Winchester - I mean the famous gun that "conquered the Wild West" - a thing too famous and popular not to write much and in detail. Including on the pages of VO, where, in particular, my materials about the battles of the Americans with the Indians at Rosebud and Little Big Horn were published. It told not only about these battles themselves, but also about weapons. However, the design of the hard drive and the circumstances connected with it are so interesting that … inevitably we have to return to them. Moreover, the author had a chance at one time not only to "hold on" the hard drive of 1895, but also to shoot from it, and later to hold in his hands a sample of a hard drive that was absolutely exceptional in originality.
Winchester Model 1866 (Model 4, caliber.44-40).
And it so happened that as a boy I saw a "gun" on the wall in my grandfather's room. A family chronicle told me that it was from this gun that my uncle, who later died in the war, almost shot my future mother, shooting her grandfather's wolf canister at her almost point-blank. One buckshot remained in her hand for the rest of her life! Well, and then I myself saw how my grandfather chopped a lead rod of square cross-section into pieces and stuffed the cartridges with the resulting "cubes", which … he used to shoot the crows in the garden!
Pistol "Volcanic".
Bang bang! And only feathers flew from the flying crow! Then he began to teach me how to shoot, and the complexity of the gun seemed amazing to me: first squeeze the trigger, then throw back the lower lever, so that even the trigger would fall out of the gun, then insert the cartridge, raise the lever up and only then shoot! The guns of the fathers of the neighboring boys with breaking barrels seemed to me somehow not real. Moreover, studying in a special school with English from the second grade, I very quickly read the stigma on it: "Winchester 1895 American Army".
Diagram of the mechanism of the 1873 winchester.
Well, and only later I found out that my grandfather was given him in 1918, when he was in charge of grain procurements, commanded food detachments and … they shot at him, and he himself shot. But after the civil war, he was offered to hand over the military winchester, and he gave it to the alteration. In the gun shop, they changed the rifled barrel to a smooth one of a larger caliber, removed the clip for the clip that was on the receiver, pulled out the spring and the feeder from the store, and at the same time changed the forend. At that time in Soviet Russia there were many such converted rifles, after all, a lot of Winchesters were also delivered to us, and for some reason many of them ended up in the rear, and not at the front. Often, kulaks made cut-offs ("cuts") for themselves, and we have one of them in the Penza Museum of Local Lore. Well, in 1965, the GDR film "Sons of the Big Dipper", based on the novel by Liselotte Welskopf Heinrich, was released on our screens, and I fell ill with a Winchester for life, although later I had to part with my grandfather's gun.
Lever-bracket and receiver of the Winchester model of 1895.
Well, this is, so to speak, "the author's personal impressions", but what the "dry science of history" tells us about where "it all began" is. And it so happened that on February 14, 1854, an American named Benjamin Henry received a patent for … a pistol in which the bullets (and they are the essence of shots, that is, caseless ammunition!) Were in a tubular magazine under the barrel, and were fed into the barrel using special lever, structurally combined with the trigger guard.
Russian soldiers with winchesters in their hands …
It should be noted that the "first highlight" of the design - 10-mm lead bullets filled with a charge of … explosive mercury was more original than this lever. True, except for the explosive mercury inside the bullet, there was nothing else! When the hammer hit the firing pin, it pierced the explosive inside the bullet through the hole in the bolt, it flashed, and this, in general, was enough to throw it out of the barrel. This design simplified the design of the pistol (no need for an ejector!), But it is known that the simpler the weapon, the better it is. The pistol was named "Volcanic".
Canadian Royal Mounted Police and also with Winchesters.
But … despite all these advantages, the new weapon did not enjoy success on the market. The fact is that the speed of the bullet was low and, accordingly, the destructive force was also low. It also turned out that holding the pistol in the right hand, and working with the lever with the left, is inconvenient. It was possible, of course, to hold the pistol by the barrel and reload it with the right. The company tried to rely on the Volcanic multiple-shot rifle, with a magazine downright incredible length, but it was not a commercial success either. As a result, the manufacturing company, by the way, also called Volcanic, went bankrupt!
Advertising of hard drives.
Here we will go back a little and remember how the weapon was generally charged at that time. However, shorter and better A. A. You can hardly tell Pushkin about this, but in his novel "Eugene Onegin" he described this process as follows:
The pistols have already flashed
The hammer rattles on the ramrod.
Bullets go into the faceted barrel
And snapped the trigger for the first time.
Here is gunpowder in a trickle of grayish
Pours onto the shelves. Serrated, Securely screwed in flint
Cocked …
The invention of cartridges, in which a bullet, gunpowder, and a primer were together, helped to solve the problem with accelerated loading. However, even earlier, human inventive thought created a caseless shot - that is, a bullet without a cartridge case, with a propellant charge inside! I must say that at that time there were many attempts to create a rapid-fire multiple-charge weapon. But both pistol revolvers and repeater pistols, as a rule, all had several barrels, firing in turn!
Another advertisement.
That is, a store for many cartridges could solve the problem, and Benjamin Henry took care of his creation, and already in 1860 received a new patent for a cartridge rifle with a 15-round magazine under the barrel. He replaced the low-power bullets with a charge inside with.44 caliber rimfire cartridges, and why, again, with a ring-fired one is understandable. After all, the bullet head of one cartridge was directly opposite the bottom of the other. And if there was a primer, then when the butt hit the ground, an accidental shot could occur.
The bolt of the master gunsmith Erskine S. Allin, installed on the 1861 model. Springfield rifle.
During the American Civil War 1861 - 1865. this Henry rifle was used very actively. The advertisement claimed that "You can load it on Sunday and shoot it all week without reloading!" But it was still very inconvenient to load - it could only be done while standing, and besides, through the slot running along the entire store from below (the lever of the pusher sleeve moved along it), dirt and dust got there. Yes, and the lever itself could rest against the hand when moving, which could cause a delay in firing, and the loading process was very long. To do this, the lever at the base of the spring had to be pushed all the way towards the muzzle of the barrel, fixed, and then disconnected the lower part of the magazine from the upper one, take the upper part to the side so that it does not interfere, and insert cartridges into it. Looking at the lever sticking out of the slot in the store, it was possible to determine whether the rifle was loaded or not. That is, it was clearly not the best solution, although with a fully loaded magazine, its rate of fire reached 30 rounds per minute. Something else was needed, and this is how the famous "Winchester" of 1866 appeared.
The same age as the "yellow guy": single-shot carbine model 1866 "Springfield" with a folding bolt.
The main "highlight" was the spring-loaded store door, located on the right of the receiver. Now it became possible to load the magazine "from the rear end", that is, holding the rifle in the left hand and not necessarily standing, but also lying down (very convenient!) And sitting in the saddle.
Snyder rifle flap. Opened.
It should be noted that the successful Winchester system (well, he bought Henry's patent and released the "yellow guy", that is, the "66" carbine) immediately gave rise to well, just a lot of imitations, and now it's time to tell a little about them in more detail.
Snyder rifle flap. Closed.
Let's start with an almost identical copy and Winchester's main competitor, John M. Marlin, who started out with revolvers and derringers in 1870 and eventually improved on the Winchester. The main drawback of the latter was the shutter, which closed the shutter box from above and slid inside it along the grooves. The shell case was thrown up and sometimes hit the shooter's face.
Carbine "Marlin". Model 1894 chambered for the Remington.44 Magnum 44 1894
Marlin came up with a U-shaped shutter and a closed-top receiver. When reloading, he also retreated, but at the same time a window opened on the right, through which the sleeve was also removed to the right. Thanks to this, an optical sight could be installed above the receiver of the "marlin" carbine. Initially, carbines were produced in calibers.32 and.45 (7, 7 and 11, 43 mm), but then others appeared.
Carbine "Marlin" chambered for.30-30 Winchester.
Then A. Borges of Oswego released his own version of such a rifle. It has a noticeable quirky lever, but the mechanism itself is similar to that of a Winchester. In 1878, his rifle was tested, but found to be fragile. Schneider's firms also did not stay away from participating in the development of this system and also proposed a bolt controlled by an underbarrel lever. But when it was pulled forward, the bolt did not move back, but … sank down in the grooves of the receiver.
The bolt of the "Marlin" rifle.
At the same time, a cartridge was fed to it, the bolt rose, while a special lever (aka extractor) pushed it into the barrel. The rate of fire of the rifle was at the level of the rate of fire of the "Winchester" and "Marlin" and was distinguished by a very short bolt action. Such a system was described in the English book "The Gun and its Development" by W. W. Greener, published at the end of the 19th century and reprinted at the beginning of the 20th. Then the information from it was borrowed by the well-known historian of weapons V. E. Markevich, already our author, and … that's it!
Schneider system shutter.
At the same time K. Kh. Ballard of Worcester, Kentucky also decided to have his say in the development of lever operated bolt action rifles. He made an excellent … single-shot rifle, which is still on sale, and then he came up with a bolt for multiple charges with an under-barrel magazine. Moreover, unlike everyone else, he acted according to the principle “to do it is simple - very difficult, and difficult - very simple”. His bolt was also controlled by a lever-brace, but it “drove” inside the receiver due to the fact that the gear groove on it was rolled along two gears! The benefit from this was that the bolt moved extremely smoothly, but the bolt itself and the receiver turned out to be very long, and therefore heavy. Ballard rifles were produced in the following calibers:.32,.38,.44 (7, 7, 9 and 11mm), and then also.45 and.50. Moreover, if the cartridge of the Winchester 50th caliber contained 90 grains. gunpowder, then Ballard has 115! That is, his rifles were more powerful! There were rifles with an under-barrel magazine for 5 and 11 rounds and, although they were in demand, they still could not compete on equal terms with hard drives.
