Snipers and rifles of the 19th century. Hunting rifles: history of development from matchlock arquebuses to modern models

TO end of the 19th century centuries, American engineers have become accustomed to surprising the world: the longest bridge, the most powerful press, the largest steam locomotive. The Model 1895 Lee-Navy rifle takes its rightful place among these unique items.

The history of the rifle goes back to the American Inventors Rifle Competition. Such a pompous name was given to a competition held in 1893, during which American gunsmiths had to create a replacement for the Norwegian Krag-Jorgenson rifle, chosen by the US Army. Among the participants was James Paris Lee. None of the 16 rifles passed the competition, and the US Army declared his rifle completely unsuitable for military use.

Lee, however, did not lose heart. That same year, the US Navy announced a competition for a new small-bore rifle and Lee got to work. By that time, it became clear that the caliber of military rifles, hastily adopted in the late 80s (their caliber ranged from 7.5 to 8 mm), was too large. Without significantly weakening the power of the fire, it could have been reduced further. Therefore, almost all countries that rearmed in the 90s with rifles chambered for smokeless powder preferred the 6.5 mm caliber.

The US Navy decided to go even further. A smaller caliber simplified aiming and increased the supply of ammunition carried by soldiers without increasing the weight of the loadout. After weighing all the reasons, the Bureau of Armaments specialists chose the 6 mm caliber. The Lee-Navi rifle had the smallest caliber among military long-barreled weapons until the adoption of rifles of the M16 family with a caliber of 5.56 mm in the mid-60s.

The production of new cartridges was established by the Winchester company. Smokeless gunpowder was not available to North American chemists for a long time, so they had to arrange its purchase in Germany.

James Paris Lee was born in Scotland in 1831. When he was five years old, the family moved overseas to Canada, and in 1859, James Lee himself and his family moved to the United States and settled in Wisconsin. In 1879, Lee received a patent for a detachable middle magazine for rifles with vertical cartridges. He used it in the design of his rifle, which was produced by Remington under the name Remington-Lee M1879 for the US Navy and foreign customers. Its development was the Model 1885 rifle, which was also exported.

This and the previous photo were taken from the site http://milpas.cc/rifles/ZFiles/Bolt%20Action%20Rifles/M1885%20Remington-Lee%20US%20Navy/The%20US%20Militry%20Remington-Lee.html

However, the greatest success awaited Lee in his long-abandoned homeland - in 1888, his rifle, called the Lee-Metford, was adopted by the British army. Numerous versions of the rifle were produced until the mid-50s, when it was replaced by the Belgian FN FAL self-loading rifle.

Taken from Wikipedia

The repeating rifles that were in service in different countries did not differ much in their design. The barrel was locked with a bolt, in the front part of which there were two protrusions (they were called combat protrusions), which, when rotated 90 degrees, extended beyond the supporting surfaces of the breech of the barrel. New rifle Lee was wired very differently.

To reload, the shooter pulled the bolt handle back. Turning in the figured cutout of the receiver, it raised the rear part of the bolt. In this case, the only combat protrusion (it was on the lower side of the rectangular cross-section of the bolt) protruded from behind the supporting surface of the receiver. The bolt moved back, ejecting the cartridge case.

As we moved forward, everything happened in reverse order. The design of the trigger mechanism prevented a shot when the bolt was not fully closed and self-opening of the bolt before the shot was fired.

The bolt did not end the rifle's unusual design. At that time, packs or clips were used to quickly load repeating rifles. When loading in batches, the cartridges were combined with a special device, a pack, with which they were placed into the magazine. After the last cartridge was chambered into the barrel, the pack fell out through a window in the bottom wall of the magazine (in early rifles the shooter had to remove the empty pack from the magazine himself).

Packs for Austrian Mannlicher rifles

The disadvantages of pack loading were the large weight of the pack itself, clogging of the magazine through the window for packs to fall out, and the complete impossibility of loading the magazine one cartridge at a time. When shooting without packs, the rifle turned into a single-shot rifle, and the shooter had to send the cartridges into the barrel.

Clip loading was free from these shortcomings, however, in the early 90s of the 19th century, when Lee designed his rifle, only two models of such rifles were in service: the Belgian Mauser model 1889 and the Russian Mosin rifle.

Taken from Wikipedia

Lee went his own way and created a completely original clip pack.

As with batch loading, the cartridges were put into the magazine along with a pack of clips. After chambering the second or third cartridge into the barrel, the pack fell out of the magazine. However, the magazine could be loaded with one cartridge at a time. It held five cartridges, the sixth could be inserted into the barrel. For greater safety, shooters were advised to place it in the barrel after loading. spent cartridge case and release the trigger.

The Lee rifle was adopted by the US Navy and Marine Corps in 1895. In 1896-1900, 20 thousand rifles were ordered from Winchester, but fewer were produced, 14,658, which cost the fleet $14.60 each.

New rifles were not missed in gun shops for long. In 1898, the United States declared war on Spain and Marines landed in Cuba and the Philippines. During the war, the Lee-Navi quickly had to be replaced with “land” Krag-Jorgensen rifles. Supply of troops with three types of ammunition (most of American soldiers were still armed with single-shot Springfield rifles) was too difficult for the quartermasters.

However, the Li-Navi was not removed from service; in particular, they were armed with the marines who defended the Embassy Quarter in Beijing in 1900, together with detachments from other countries, during the Boxer Rebellion. Only after 1903, when the Sprigfield rifle, common to all branches of the military, was adopted, were they gradually removed from arsenals.

According to a long-standing tradition, the rifles went on sale at a price of $32; for a thousand rounds, you had to fork out another $50. Cartridges in packs of clips cost $8 more.

For the same 32 dollars you could buy a so-called sports rifle with a slightly shortened barrel and a redesigned stock. Lee Navy was well suited for hunting medium game (black bear or caribou), but was not popular due to the high cost of rifles and ammunition. Winchester and Remington stopped producing 6 mm cartridges in 1935.

But what kind of rifle was Li-Navi, because American historians are of the opinion that it was a humane weapon. However, it is not.

Experience Russo-Japanese War showed that the severity of wounds depends only on the location and angle of impact of the bullets. The wounds from bullets from the Japanese 6.5 mm Arisaka and 8 mm Murata rifles were no different from each other. Of course, soft bullets from old rifles (caliber 10-13 mm, which were replaced by small-caliber rifles chambered for smokeless powder) easily crumpled when hitting the target. Outwardly, such wounds really looked much more terrible than the clean through wounds that so pleased Boussenaard’s doctor Tromp.

However, a surprise for the doctors was a phenomenon akin to water hammer, which occurred when hit by bullets from new rifles. At supersonic speeds (at ranges of up to several hundred meters), the shock affected organs and bones located away from the wound channel. In addition, bullets carried scraps of uniform and dirt into deep wounds, which inevitably led to suppuration, which was deadly before the invention of antibiotics.

Li-Navi was distinguished by its high penetration ability - at a distance of 30 m, a lead bullet (there were no armor-piercing bullets then) pierced an 11 mm sheet of boiler iron.

Lee paid a lot of attention to the “little things” that increase safety and ease of shooting. He was one of the first to introduce a bolt stop, which locks the bolt in the open position when the magazine is empty. The shooter was no longer in danger of being left without ammunition at the decisive moment. A special latch prevented the shutter from opening itself.

It is interesting to compare the weight of rifles of that time with the supply of ammunition.

It can be seen that Li-Navi has the largest supply of ammunition with the smallest load weight.

The rifle also had its drawbacks. The most significant was the rapid wear of the barrel, which began after the first 2000 shots. It was believed that this was due to the cartridge being too powerful for its small caliber. But the reason for this appears to be related to the rifling of the Metford barrel. The same problems plagued the English Lee-Metfords. After replacing the rifling with regular rectangular ones, the wear immediately returned to normal.

I will make a detailed description of the rifle’s design with drawings in a separate post.

Every novice hunter who has just purchased a gun often thinks about how hunting guns became what they are today. If you try to find information about this, it is almost impossible in Russian-language sources. The only thing you can find is reviews of modern models, the history of Izhevsk or Tula guns, and well rare descriptions old hunting weapons German made.

Not everyone knows that 150-200 years ago, hunting weapons were the most advanced, since it was the hunters who tested everything latest systems those distant years. This is understandable, because in Europe before the First World War the arms industry worked specifically for them. Only the beginning of the war could put an end to the rapid development of rifled and smooth-bore weapons for hunting.

The structure of a hunting rifle and the principle of its operation

The term “gun” used to mean flint. Only many decades later this term began to be used to refer to firearms intended for hunting and combat. Most modern shotguns have a fixed or breakable barrel. The gun consists of the following parts:

• trunk;
• Castle;
• Pads;
• Descent;
• Forend;
• Butt;
• Shakes;
• Pads;
• Triggers and other parts that differ from model to model.

The internal parts of the gun may differ from each other due to different systems. Some of them are reloaded by cocking the hammers, others by the pump-action method or based on the operation of automatic powder gases.

The gun fires when the shooter pulls the trigger, which actuates the hammer. It engages the firing pin, which breaks the cartridge's primer. After this, a shot occurs.

Stages of development of weapons for hunting

In Europe, the first small arms appeared on the territory of modern Spain, quite surprising the local knights. The Arabs who ruled this country at that time were seen by uneducated Europeans as real demons, whose weapons spewed smoke, flames and deadly bullets.

Little is known about the design of the very first guns, but one thing is for sure - they were bulky single-shot mini-guns that had a lot of weight. The first firearms came to the Russians along with Tatar hordes who received it from the Chinese. It is possible that these were Polish or Turkish matchlock guns.

The first mention of the use of firearm models can be found in ancient chronicles, saying that the Lithuanian prince Gedemint died from a bullet in 1341. The first arquebuses appeared in the 15th century, and over the following years the wick systems were improved. Around the same time, the first single-barreled gun for hunting appeared. A huge disadvantage of the first hunting models was their low rate of fire, so bows and crossbows were used by hunters for a long time.

The entire history of hunting firearms can be divided into several stages:

• The era of ramrod weapons with matchlocks and flintlocks;
• Percussion guns;
• New models with unitary cartridges.

This division is very arbitrary, but this way we can highlight the stages of the evolution of hunting weapons.

Flintlock gun - the first revolutionary modernization

In 1504, the Spaniards demonstrated the first flintlock gun to Europe. This type of weapon was borrowed from the Moors, who in those years made a huge leap in the development of firearms. It was significantly superior to wick models. It was with such weapons that they hunted and fought for many centuries. In Russia, flintlock guns were used until the beginning of the 20th century, since shooting from them did not require cartridges. Hunting flintlock rifles were often richly engraved and had fine finishes. German and Turkish guns especially stood out.

In the 16th century, something like the first cartridges appeared, consisting of a paper cartridge case containing gunpowder and a bullet. This invention reduced the time it took to reload flintlock weapons. In the same century, the first double-barreled shotguns appeared. Since a gun was usually used only once during hunting or combat, many gunsmiths tried to increase the rate of fire. This is how not only double-barreled, but also multi-barrel models appeared. Unfortunately, the flintlock, which had multiple barrels, was too bulky, making it effective only for defense or ambush hunting.

In the 16th century, the first German guns with a rifled barrel appeared. This made it possible to give the weapon incredible range and accuracy for smooth-bore models.

Multi-barreled flintlock rifle of improved design

In the 16th and 17th centuries, firearms began to be divided into military and hunting models. Double-barreled shotguns have become the most popular option for hunting. If at first weapons with wheel locks were made, then after a while they gave way to more convenient double-barreled guns.

In 1738, a real revolution took place in the history of hunting weapons. The Frenchman Le-Clerc mastered the production of lightweight double-barreled shotguns that were easy to use. The oldest double-barreled flintlock gun, which was made in Russia, dates back to the 17th century. This weapon was made specifically for Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

18th century hunting weapons

In the 18th century, the concept of gun caliber was clearly defined. Different models began to be produced, each of which was intended specifically for its own niche. All the guns that were produced at that time would now be called piece guns, since they were made only to order. This resulted in their high cost. The most common types of guns were:

• Single-barrel or double-barrel threaded fittings. Their caliber varied from 16 to 26 mm. That was very powerful weapon, the direct ancestor of combat muskets. Their main difference was the presence of a rifled barrel. With the fitting it was possible to go after a large animal without fear, since it destructive force was extremely high;
• Single-barrel rifled carbines, whose caliber was about 12.5 mm;
• Rifled single-barreled rifles, whose caliber varied from 7 to 9 mm. This weapon was much lighter, so it was suitable for hunting medium-sized animals;
• Combination guns appeared. One barrel was usually smooth, and the second was rifled. Unlike modern combination models, these guns had horizontal barrels;
• Smoothbore guns. The most popular and cheapest weapon, very popular in Russia in those years. Wealthier shooters bought double-barreled weapons, while the rest were content with simple single-barreled guns. Smoothbore models had a caliber from 15 to 20 mm. Their weight ranged from 2.6 to 4 kg. Naturally, lighter hunting weapons were much more expensive;
• The first shotguns designed for birds, mainly waterfowl, also appeared. They were smooth-bore, could have one or two barrels, and varied in weight from 4 to 6.5 kg. The caliber of these guns ranged from 19 to 26 mm. Such heavy models were not very popular among hunters.

All of the above models were, as a rule, flint, since the percussion cap lock appeared only in the 19th century.

The best hunting rifles of the 19th century

At the beginning of the 19th century there was a real breakthrough in the history of firearms. This is due to the appearance of the first percussion-capsule guns. The first shock train was opened in France at the end of the 18th century. Thanks to the experiments of a priest from Scotland, Forsyth, weapons appeared that used a completely new type of ammunition.

In 1815, the first capsules appeared that had fulminate of mercury as a percussion composition. In 1817, the first examples of capsule guns appeared. In modern museums you can find such ancient models that are perfectly preserved.

Most early shotguns, even those equipped with the new primer system, remained muzzle-loading or ramrod-loading. These were both smooth-bore and rifled models. Since their main problem was the insufficient rate of fire, work was constantly underway to create breech-loading models of hunting rifles. It was only in the 19th century that these efforts were finally crowned with success. The first gun of this type appeared in France in 1808. It was invented by the then famous gunsmith Poli. Despite the fact that about 10 years remained before the advent of percussion cartridges, breech-loading hunting weapons already existed.

Weapons of Lefauchet and Flaubert

The best models of the 19th century are considered to be the works of Lefauchet and Flaubert. Lefoshe in 1835-36 created the first breech-loading gun, which used unitary pin cartridges. The new hunting weapon worked according to the following scheme:

1. The barrels folded back, after which the shooter could quickly insert cartridges into them;
2. When firing, the trigger hit a special pin that protruded from the cartridge case;
3. Thus, the capsule exploded.

Lefoshe cartridges were very popular in their years, they are produced even today.

In 1842, new ammunition with rimfire cartridges appeared. They were created by Flaubert, who himself was a passionate hunter. These cartridges do not have powder charge. In 1856, Flaubert's cartridges were improved by Beringer, who added gunpowder to them. Such ammunition is still used today. But the central firing cartridge, which is currently the most common, was invented by Potte. As often happens, another person received a patent for his invention. It was Schneider.

After some time, a group of English gunsmiths developed a new weapon that used center-fire cartridges. Soon all cartridges of this type received a brass sleeve.

New magazine hunting rifles

When the first single-barreled and double-barreled guns were still flintlock, the first examples of magazine guns appeared. They were very heavy and uncomfortable for everyday use. Here are some of the most famous representatives of those years:

• Italian six-shooter weapon from the Antonio Constante weapons workshop;
• The new fashion also affected Russia, where in the 18th century a nine-shot gun appeared, which was made by the gunsmith Savishchev.

Despite attempts, simple double-barreled shotguns with flintlocks were considered the best in those years.

A new round of development began in 1855, when S. Colt created his famous revolver cartridge. After this, the development of repeating rifles moved forward at a rapid pace. In the second half of the 19th century, new models of repeating rifles appeared, which differed significantly from their massive predecessors:

• Volcanic rifle;
• Henry-Winchester carbine;
• Spencer-B shotgun. Henry.

Thanks to the conquest of the Wild West and the American Civil War, new systems quickly gained popularity throughout the vast country.

Pump-action and bolt-action shotguns

IN modern Russia many believe that pump-action shotguns appeared in the 1980s. In fact, the first weapon of this type appeared in 1883 in the USA. For more than 130 years, this system has proven itself to be reliable and trouble-free. Currently, pump-action shotguns are also produced by domestic arms factories, although the pump-action shotgun has never been able to catch up in popularity with the classic double-barreled shotgun. Reloading in such systems occurs due to manual movement of the forend.

Turkish guns of this system and American ones are very popular in Russia. Shotguns are available in various calibers:

• 12 gauge shotguns are considered the most powerful and versatile;
• 16 gauge shotguns are more specific. They are not recommended for big game hunting;
• 20 gauge shotgun - only for medium and small game. They are lighter in weight.

Currently, pump-action systems are replacing semi-automatic models from the weapons arena. One of the most famous domestic representatives of this category is the MP-155 semi-automatic shotgun.

Bolt-action hunting weapon

Another popular system that is trying to supplant the classic double-barreled shotguns are bolt-action shotguns. This is a single-barreled weapon, which is usually rifled. The most famous representative of this category is the legendary Mosin rifle, which was used both in war and hunting. The famous kulak sawn-off shotgun is a shortened rifle of the Mosin system.

In Soviet times, these sawn-off shotguns were mercilessly confiscated and destroyed, but after the revolution, Mosin rifles were used for hunting for a long time smoothbore weapon. Currently, any hunter who has the right to purchase rifled weapons, can buy a real three-ruler for hunting. You can choose between a regular rifle and a sniper rifle, which was made from the best components. True, it costs 3 times more.

Automatic shotgun models

The first models of automatic rifles appeared in the second half of the 19th century, but their serial production was established only at the beginning of the 20th century. The first production weapon of this type was designed by Browning in 1903. Currently, automatic rifles are deservedly popular among large quantity hunters of Russia. These models come in both rifled and smoothbore.

The most popular are models designed on the basis of the legendary Kalashnikov assault rifle. This is Vepr from the Molot plant and Saiga from Izhevsk plant. Despite the rough processing of the parts, this weapon considered the best in its price category. Its popularity is due not only to the flawless operation of the automation, but also to its similarity to its combat counterpart.

How to choose a gun for hunting

Currently, the choice of hunting rifles is extremely wide. Previously, a Soviet hunter could choose among several models made in Tula or Izhevsk, and even those were represented by single-barreled and double-barreled guns. As for the choice of rifled weapons, Soviet hunters could also choose from several models, but this was not available to everyone.

Now the choice is extremely wide. For the domestic shooter, models are available not only domestic production, but also many foreign brands. The weapon rating, which can be found on the pages of specialized publications or on the Internet, will help you make a choice.

Guns Russian production can be divided into modern and Soviet models. Don’t think that it’s impossible to buy a new Soviet gun now. Many Tula and Izhevsk models are still produced unchanged. The most popular are vertical and horizontal double-barreled shotguns. Combination shotguns are in small but steady demand. Semi-automatic machines based on combat machine gun Kalashnikov.

The main advantage Russian weapons is its price, but the build quality Russian models very mediocre, so they need to be improved independently.

Turkish guns are optimal choice between price and quality. A good Turkish double-barreled shotgun or semi-automatic is copied from well-known European and American brands. Unlike Russian-made hunting weapons, Turkish ones are assembled of quite high quality. The Turks make excellent vertical and horizontal double-barreled shotguns, as well as self-loading models.

The emergence of mass small arms with a rifled barrel changed the battlefield once and for all. Tactics, and indeed the entire strategy, were built on the soldiers’ ability to break through and defend. Of course, the debate about which firearm became the main one in the 20th century will always rage - there are more than enough experts, both professional and amateur. We decided to show you objectively the main models, each of which has become a real legend.

M16

In 1959, this rifle was presented to military specialists by the Armalite company, which was subsequently purchased by the famous Colt concern. Already in 1964, the M16 entered service and to this day remains the main argument of the American infantry.

Maxim machine gun

Actually, the machine gun was developed by the American Hiram Maxim, but it was the Russian modification by Colonel Alexander Sokolov that went down in the history of wars. Until the very end of the Great Patriotic War, “Maxims” were produced in Tula and only in 1945 they gave way to the new Goryunov machine gun.

PPSh

The Shpagin submachine gun replaced Degtyarev's design. Simple, functional, truly military weapon became a real symbol of the Soviet soldier of the Second World War.

Colt M1911

Until 1990, the Colt M1911 automatic pistol, developed by John Browning back in 1911, was in service with the American army, and without any modifications since 1926. Structurally simple, ideal in combat conditions, the pistol is still used in some places in our time.

M134 Minigun

The 7.62 mm M134 Minigun aircraft machine gun became a vivid symbol of the Vietnam War. The effective rate of fire of this machine reached 4000 rounds per minute - a real meat grinder.

Mauser C96

Strangely, the 1896 development was successful even at the beginning of World War II. The precise, effective, trouble-free Mauser did not enter service with any army in the world: officers from all over the world bought pistols with their own money, preferring to exchange money for their own blood.

M1 Garand

No, it was not the Mosinka that became the first main self-loading infantry rifle. The American M1 Garand, created and nurtured by John Garand, went into mass production only at the beginning of 1940, but managed to reap its share of the bloody harvest in the terrible war.

Kalashnikov assault rifle

Well, we left the most obvious and the most “delicious” at the same time for last. The Kalashnikov design has become the most common small arms in the world; More than one hundred million machine guns were produced. Many modifications were created, and the machine worked almost all over the world.

The First World War was, perhaps, truly the first war of the 20th century. In this war, humanity had to face such achievements of technical thought as airplanes, airships, submarines, machine guns, rapid-fire guns, explosive bullets, poisonous gases, armored vehicles, tanks... But besides these modern species weapons in the First world war Other means of attack and defense were also used, which seemed to come out of another era - the Middle Ages.

One of these exotic types was fléchettes - pencil-sized metal darts, which were dropped by aircraft on large concentrations of enemy personnel - infantry and cavalry. Beginning in 1914, Russian newspapers reported cases of the use of these weapons by the Germans, cited photographs of enemy arrows and colorfully described the consequences of the use of such weapons. Thus, in the popular Suvorin newspaper “Evening Time” exactly 100 years ago, on April 4/17, 1915, an illustration was published on the first page, clearly demonstrating appearance flechettes and how to use them in battle.

The note “Iron Arrows” accompanying this illustration stated: “Before the outbreak of the war, iron arrows were invented in France for dropping them from airplanes. This invention, which produced brilliant results during experiments, was kept strictly secret, however, at the very first actions of the German air fleet It turned out that the Germans were using these arrows. In the telegram room of "Evening Time" (Nevsky, 52) an arrow delivered from the Prussian front is displayed. The arrow is made of iron, 3 inches long (about 13 cm - A.I.) and looks like a sharpened pencil. It is made in such a way that when dropped from a height, it always falls with the tip down. For this purpose, the top two tips of the arrow are made not round, but tetrahedral, i.e. lightened by the weight of sawn longitudinal strips. The arrows are suspended from the pilot's apparatus in special boxes, 1000 pieces each, with a retractable bottom. Falling from a height of one mile, such an arrow acquires the force of a rifle bullet. The arrow displayed in the telegram room has the inscription: “Invention française, fabrication allemande,” i.e. French invention, German production.”

“The great-grandfather of our aviators, the famous French inventor Ader, who was not recognized by anyone in his time, invented that metal arrow, which has now become widespread as a weapon for aviators,” wrote the magazine “Nature and People.” - Now this arrow has been improved in this way: the aviator takes a metal box, open at the top, in which 50 arrows are placed with the point up. As you know, these arrows are designed in such a way that when they fall, they turn with the tip down. Flying out of the box, they turn and push each other, thereby automatically scattering rain over a wide space. Each aviator carries 5,000 of these arrows. (...) The Germans are also throwing such arrows now. But for some reason exclusively on the Russian front.”

The reason for the use of steel arrows in the era rapid fire weapons was the fact that the airplanes of the initial period of the war did not have any weapons, since they were mainly used for reconnaissance, meanwhile, the idea of ​​​​defeating the enemy from the air excited the minds of the military. Throwing hand grenades from an airplane or shooting at the enemy with a revolver was not effective, so such cheap and, most importantly, weapons with a large range of action as flechettes seemed very promising in the absence of the ability to conduct aimed fire from the sky. However, the French who invented this weapon themselves used it quite rarely, while the Germans, having significantly modified the French invention, took it into service, mockingly emphasizing this in the above inscriptions in French, “decorating” the steel arrows. The terrifying sound (sharp whistle) of arrows falling from the sky and their destructive ability had a strong psychological impact on the soldiers who happened to be victims of such bombings, since the flechette picked up speed and easily pierced wooden boards up to fifteen centimeters thick.

However, the Germans themselves also suffered from this type of weapon. The impression that these weapons made on the troops can be learned from the story of the Austrian writer Robert Musel, who served as an officer in the Landwehr during the First World War and almost died in 1915 from a flechette dropped from an Italian plane:

“One day an enemy pilot appeared above our calm position. (...) ...I heard a sound, and then only realized that danger was approaching. But at that very second I already knew: this is an aircraft arrow! There were then such sharp metal rods, no thicker than a carpenter's plumb line, which planes dropped from a height; hitting the skull, they probably pierced a person to the very soles, but they did not often reach their goal, and they were soon abandoned. That's why I encountered such an arrow for the first time; but since bombs and machine-gun shots make a completely different sound, I immediately understood what it was. I tensed up all over, and the next moment I had an amazing feeling, not based on anything real: she would hit! (...) For quite a long time, I was the only one who heard this sound approaching. The sound was simple, thin, melodious, high - like the rim of a glass rings when you knock on it; but there was something unreal about him; You’ve never heard anything like this before, I told myself. And this sound was directed at me... ...The sound approaching from above took on flesh, grew stronger and threatened.”

(Fragment from the TV series “Death of the Empire” (2004). The flechettes shown in the film are much larger than real steel arrows from the First World War)

However, quite soon, due to the rapid development of methods of conducting air combat and bombing the enemy, flechettes began to be replaced by more effective methods of attack - aerial bombs, the consequences of explosions of which were many times greater than the damage caused by steel arrows. But flechettes continued to be used at a later time. Soviet pilot, Aviation Lieutenant General P.P. Ionov, recalled how this type of weapon was used by red aviation during Civil War: “The pilots of our detachment conducted continuous aerial reconnaissance and several times flew out in a group to attack enemy troops on the march. In these cases, we dropped fragmentation bombs and special arrows and fired from machine guns. (...) Lead arrows about ten centimeters long were thrown from a small wooden box. The box had to be held while standing in the cockpit, then turned over at the right moment and the arrows shaken out of it. The arrow throw was not adjusted. The fact that the arrows hit the target could be judged by the scattering enemy soldiers. From the experience of the First World War it was known that the invisible and almost inaudible fall of arrows had a great demoralizing effect on the troops.” This experience was not forgotten during the Great Patriotic War, on initial stage which, not having enough bombs, Soviet planes dropped on the positions of the German infantry... railway spikes.

Another “medieval” weapon of the First World War was the morgenstern, a club used by Austrian and German soldiers to defend their trenches. Since pistols and revolvers were reserved only for officers, there were no short-barreled automatic weapons yet, and it was extremely inconvenient to fight off the advancing enemy in a narrow trench with long rifles with bayonets attached to them, German and Austrian soldiers remembered the time-tested weapon - clubs, which are here They began to manufacture them, enhancing their damaging effect with sharp nails. Photographs of such trophies have been published more than once in Russian periodicals, surprising the reading public with the “savagery” of these “military novelties” of European nations.

In the 50-60s. XIX century in Europe and overseas a great variety of capsules appeared breech charging. There were quite a few conversions from former muzzle-loading guns. These were the rifles of the 1863 and 1867 models. Baden and Bavarian riflemen, English infantry rifle Montstorm Model 1860, cavalry carbine Westley Richards Model 1862, Saxon infantry rifle Dreschler sample 1865, etc. It is impossible to list or describe them all. Most of them had a rotating sliding bolt in the breech of the barrel, which locked a simple paper cartridge with a bullet and gunpowder in the barrel. The capsule was put on the seed rod separately and broken by an independently located trigger.

The advantages of breech-loading firearms were obvious. When loading from the muzzle, so that the gunpowder did not remain on the walls of the barrel bore, the gun was placed in vertical position. The shooter had to rise to his full height, exposing himself to bullets. A breech-loading gun can be loaded in another position, for example, lying down, which is much safer. Breech-loading guns had a faster rate of fire and made it possible to fire more intensely in battle.

Based on materials from the book " Firearms", ed. group: S. Kuznetsov, E. Evlakhovich, I. Ivanova, M., Avanta+, Astrel, 2008, p. 64-75.