Question about French rifles of WW1

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Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/29/2007 3:28:24 AM

SMK-at-work

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Does anyone have a cross section of the tube-magazine system for the "Lebel" M-1886 and its successors that were stil in use in 1914?

I'm curious about the description of the ammo - it had a very wide cartridge base, with a noticeable groove around the primer for the point of the bullet behind to sit in so it wouldn't impact on hte primer & possibly set it off in the magazine!! Apparently there are no known cases of this happening, so it must have been effective!!

But it seems like a strange arrangement & I was wondering how it all worked - there doesn't seem to be any pictorical descriptions on the web.

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/31/2007 1:29:53 AM

Dirtdog20

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_Lebel

I know its Wiki but it is a pretty decent item.

http://www.oldrifles.com/French.htm

Notice the three round clips on the Lebel about 1/3 of the way down the page.

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/31/2007 1:37:55 AM

SMK-at-work

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I've sen the wiki thanks.

the other link is pretty interesting - thanks for that.

but it doesn't show how the tube magazine mechanism works

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/31/2007 2:00:28 AM

Dirtdog20

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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWlebel.htm

Not a great view of the tubular magazine but I will look some more.

http://www.gunsworld.com/french/bert_leb/lebel_us.html
Another not great view but hopefully this is more like what you wanted.

Edited to add link.

< Message edited by Dirtdog20 -- 10/31/2007 2:04:15 AM >

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/31/2007 4:27:37 PM

Dirtdog20

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Please forgive me if this gets to basic in spots.

The tube magazine is loaded by opening the bolt all the way to the rear. This causes a "door" to open exposing the magazine. The rounds can then be loaded much like a shotgun one at a time. Once the magazine is completely loaded, or as loaded as you have rounds, you close the bolt which closes the door. This is assuming that you have a full magazine and you are placing an additional round in the chamber.

Once you fire the first round the opening of the bolt extracts the fired casing and opens the door allowing a round to slide back onto the door. The bolt moving forward lifts the door to allow the bolt to engage the new round and feed it into the chamber.

The basic problem with the tubular magazine is the balance of the rifle shifts with every shot. Which is not a big deal when the basic doctorine is attack with the bayonet.

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 10/31/2007 11:16:35 PM

SMK-at-work

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Thjose are quite good thanks - the 2nd one with the line drawing seems to show how hte mechanism raises the round into the breach if you're used to looking for such things :)

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 11/1/2007 9:08:11 PM

Disintegration

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dirtdog20
The basic problem with the tubular magazine is the balance of the rifle shifts with every shot. Which is not a big deal when the basic doctorine is attack with the bayonet.

That's not that big a problem unless you're target shooting - shooting at a man-sized target at 100 yards or less it's not even noticeable.

One reason tubular magazines went out of style was the prospect of ammo detonation in the magazine once everyone went to spitzer bullets - this is an interesting solution to that and I wasn't aware of it.

But I think the main reason was the difficulty in loading - you can't use clips, so once they went to stripper clips you could load 5 rounds into an SMLE or Mauser in the time it took to load 1 or 2 into a tubular magazine. It's also awkward trying to grab and load a handful of loose rounds and less experienced shooters tend to fumble them under stress - I see a lot of that in competition, and that's with nobody shooting back!

Slower loading was initially thought to be an advantage (it would discourage wasting ammo) but designers eventually learned what a mistake that was.

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RE: Question about French rifles of WW1 - 11/2/2007 12:26:00 AM

Dirtdog20

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Disintegration

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dirtdog20
The basic problem with the tubular magazine is the balance of the rifle shifts with every shot. Which is not a big deal when the basic doctorine is attack with the bayonet.

That's not that big a problem unless you're target shooting - shooting at a man-sized target at 100 yards or less it's not even noticeable.

One reason tubular magazines went out of style was the prospect of ammo detonation in the magazine once everyone went to spitzer bullets - this is an interesting solution to that and I wasn't aware of it.

But I think the main reason was the difficulty in loading - you can't use clips, so once they went to stripper clips you could load 5 rounds into an SMLE or Mauser in the time it took to load 1 or 2 into a tubular magazine. It's also awkward trying to grab and load a handful of loose rounds and less experienced shooters tend to fumble them under stress - I see a lot of that in competition, and that's with nobody shooting back!

Slower loading was initially thought to be an advantage (it would discourage wasting ammo) but designers eventually learned what a mistake that was.

Also the learned ability to forge folding springs that allowed magazines. The French, again looking at doctorine, originally went with the 3rd magazine. The 8MM casing also played a part I am sure. The Cho-Cho using the same round had the half moon magazine. I would think trying to put a 10 rd magazine on the Lebel and its follow ons could have resulted in an ugly rifle. Which isnt a bad thing in combat but even today is seen as a bad thing on parade.

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