Automatic… revolver!
“In order to fire, it was necessary not only to press the trigger, but to squeeze the entire revolver in your hand so that the second trigger was pressed into the handle from behind.”
"To a Secret Friend" by M. A. Bulgakov
"To a Secret Friend" by M. A. Bulgakov
stories about weapons. Not long ago, I read about an "automatic revolver" in an article on our website, and I thought the author was clearly trying to be in good company. Because who among famous writers hasn't confused a revolver with an automatic pistol? M. A. Bulgakov was especially distinguished, of course—he'd write whatever word suited his fancy. For example, in "The Master and Margarita," Azazello takes out "black automatic pistol", and then he appears as "revolver"In "Theatrical Novel" ("Notes of a Dead Man"), the author talks about a Browning pistol (a classic automatic pistol), but for some reason he stubbornly calls it a revolver.
"White Guard"... Here, the revolvers are Alexei Turbin's Browning, Nai-Tours's Colt, and Myshlaevsky's Parabellum. "Fatal Eggs"... The picture is exactly the same: "a huge, old-style Mauser pistol" Alexander Semenovich Rok was also later called a revolver.
Webley and Webley-Fosbury revolvers (bottom), circa 1901. The top revolver is the "ancestor" of its "self-cocking descendant." Royal Armouries, Leeds
But in Sinclair Lewis's novel "It Can't Be Done Here" there is this paragraph:
In Kansas, a man named George W. Smith, on the spur of the moment, gathered two hundred farmers, armed with shotguns and sporting rifles, and a ridiculously small number of automatic revolvers, and led them in burning down a Minutemen barracks.
But in this case, there's no mistake, because automatic revolvers did exist, albeit with a very specific name. The most famous is the Webley-Fosbery revolver, model 1901-1903. It was patented back in 1896 and was in production from 1901 to 1924. It was designed by British Colonel George Vincent Fosbery, a career soldier and recipient of the Victoria Cross, who served for many years in India (where he received the award in 1863). This revolver is just one of his many inventions. He also invented the explosive bullet, which exploded on impact, and the "paradox" bore for accurately firing both shot and bullets from the same gun barrel.
A 1903 sport shooting revolver with a 1890mm barrel. Royal Armouries, Leeds
Fosbury conceived a double-action revolver chambered for the powerful .455 caliber cartridge used in British army revolvers. The reason was that automatic pistols of the time fired low-power cartridges, and Fosbury believed that large-caliber bullets not only killed better but also knocked down. His revolver utilized the recoil energy both to cock the hammer and to rotate the cylinder. Initially, he considered redesigning the Colt SAA revolver, but when Colt was uninterested, he proposed his idea to Webley, using their revolver and their cartridges as a basis.
View from above
The revolver was designed so that the barrel and cylinder weren't permanently attached to the grip, but slid along grooves machined into it. When a shot was fired, the grip remained stationary, while the barrel and cylinder were forced rearward by the recoil force. This meant that the entire upper frame of the revolver, including the barrel, cylinder, and hammer, rolled back relative to the lower frame when the shot was fired. The revolver's cylinder featured zigzag grooves, which Fosbury borrowed from the Mauser Zig-Zag revolver, developed back in the 70s. In that revolver, a pin connected to the trigger rotated the cylinder, but Fosbury reversed the moving parts of the mechanism, so that the recoil force moved the cylinder relative to the fixed pin.
Root's 1855 patent for a revolver with zig-zag grooves on the cylinder. The ring-shaped trigger had a pin that engaged one of these grooves. When pulled back, the trigger simultaneously caused the cylinder to rotate!
This system provided the shooter with a consistent single-action trigger pull, allowing rapid fire (comparable to any semiautomatic pistol) with large-caliber cartridges. Furthermore, the movement of the revolver's massive components effectively absorbed the recoil of its large cartridge, making it more accurate than conventional revolvers of the same caliber.
The Remington Derringer features zig-zag rifling on its rotating barrel block…
The revolver also had a manual safety, and here's why: its trigger mechanism was single-action only, and it was impossible to carry the revolver with the hammer down and then fire it by pulling the trigger. The revolver had to be cocked (either with the hammer or by sliding the top of it back, simulating a shot), and it had to be carried with the hammer cocked. For safety, a manual safety lever on the left side of the grip had to be used, which could lock the trigger and the upper sliding frame with the barrel and cylinder.
The revolver was reloaded in the same way as a standard Webley revolver. A lever to the left of the hammer disengaged the cylinder from the frame, after which the barrel dropped down, and the automatic ejector ejected the spent cartridges. The cylinder could be reloaded with .455 cartridges one at a time or using the Pride speed loader.
The Webley-Fosbury revolver was chambered for two different cartridges: .455 and .38. The .38 ACP cartridge was introduced in 1900 and became something of a hit in the American market. The .38 ACP cartridge in Webley-Fosbury revolvers allowed the use of an 8-round cylinder, which was loaded using a spiral-shaped mechanism.
Webley-Fosbury .38 ACP Drum
The .455-caliber cylinder required no clip. However, it held only six rounds. British officers were required to purchase their own sidearms. They were required to use only the standard cartridge, so many of them purchased this .455 revolver, even though it was never officially adopted. The most common model was a 6-inch barrel with a blued finish. However, tastes vary, so Webley produced this revolver with both a 4-inch and a 7,5-inch (189 mm) barrel for target shooting. A compact "pocket" version was also available. A nickel-plated finish was optional (though few such revolvers were produced). With a 152 mm barrel, the revolver weighed 1,16 kg unloaded, making it a heavy weapon. Interestingly, the revolver with a 189 mm barrel was slightly lighter – 1,14 kg with an overall length of 297,00 mm.
Loading a Webley-Fosbury revolver using a Pride clip
A total of approximately 4200 revolvers were produced, primarily in .455 caliber, and only 417 in .38 ACP. Production continued from 1901 to 1924, though the volume was small—an average of 10 per week. During World War I, production ceased entirely, with all attention focused on the manufacture of standard military revolvers.
To fire the Webley-Fosbury revolver, you had to pull the hammer with two fingers of your left hand and pull the top of the revolver back. This cocked the hammer and rotated the cylinder. The revolver could now function as a pistol with a single-action trigger. If a misfire occurred, you had to repeat this procedure—grasp the hammer again with your left hand (or the barrel, which could be hot). This revolver also had no protection for the shooter's hand from the moving part of the top frame. But on the plus side, it had low recoil, a light trigger, and excellent accuracy!
At the outbreak of World War I, British pilots used it with some success, firing at German pilots before machine guns became standard aircraft armament. However, it performed poorly in the trenches, as its mechanism proved very sensitive to contamination. In 1907, the revolver was demonstrated at a trial of new pistols and revolvers in the United States. A model chambered for the American .45 caliber cartridge was demonstrated, but the Yankees rejected it, noting that it was large, heavy, and no better than a self-loading pistol.
Drawings of Charles Lefever's automatic revolver from a 1909 patent document.
However, the idea of an "automatic revolver" did manage to permeate the American mind. And they, too, developed their own automatic revolver, the Union Automatic Revolver (also known as the Lefever revolver). It was designed by Charles F. Lefever (U.S. Patent No. 944,448, 1909) and manufactured by Union Firearms in Toledo, Ohio, chambering .32 caliber cartridges.
It was produced in limited quantities until 1912, when production ceased due to Union Firearms' exit from the pistol manufacturing business. It was similar in every way to the Webley-Fosbury automatic revolver, but featured a protective shroud covering the top of the grip, preventing the revolver's moving parts from coming into contact with the shooter's hand. For safe carrying, the revolver was equipped with a safety located above the left grip. The safety operates similarly to the safety on the AR-15 automatic rifle. To lock the top of the revolver, the safety is turned counterclockwise with the thumb. Interestingly, this revolver is called an automatic, although the automatic cycle does not include the ejection of spent cartridges from the cylinder. However, since it is a break-action revolver, the ejection of spent cartridges occurs simultaneously with the break-action frame being opened for reloading.
Union. Right side view.
To speed up reloading, the revolver was designed to be fed from accelerator clips. It's important to keep in mind that many early pistols of the era also used top-down magazine loading, like the famous Mauser C-96, so this shortcoming wasn't so obvious in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Only after the development of powerful and ergonomic pistols like the Luger and Browning pistols (models M1900, M1902, M1903, and M1905, which were the predecessors of the Colt 1911) did revolvers begin to be perceived as old-fashioned weapons, whose only advantage lay in their simplicity and reliability.
"Union". Drum
Around the same time, the Spanish company M. Zulaica y Cia (in 1905) also created the "Zulaica" automatic revolver. It was a true automatic revolver, featuring a blowback action and a hammer-type trigger. However, it held .22LR cartridges in a six-round cylinder. The cylinder, like a standard revolver, had to be loaded manually, one cartridge at a time. When fired, as expected, the bolt retracted, driven by zigzag grooves and a pin inserted into them. This rotated the cylinder, ejecting the spent case, and cocking the hammer. Production continued until 1920, but this "revolver-pistol" was not particularly popular.
Union. Strike
Today, there is an “auto-revolver” “Mateba” on the arms market, but it will be a completely different story...
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