Mauser's Gewehr 41(M) Semiauto Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
•
13m
When the German military started looking for a self-loading rifle in the late 1930s, they had a pretty strict set of requirements. Most significantly, the rifles could not have gas ports or recoiling barrels, could not have moving parts on top of the action, and had to be capable of being operated manually with a bolt handle like a bolt action Mauser. Four companies tried to get into the resulting rifle trials, but only two were able to build good enough guns to get contracts for field trials. These were Walther and Mauser. Walther ended up winning the competition (largely because they ignored several of the RFP requirements) and their rifle became the Gewehr 43. Mauser stuck to the requirements with their Gewehr 41(M), and it cost them the competition.
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
Shooting a .276 Pedersen PB Rifle
Thanks to Alex C. at TheFirearmBlog, I recently had an opportunity to do some shooting with a .276 caliber Vickers-Pedersen model PB rifle. This was one of the very first rifles Vickers built when they though the Pedersen would be adopted by the US military and couple be further marketed worldwid...
-
Colette Gravity Pistol
Colette was a Belgian gun manufacturer that made this interesting parlor pistol. It used a rocketball type of cartridge, in which the powder and primer were encased in the hollow base of the bullet to make a caseless cartridge. The gravity pistol was named for its gravity feed mechanism and its 2...
-
British Boys Anti-Tank Rifle
Pretty much every major military had an antitank rifle in service when WW2 kicked off, and the British example was the Boys rifle, named after the Captain Boys who designed it. It was a bolt action .55 caliber rifle with 5-round detachable magazines. If was obsolete by 1943 and replaced by the mo...
