Greetings,
I've been trying to think of reasons why in Cowboy flims the Army and indians seem to always have repeating rifles, not sure what model or name, but in WWII Germans(Karl 98), Russki's(Naginosh?), Brits(Lee Enfield 303) still only seem to use bolt action rifles, decades after the cowboys rifles.(I'm well aware of the SMGs used by Jerrys Tommys&Russians but I trying to talk rifles)

#What were the cowboys repeting rifles?
#Were these rifles there then or did hollywood fool me...again?
#Why didn't they get used by the army in conflicts such as the American civil war, WWI and WWII?/why I didn't know they were if they were?

nuff said
answers&website links if u'd be so kind. :confused:

History of the Repeating Rifle

The invention; the Henry Rifle. It was Mr. Henry whom first conceived the lever action repeating rifle. It was patented in 1860 and gave one man the single power of a dozen marksmen. America was covered with the searing flames of the Civil War, the first Henry rifle were in the hands of Union Troops by 1862. The Henry found popularity both with troops and with Native Americans.

Custard and his troops used the single shot Springfield rifle. The Native Americans were the ones who used the repeating rifle and totally outgunned Custard in battle
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/history.htm

In The Battle of Little Bighorn, the native americans had winchester repeater riftes i believe

single shot rifles are a lot cheaper to mass produce which was why they were used in the war, anyway there was so little ammunition that repeating rifles would have been a waste of time

Backwards rifles... sounds like something the Polish army would use.

/chortle

Backwards rifles... sounds like something the Polish army would use.

/chortle
for your information roman the polish army was a brave and daring lot

Mr. Henry was a gun designer for the company that was owned by Mr. Winchester. The company went through several name changes, including, I believe, the Henry Repeating Rifle Co., before settling on Winchester.

The "Henry" was the first on these rifles, and was used in the Civil War by the North. It was followed by the 1873 Winchester, which is the rifle you see all of the time in Western movies.

BTW, these are not "repeating" in the sense of being semiautomatic. They are magizine fed, but have to be loaded by use of the lever action, similar to bolt action rifles.

Roman:

Backwards rifles... sounds like something the Polish army would use.

Hah. During WW2, you might have a point. The only good equipment that the Polish had were anti-tank guns. And anti-tank guns can only get you so far, if you don't have an appreciable number of decent tanks of your own. I guess that's what comes from 100 years of crippling occupation, and only a couple of decades of independence. Not exactly much time to build up a superpower/empire which can rival the Germans.

On a lighter note, at least the Poles had more success against the Nazis than another particular country, which had state-of-the-art equipment, including perhaps the best tanks in Europe at the time.

if the poles had modern equipment they would have stomped hitler into the ground
even with their primitive armaments they managed to hold off the germans for a little while
but it is true, tanks last a lot longer than horse flesh

leopold99:

if the poles had modern equipment they would have stomped hitler into the ground

Since the Poles didn't have modern equipment, we will never really know. Hence, your statement is essentially conjecture.
On the other hand, I'm almost certain that Poland would have fared far better if it had have had some decent tanks. It would also have fared far better if the Allies had kept their promise, and had sent aid/dropped supplies after approx. two weeks.

A common attitude amongst the Poles is of distaste towards the actions of the Allies during WWII. The Allies promised aid, and then failed to deliver. I'm sure that they had quite reasonable excuses, but if you can't keep a promise, don't make it in the first place. The only reason that Poland kept fighting against the Nazis was because they were promised aid and relief if they could hold out for about 2 weeks (they held out for about 40 days). If the Allies had merely have been honest, and stated that the Poles were fighting on their own, then Poland (most likely) would have surrendered and spared a large number of its soldiers and civilians.


but it is true, tanks last a lot longer than horse flesh

Bah. The Poles didn't charge German tanks on horseback. That was wartime propaganda. The Nazis didn't want the population to know that the Poles were actually have success against German 'state of the art tanks' with mere anti-tank guns.

The Poles greatly were outnumbered in two very important areas...armor and planes. The Poles did have a few armored vehicles, enough for a couple of armored brigades. But the Germans had 6 panzer divisions, plus other armored units. And the Luftwaffe greatly outnumbered the Polish air force.

The Poles fought bravely, but did not have the tactics or the equipment to stop the Germans.

And the final nail in the coffin was when the Soviets invaded from the east.

Mr. Henry was a gun designer for the company that was owned by Mr. Winchester. The company went through several name changes, including, I believe, the Henry Repeating Rifle Co., before settling on Winchester.

The "Henry" was the first on these rifles, and was used in the Civil War by the North. It was followed by the 1873 Winchester, which is the rifle you see all of the time in Western movies.

BTW, these are not "repeating" in the sense of being semiautomatic. They are magizine fed, but have to be loaded by use of the lever action, similar to bolt action rifles.
Close, Henry opened his own company. Oliver Winchester was a backer who later took over the company. The first Winchester was the 1866, basically a Henry with improved magazine tube(no visable follower) and wooden forearm.The most common rifle in westerns is the 1892 simply because it weas much more common being manufactured intill the 1950s IIRC.
To get to the point of the first post bolt action rifles are capable of handling cartridges developing much greater pressure and they are able to use cartridges with the newer spitzer (pointed) bullets. Giving the range/power advantage to the bolt action repeater.

Roman:

Hah. During WW2, you might have a point. The only good equipment that the Polish had were anti-tank guns. And anti-tank guns can only get you so far, if you don't have an appreciable number of decent tanks of your own. I guess that's what comes from 100 years of crippling occupation, and only a couple of decades of independence. Not exactly much time to build up a superpower/empire which can rival the Germans.

On a lighter note, at least the Poles had more success against the Nazis than another particular country, which had state-of-the-art equipment, including perhaps the best tanks in Europe at the time.

The tanks the Germans had when they invaded Poland were pretty crappy. The finest tank in Europe at around that time was probably the Char B1 BIS used by the French....only problem was it used aviation fuel and supplies soon ran out whereas German tanks could refuel at any French petrol station....

G.F:

The tanks the Germans had when they invaded Poland were pretty crappy.

The tanks were better quality, and more numerous, than the Poles had. However, the Germans lacked foresight... they painted very clear symbols on their tanks, which made them easy to sight when using anti-tank guns.
After that nasty little lesson, the Germans made sure not to go and paint glowing red symbols on their tanks.


. The finest tank in Europe at around that time was probably the Char B1 BIS used by the French....only problem was it used aviation fuel and supplies soon ran out whereas German tanks could refuel at any petrol station!

*chuckle* As I said, the French had state of the art tanks. I never knew that they ran on aviation fuel, though... that's pretty damn impractical.

Close, Henry opened his own company. Oliver Winchester was a backer who later took over the company. The first Winchester was the 1866, basically a Henry with improved magazine tube(no visable follower) and wooden forearm.The most common rifle in westerns is the 1892 simply because it weas much more common being manufactured intill the 1950s IIRC.
To get to the point of the first post bolt action rifles are capable of handling cartridges developing much greater pressure and they are able to use cartridges with the newer spitzer (pointed) bullets. Giving the range/power advantage to the bolt action repeater.

Thanx for clearing up my mistakes. I was going by what I remembered from the history channel.

Well, since we seem to have gotten off onto tanks...

The French has some good tanks, for 1940. As has been said, the Char B1 was very good. The R-35 and S-35 were also as good as anything the Germans had. And the French had a lot of tanks.

What the French lacked was a good armor doctrine. They spread most of their tanks thinly across the entire front rather than concentrating them as the Germans did. The French only had (I think) two tank divisions and a few other small mechanized units. The Germans had ten panzer divisions and several panzer grenadier divisions. These were the units that punched such big holes in the French lines, cutting off the main French and British armies in Belgium.

The standard issue rifle of the U. S. Army following the Civil War was the “Trapdoor” Springfield. It was a single shot rifle, made from converted muzzle-loading rifles. Following the Civil War, the U. S. govmint was trying to save money (imagine that?) and the converted Trapdoors were cheaper than new rifles or new technology. Good pictures at http://www.sodcity.com/Trapdoor%20Web/index.htm
Do a search for “Trapdoor Springfield” and you’ll get more information than you wanted.

The Army did some ‘experiments’ with the Henry rifle. The 1860 Henry rifle was issued and used in the Civil War, but it was underpowered for a fighting rifle. Power was about that of a revolver. Effective range was limited to about 75 yards or so. Also, the magazine had a projection that could be blocked by the forward hand on the rifle. Finally, the Henry was considerably more fragile than the common single shot military rifles of the day.
Henry also had models of 1866 and 1873, which were improvements on the 1860. They were also limited to revolver length cartridges – including .44-40, a respectable powered round. Still, they weren’t ‘rifle’ level cartridges. However, the 1873 rifle is the legendary “Gun that won the west”. It accounted for many game animals, a fair number of ‘hostiles’ and various bad guys and lawmen. They were popular with those who bought their own rifles.

Oliver Winchester bought out the company over time to make it Winchester. See http://ca.geocities.com/winchesterguns/ for a longer history.

I should probably point out here: Shotguns were probably more plentiful in the ‘west’ than either rifles or pistols. They were generally cheaper to purchase, didn’t require as much training or skill to operate, and – with proper ammunition – could be used for birds and small game, foxes or coyotes raiding the hen house, medium sized game like deer – and – cattle rustlers.

Still, the US Army had bunches and bunches of Trapdoor Springfield rifles, already paid for. And, military organizations are stereotypically conservative. Change is slow.

Then genius struck. All over.

In Europe, a young gun designer named Peter Paul Mauser came up with the manually turned bolt rifle action. Off the top of my head, the first one was the 1873 Mauser in 11mm (or .43) Mauser caliber. It was a single shot. It was faster to operate than the Trapdoor, slower than the Henry, but could use cartridges loaded to higher pressure. In 1884, Mauser developed a system for a tubular magazine under the barrel, allowing a fully loaded rifle of 11 rounds.

Mauser went on to design several more rifles, culminating with the timeless ’98 Mauser. The basic action, or ‘workings’ of the rifle are still the basis for most of the bolt-action rifles in the world. The action has been used for cartridges from .22 long rifle to a scaled up version in the equal of .50 Browning Machine Gun. Countless sporting arms have been derived.

In the U. S., a western gunsmith named John Moses Browning (slight pause to rise and remove hat) started designing guns. JM designed the 1892 and 1894 and 1895 Winchester rifles, the 1897 Winchester shotgun, a couple machineguns and all the semiautomatic pistols Colt produced until the 1980s or so.

Then there were men like Arthur Savage, who founded the Savage Firearms Co. John Marlin, who built Marlin rifles and shotguns. But these were relatively late comers.

Remington Arms Co. didn’t do a lot of innovation in this period. They made shotguns for the civilian market, mostly. They made single shot rifles for hunting, but were priced out of the military markets.
The rolling block Remington rifle was popular with some, buffalo hunters and foreign armies, oddly. The U. S. Army had some, but it never replaced the Trapdoor officially.

In the 1880s, a French chemist changed the gun world forever. Paul Vieille discovered that if one colloided ‘guncotton’ (cotton dissolved in nitric acid) then cut it into small bits, it burned with three times the energy of black powder and gave off relatively little smoke. Now, rapidly repeating weapons were practical.

The U. S. Army (and other services) finally displaced the Trapdoor Springfield in 1898 with a fancy new, small bore repeating rifle; the 1898 Krag-Jorgenson, in caliber .30 Government, known commercially as .30-40 Krag.

In short, the reason the Army had a single shot and the cowboys and Indians had repeaters was simple. Cowboys and Indians were not restricted by Army regulations.

In the U. S., a western gunsmith named John Moses Browning (slight pause to rise and remove hat) started designing guns. JM designed the 1892 and 1894 and 1895 Winchester rifles, the 1897 Winchester shotgun, a couple machineguns and all the semiautomatic pistols Colt produced until the 1980s or so.


During WWI, the Army's rifle was the Garrand, which was essentially a copy of the 1898 Mauser using 30.06 cartridges.

Browning was an excellent gun designer. He was responsible for the design of the legendary Colt .45 Automatic, Model 1911. During WWI, he designed the Army's .30 caliber, water cooled heavy machinegun and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). After the war, he designed the air cooled .50 cal heavy machinegun. Oddly, this weapon was originally envisioned as an anti-tank gun. His last major design, not quite finished when he died, was the Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol.

The History Channel, in it first series of "History of the Gun" noted that, except for the Garrand, all of the Army's infantry weapons in WWI were designed by Browning.

His designs have also been enduring. The Colt .45 was used in the Army into the 1980's, and is still very popular. The .30 machinegun was used into WWII. The BAR was used through Korea. And the .50 machinegun is still in use today.

I have a Browning Hi-Power. It is an excellent gun. The design is very similar to the Colt .45, with a few refinements. For when it was first made, it was over engineered. It can literally be disassembled in seconds for cleaning. Amazing gun.

During WWI, the Army's rifle was the Garrand, which was essentially a copy of the 1898 Mauser using 30.06 cartridges.Oh, Stepchild! Fall on your sword!
The Garand rifle was not adopted for use by the U. S. Armed forces until 1936; it was the WWII standard rifle. The Garand is a semi-automatic rifle, not a bolt gun.

I think you mean the M1903 Springfield rifle. That was used in WWI, and is arguably based on the '98 Mauser. As I said, most every bolt gun made is at least tangentally derived from the Mauser.

Browning was an excellent gun designer...No argument there.

I used a browning 9mm in the army (made in Belgium - 1990s).

Oh, Stepchild! Fall on your sword!
The Garand rifle was not adopted for use by the U. S. Armed forces until 1936; it was the WWII standard rifle. The Garand is a semi-automatic rifle, not a bolt gun.

I think you mean the M1903 Springfield rifle. That was used in WWI, and is arguably based on the '98 Mauser. As I said, most every bolt gun made is at least tangentally derived from the Mauser.

No argument there.

Arrg. You are correct. Again, relying on my (sometimes) failing memory. It was the Springfield. The Army was greatly impressed by the Mausers used by the Spanish during the S-A War. Their Mausers were quite a bit better than the Krags we had. The Army had to get licenses from Mauser to produce the Springfield.

As you pointed out, the original Henry rifle had some drawbacks. It was very inovative for its time. And, as with many inovative products, its design had shortcomings that didn't come to light until it was put into use.

Is the Lee-Enfield an original design?
In many ways it is. And it predates the mauser by 5 years.

And the Lee Metford was even earlier, 1888 and led to the SMLE.

I'm not much interested in rifles, but recal that in some ways, the industrial revolution started with one. I think it was the Springfield rifle, but not sure of any of this so please correct my memory, if need be.

I.e. prior to that rifle, each rifle, clock, etc. was custom made and the parts, while very similar, were not interchangable. The rifle I am interested to know (or confirm, if memory is correct) is the first to be made from parts so precisely made to a standard that they were interchangable. Was it the springfield rifle and was it from Springfield, Mass?

Yes, the 1851 springfield musket. It was from the springfield armory.

Yes, the 1851 springfield musket. It was from the springfield armory.thanks - you rifle buffs should take more credit for strating the modern world. Henry ford did not do it with his assembly line. the springfield armory did it with precison, interchangable parts that allowed specialization in mass production that Adam Smith praised long before Ford.

I.e. Smith's specialization of manual labor is sort of eary assemble line concept: (One man cut the wire, another only made the head of the pin, etc.)

What springfield did is more important and not well known by average Joe. They made it possible to subcontract parts, salvage used parts, facilated repair via catelogue parts, etc.

Ford's main contribution to the modern world, IMHO, was the idea to pay workers enough so they could buy the things they made. I.e. Ford should get credit for the "middle class," not the industrial revolution Springfield started or even the assembly line as Adam Smith had that idea long before Ford. I will however, admit that he make these ideas widely used.

industrial revolution Springfield started or even the assembly line as Adam Smith had that idea long before Ford.
Or the Royal navy, who had production lines mass-producing blocks for rigging back in the age of sail.....

Well there is a much greater degree of precision needed for a firearm than rigging blocks, but I wonder how hard it would be to track down the first instance of production line work. The ancient greeks making wine vessels?

I have heard from my grandfather before, that many repeating rifles had small intricate parts that could not be put together with a machine, this would mean that the german industrial machine would not be able to mass produce them. I have also been told that bolt lock rifles tended to be a lot more accurate. Not entirely sure if either are true

that many repeating rifles had small intricate parts that could not be put together with a machine, this would mean that the german industrial machine would not be able to mass produce them.
Assembly of components is rarely done by machine, regardless of what it is. Manufacturing of components can be done by any requisite machine tool.

Well there is a much greater degree of precision needed for a firearm than rigging blocks, but I wonder how hard it would be to track down the first instance of production line work. The ancient greeks making wine vessels?If we realy want to start a "can you find and older one" contest, my entry showing both a production line (although it was stationary and the workers moved along it) different workers performed a specialized task is:

Two or three men pulling a crude plow, one man guiding it, and small boy following with bag of seeds about 5000 years years ago.

Thus, I think the interchangability of parts, MADE TO A MEASURED STANDARD TOLLERANCE IS THE KEY.

I doubt if the royal navy's blocks were make to a measured standard and tested against it to see if the part was "within tollerance" as the Springfield armoy's parts must have been.

IIRC the blocks were made on machines and were to a tolerance, since they were designed to accept the lines running through them (very loose tolerances by today's standards - hardly +/- a couple of thou :D ), but in the history of engineering that production line is held up as one of the first examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills

IIRC the blocks were made on machines and were to a tolerance, since they were designed to accept the lines running through them (very loose tolerances by today's standards - hardly +/- a couple of thou :D ), but in the history of engineering that production line is held up as one of the first examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_MillsOK, if true, seems like Royal Navy can claim to have started the industrial age. Certainly England (Watt's steam pump for removing water from coal mines) can claim to have started the fossil fuel engines that power it.