Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

by Robert Routledge

The Germans, about 1888, adopted a magazine rifle known as the Mauser. It had a fixed tubular magazine for eight rounds below the barrel, and a breech mechanism of the Remington-Keene type. The French followed suit with their famous Lebel gun, the construction of which was long kept secret. It also has a fixed under barrel tubular magazine, and the cartridges used with it contain smokeless powder. It is said that a new gun of practically the same pattern has been adopted by Russia, but with a detachable magazine to contain five rounds. The Russian gun will also use smokeless powder. In England, a small-bore rifle of 0·303 inches calibre is now issued to all troops. It has an under breechbox magazine, modified from the Lee rifle. The box is detachable, so that the weapon could normally be used as a single loader, and the magazine attached only when required. But the British authorities have decided that the magazine box is to be attached to the weapon by a chain. The first issue of this pattern of rifle to British soldiers took place early in 1890. The Austrians are adopting the Mannlicher pattern, in which the magazine idea is embodied in a complete and practical form. This rifle has a fixed box magazine below the breech. From this box, in which the cartridges—five in number—lie side by side, they are fed up by springs as they are disposed of by the movement of the breech mechanism. The magazine is recharged by placing in it a tin case containing five cartridges, and the case drops out when all the cartridges have been fired. In this form there is of course no necessity for providing any mechanism for holding the magazine in reserve while the rifle is used as a single loader. As to calibre, the Austrian authorities follow other countries in adopting a small bore, namely, 0·315 inch. Italy has converted her single-fire Vetterli rifle into a magazine arm, with a box something like the Mannlicher, and Belgium has adopted a gun of the same type. The rate of fire from charged magazines of such guns as the “Lee,” “Mannlicher” and “Vetterli,” worked with the right hand without bringing the piece down from the shoulder is, for all of them, about one shot per second; but the time that is required to recharge the magazines varies much according to the contrivance used. The number of rounds the magazine of a rifle is capable of containing when fully charged is from 5 to 12, or more, according to the difference of system. It is considered that in the detachable Lee or the quick recharging Mannlicher five rounds are ample for use at a critical moment.

Fig. 89.—The Magazine and Breech of the Mannlicher Rifle.

The calibre of the military rifle has been decreased with almost every new pattern adopted. Thus, while the old “Brown Bess” had a calibre of 0·75 inch, in the last issue of it the bore was reduced to 0·693 inch; the Enfield (1852) had a bore of 0·577 inch; the Martini-Henry, 0·451 inch, which, in a newer pattern adopted in 1887, was reduced to 0·400 inch; and, finally, in the Lee-Metford, the calibre is only 0·303 inch. A similar consecutive reduction of bores has taken place in the rifles adopted by other countries, and one of the latest type, issued for the use of the United States Navy, has a bore of only 0·236 inch, and it is even expected that a still smaller one will become general. The advantage of the narrow and lighter projectile is that while it has a higher initial velocity with a given charge, its flight is less checked by the resistance of the atmosphere, the section it presents being so much less. Thus the bullet of 0·236 inch diameter has a section little more than one-fourth that of the 0·45 inch bullet. The difference is well shown in the comparative heights of the trajectory (or path of the bullet) of the Martini-Henry 0·450 inch bullet, and that of the 0·303 inch Lee-Metford (the latter with cordite ammunition); for at a range of 1,000 yards the former reaches to 48 feet above the line of sight, while the latter rises to only 25 feet.

Some form of repeating or magazine rifle has now been adopted by all the most important nations of the world. The number of shots contained in the magazines varies from 5 to 12. In the British detachable box magazine there are ten charges. The calibres of the barrels range in the infantry patterns of different nations from 0·256 inch to 0·315 inch; the explosive used in every case is some kind of smokeless powder, and this, in the cartridge for the Lee-Metford, is cordite. The bullets are not made simply of lead, but of lead coated with a harder metal or alloy such as steel, cupro-nickel, nickel steel, or they consist entirely of some of these alloys.

Although the magazine rifle is now the regulation weapon of the infantry of all great armies, it is not improbable that at no distant future it maybe superseded by one in which, as in certain machine guns, the force of the recoil will be used for actuating the breech and lock movements. Many patents have already been taken out for rifles on this principle, and several patterns have actually been constructed, in which a merely momentary contact of the breech-piece with the end of the barrel is sufficient; the recoil of the barrel with the reaction of a spring performs all the requisite movements with such rapidity that an amazing speed of firing has been obtained. It is said that such an automatic gun can send forth bullets at a perfectly amazing rate. Of course the mechanism of such a gun is somewhat intricate, and it is impossible to explain its construction and action without a great number of diagrams and much description.

RIFLED CANNON.

Having briefly sketched in the foregoing section the development of the military rifle from such weapons as our own “Brown Bess,” down to the repeating or magazine rifle, we now purpose to adopt a similar course with regard to ordnance, giving also some particulars of the methods of manufacture, etc., and following in general the order of history.

Naturally there is nothing that accelerates progress in warlike inventions so much as the exigences of war itself. This is well exemplified in circumstances attending the Crimean War, which was waged in 1854 by England and France in alliance against Russia. The desire of having ships that could run the gauntlet of the heavy guns mounted on Russian forts led to the construction of La Gloire and other armour-plated vessels, as we have already seen, and a suggestion of the French Emperor, as to improving metal for guns, made to Mr. Bessemer, led incidentally but ultimately to the great revolution in the manufacture of steel, although it is true that Krupp of Essen had begun to produce small cast-steel ordnance as early as 1847. But what determined the necessity for rifled ordnance was more particularly the greater comparative effects obtained by the muzzle-loading rifles over the field artillery then in use in the several engagements that took place in the Crimea, especially in the battle of Inkerman (1854). The rifles so much surpassed in accuracy at long ranges the smooth-bore field-pieces firing spherical projectiles, that field artillery was on the point of losing its relative importance, and even in the matter of range the latter lost so much by windage that the men serving the artillery could sometimes be leisurely picked off by the rifle sharp-shooters. Inventors were soon at work on devising methods of increasing the accuracy of ordnance fire with both light and heavy pieces, and before the end of the war some cast-iron guns rifled on Lancaster’s plan had been mounted on forts and in ships, without proving very successful except in regard to increase of range when elongated pointed projectiles were used with them.