The problem is, I have no idea myself! I have seen a picture of one of these before, but my memory's too short to call it up.

Poulin Antiques sold this one for the dollar amount shown a couple of years ago. Via e-mail, I explained to them I was just...

I was frankly quite surprised, while doing some informal research on early semiautomatic rifle designs, to discover that the British Royal Air Force was one of the first users of an American semiautomatic design.


The Winchester Model 1903 was invented by John Browning. It fired a .22 Winchester...

As I said in my last installment, the First World War could have really been more bloody than it was. It took until World War Two before any major combatant - the United States - armed the majority of its personnel with a self-loading rifle.

However, the French had already had the idea first! In 1916, they began issuing the first of a thousand or so Meunier A6 Model 1916 semi-automatic rifles. It was planned to make the Meunier - firing a 7x59mm cartridge - the standard French infantry...

When the Allies and the Triple Entente went to war in World War One, the parsimony and resistance to change by the senior ordnance officers of the different armies kept World War One from being even a bloodier clash than it turned out to be.

No army entered the war with its standard issue shoulder weapon capable of semi-automatic or automatic fire. Everyone used a bolt-action rifle as their main issue firearm.

Yet, how easily it could have been different...
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Ran across another little-known fact this morning. Besides their Berdan II and Winchester 1895 rifles, the Russians also used another "back-up" military rifle in World War One.


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