Has any Army ever adopted a lever action?

[Mikee Loxxer]

Not having much experience with lever guns (the only one I ever fired was a Marlin chambered for 45-70) I have to wonder "can you shoot one easily from the prone position like you can a bolt gun?" If not is this the reason why the lever action is not used by professionals (except maybe as a guide gun) anymore? I would think a bolt or autoloading gun would be a much better choice than a lever action on the post WWI battlefield.

 

[roscoe]

Some of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders carried 1895 Winchesters in 30-40.

 

[Detritus]

Cosmo, you may have a point .... right up until it's time to reload. Then, the 1903 with chargers trumps your 99.

unless i am gravely mistaken the Savage 1895 (first model of the 99) rifles submitted for the army trials DID have a form of charger guide. used to have a picture (lost when my last Comp. "got Ebola" so to speak) of one of the rifles submitted for evaluation along with 5 rounds of clipped 30-40 Krag, this is the ONLY pic i have ever seen of clipped 30-40.

 

[Cosmoline]

Not having much experience with lever guns (the only one I ever fired was a Marlin chambered for 45-70) I have to wonder "can you shoot one easily from the prone position like you can a bolt gun?" If not is this the reason why the lever action is not used by professionals (except maybe as a guide gun) anymore? I would think a bolt or autoloading gun would be a much better choice than a lever action on the post WWI battlefield.

You can certainly fire them prone. Any additional clearance can be had by simply tilting the receiver. But it's no more difficult than trying to manipulate a WWI era bolt action prone. Plus, the levergun has substantial advantage in moving combat. So why would a primitive autoloader or long bolt action rifle be superior?

 

[Tory]

What part of "LEVER" did you not comprehend?

"The Martini is not a lever action but a martini action. I had two, one an ex-Australian training rifle, the other an Ithica [sic] 22LR designed to look like a lever action."

That "Martini action" is LEVER operated. On BOTH guns.

As I own both a Mk. IV Martini-Henry and an Ithaca Saddle gun, I think I know how they work.

 

[Crosshair]

For those of you who want to know, the first time that the use of repeating rifles resulted in a significant strategic advantage for one side was during the Plevna Delay. The link goes to an interesting read on how the Turks used the repeating rifle to repell several Russian attacks. I like to call the lever rifle the 19th century submachine gun. That is basicly what it was at the time. A short range weapon with a high rate of fire. (Compared to other weapons of the day.)

 

[Eleven Mike]

That "Martini action" is LEVER operated. On BOTH guns.

Yes, but it's not a lever-action. A lever-action has a bolt, but we don't call it a bolt action. Lever-action and bolt-action are just terms that indicate a certain type of gun and the Martini is neither.

A Martini-Henry is a single-shot breechloader, putting it in a whole different category from a lever-action.

 

[Gunstore Commando]

Don't forget paramilitary units.

The Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers, effectively more of a paramilitary than a law enforcement organization, of course made great use of Winchester 73's, 76's, etc. Someone has also mentioned the RCMP, another similiarly constitued group.

Speaking of Canada, I have a vague recollection that some Canadian Home Guard units had Savage 99's.

 

[MikeJackmin]

I (think) I recently read about a flaming-bomb-marked Winchester lever gun that was issued to a few folks in the Northwest US during WWII. They were some sort of forest ranger/home front military outfit. I don't recall the details, sorry.

I sure would have prefered a '94 to an '03 in the trenches, personally...

 

[Tory]

NONSENSE!

"Yes, but it's [the Martini action] not a lever-action."

Really? A quick use of GOOGLE produced the following information:

Martini-Henry website says:

The Martini-Henry Rifle is a weapon of Empire....This robust weapon utilized a falling block, self-cocking, lever operated, single-shot action designed by Friedrich von Martini of Switzerland.

Guns & Ammo website says:

The Ithaca Model 49 was a lever-action Martini-type single-shot.

Note that the "LEVERGUNS" website also includes the Ithaca .

Now explain how a gun that requires the user to operate a lever to function is NOT a "lever action"..........

 

[Cosmoline]

Simple. The lever does not actuate the action. The shooter's arm and hand function in that capacity. Hence a Martini-Henry has a lever (long or short) but that lever does not cycle the action, it merely opens the breech and ejects the spent shell. A lever ACTION will eject the spend shell and load up a new cartridge with a stroke forward and a stroke back.

The 49 is best described as a faux lever action, but it was clearly designed to look like a true levergun and is better classed with the true leverguns than with the Martini-Henry's, Farquarsons and other single shots which have a breech opened by some sort of lever device.

 

[Eleven Mike]

Now explain how a gun that requires the user to operate a lever to function is NOT a "lever action"..........

It's very simple. When the term is used, it means a repeater, not a single-shot.

You might as well say, "explain how an AR-15, which uses a bolt to cycle and fire, is NOT a bolt-action."

 

[Eleven Mike]

Now that I think of it, Tory, we still call a single-shot bolt-action a bolt action, so you may be partly right. However, would you say that a Ruger No. 1 is a lever-action? This doesn't make sense to me. Maybe single-shot bolt guns should not be so called.

Cosmoline, I would say that the lever of the Martini does "actuate the action," but that said action is very different from a lever-gun in that it doesn't reload the gun.

 

[tinner man]

When Texas was a republic

They had the lever action, why they were so dangerous. According to John Wayne movies.

 

[Tory]

Actually, it does...

"The 49 is best described as a faux lever action, but it was clearly designed to look like a true levergun and is better classed with the true leverguns than with the Martini-Henry's [sic], Farquarsons and other single shots which have a breech opened by some sort of lever device."

Nonsense. The Ithaca is, by your definition, LESS less of a "lever action" than the Martini-Henry. The former does nothing more than drop the breech block, allowing the case/cartridge to eject; the hammer must be manually cocked for the gun to fire.

The Martini-Henry cocks the striker with the action of the lever, making that an integral function of the "lever action."

Note that TWO sources support my position; you have yet to cite any supporting yours. Try again...........

 

[Eleven Mike]

Tory,

Your first source, the Martini-Henry website, does not support your contention. It says "lever-operated," but it does not say that the gun is a lever-action.

The other two sources you haven't actually cited, so give me some URL's and I'll take a look. Are these websites reliable, credible sources? Perhaps they are wrong in their statements.

What I'm trying to tell you is that a single-shot rifle that uses a lever to operate it's action is not in the same category with a repeating rifle. The Martini-Henry may be an improvement over a rifle that must be manually cocked, but as a military rifle it is worlds apart from a gun that can fire several shots without reloading. So, it would be silly to call both guns by the same name when their capabilities are so much different.

 

[Harve Curry]

Don't forget the Evans, 32 rounds in the old model or 28 rounds in the new sporting models, 44 caliber centerfire like a hot loaded 44-40.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Martinis are lever operated action just like the Sharps,
but most folks think of the Sharps as a single shot
and leveraction implies lever action repeaters like the
Winchester and Marlin, that's the common usage.

The Spencer is a lever-action, drop breech loader like many
single shots, but it is also a repeater with a buttstock tube
magazine. Unlike the Winchester and Marlin, working the
lever on the Spencer does not cock the hammer: you
have to do that by hand. Spencer was one of its kind.

Spencers and Henrys were issued by the military. Have we
settled whether they were officially adopted as standards?

 

[Tory]

Context

"What I'm trying to tell you is that a single-shot rifle that uses a lever to operate it's action is not in the same category with a repeating rifle."

Absolutely - NO repeater is in the same category as a single-shot, regardless of how operated. My contention is simple: If the gun requires manual operation of a lever to function, it is a "lever action." Whether said gun is also a repeater is a separate analysis.

As the question referred to "lever action" guns adopted by any army, the Martini-Henry, which ruled the British empire from 1875 through 1888 and was expressly referred to by Kipling in at least 2 of his poems, qualifies.

GOOGLE "Martini-Henry" for its site; "lever action" for a LOT more.

 

[rbernie]

Plus, the levergun has substantial advantage in moving combat. So why would a primitive autoloader or long bolt action rifle be superior?

Most leverguns do not have the extraction or feeding power of a boltgun, and do very poorly when asked to feed and extract ammo that's muddy, dented, or otherwise not quite in spec.

I love my 99's, but they *do* have their limitations to being viable choices as military firearms. Of course, the same could be said of ANY of the modern push-feed semiauto designs....

 

[Cosmoline]

Most leverguns do not have the extraction or feeding power of a boltgun, and do very poorly when asked to feed and extract ammo that's muddy, dented, or otherwise not quite in spec.

I don't know that that's true at all. The '94 has loose tolerances and can certainly deal with muddy ammo. In fact I can't remember a single instance where any lever action I've owned, including '94's, Savage '99's and Marlin '95's have failed to extract in spite of being used in extremely rough and dirty environments. OTOH I know of many cases where old Mausers have failed to extract.

Absolutely - NO repeater is in the same category as a single-shot, regardless of how operated. My contention is simple: If the gun requires manual operation of a lever to function, it is a "lever action." Whether said gun is also a repeater is a separate analysis.

You're the only one I know of who considers Ruger No. 1 and Martini-Henrys to be true leverguns. Firearm classifications are by their nature fuzzy around the edges. But if you take them to the extreme and include as many firearms as possible in the definition, then the definition ceases being useful. A definition of "lever action" which includes a huge array of single shot rifles isn't a useful definition. Both as a matter of firearm taxonmy and historical analysis, the Martini-Henry belongs with the other single shot breech loaded early cartridge firearms where the user feeds his own cartridges by hand, such as the trapdoor springfield. To claim it should be classed with the subsequent and unrelated line of leverguns because they both incorporate levers is silly. Once you get beyond the surface, the two kinds of rifles have nothing in common.

With early single shot bolt actions, OTOH, you can see a direct line between the first single shot Mauser and the tube fed version, which then followed into the magazine fed varieties. The Martini-Henry did not evolve into the Henry or the Winchester. Nothing about it did.

Stop confusing lever-operated with lever action.

 

[Correia]

Tory, I would be hard pressed to find any firearms historian, curator, or bonafide arms expert that would agree with your terminology. Regardless of what a couple of hobbyist webpages have to say. Even the NRA hunters education packet and basic rifle course disagrees with you. Lever actions are universally considered to be repeaters.

 

[rbernie]

The '94 has loose tolerances and can certainly deal with muddy ammo. In fact I can't remember a single instance where any lever action I've owned, including '94's, Savage '99's and Marlin '95's have failed to extract in spite of being used in extremely rough and dirty environments. OTOH I know of many cases where old Mausers have failed to extract.

I can't get my '99s to accept neck-sized ammo or ammo that's been deformed in the body in any way with 100% reliability, but those same rounds will chamber and fire in my bolt-actions every single time. The bolt action simply has the leverage to close the breech under conditions that the levergun can't handle.

And I can't count the number of times that each of my 99s have slipped that silly teeny weenie little extractor hook off the rim and failed to extract a round that was a little hot or a little dirty. My C Model Series A in 243 was the worst, but i've had both of my Model Es in 308 and all four of my Model Fs in 308 fail to extract at least one round per one hundred during load development.

The Marlin '95 has been more reliable on extraction for me, presumably because it has a bigger hook. But it still lacks the camming action needed to chamber casings that are not dangerously close to SAAMI minimum spec.

 

[Cosmoline]

But if leveractions were inherently poor at extraction, the same would apply to automatic actions and make them improper as military firearms. There's nothing preventing a stiffer or stronger extractor from being used.

 

[rbernie]

Don't disagree - in fact, if you go back and read my original post in this thread that's exactly the point I made.

The issue with the Savage 99 is that Savage never did address the poor design of their extractor, and (not being spring-loaded) it doesn't lend itself to aftermarket 'fixes'.