peashooter85:The Magazine Cutoff,Bolt action repeating rifles would first be introduced in the mid 1
peashooter85:The Magazine Cutoff,Bolt action repeating rifles would first be introduced in the mid 19th century. The first to adopt the bolt action repeater as a standard military firearm were the Swiss, who adopted the Vetterli rifle in 1871. However acceptance of repeaters of any kind was slow. Many nations adopted breechloading conversions of their old muzzleloading muskets, such as the American Trapdoor Springfield, British Snider Enfield, or Russian Kropatschek. Later single shot breechloaders would become popular. Some bolt action designs were used, but were typically single shot only. The fact of the matter was that in most militaries, the old guard high ranking brass eyed repeating firearms suspiciously. After all, they never needed them back in the day, so why would they be needed now? One of the most common arguments was economic in nature. Commanders believed that armed with repeating rifles, soldiers would be wasteful with ammo. Also at the time military doctrine emphasized individual marksmen; highly skilled sharpshooters picking off the enemy with single shots, perhaps even hundreds of yards away. The concept of dominating the enemy through superior firepower was either inconceivable or unpopular.With the French adoption of the Lebel rifle in the 1880’s, it became apparent that the bolt action repeater would dominate the battlefield of the future. By the turn of the century, almost every nations would adopt some bolt action model with a box magazine. However, old attitudes remained, and hence a compromise needed to be made. Hence the magazine cutoff, a device which was installed on most bolt action rifles in the late 19th or early 20th century. A magazine cutoff was a simple device which deactivated the magazine. With the simple flick of a switch, a device would be engaged which physically blocked the magazine preventing the action from advancing the next round, thus turning the bolt action repeater into a single shot breechloader. Soldiers were encouraged to use the rifle only as a single shot, only engaging the magazine in emergency situations or very hot firefights. It sounds like a very odd situation, equipping repeating firearms with a device that disables its ability to fire repeatedly, but it was a necessary compromise which made the old timers happy while allowing militaries to modernize. Magazine cutoffs remained a feature of military bolt actions up until the middle of World War I. The horrors of the Great War, especially the use of machine guns, taught that the future of warfare was firepower, and that the doctrine of the individual marksman was an outdated idea which got men killed. -- source link