Weapons of the Trenches

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Not a rifle, pistol or shotgun but one that sums up the barbarity of that war.

trench.jpg
 
Funny how today, we think of close quarters battle as home for 16" AR-15 carbines with all sorts of doo-dads.

Back then, it was a Mauser/Springfield/Enfield with a long bayonet, a big knife, maybe some brass knuckles or a primitive club, a hatchet, or whatever else you could scrape together.

I think World War One is often overshadowed in history by the Second World War, and that's understandable. But World War One WAS a turning point in history as well, and it too cost millions of lives. The Great War should not be forgotten or brushed aside becaue World War II was bigger.

I believe that during the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, the British took sixty THOUSAND casualties in one DAY.

World War One was the very first war in which most of the modern instruments of war were used on a large scale; The airplane, modern artillery, the submarine, the machine gun, chemical weapons, hand grenades, flame throwers, tanks, on and on.

These weapons combined with primitive Napoleonic tactics led to killing on a scale the world had never seen. I can only wonder what went through people's minds shortly after the Battle of the Somme, when the press reported the tens of thousands dead in a few days. The British, French, Germans, and Russians lost an entire generation to that meat grinder. The tragedy of the Great War is magnified when you begin to understand what it was about. It wasn't about ANYTHING, really. Old alliances, old grudges. The european powers thought it'd be just another little war for the glory of their respective monarchies, like the countless ones they've had over the centuries.

So in 1914 their armies happily marched off to war, singing songs, wearing brightly colored uniforms, and saying it'd be all over by Christmas.

Wow, didn't mean to get so deep. LOL

MORE PICTURES
 
I hear something about Canadian soldiers having a rifle called the "Ross". Anybody know anything about it, or have any pictures? Apparently it was problematic, though very accurate.
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Since I just got to this section, thought I'd share... (A Rifleman Went to War, pp 213)

The first time we were called upon to repel a determined attack, and sustained rapid fire was in order, it was found that the Ross would not stand up under that kind of treatment. Wonderfully accurate weapon as it was, it was never built for fast, rough work. Never will I forget the time: one night when Heinie tried to rush our lines in one of his many charitable attempts to chase us out of our muddy muskrat holes and back on to the high and dry ground in our rear and we, with characteristic soldier perversity, declined to go, that I heard, during a little lull in the firing, a great voice, supplicating, praying, exhorting, and, above all, cursing the whole Clan Ross. Investigation showed it to be "Big Dan" McGann, assiduously trying to open the bolt of his rifle, using a big chunk of wood as a persuader. During the short time allowed me to listen, I heard him specify each and every member of that family from away back -- from the time of the "begats" down to the present generation, all designated by name and number, together with the most lurid and original adjectives it has ever been my pleasure to hear. It was marvelous, entrancing -- just to hear that man swear -- but we soon found out that he was only doing what we should have liked to, had we his extraordinary ability. The bolts would stick and all hell would not open them
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Gee... sounds like one of George's rants on the AR. :D

-K
 
OH
MY
GOSH

TELL ME the following does not sound familiar...

picking up where we left off...
We had trained intensively with the Ross rifle... and had found it to be thoroughly reliable and accurate. Even in the stenuous rapid-fire tests, when fifteen shots per minute were required, it never failed. ... In accuracy, up to six hundred yards, at least, it equaleed or excelled any rifle I had or have since fired -- the Springfield not excepted.

...

Mindful of all this, it can well be understood that we went into action with all the confidence in the world in our rifles. Every man in the original batallion had fired hundreds, yes thousands of rounds, each with his own pet rifle, and knew just what he could do with it. He also knew how to take care of it, which is another very important thing. Cleaning accessories were difficult to find, but somehow or another every man found some means to keep his rifle in servicable condition...

...

... when they commenced to freeze up on us, it was acknowledged that the problem was serious. They tried all sorts of stunts to remedy the trouble, sending the rifles out back of the lines to the armourer sergeants, who reamed the chambers out larger so the cartridge would not fit so trightly, and all that, but it was no go., and the ultimate solution was to ... issue every infantryman the regulation [SMLE].

At that time and for several years after the war, I believed that all the trouble was due to some fundamental defect in the rifle itself, but since hearing from members of organizations in the First Division who participated in the earlier battles without noticing any such trouble, I am now inclined to the opinion that it might have been due, in part, at least, to the ammunition.

[McBride goes on to describe ammo production and distribution of the era...]
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So...... who's taking bets that ol' Eugene was a bastard child of the Ross Clan? :D


-K



[/quote]
 
Another oddity from the Great War was the 1915, 13mm Mauser.
Originally intended as an anti-tank weapon. It was basicly a scaled up 98.
No one on either side ever argued about it's power, reliablity or effectiveness against the first tanks.
The poor smucks who fired it complained that it had a "somewhat" excessive kick. The German military responded by adding a 3 round magazine.
It had NO muzzle brake!
The 13mm round was supposedly the inspiration for the US army and JMB to design the .50BMG round.

I have heard that some US troops carried the Krag-Jorgenson to France and only got 1903s or 1917s just before going to the front.
 
That would make sense. There were probably thousands and thousands of Krags still in the inventory at the time, as well as probably a few original Springfields in the .30-'03 cartridge.

What cartridge did this Canadian Ross rifle fire?

C'mon. Anybody got any pics of trench shotguns for us? :D
 
Then, as now, most guard and reserve units would get the hand-me-downs from the regular army. I think some National Guardmen still had the trapdoor Springfeilds, though I don't think any went to France for the great war.
Ross was .303, just like the Enfeild.
 
Night crawler i found the "early colt" you referenced

There was another early light machine gun in the US. They have a demilled example of one in one of our Armories. It's like a Colt 190...8, maybe? Anybody know anything about a Colt automatic rifle or light machine gun?
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found it!!! i was mistaken with my last reply on this subject the gun in question is a 1895/1914 Colt-Browning info found HERE and it IS in fact a "potato Digger"


had a VERY short us ground force service life, was used as the basis for the Marlin "aviation" Machine gun which replaced the swinging under barrel toggle with a gas cylinder).
 
The 03' never served overseas, just the 1917. If that doesn't matter then add the Thompson submachine gun. It was setting on the New York docks waiting for shipment overseas when the War ended.
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Which Thompson was sitting on the docks waiting for shipment? Would that be the original 1921 model?


There were probably thousands and thousands of Krags still in the inventory at the time, as well as probably a few original Springfields in the .30-'03 cartridge
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I have nver read of any .30-40 Krags in WWI front line service. And IIRC the Springfield in .30-03 was never a general issue weapon.
 
And IIRC the Springfield in .30-03 was never a general issue weapon.
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i've seen a few histories of the 1903 springfield, that seem to imply that the 30-03 chambered 1903 was never issued to ANY troops (remember 1903 was the year of acceptance for production, not the year it reached service), that by the time sufficent numbers of the rifle had been MADE, so that the rilfe could be issued to to even a company level unit, that the decison to change over to the "spitzer" style 30-06 round had been made and that ALL 1903 issued to the troops had their chambers redone (wasn't simply a lengthened throat or some such??)

i maybe completely wrong or the researcher/historian that made the comment may have been smoking something. but if there were not sufficent numbers of '03 rifles to equip the army by 1917, i'm thinking that dern few were produced between acceptance in 03 and the change over to teh NEW round and the need for the revised chamber in 06....


BTW the "guns on the NYC docks" at the time of the end of the war, were the second or third (and first LARGE) shipments of BARs meant to be feilded for use as "walking fire" weapons, in the big allied offensive that year.
Thompson got the IDEA for His "trench broom" (most likely from early reports of Bergmann MP18s) and started designing it before the war ended, but the war ended before a suitable prototype had been made and it took a few years to make a commercially viable unit.
 
Don't forget the 1891 Mannlicher-Carcano, the Italian's main rifle. The Italian Front was intense during WWI, fought IIRC high in the mountains against Austro-Hungarian troops.

From all I've heard, both the long version of the Mannlicher-Carcano and the long version of the M95 Mannlicher straight pull were far more accurate than the cut-down versions from WWII we see so often today.
 
bump

Got a better understanding of things now.

The US also used the Lewis Machine Gun in .30-06, called the "M1917". It had a 47 round pan magazine, though I've seen pictures of it with what looked like a box magazine.

Was the Pedersen Device for the M1903 ever used in combat?

Did the British and Americans use optics on some of their rifles? Which rifles? (M1903, M1917, P.14, SMLE?) Did the Germans field a scoped Mauser 98?

Anybody know anything about the MG-08/15 light machine gun ("light" being a relative term) and the MG-13? The former looks like a water cooled, though it's supposedly manportable, and fed from a big drum on the right side. The Latter had a box magazine and was air cooled, I think.

The British used the Vickers Mk.1 machine gun, but also an adaptation of the French Hotchkiss called the "Portative", if I'm not mistaken.

The Germans had this 13mm Anti-Tank rifle. Anybody know anything about it?

What about the British .55 Caliber Boys Anti-Tank rifle? Was that fielded during the Great War? (Doubt it, as the Germans only had one cumbersome tank during the whole war, with a crew of EIGHTEEN....)

What about the Bergman MP-18? It fed from a Luger Snail Drum, correct? What was the magazine capacity? Was it actually fielded during the war (I understand this is a topic of much debate). The MP-18 design lived on well through World War II, with modernizations and updates being used by both the Germans and the Japanese. I believe that the MP-18 also evolved into the Lanchester submachine gun the British used.

The French had a whole mess of guns, too. They had a Lebel rifle that used spitzer bullets AND had a tubular magazine; they later replaced it with a box-mag bolt gun with a three round magazine. They later updated that to a five round magazine. They had the Hotchkiss machine gun, too.

EDIT: The MG-13 was apparently a post-war design that was fielded in 1930. Observe. My mistake.

Oh, and if you check this page, apparently the .30-06 Chauchat used a straight 16 round magazine instead of the banana magazine with the slots in it.
 
Sniper scopes in WWI

The only scope I've ever even seen or heard mentioned in connection with WWI sniping is the Warner & Swasey, I've seen pix of it mounted on an M1917, and on a Ross. The Ross pic was in 'The Gun Digest' , but I'm exactly sure of the year, somewhere around '68. Excellent article about the Ross rifles in it. The Germans must have used some glass on their sniper rifles, because it was the low magnification of them that prompted John Unertl to build his own. (Thankfully after he moved to the US between the wars;) .)
 
Was it actually fielded during the war (I understand this is a topic of much debate).
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Supposedly von Hutier's troops were issued small numbers for the assault on Riga in 9/17.

Don't forget the Italian Villar Perosa "submachine gun"!

Interesting thread, as I'm just finishing up The Guns Of August. If you haven't yet read it, Nightcrawler, I highly recommend it. Another couple of good ones are Eye-Deep In Hell by Ellis and British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One, by Laffin. You'll enjoy them. :)
 
Don't forget that large numbers or Russian troops, and the Arabs under T.E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) used 6.5mm Arisaka rifles from Japan (oddly enough, Japan was on our side in that war) and some Russians preferred them to the Mosin-Nagant.


The Russian MG was a Maxim '08.


Also, at the start of the war the Germans had trained snipers, with scopes, in large numbers, the allies did not have many, if at all, with any scopes or training (they got in gear after the war started). Most of the scopes used in WW1 had low power (3-4X) and were fragile, but they worked. Not much changed from what got used in WW2, though by then they were a bit stouter-built. The book Sniper by Adrian Gilbert in paperback covers WW1 quite well, the sniper hides, development of the ghillie suit, rifles used, why/when, etc.

The Pattern 1914/1917 Enfields were actually preferred for sniper use on the Allied side as they were very accurate with a scope.

I've handled a WW1 Ross, and while well built, the propensity for launching the bolt into your eyeball if improperly assembled would preclude me from having one as anything but a collectors piece! :) I prefer my No.4 Mk1 Lee-Enfield.
 
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