Bulgaria is a good country, And Russia is the best!
("Under the Balkan Stars" Lyrics: M. Isakovsky)
Today we continue our journey across countries and continents where various bolt-action rifles were used. In accordance with the alphabetical order, today we have the first letter "B", that is, the country of Bulgaria. But in terms of "technical capabilities" Canada will follow.
To begin with, Bulgaria, with the largest army in the Balkans at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, played an important strategic role in Eastern Europe, balancing between such great powers as Russia and Austria-Hungary. Bulgaria was a relatively modern kingdom, occupying an important place in the world … a situation that ended immediately after World War II, when its inclusion in the zone of interests of the USSR brought it what … brought and eventually ended with its next reorientation to the West. However, this could be expected. After all, how many such reorientations have already taken place in Bulgaria. It is necessary to free ourselves from the Ottoman yoke, and we are friends "on the water." It is necessary to ensure its own interests, and Bulgaria is an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War and … a state neutral in relation to the USSR during the Second. Then an active participant in the Warsaw Pact, the "16th Republic of the USSR", our most important "foreign resort" and supplier of canned fruits, and an equally active ally of the West today. Well, we do not know how to tie allies to ourselves or those who could become them, we do not know how, and for some reason it is a shame to learn from those who can.
Soldiers of the Fatherland Front of Bulgaria on the streets of liberated Sofia with Mannlicher rifles in their hands!
But there have always been such opportunities for Russia! After all, Bulgaria did not have factories for the manufacture of weapons, and it had to buy weapons on the export market. And she chose excellent Austrian rifles from the Steyr company. However, during alliances with Russia, the Bulgarians also managed to acquire rifles of the Berdan II model. Although no such rifles have been found to date, there are photographs of Bulgarian soldiers armed with Berdan II rifles posing. Obviously, they were acquired either during the Russian-Turkish war, or immediately after it. Then, when relations between Russia and Bulgaria deteriorated, the flow of Russian rifles dried up, and Austria became the supplier of small arms for the Bulgarian army.
Thus, Bulgaria bought Model 1888 and Model 1888 / 90S, which can be distinguished by the characteristic stamp with the image of a lion at the top of the store.
Rifle "Mannlicher" М1888 at the Army Museum in Stockholm. One of its features was a separate magazine protruding from the box, not combined with the trigger guard.
"Mannlicher" M1888 represented a rifle with a sliding bolt, while its movement did not occur up and back, but only backward, followed by a return to the place. Another feature was batch loading. At the same time, due to the fact that the cartridges were welted, in the pack they were located in such a way that the cap of each next upper cartridge was in front of the cap of the lower cartridge, which made it possible to feed them into the barrel without delay. Because of this, the clip-pack was given an oblique shape, but because of this, it could only fit into the store with one side. Therefore, in order not to confuse the top and bottom at night, corrugations were made on the “upper” part of the pack. Because of this, the rifle had a specific drawback. It was possible to recharge it only by removing the pack from it and adding new cartridges to it.
Until 1890, the M1888 rifle used 8-mm cartridges with improved black powder, which provided the bullet with an initial velocity of 500 m / s. Since 1890, they began to use smokeless powder and a new bullet in a steel shell. At the same time, its initial speed increased to 625 m / s.
In 1890, specifically for the use of cartridges with smokeless powder, the Mannlicher rifle of the 1888 model was modernized, replacing the sights with a rear sight with divisions for firing from 600 to 1800 steps (1350 m) at close range and from 2000 to 3000 steps (2250 m) at long range … In addition, scales for a cartridge with smokeless powder were applied to the side surface of the sight. When the Mannlicher M1895 model appeared, the Bulgarians immediately bought an experimental batch of 3000 rifles, during the 1896/97 financial year they were tested. The rifle was liked and Bulgaria placed an order for 65,208 rifles shipped during the 1903/04 fiscal year. The Mannlicher system was used in Bulgaria during the First World War and during the Second World War. Moreover, these rifles were still in the strategic reserve even in the 60s of the last century.
In Canada, the situation was slightly different. Instead of equipping their troops with British rifles (there is, however, information that the British did not agree to supply the Canadians with their Lee Enfield rifles), like other Commonwealth countries. Therefore, Canada tested the rifles in 1901 and accepted the offer of Sir Charles Ross, who owned the Ross Co Rifles Company. The rifle was a unique design with a straight bolt action. Following the British naming system for guns, the first Ross rifle was named the Mark I, and not by the year it was produced. Quickly decommissioned, today it is a rare and highly sought-after model among weapon collectors. There were only 5,000 Mk I rifles produced in Canada before the start of production of the Mk II in 1905, and very few of them survived.
The bolt and sight of the Mk I rifle. Museum of the Royal Canadian Regiment in London.
Canadian Sir Charles Ross began work on his rifle in the late 1890s, based on the Austrian Mannlicher M1890 / 1895 rifles. In the wake of the Boer Wars and Britain's refusal to supply Canada's Lee Enfield rifles, the Canadian army turned to Ross. As a result, in 1902, the.303 caliber Ross rifle was adopted by the Canadian army and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and from 1905 it began to be massively supplied to the troops. In 1907, it was the turn of the Mark II rifle, and in the period from 1907 to 1912 it was modified several times. In the summer of 1910, the Mark III rifle entered the Canadian army, which became the main weapon of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe during the First World War.
The same rifle, side view.
However, in its trenches, it turned out that the Ross rifles, for all their excellent rate of fire and high accuracy of fire, were not at all adapted to the role of army weapons. The rifles turned out to be very sensitive to contamination, and their longitudinally sliding bolt was not only difficult to disassemble and assemble, but also in some modifications allowed incorrect assembly. In this case, it was possible to fire a shot with the bolt unlocked with the most deplorable results for both the rifle and the shooter. As a result, as soon as the Canadians had such an opportunity, the Ross rifles were replaced by the British Lee-Enfield No.3 Mk. I rifles. In the post-war period, Ross rifles were used in the role of hunting and sporting weapons, both in the version chambered for the.303 cartridge, and under the powerful.280 hunting cartridge, quite developed by Ross.
Rifle Mk III.
Rifles of this system have a longitudinally sliding breechblock acting with a straight movement of the handle. The barrel is locked with a separate combat larva when it is turned. At the same time, this larva could have either two massive combat stops, or instead of them, an intermittent multi-thread thread was made on it, as in the piston bolt of an artillery gun. The rotation of the larva during the movement of the shutter was achieved by the interaction of spiral grooves and protrusions on the body of the shutter.
Harris store arrangement. US patent No. 723864 1903
The cartridges were fed from an integral 5-round box magazine of the Harris system (Mark I and Mark II), in which the cartridges were staggered in two rows, while its equipment came from above with the bolt open. A feature of this design was that the magazine had to be loaded with separate cartridges. It was possible to act differently.
Feeder device and placement of its coil spring in Harris's store. US patent No. 723864 1903
To do this, the shooter first had to lower the magazine feeder, compressing its spring by pressing a special key on the right of the forearm, immediately behind the sight. Then five cartridges could simply fall asleep in the magazine box and release the feeder key. At the same time, Harris's store did not come out of the box.
The location of the cartridges in Harris's store. US patent No. 723864 1903
The Mark III rifle had a single-row magazine and protruded from the bottom of the box. It could be equipped with plate clips from Lee-Enfield rifles or one cartridge at a time. Another feature of the Ross rifles was the magazine cutoff, located on the right at the trigger, by pressing which the rifle turned into a single shot. The sights on the Mark I and Mark II rifles were open and had a range-adjustable rear sight with a U-shaped slot on the barrel; on Mark III rifles, the rear sight was dioptric and placed in the rear of the receiver. All variants of the Ross rifle had a ring muzzle.
The device of the bolt and single-row magazine on the Ross Mk III rifle.
Mark III rifles appeared in 1914, and a total of 400,000 copies were produced, and they were in service until 1916, when they were replaced by Lee-Enfields. Here we can say that the Canadians were simply unlucky. They received a very good rifle, but unsuitable for the harsh front-line conditions. And so, that with Harris's chess shop, that with a flat single-row, it was a very good weapon!
