets were sent to the Russian army.