by Dan Carlson
I have been fascinated by arms and armor from a young age. It goes hand-in-hand with my love of history. I went out almost a year ago with my good friend Michael and his nephew James to fire some black powder weapons. After that trip, we made plans to do another one for DMC, covering some weapons seen in Blood and Valor!
Disclaimer: All the firearms shows in this article were done so by the permission of their respective owner. They were handled safely and appropriately. While firearms are fun to use on a range, always make sure you do so safely and with the utmost respect. Follow the rules of firearm safety and don’t forget to have fun!
The Tools
We brought out quite the arsenal for this trip! The week before we went through all of Michael’s collection to pick out the ones we would use for this shoot, as well as making sure that I brought two from my own collection.
The “Lewis”
The Lewis Gun is an American designed machine gun that was adopted by the United Kingdom in 1914. It was part of the first generation of “light machine guns” to be fielded. Calling this a light machine gun is a little weird, as it is a HEAVY weapon, but it beats lugging a Maxim around!
Michael’s example is old, and is incompatible with standard Lewis parts, as he will explain below. This meant most of our firing was a process of charging the weapon and hoping it would cycle. Luckily, we were able to film one really good example of it firing before we decided not to put any more wear and tear on the old gal.
Michael’s example is a Japanese version that he has been slowly fixing up. Its internals need to be custom machined, which is expansive, so he doesn’t take her out often. This was a real treat and I am glad we got to show off his beautiful piece if history!
Above is a little bonus footage for anybody wanting to know how we loaded up the pan magazines
The Mauser Gewehr 98
There are few weapons more ubiquitous than the German Empire’s Mauser Gewehr 98. Designed by Paul Mauser in 1895 and adopted in 1898, it represents the greatest bolt-action rifle ever created from a safety and design standpoint. Mausers are reliable, easy to use, and modern hunting rifles borrow heavily from its 3-locking lug bolt. Mausers will eat all but the worst ammunition you load, and are smooth to operate. Michael’s example is a Turkish Mauser produced for WW2, but for all intents and purposes it is a Gewher 98.
If there is one word to describe this rifle, it is smooth! The bolt moves smoothly when cycling the action, meaning a good 95% of the population could be easily trained to use it. Its only drawback in modern terms are its 5-round capacity and being slow to load without the proprietary stripper clips.
The Mauser was the workhorse for the German Army in WW1, and its not that hard to see why. Being easy to use, accurate at combat distances, and being reliable as all-get out made the Mauser a good choice for not just Germany, but for many of their allies as well!
The M1891 Mosin-Nagant
The M1981 Mosin-Nagant rifle is often called “the garbage rod” by owners who live in the US. It’s understandable; most of the rifles in private circulation have been refurbish by their respective factories and are often fed the cheapest ammo available at your local sporting goods stores, causing bore damage which results in poor accuracy. For the Russian conscript on the Eastern Front, this flexibility was essential to their survival.
The Mosin-Nagant was designed in 1891 and was immediately placed into mass production. Due to the Russian Empire’s massive army and poor economy, they could not supply the new rifles to all their troops. The troops who did receive Mosins noted not only the rifle’s reliability, but that it’s length made it useful as a spear on the charge. Mosin-Nagants came from the factory with their bayonets fitted on, and soldiers were never expected to remove them. The rifles were even tested at the factory with the bayonets attached!
This example is from 1942, and is my personal rifle. It was the first rifle I ever owned (a 21st birthday present from my parents) and when i purchased it, I took it to a local gunsmith to get checked out and sighted in. Despite not having the bayonet attached, my Mosin-Nagant is not only eerily accurate for a vintage bolt-gun, but is also joy to shoot!
The Springfield 1903
We had fully intended to fire this beast on our outing, but our logistic system (our excited brains) forgot to pack the ammo for it. However, the Springfield 1903 is essentially a Mauser Gewher 98 with a US Flag on its lapel. The bolt design was copied STRAIGHT from Mauser, resulting in an international suit that was dropped after the Germans lost the war. Despite our ineptitude for forgetting the ammo, this is the weapon the American Expeditionary Force would have entered the Great War with, making this piece a cool piece of history, even though she is quiet today.
The Winchester 1906/07 SLR
The Winchester 1906/07 SLR (Self Loading Rifle) is a rare firearm to find in the US. So much so that Michael is the only person I know who owns one! This handy, semi-automatic rifle/carbine was used by the French, British, and Russians during WW1. This example fires a .351 Winchester SL cartridge (8.9x29mmSR for the metric users!) while the originals fired a variety of .22 caliber cartridges. The recoil on the example is surprisingly sharp, but not unmanageable.
As stated in the video, its really not hard to see why this firearm would be desired by the allies. I’d rather have one of these in a trench than a pistol or a bolt-action rifle any day!
Michael’s example of this weapon is well preserved and beautiful! However, the ammunition is so scarce after firing our respective magazines we tried to grab as much of the spent brass as we could!
The Thompson
While the Thompson didn’t see any action in WW1, I wasn’t going to not fire Michael’s full-auto example of one! This weapon needs no introduction, as it was the gun that made the 20’s roar and later served on the front lines of WW2 before tis cheaper cousin, the M3 Submachine Gun (affectionately called the ‘grease gun’) started phasing it out. I’ve fired an example like this before, and since we had the ammo for the Colt 1911 already in the truck, we’d be stupid to not take this bad boy out for a ride!
The 9mm Mauser C96
The Mauser C96 (Construktion 96) self-loading pistol was part of the first generation of automatic handguns. While the idea of a self-loading rifle was still theoretical, the physics of creating a self-loading pistol was much easier due to decreased cartridge pressures. The pistol was so popular that is was used by both sides of the conflict!
This example is a modern-production Mauser chambered for 9mm. Like the original, it is fed from a stripper clip and is a pleasure to shoot.
The Original mauser C96
if you thought the 9mm Mauser was cool, this one is even cooler! Michael is the proud owner of an original C96 chambered in the 7.63 Mauser cartridges. While this is not as powerful as the later Soviet designed 7.62x25mm cartridge, it is still a very fast projectile that is surprisingly easy to shoot!
Like the 9mm example, this C96 also feeds from a stripper clip loaded through the top. Due to the age of this example we opted to single-load for the firing.
Did you know the Mauser C96 was used as the basis for Han Solo’s iconic DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol?
The P08 Luger
Full disclosure, Michael let me fire this on a previous trip out, but I was very excited to shoot his Luger again! The P08 Luger, chambered in 9mm Luger (also known as 9mm Parabellum, or “for War”) was Germany’s other option for a self-loading pistol. It is a sexy piece of machinery and it handles like no other handgun I’ve ever fired. The Luger points so nicely and fits comfortably in the hand. The recoil is minimal, making it very easy to shoot. I definitely prefer this system to the American pistol we’ll look at shortly! if you are ever given the chance to fire a Luger, take it! You will never regret it!
The Cold Model M1911
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! The Colt Model M1911 is as American as McDonalds, Muscle Cars, and bacon-wrapped donuts. Firing the .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) cartridge, known to enthusiasts as “the Lord’s Cartridge.” The Colt M1911 fires from a 7 round magazine stored in the grip and was designed by John Moses Browning in 1911, and became the standard US sidearm until the Beretta 92F was adopted in 1985. Variations of this design are still produced and carried into combat around the world. The .45 projectile it fires moves slower than that of the Luger’s 9mm, but hits with more force, at the cost of penetrative power. Despite all that power, the 1911 is a pleasure to shoot and is easy to handle.
The M1895 Nagant Revolver
The final entry on our list is a rare revolver from my own collection; a M1985 Russian Nagant Revolver. It was designed by the same Nagant who helped put together the Mosin-Nagant rifle. The M1985 is unusual for being a “gas-seal revolver,” meaning that when the hammer is pulled back, the cylinder is moved forward and is pressed into a seal that prevents excess gas from the cartridge from escaping the sides of the chamber. The downside is that all of this mechanical wizardry causes the trigger pull to be about 25 pounds (when fired double-action). For context, everything else we have fire today has sat between 6-10 pounds of force to pull the trigger.
This same revolver is still used today by Russian police due to the massive amount of surplus ammunition stockpiled in warehouses for the Russian Military.
What really sets the M1985 apart as a military revolver is that it is easy to disassemble and clean. If you have a jam or some kind of debris preventing the cylinder from turning, its possible to quickly strip the gun down and clear the issue; a useful property in the trenches of the Great War. This, along with its impressive reliability is why it has survived for more than 100 years in service.
Conclusion
Nothing puts WW1 in perspective quite like shooting some weapons from the time period. It makes you appreciate how far we’ve come, and allows you to see where technology has continued to improve, leading to the various firearms we have today.