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| MAS Mle.1873 revolver. Missing ejector assembly. |
It would be replaced in the early '90s by an ultra-modern smokeless-powder design, firing a jacketed 8mm bullet of roughly half the weight at an even slower muzzle velocity, which made sense to somebody somewhere in the Armée bureaucracy, I suppose...
21 comments:
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Spam is gettin weirder.
Maybe the rationale was the same as arming European police with large .25 autos ... they needed them to have a pistol to do their job, but they really didn't want them to have a real pistol?
Kristopher,
Nah, in the '90s, smokeless smallbores firing jacketed bullets were the Next Big Thing. I believe the Swiss and Russkies debuted their .30 cal wheelguns about the same time.
Bean counters popped chubbies because they could still be bored on the same machinery as service rifles.
Same kind of rationale that led the U.S. to toss the .45ACP for a 9mm.
Interesting looking revolver. It is very, very similar to the Italian Bodeo revolver 1889 (10.35mm calibre). The Italian Army used the Bodeo right up to WW2.
Did the French and Italians have a history of shared gun designs?
'90s meaning... 1890s?
ASM826,
"Same kind of rationale that led the U.S. to toss the .45ACP for a 9mm."
Yeah, because 9mm bullets were slower than .45 bullets and represented an entirely new propellant technology plus it would allow us to use the same boring machinery for our pistol barrels as the ones on our 9mm service rifles...
Oh, wait, that's not how it happened at all. ;)
perlhaqr,
Yes. :)
Still want to make a big bore pocket pistol with a wide-ish bullet at low velocity. The .45 GAP diddled my chance to shorten the .45acp case, but if I neck it to .429 (.44 special/.44 Mag diameter) and spit out a copper plated 180 flatpoint at 700 f.p.s., on a semi-bobtailed aluminum 1911 frame (Officer's length) with fixed barrel and a streamlined striker fired blowback slide, do you think it would sell?
And yes you can bobtail an Officer's model 1911. Pictures available on request.
@ Ed Foster. Will it sell? It will at least be just one more proof of Barnum's Law.
You know, I caught myself thinking that the robot who left the immediately prior comment seems like a genuinely nice and thoughtful fellow.
I am really conflicted how to feel about that.
Are there really multiple spam comments here?
I agree that going down in diameter only makes sense when increasing speed. That was the trend for several hundred years~ the Russkies made a hand/subgun cartridge that was fast enough that it was okay that it was a .32 (7.62x25mm), but .32 ACP only is the Hammer of Thor on Justified.
John,
"Are there really multiple spam comments here?"
Sometimes they post while I'm sleeping because I'm not actually manning the spam filters 24/7, and then people chatter about them at night and so when I wake up and muck out the spam traps first thing in the morning, it leaves comment threads looking a little Swiss-cheese-y. ;)
Paul Scarlata did a test with the old 1873 a few years ago and found that you just can't put enough black powder in that stubby little case to get anywhere near the published 700 fps mark. IIRC, it was closer to 450 - 500 fps and was the source of plus complaints from surly men in kepis. The later Navy model apparently had a slightly longer case, but was no powerhouse either.
As you said, France had a lot of experience of frontier wars. Enough to realise that RN slugs from handguns suck at ending fights, no matter the calibre. Just a guess, but they probably found that the 8mm penetrated deeper than the old 11mm and recoiled less, so why not go with it?
Ed: Why not go with a heeled bullet on a GAP case?
http://www.leverguns.com/480/480_achilles.htm
"It's not supposed to make sense, it's the government."
- Unknown
Ed
You'd end up w/ something like the 400 Corbon except w/ shorter OAL.
The 11mm French Ordinance revolvers have been converted to shoot the 45 Auto rim and they can be quite accurate. Loaded to match black powder loads. Lots of fun. Some of these came after WWII. those I have seen and handled showed good workmanship and I have also seem some converted to 22 caliber rimfire, by chamber and barrel relining. They can be a fun gun.David S.
Thinking of old large caliber military revolvers being redone in .22LR, Colt's model of 1873 comes to mind. I read somewhere that actually, as new production, .22 was about the most popular chambering on the civilian market. They said those guns don't show up often because they were used until the were ruined. Not everybody took care of a gun as if their life depended on it.
I'm gonna wager that Scarlata didn't use the same BP that was available in the latter half of the 19th century. Evidence suggests that what we pass off for BP these days (Goex, Elephant, Swiss) doesn't have anywhere near the snort of the earlier formulations. A lot has to do with the charcoal used in the mix. It's been rumored that Goex uses elm, because they got it cheap.
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