Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Forgotten Weapons"
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@knurlgnar24 Yes and no.
Yes and no.
Factories and workshops of the time were not that controlled environments, they were not clean places, and they could be hot, cold, and anywere in between.
WWI HMGs, like the Vickers, the MG08 and so on, were built with the same concept, and had been among the most reliable self loading firearms ever.
Because, like the industrial tooling of their time they were massively overbuilt. It was like they couldn't be bothered by the simple energy of a cartridge firing. And, in their frame, there was a lot of void space, so the dirt had a lot of places to go before locking the mechanism.
The Madsen LMG was kind of a smaller version of that. As that, it was a little more sensible to elements and dirt, but no more (and maybe less) than any LMG of the time (Hotchkiss Portative, Lewis Gun... not to talk about the Chauchat).
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@davidvarnes7708 For 1934 It was simple to make too. The BAR, BREN, MG34 and Type99 (and both the BREN and MG1934 had been selected in 1938, the Type99 in 1939) had more complex machining. Among the most used LMGs of the time, Only the DP28 could be considered simpler to manufacture.
But generally, though I like it, it seems like a promising prototype put in production before all the elements had been figured out throughly.
Very good and simple operating mechanism, barrel change mechanism, general ergonomy, controls, gas settings…
But three sets of lugs? That bipod (I’ve seen better in WWI)… no handle to grab a scorching hot barrel… And that magazine…
It could have easily been so MUCH better.
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@RandomUser-cx9kn In the post-war years Bernardelli had a lot of know-how on making guns, but only of estabilished patterns, while the market required something new. Unfortunately the small company had not experience in designing new weapons and, as an engineer that worked there at that time recalled, even the access to specialised literature was very limited, especially in foreign languages. So they simply copied what they could put their hands on. They put their hands on a SVT and "oh, whe can make a shotgun out of this".
Later the situation was different. Thus not being Beretta, The Bernardelli 60 had been quite a success, and the P0.18 too. Unfortunately the company invested heavily in the Italian Army AR trial, but it had not been the only one. Franchi did it too with the 641 (derived from the H&K G41), and SOCIMI with the ambitious 871 (piston driven, reciprocating charging handle AR15).
The P.One evolution of the P0.18 was an exceptional firearm, that today would probably have it's place in the market exactly for it's "classic" features (all forged steel slide and frame, 1911 style safety but with a decocker too, like modern CZ and Taurus), unfortunately it was released in the worst possible moment for an all-steel pistol.
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WhiteCavendish Since the movement made by bolt head is about the same (first rotate 90°, then slide rearward for the lenght of the cartridge), the movement of the hand is not so "quantitatively" different. In the Mauser it's divided in two distinct actions "high - rear", while in the Ross it's a single, longer, one. As for the effort, that's probably true for sniper rifles, adeguately cared and that tend to shoot fewer ammunitions than infantry rifles. One of the problems of the design as an infantry rifle infact was it's tendency to require more and more effort to cycle the action as the rifle keep shooting, as a result of tight tolerances and dirt (unavoidable in trench warfare). Another superbly accurate and smooth straight pull, the Schmidt-Rubin, especially in it's K31 incarnation, if used in the same conditions would have probably suffered of the same problems (that were repeatedly reported in training) for the same reasons.
It's worth to note that another widely used (the most widely used of them all actually) straight pull, the Steyr-Manlicher, although being far less smooth than the previous two at first shot, did not suffered from the same problems. The famous Russian weapon desiger Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov (the father of the Fedorov Avtomat), in his reports from the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese war noted infact that the Manlicher design was even less sensible to mud and snow than the M91 Moisin-Nagant.
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The founders were two businessmen that, until the late '30s had an activity of import of bananas from Somalia (they owned two ships that they used for that). In the late '30s their business was nationalized by the government, and they (that were also two enthusiast hunters) used the indemnity to found, in the city of Cremona, a manufacture of weapons expressely meant for the army, so the name "Armi da guerra - Cremona" (Weapons for war - Cremona) then contracted in "Armaguerra". The manufacture was founded in 1939. The rifle was their first indipendent design, and had been immediatly succesful, winning the competition of Beretta, Breda and Scotti. However, during the war, the Armaguerra mainly produced Carcano rifles and Beretta Model 1934 pistols.
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You are welcome. One of the thing that could be of interest, is why the two choose the city of Cremona for the plant. Infact they were both of Genova, and Cremona was then a little, not industrialized, city, famous, like now is, for its luthiers. One can only speculate, but is often said that it was cause Cremona was the city of Roberto Farinacci, one of the leading figures of the fascist party. Building a manifacture there, they thought they could gain public procurements more easily. In the end, it was an excessive caution, as the plant started to work in 1939, and, since 1940, everything that could manufacture a rifle had no shortage of procurements.
In the end, in its brief life (the plant made weapons only from 1939 to 1945) the Armaguerra was higly innovative. It not only designed the winning semiauto model for the Italian Army, but also the OG43 and OG44, the first "second generation" SMGs.
Although not used productively for decades, the Armaguerra Plant is still existing. Recently the asbestos roof covers had been replaced by photovoltaic panels (even those that are still not covered in the picture, had been later), so it's currently a photovoltaic plant. http://nextia.ch/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/armaguerra-1.2bn.jpg
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Today it can seem strange, but, in the first half of XX century, to design a detachable magazine that was at the same time so cheap to be discarded on the field, and so well and consistently built to not cause feeding problems was really an issue. The BAR and the BREN were plagued by jammings caused by defective magazines, and those had been built by countries that had not raw materials shortages. The British actually designed a fixed magazine for the BREN, loaded with two 15 rounds clips (they didn't adopt that, but it was really awkward compared to the Breda one).
So, in 1924, FIAT came out with a LMG design (FIAT 1924) that had a fixed magazine on the left of the weapon, loaded inserting a 20 round clip (similar to that of the subsequent Breda) from the right. In exchange of a little time lost in recharging, all the feeding problems were avoided.
The flaw was that, to load a MG inserting a clip from one side, the gunner, or the servent, had to expose himself a little, and, laterally pushing the weapon, they can move it, loosing the line of sight.
So the Breda had the subsequent evolution. By tilting the magazine, in exchange of a little more time lost in recharging, the gunner could load the gun (and change the barrel, for that matter) without changing position at all.
In the end, ten years later, at the start of WWII, it was an already outdated design, but it was actually not that bad. There is a tendency, on the net, when a weapon had some defect, tho extremize them, concluding that "it's the worst gun ever made!", "I would have rather fought naked than carrying that piece of junk!" and things like that. But those are modern days shenanigans. The contemporaries of the weapon, those that had to fight them daily, and reuse the captured ones, thought it was not that bad.
From Tactical and Technical Trends (the magazine of the US Intelligence) No. 7, Sept. 10, 1942 "Use of Captured Italian weapons" :
"Breda Light Machine Gun: The Breda light machine gun is similar to the British Bren gun. It is mechanically superior to the Bren gun under dusty conditions. It requires only one man to service it as compared to several for the Bren gun. It has a slightly higher rate of fire than the British weapon. Its disadvantages are that it has no carrying handle, cannot be fired on fixed lines, and has no tripod mounting".
Mind that, to use 4 spare barrels (the number the Italians deemed to be necessary after having used the gun in combat), you have to fire at least 800 rounds in quick succession. So much for the gun not being capable to really provide automatic fire.
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