In our last post, we saw a video that showed the basics of a bolt-action firearm, A bolt action is in the class of manually operated firearm actions. In today's post, we will study a few different classes of firearm actions, which we have already studied the basics of many months ago.
In the above links, we studied these actions using some illustrations and also studied some specific variations of these actions (e.g.) short recoil action, long recoil action, direct gas impingment, short stroke gas operation etc. We also studied examples of weapons that used these different actions.
Thanks to the efforts of the US Army, we actually have a movie that illustrates the basics of all of these actions.
The video clearly illustrates how the various actions work, far better than static images do. Happy viewing!
In our last couple of posts, we saw a couple of examples of semi-automatic, full automatic and three round burst mechanisms. The first video was prepared by the US Army to train soldiers. As it turns out, the Army had actually prepared a set of videos. The first in the series showed an example of a bolt-action firearm in action. We will study that video in today's post:
Interestingly, the video shows a hammer fired and a striker fired mechanism and also deals with extraction and ejection mechanisms, as well as loading new ammunition from a box magazine.
The next shooting sport we will look at is called the Mad Minute. It has its origins in a British Army exercise, which is described in a manual called "The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909).
The aim of this exercise is to demonstrate rapid fire shooting with good accuracy. The original exercise required the soldier to fire at an official "Second Class Figure" target, at a distance of 300 yards, using a Lee-Enfield service rifle and hit it at least 15 times within one minute.
A second class and first class target. Click on the image to enlarge.
Image taken from Musketry Regulations Part II. Public domain image.
The figure in the middle of the target is intended to resemble the silhouette of a man with a rifle peering out of a trench and measures about 12 inches x 12 inches. The next image shows a close up of the silhouette, including details of the actual colors used.
Details of the silhouette. Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.
As this was before World War I, notice that the silhouette resembles a man wearing a cloth cap.
A Lee-Enfield Mark I rifle. Click on the image to enlarge.
The soldier was allowed to load the rifle with one cartridge in the chamber and four in the magazine and get into the prone position. The target would then appear at a distance of 300 yards and the soldier would be expected to shoot with it. Reloading was allowed in groups of five cartridges from a pouch or bandoleer and the total time of the exercise was one minute.
As long as the target was hit anywhere with a bullet, that counted as a hit. However, points were scored as follows: hitting the silhouette scored 4 points, hitting inside the inner ring scored 3 points, hitting inside the outer ring scored two points. Soldiers would be classified based on their accuracy, as marksmen, first-class shot, second-class shot and third-class shot. This exercise was one of a set of training exercises to grade soldiers. People who scored enough points to be classified as "marksmen" were given extra pay and a special crossed-rifles badge.
While the exercise only required 15 hits on target within a minute, many people would continue to fire even after 15 hits, to see how many times they could hit the target within that one minute. The smooth operation of the Lee-Enfield rifle's bolt action allowed soldiers to fire rapidly and accurately. Several people in the British Army could hit the target over 30 times within this time period! There are records of soldiers in the British Army scoring 36 or 38 hits within a minute at 300 yards.
By the time World War I started, the average British soldier was a better shot than his French or German counterpart. During the Battle of Mons, several German units reported that they were facing British troops armed with machine guns, when in reality, it was groups of riflemen firing rapidly using their bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles.
These days, while this exercise is no longer part of military training, some people still organize "mad minute" competitions to see how many hits can be scored in a minute.
A long while ago, we had studied a shooting sport called "silhouette shooting". A couple of years ago, we studied "clay pigeons", just before the London Olympics. As a theme, we will study sports where shooting plays a part, in the next few posts. Today,we will study the Biathlon, a sport that is played in cold weather and is part of the Winter Olympics.
The sport of biathlon is a mixture of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. It has its origins in military exercises in Scandinavian countries, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Each competitor has to ski through a cross-country course, while carrying a rifle and a small amount of ammunition. At different stages of the course, the competitor has to stop at a shooting range and shoot five shots at targets, at a range of 50 meters (160 feet). There may be two or four shooting ranges throughout the course and half of these are shot at in the prone position and the other half in the standing position. The size of the targets depends on the position used to shoot them: prone position has targets of diameter 4.5 cm. (1.8 inches) and the standing position has targets of 11.5 cm. (4.5 inches). Depending on how many targets are left standing after five shots, extra penalties are given to each competitor. The penalty is in the form of extra time (1 minute per missed target) added to the competitor's time, or extra distance (150 meters (490 feet) per missed target) that the competitor must ski through. The winner is the one with the shortest time through the course.
In competitions between 1958 to 1965, high-powered military cartridges such as .30-06 Springfield and 7.62x51 mm. NATO were used, along with military rifles. After 1965, some competitors began to use smaller calibers and lighter rifles, and by 1978, the .22 LR cartridge was adopted as the standard. Separate contests in Norway still use large-caliber military rifles though.
These days, modern biathlon rifles are precision instruments, which are crafted to very high standards.
A modern Biathlon rifle. Click on the image to enlarge. Image courtesy of Eberlestock.
The rifle must weigh at least 3.5 kg. (7.7 lbs.) without ammunition and magazines. It must use .22 LR cartridges and magazines should contain 5 cartridges. Some events allow carrying 3 extra cartridges in the stock, which must be loaded manually, should the competitor miss some shots. The rifle must use bolt action or straight-pull bolt action and no automatic or semi-automatic rifles are allowed. The sights are manual peep sights and no telescopic sights are allowed. The rifle may have a flip up cap at the muzzle, which can be flipped to prevent snow and rain entering the barrel, while the competitor is skiing. The sling of the rifle may be attached to a cuff on the competitor's arm before shooting, to provide extra stability. The stock is lightweight and very adjustable to each competitor's requirements.
Each competitor carries the rifle, ammunition and magazines through the entire course. The rifles are only loaded at each shooting range and unloaded before leaving. In competitions before 1978, the target distances were much longer. Before 1966, each range would have a different distance to the target: 100 meters (330 feet), 150 meters (490 feet), 200 meters (660 feet) and 250 meters (820 feet). In 1966, the distance was reduced to 150 meters (490 feet) for all the ranges in the course. In 1978, the distance was further reduced to 50 meters (160 feet) for all ranges, which is the standard currently. Some competitions in Norway still use larger-caliber military rifles and longer distances to target, as per the original sport rules (with some competitions consisting of shooting various targets at unknown distances.)
Rifles are zeroed before the competition starts, but since it takes place outdoors, the wind and temperature may alter where the rifles shoot, and each competitor needs to adjust the sights accordingly. To make things even more complicated, since there are multiple shooting ranges through the course, a competitor might arrive at one range and find severe wind blowing, but travel to the next range and find no wind blowing there, all in the same course. Each shooting range has flags that flap in the wind, so a competitor can look at these and estimate how hard the wind is blowing and its direction and compensate accordingly.
As each missed shot counts as a penalty and adds more time to the competitor's total, it is vital to hit as many targets as possible at each shooting range. This is difficult to do after skiing through a long distance, as each competitor's heart is racing and lungs are pumping due to the exertion of skiing and the cold weather. The racing heart and aching muscles could cause the rifle to shake while aiming at the targets. Therefore, one of the strategies that many competitors use is to slow down as they are entering into each shooting range. This allows them to focus on controlling their breathing and relaxing their muscles a little, before they enter the range. A world-class competitor can enter a range, shoot all 5 targets and then leave in as little as 19-20 seconds or so.
There are still contests held in Norway, that use older standards (such as using military caliber cartridges, different distances to various targets, longer distances, carrying a military pack, skiing through trees etc.) These are true to the original purpose of the biathlon, which was to provide military training to people, for the purposes of national defense in times of war.
Here's a little video that explains the sport of biathlon for beginners. It appears that the person explaining stuff here is not entirely familiar with firearm terminologies, as she refers to clips instead of magazines and bullets instead of cartridges, but the video does explain the basics pretty well.
The early history of true shotguns begins in the 1800s, when people began to use them to hunt birds. During that time, the flintlock firing mechanism was the ignition system of choice and hence, it should be no surprise to know that early shotguns used them. The problem with such mechanisms is that there is a noticeable delay between pulling the trigger and the weapon actually discharging. The Rev. Alexander Forsythe, a Scottish clergyman and an avid hunter, noticed that the local birds would see the flame in the pan and immediately change direction and thereby escape. Hence, he set about inventing the percussion lock, which was the next big development in firearms technology and was also used by other firearms besides shotguns. The percussion lock was eventually replaced by modern cartridges, which we use to this day.
Shotguns come in both single barrel and double-barrel types. Double-barreled shotguns have two triggers, one to discharge each barrel. Of the double barreled shotguns, there are two types: "side by side" type and "over and under" type. What this means is how the two barrels are positioned. In "side by side" types, the barrels are placed beside one another, whereas "over and under" types have one barrel positioned on top of another.
"Side by Side" type shotgun
"Over and Under" type shotgun
Double barrel shotgun barrels are never attached parallel to each other, but instead set so that their shot will converge at some point (usually at 40 yards distance). In some shotguns, one of the two barrels may be made different from the other. For instance, one may have rifling and the other is smoothbore, or one barrel may be choked for closer shooting. In other cases, both barrels may be made as identical as possible.
Of all the actions, the break-open action, such as the two images above, is the most common type and has been around for a long time. This is a breech-loading mechanism. It was realized in 1875 that the movement of opening the action could also be used to cock the weapon at the same time. The first such cocking mechanism was pioneered by Anson and Deerley for their hammerless shotgun and it is still used almost unchanged to this day. Break-open actions are the most common type used for shotguns.
Another action that was invented in the mid 1800s and rare today, is the side-motion action. In this type of action, the barrels are mounted on the edge of a metal disc. A lever in the bottom of the stock rotates this disc, which causes the barrels to move in an eccentric motion, where they can be reloaded.
Another action that was invented in the 1800s, but is rare now, is the sliding barrel action shotgun. There are only a few manufacturers around that make this type currently and it was never as popular in the 1800s either.
Sliding Barrel Action Shotgun
Lever action shotguns were popular in the 1880s. The Winchester model M1887 was designed by John Browning and became a best-seller for the company. This was the first truly successful model of a repeating shotgun. This action allowed for users to load multiple cartridges into the weapon, not just one or two cartridges. Their popularity waned after the design that we're about to study in the next paragraph was introduced, and we don't see too many lever action shotguns these days.
Lever-action
The action that replaced the lever action design is the pump action shotgun design. The first popular ones of this type were the Winchester M1893 and M1897 models, which were designed by John Browning! It must be noted that when Winchester originally asked Browning to design a repeating shotgun in the 1880s, he had argued that a pump-action mechanism shotgun would be the most appropriate design, but Winchester was a lever-action manufacturing company, so they persuaded him to design a lever-action shotgun, which was the M1887 model described above. However, they did later manufacture his pump-action design as the Winchester model M1893, which was later improved to the model M1897. It must be noted that the M1897 shotgun gained so much popularity that it was used by US soldiers in World War I, where it was found very useful for trench fighting. Its quick shooting speed and massive stopping power made it a very effective weapon for US soldiers to have. In fact, the German troops feared this weapon greatly and the German High Command even attempted to have it outlawed in combat, by citing Geneva convention laws (this coming from the same people that allowed the use of poison gas!). The pump-action shotgun design is still popular to this day.
Pump Action shotgun
There are also semi-automatic shotguns, where some of the force generated by the firing cartridge is used to eject the old cartridge, cock the action and load a new cartridge. Semi-automatic shotguns use a variety of mechanisms: long recoil action, inertia operated action or gas-operated action. The first successful semi-automatic shotgun was the Auto-5 (or A-5) action first designed in 1898 by (surprise, surprise) John Browning! The Auto-5 model remained in production until 1998!
Semi-automatic Remington Model 11 shotgun using long-recoil action
Bolt-action shotguns also exist in the wild, though they are not common. One particular model was manufactured in .410 caliber by the Ishapore arsenal of India, based on the Lee-Enfield SMLE Mark III model.
Ishapore .410 caliber bolt action shotgun. Click on image to enlarge.
In the next post, we will look into more about shotguns.
In the last couple of posts, we studied the break-open action and the sliding barrel action. Now we will study another type of action that is known for its sturdiness and is still with us. This action is the bolt action.
We actually studied the first weapon to use a bolt action a while earlier. It happens to be the Dreyse Needle Gun. This gun had a number of firsts to its name:
It was the first mass-produced military weapon using breech-loading technology.
The ammunition it used burned almost completely, so it didn't need to eject the paper casing after firing the weapon. This was a precursor to caseless ammunition.
It was the first bolt-action breechloading weapon.
The action was a significantly new invention in 1841, when the Dreyse needle gun was first introduced. It allowed the user to reload significantly faster than the opposition who were still using muzzle-loading weapons (almost 5 times the shooting speed). It also had the advantage that the user didn't need to stand up to reload the weapon and therefore could hide behind cover.
The basic idea of a bolt-action weapon is a manually operated bolt, which is manipulated by a handle, typically on the right side of the weapon. The handle is used to unlock the bolt and open the breech cover. The old cartridge case is then ejected from the breech chamber. The opening of the bolt may also cock the weapon in some models. Then a new cartridge is put in the chamber and the handle is then moved forward to close the bolt. In some models, the action of closing the bolt cocks the weapon. The weapon is then ready to fire.
In some models, opening the bolt causes an extractor lever to automatically pull the old cartridge case out of the chamber to eject it. The magazine has a spring that pushes a new cartridge into the chamber, when the old cartridge case is pulled out by the extraction lever. Such a mechanism is used in many bolt-action rifles, such as the Springfield M1903 rifle which carries a 5-shot magazine under it. This speeds up shooting because the user doesn't need to waste time pulling out the old cartridge or feeding a new one by hand.
Compared to other actions, the bolt-action has a few advantages. It is extremely simple to make, yet has very high accuracy. It is very cheap to manufacture and very light-weight. Best of all, it is a very strong action and can handle powerful cartridges. The only downside to it is that it doesn't support a very high rate of fire compared to some other alternatives. Since most modern military rifles are semi-automatic or selective fire weapons, they don't use this mechanism. However, the simplicity combined with the accuracy and the ability to handle high powered cartridges make it ideal to be used in sniper rifles. In fact, the bolt-action is overwhelmingly the action of choice in most of the sniper rifles used throughout the world. This mechanism is also used in many hunting rifles, where rate of fire is not as important as accuracy and power.
There are three major variants of bolt-action rifles which we will study below.
The Mauser M-98 system was first introduced in 1898 (hence M-98) with the Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle, which was used by the Germans between 1898 and 1935. This highly successful bolt-action design was later used in a lot of other rifles and is the dominant form of bolt-actions used today. In this type, the rifle is cocked when the bolt-action is opened. The Gewehr 98 has a 5-round magazine.
Click image to enlarge
The image above shows an original Mauser model from 1898. The weapon was designed with a lot of thought. The bolt handle is securely attached to the bolt and there are a couple of gas vent holes built into the bolt, so that if there is a rupture in the cartridge case or primer, the hot gases will vent out of the magazine hole instead of near the user's face. The "controlled feed" extractor claw holds on to the cartridge the moment it has fed from the magazine and holds on to it until the cartridge case is ejected. The weapon is cocked as the bolt is opened (actually, it specifically cocks as the bolt handle is rotated upwards, before pulling back to open the bolt) and the rear part of the striker protrudes from the back of the bolt, which allows one to quickly check if the rifle is cocked or not visually. The original mauser design was not given to cheap mass-production.
The cock-on-bolt-opening design was later adopted by other rifles as well, notably the Springfield M1903 (like the one shown in the picture above). The M1903 was used in the US military from 1903 all the way into the Vietnam war. The cock-on-bolt-opening design rifles are slightly slower to load than the other variant which we will study below. However, it is the more common of the two variants of bolt action and is used in nearly all modern hunting rifles today. It was also the dominant form of action used between the 1890s and the mid 1900s.
Another variant of bolt action is the cock-on-bolt-closing design. This is famously called the "Lee Enfield design" as it was first used in the Lee-Enfield rifle of 1895, otherwise known as the SMLE (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield) rifle. This rifle was heavily used in the British Commonwealth and its descendant is still used by Indian police, which makes it the longest serving bolt-action rifle model in existence.
The above is an example of a Lee-Enfield Mark I rifle. In this rifle, pushing the bolt closed cocks the rifle. This makes opening the bolt a lot faster and smoother, compared to the cock-on-opening design of the Mauser. This feature, coupled with its larger capacity 10-round magazine meant that a user could shoot 20-30 times in 60 seconds, making it the fastest bolt-action rifle of its day. The Lee Enfield rifles fire a 0.303 bullet. Note that the 0.303 bullet actually measures 0.311 inches in diameter, as we have noted previously.
The Indian Ordnance board later made a variant of this rifle called the Ishapore 2A1, which was based on the Lee Enfield Mark III rifle model.
The main difference is that the Ishapore 2A1 rifle is chambered to fire a standard NATO 7.62 x 51 mm. round. As a result of this, the steel used in this weapon is also improved to handle the higher pressures of the NATO cartridge. This rifle has the distinction of being the last bolt-action rifle designed to be used by a regular military force (other than sniper rifles, which are for special forces only). It is still used by police in various states in India. It is also popular with civilian shooters in the UK and USA.
The Lee-Enfield cock-on-closing-bolt system was also used on a number of other rifles, mostly made in the UK and other commonwealth countries.
A third variant is the Mosin-Nagant system, which was first used by the Mosin-Nagant rifle in 1895. Unlike the Mauser system, the bolt head rotates with the bolt and lugs, whereas the Mauser has the bolt head is an integral (non-removable) part of the bolt. It is also unlike the Lee-Enfield where the bolt head remains stationary and the bolt alone rotates. It is a rugged design, but is complicated. This type of bolt-action was mostly used in Russia, but one version called the M28 was manufactured by the Finns. The M28 is widely regarded as one of the finest and most accurate military rifles ever produced and was used by the most successful sniper of all time, a Finn named Simo Hayha.
There are other bolt-action systems, but never caught on as much as the above three systems.
Bolt actions are more accurate than semi-automatic rifles, which is why hunters and military snipers still use them. The reason is because when the cartridge is fired, the entire energy is devoted to propelling the bullet out of the rifle, unlike a semi-automatic or automatic weapon, where part of the energy is diverted to eject the old cartridge, auto-cock the weapon and load a new cartridge. It also has less moving parts than most other action types. The only parts that really move in a bolt-action when it is being fired are the spring and the firing pin. This simple and strong design means it can fire magnum cartridges as well. One more advantage for snipers is that it does not eject the spent round automatically, which is beneficial to the sniper because it does not give away his position and he can decide to eject the round himself when it is safe to do so. The only disadvantage is that it is slower to use than some other actions. So, while it may not be as useful to an ordinary infantryman, this action is more valuable to snipers and hunters and has thrived for these reasons even to the present day.
