The Commission Rifle Part I — The Gewehr 88The story of the German Gewehr 88 begins in 1886 wh

The Commission Rifle Part I — The Gewehr 88The story of the German Gewehr 88 begins in 1886 when the French introduced the Lebel Model 1866 bolt action rifle. At first glance the Lebel doesn’t seem very special, it was a bolt action rifle with a tubular magazine, something very common at the time. However it wasn’t the Lebel itself that was special, rather it’s cartridge.  It used a revolutionary 8x50mm cartridge, much smaller in caliber than most other rifles of the time. While smaller caliber rifles had been attempted before, the problems of fowling from black powder made such calibers impractical.  The 8mm Lebel cartridge used a new smokeless powder which not only prevented fouling, but fired with much more velocity, range, and accuracy.  In addition, the cartridge lacked the characteristic puff of smoke which could give away ones position to the enemy, or could an entire battlefield in a smokey, sulfuric haze. The invention of smokeless powder stunned the world, and immediately nations began to develop their own smokeless powder rifles to catch up. France’s old rival Germany was especially alarmed, whose Mauser Model 1871/84 had been made instantly obsolete. Thus shortly after the introduction of the Lebel, the German Army formed the German Rifle Testing Commission to create a new design.  The Commission consisted of some of the best German and Austrian firearms designers of the time, however conspicuously absent was Paul Mauser, inventor of Germany’s previous infantry rifle, the Mauser M1871. Mauser was not very happy about not being invited to the Commission, especially since they were using his action as a basis for the rifle. Mauser would go his own path, creating revolutionary designs that would surpass the Gewehr 88 and invent the rifle which would ultimately replace it.The basis for the Gew. 88 was the Mauser M1871 action, a turn bolt split bridge cock on opening bolt action. The action was redesigned with various updates intended to make it more modern, stronger, and more reliable. Whereas the Lebel had a Kropatscheck style magazine tube, the new Gew 88 was equipped with a five round single stack Mannlicher style magazine invented by Austrian gun designer Ferdinand Mannlicher.  The new magazine was used with Mannlicher’s with M1885 and 1886 straight pull bolt action designs which used black powder cartridges. The Mannlicher magazine was fed by a five round single stack en bloc clip, which was inserted cartridges and all into the magazine.  When the user expended the five rounds, the empty clip would drop out through a port at the bottom of the magazine.While an efficient design, one common problem with Mannlicher magazine’s was that the port on the bottom often served as an entry point for dirt, dust, and moisture. The Commission improved upon the Mannlicher design by making it mutlidirectional, whereas in the original Mannlicher design, the clip had to be inserted in one “up/down” direction. One of the oddest features of the Gew. 88 was a barrel shroud made of stamped sheet metal.  The shroud wasn’t really created to dissipate heat, but instead was intended to create a space in between the barrel and the stock, in other words a “free floating” barrel.  The purpose of this was to prevent the stock from shifting the alignment of the stock and disrupting it’s barrel harmonics when fired.  While an interesting feature, the shroud often trapped moisture resulting in rust and corrosion.Of course, the most important feature of of Gew 88 was it’s cartridge, called the Patrone 88, a rimless 8x57mm cartridge which used a nitrocellulose based smokleless powder as propellant. Despite being of much smaller caliber than most cartridges of the 19th century, it was far more accurate, had much greater range, and had much more power than black powder cartridges before it. Note that it used a round nosed bullet, the pointed spitzer bullet not being invented until 1898.The Gewehr 88 would immediately be approved by this Commission after barely testing it, and it would be adopted by the German Army in 1888, a mere two years after the introduction of the French Lebel, and remain in German service even in World War I.  The Gew. 88 would be used by other nations as well, including Turkey and China, and it’s action would form the basis of other Dutch and Austrian designs.  However, a rifle created by a commission and rushed into service with little testing was certainly not perfect, and the new Gew. 88 had many flaws that would come to light once in military service.TO BE CONTINUED… -- source link

More pics about