History of automatic weapons. Where it all began
One of the first automatic carbines. Winchester M1905. The neck of the magazine is clearly visible. Author's photo
His horses are faster than leopards
and quicker than the evening wolves;
his cavalry gallops in different directions;
his horsemen come from afar,
fly like an eagle
rushing at prey.
Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, 1:18
and quicker than the evening wolves;
his cavalry gallops in different directions;
his horsemen come from afar,
fly like an eagle
rushing at prey.
Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, 1:18
stories about weapons. At all times, people have dreamed of the speed of action. Rush on a horse across the battlefield faster than a leopard, swim in the water faster than a dolphin, soar in the sky like swallows and eagles. I also wanted to shoot at the enemy with maximum speed and, it should be noted, archers both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages were taught to shoot arrows with maximum speed so that they would fall on the enemy “like drops of rain.”
The same thing happened in the era of firearms. All the efforts of its creators were aimed mainly at increasing the rate of fire: improved loading techniques were developed, the matchlock was replaced by a flintlock, then it was replaced by a cap lock, weapons with several barrels were invented, and then revolver pistols and shotguns with a magazine, which was also chamber.
But nature itself has placed a barrier on this path for man - his own physical imperfection. So he could not fire faster than a certain number of shots even from the most advanced weapon, powered by his own muscular power.
And the development of science and technology told him the right way - to create self-acting firearms, capable of independently reloading and shooting. Attempts to create such a weapon began quite early and... late at the same time. It turned out that it was possible to make it even at the very beginning of the 19th century, but due to the general inertia of thinking and primitive production technologies, the first attempts in this direction appeared only in the middle of it.
Thus, in 1854, the English technician Heinrich Bessemer developed and even received a patent for a breech-loading cannon that fired a unitary cartridge. Its shutter was opened by recoil force, and the barrel was automatically loaded and the striking mechanism was cocked for the subsequent shot. Moreover, to prevent the barrel from overheating, the inventor used water cooling. Bessemer's invention remained on paper. But a lot was said and written about him at that time, and his idea spread like ripples in the water from a thrown stone.
Henry Bessemer
Already in 1862, a certain Blackeley invents a gun in which the automation uses recoil force and works due to springs and counterweights. Followers immediately appear - Massot, Calle, Mocrieff, Johnson, but due to their imperfections they do not develop. A year later, Mexican entrepreneur Martin Regul Pilon patents an automatic rifle with a sliding bolt and a recoil spring supporting it. Interestingly, instead of a trigger, he equipped his gun with a thumb key, and even covered it with a special cover to protect it from accidental pressing.
Regulus Pilona shotgun
It would be strange if already at this time someone did not try to automate a revolver or a gun with a drum magazine. This person turned out to be the English engineer Joseph Curtis, who designed a similar gun in 1866.
Again, the famous Frenchman Reffi, famous for the creation of his grapeshot, tried his hand at creating an automatic gun in 1879. But it turned out to be very imperfect. The Plessner automatic rifle, created in 1872, was more advanced.
In 1874, the American Lutze patented, as they usually write about it, “an automatic pistol with a barrel moving forward.” In fact, however, if you read the text of the patent, it becomes clear that he did not invent any automatic pistol, but invented a weapon with a magazine in the handle!
The barrel in his pistol actually moved forward, but manually, and then went back and was loaded with another cartridge from a vertical magazine. Nevertheless, we must give him his due - after all, he, in fact, created nothing more than a modern-looking pistol!
The year 1876 was marked by another important event in stories automatic weapons - someone Beley proposed using a cartridge belt to power automatic weapons. Previously, such tapes were used only as bandoliers.
In 1877, Americans Fasold and Savage developed a bolt for an automatic rifle.
During these same years, namely from 1870 to 1880, Palmkranz-Winborg, Hotchkiss and Nordenfeld worked on the automation of small arms in different countries. And all of them contributed something of their own in the direction of improving such weapons, took steps that became the basis for its further development.
The first patent for an automatic rifle by H. Maxim
In 1883, Hiram Maxim received a patent in England for an automatic rifle and at the same time introduced his machine gun, which fired 11,43 mm cartridges, but still with a charge of black smoky powder. Its rate of fire at that time was simply phenomenal - up to 400 rounds per minute. The machine gun had a bronze box, first air and then water cooling of the barrel, and belt feeding. It was patented under the name “Pom-pom”.
Drawing from American patent H. Maxim No. 297278 dated April 22, 1884
In 1884, Maxim designed an automatic gun based on the recoil principle, converting it into an automatic Winchester mod. 1873. In the same year, Maxim designed another automatic rifle with a short recoil barrel.
A year later, Ferdinand von Mannlicher offered his automatic rifle, firing 11-mm M1877 cartridges with black powder, to the Austrian military. Although his Model 1885 was a failure, never seeing anything resembling mass production, it did much to set the stage for the vast number of automatic weapons developed over the next few decades. In fact, it was this 1885 semi-automatic that had an influence on them far beyond its recognition today.
Mannlicher automatic rifle 1885
As with all recoil-driven designs, the barrel and bolt were engaged at the moment of firing and remained engaged as they both rolled back. Having traveled about 32 mm, the bolt unlocked and continued moving back, but the barrel stopped. The locking mechanism in the M1885 was a block similar to a fork or tuning fork. It was attached to the trunk and could swing up and down.
When moving up, it was fixed in a cutout at the bottom of the shutter. When the bolt and barrel moved back, the lower fork of the locking block hit an inclined protrusion, which pushed it down, causing the bolt to separate from the barrel. In this case, the bolt ejected the empty cartridge case from the chamber, while a new cartridge fell from the magazine located on the top left (in which the cartridges were fed “by gravity”, since it did not have a spring) into the bolt box. The recoil spring then pushed the bolt forward and pushed the cartridge into the chamber.
Another important element of this whole mechanic was the use of an accelerator. It moved backward with the barrel until its lower “leg” rested against a protrusion at the bottom of the receiver. At this moment, he stopped the barrel, rotated around its axis and hit the bolt, giving it an additional push from the barrel, which helped ensure reliable extraction and ejection of used ammunition.
Schematic diagram of the Mannlicher rifle of 1885. I clearly saw the locking block in the shape of a two-pronged fork...
Well, this “machine gun” did not go into use primarily because of its ammunition. Powder soot from black powder heavily contaminated the automation and made its operation unstable.
In 1886, a certain Paulsen proposed a revolver in which powder gases came out of a hole located approximately two-thirds of the way through the barrel and threw back a piston, which at the same time cocked the hammer and rotated the drum. Well, the fact that the first automatic pistol began to be produced in Austria in 1892 - there were several of my materials about this at VO.
However, for this to happen, well-developed cartridges on smokeless powder had to appear, and as soon as they appeared, automatic small arms systems rained down as if from a cornucopia: Browning 1889, Madsen-Rasmusen 1886, Claire, Salvator, Odkolek, Hotchkiss, Bergman, Colt, Schwarzlose, Doremus and many more, whom I can’t even remember, offered one model after another. That is, it was the emergence and spread of smokeless powder that made it possible to significantly speed up the process of improving automatic hand weapons.
And the first on this path, again, was the Winchester company, which in 1903 released a commercial model of the Winchester M1903 self-loading shotgun, followed by the M1905, M1907 and M1910 models.
External view of the M1903 hard drive. Photo by A. Dobress
The butt of the M1903 hard drive with a socket for loading a magazine. Photo by A. Dobress
"Model 63" produced in 1958. Photo by A. Dobress
"Model 63" disassembled. Photo by A. Dobress
The Model 1903 was designed by Thomas Crossley Johnson, the son of the president of the Yale Safe and Iron Company, who trained as an engineer and worked for several companies before joining the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1885. The first samples of his rifles were developed for the small-caliber .22 Winchester Automatic cartridge. In 1919, the name "Model 1903" was shortened to "Model 03", and after partial redesign in the 1930s, it was renamed "Model 63".
Among other changes, this model also fired the .22 Long Rifle cartridge, which was even more popular than the .22 Winchester Automatic and was in good demand among buyers. In total, about 126 000 rifles and 1903 Model 175 rifles were produced, production of which continued until 000!
T. Johnson's patent for the M1903 carbine
Interestingly, American patent No. 681,481 for a very unusual carbine was issued to Johnson on August 27, 1901, but it appeared in metal in 1905–1906. and was called the "Model 1907". Judging by the diagrams from the patent documentation, it was quite archaic, although it had two characteristic parts: a blowback bolt and a bolt pusher, which was located under the barrel and protruded from the forend.
It is interesting that samples of these weapons were actively sold before the revolution in Russia, and the 1910 model even had a silencer!
T. Johnson's patent for the M1907 carbine
Moreover, during the First World War, until machine guns appeared on airplanes, they were armed with shooters on French and British airplanes, and later they were transferred to the infantry, where they became the first models of automatic self-loading infantry weapons used.
M1910 carbine in the hands of the author
The police Winchester M1907 had an enlarged “cap” of the pusher rod to make it more convenient to press on it with your hand...
The Russian military also liked these hard drives. A contract for the supply of 500 Model 1907 automatic rifles was signed on July 15, 1916. The total cost of the contract was $44 (250 automatic rifles at $500 each and 21 cartridges at a price of $1 per 500 pcs.) The ordered rifles were sent to Russia on January 000, 22,5.
Judging by the presence in the St. Petersburg Military History Museum artillery one copy of the “Model 1907” with the stamp of the Russian military acceptance (KhIZ, personal stamp of senior military acceptance officers S. P. Khatuntsev and A. Ya. Zadde), some of the rifles made it to Russia, and perhaps all of them did.
And if we assume that they fired not with pistols, but with “intermediate” 8,9 mm caliber cartridges and, in addition, with automatic fire, for which they were converted, then we get a typical “trench broom”, and even with good lethality.
And now about V. G. Fedorov’s assault rifle.
In the summer of 1916, at the Oranienbaum Officer Rifle School, a company of the 189th Izmail Infantry Regiment was armed with Fedorov automatic rifles, and it was sent to the Romanian Front consisting of 158 soldiers and 4 officers only on December 1 of the same year. But there is information that a certain number of “Winchesters” were purchased even earlier and took part in the famous “Brusilovsky breakthrough” on May 22, 1916. And that they performed well, which is why the order for them was increased.
V. G. Fedorov assault rifle arr. 1916 Photo of the Museum of Artillery and Signal Troops in St. Petersburg
So, in the well-known book by A. B. Zhuk “Handbook ...” (1993 edition) the hard drive is somehow mentioned on pages 483, 498, 526, 608, 669, 678 and 684, but about the samples of 1907/10. for some reason there is not a single word, as if they did not exist!
Didn't Zhuk know about this weapon? Did he study weapons catalogs for all models sold in Russia?
And, of course, he knew about them. And moreover: I mentioned on page 535 that, yes, there were samples of automatic weapons, including a hard drive.
But then he again talked about Russia’s priority in relation to the Fedorov assault rifle. That it was the first of the Russian automatic rifles in 1916 to receive a baptism of fire. And this is all true!
A small thing not said. That “machine guns” were already used during the “Brusilovsky breakthrough”, therefore his work was supported, and that Winchester carbines were purchased by the Russian government on the advice of the Russian military attache in France.
Moreover, if someone decides that this is at least some derogation of the creative genius of our compatriot, then this person will make a mistake. Let's look at the dates. Both Fedorov and Johnson began working on new weapons almost simultaneously, worked in parallel (this happened very often in the history of technology) and prepared their samples almost simultaneously.
And it’s not our designer’s fault that the Russian military chose to buy American carbines instead of giving the green light to their own development. Although... we didn’t buy that much, look – “how does it work?!” And Fedorov received support, which is also completely logical.
It’s just that at one time we had a fad: to stick out everything that’s ours and diligently cover up everything that belongs to others. Well, today it is well known what such distortions in informing the public led to. So, the more complete our knowledge about everything, the better!
The author with an M1910 carbine in his hands
PS
The author’s personal impressions of the 1907 carbine.
It’s a very convenient weapon to hold in your hands, although out of habit you always look for the bolt handle with your eyes. But she’s just not there. Instead, you need to press on the pusher rod under the barrel. But just in a trench lined with boards or in the forest it is very convenient.
Dimensions of the carbine: length 1 mm, barrel length 000 mm, weight - 510 kg without cartridges, with cartridges - 3,6 kg. Ammunition: .4,1 Winchester (351x9SR).
The bolt pusher is under the barrel. Author's photo
Advertising carbine M1910 in Russia, and even with a silencer!
Information