# Carcano rifle



## The Basket (Sep 8, 2016)

The main Italian battle rifle for the two wars and trashed by every Kennedy conspiracy theory for being trash.
How did it stack up against other rifles and I see no reason not to like the 6.5mm round.


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## fastmongrel (Sep 8, 2016)

I have never shot a Carcano but a friend has and he said it was a pleasant gun to handle and fire. Nothing special but nothing wrong with it. I have read publications that claim the 6.5x52mm round was underpowered but other 6.5 rounds like 6.5 Arisaka, 6.5 Swedish and 6.5 Schönauer all have good reputations so I dont understand why the similar Carcano round should be any less of a man killer. Maybe it gets its weak reputation as a machine gun round.


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## Elmas (Sep 8, 2016)

Long story.


If I remember well (taking data from memory) of all the personnel recruited by U.S. Army in WWII just something like 3% shoot actually to an enemy, of this 3% just another 5% shot to an enemy with a rifle, and of this 5% just another 5% tried to engage a target over 1000 ft.


So, why to equip all the troops with an expensive rifle that almost all of the troops could use but to a fraction of his possibilities, capable to engage an enemy up to 4000 ft?


The point of view of the Chief of Staff of an Army is not exactly the same of an eager rifle collector.


The fact that the Carcano had not all the technological refinements of Mauser does not mean that in the right hands it could not do its job extremely well.


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## Juha2 (Sep 8, 2016)

Also 6.5 mm Carcano bullet tended to tumble, like the British .303 Mk VII, when it hit producing nastier wounds than a normal rifle bullet.


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## parsifal (Sep 8, 2016)

There was not a lot wrong with the Carcano. And rifles as a weapon generally are not the main arm to worry about, with about 15% of all casualties linked to them. They were mostly for self defence. in these terms the Manlicher carcano was perfectly workable

Having said all that. The mannlicher Carcano did have some shortcomings. its magazine capacity was limited, and unable to be altered. The bolt action was a little slow and the gun took a lot of work and resources to build . Add to that the fact that the Italian army had a number of different calibres operating at the same time and the situation rapidly becomes an unhappy one.

And the 6.5mm round, despite all the criticisms against it, was still powerful enough to assassinate a president.......


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## Shortround6 (Sep 8, 2016)

The Wiki article is actually pretty good. 
6.5×52mm Carcano - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now several things are going on here not that are not covered. 
1. The Carcano in 6.5mm never got a Spitzer bullet. The heavy round nose bullets loose velocity quicker than the Spitzer bullets meaning impact energy goes down quicker with increase range. This is a problem for the Carcano as it is one of the two weakest 6.5mm rounds to begin with. 
2. While the Carcano might be OK out of the long barrel the short barrel carbines cut the velocity to under 2200fps which further hurt impact performance. It also doesn't help trajectory.
3. Italian Army compounded the last problem when they fitted fixed back sight to the 1938 models of the rifle.





4. As a rifle the Carcano was OK as it was. It gets a bad reputation in the US Because at the time (1950s and early 60s) many US gun owners were interested in converting surplus military rifles to hunting rifles using standard US rifle calibers. The Carcano, while strong enough for it's original cartridge, wasn't strong enough for some of the commercial hunting cartridges. The magazine system was also hard to convert. which leads us to...
5. Gun was loaded with a 6 round enbloc clip.




The sheet metal clip went into the rifle and stayed in the magazine until the last round was chambered at which point it fell out the bottom of the rifle 




You couldn't "top up" the rifle, ie, if you fired 3 rounds you could not add three more rounds. you could either carry the rifle with just 3 rounds in it or eject the partially filled clip and put a new full clip in the gun. Of course the partially filled clip will NOT hold the 3 rounds in the clip and you will be holding a sheet metal clip and 3 loose rounds. Large hole in the bottom of the rifle was _supposed _to let in dirt. I don't know, wasn't there, never used one.

BTW I like the 6.5mm caliber, I had a 6.5mmX .308 rifle built for target use before the .260 Rem was a commercial cartridge and also had a rifle built in 6.5mm Rem BR, 308 case shortened to just 1.5 in long instead of 2in (or 51mm), which is where my forum name comes from. Some forums will not take the period between the 6 and the 5 in 6.5
This last rifle, while not a particularly good military round (a bit fatter than 6.5 Grendel) is one of the most accurate rifles I have ever fired. A heavy Hart stainless steel barrel gets a lot of the credit along with the gunsmith who built it.


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## Elmas (Sep 8, 2016)

parsifal said:


> ........
> and the gun took a lot of work and resources to build .
> .......



Are you sure Parsifal?


Italian government payed Mannlicher the sum of 300.000 lire in 1888 ( that was a tremendous amount of money, for those times...) for the patent of the sheet metal clip: Mannlicher replied that for 300.000 lire they could copy not only the clip, but the whole rifle...

But Mannlicher rifle was too expensive to produce, so the Fucile mod. 1891 is a mix of Mannlicher and solutions found in the Italian Army factories of those times, in order to have a less expensive weapon and a less expensive clip.

From Marcianò- Morin Dal Carcano al FAL – page 165.












Even the fact highlighted by Shortround in the previous post, namely the fact that you can’t use loose rounds, was a precise choice of the Chief of Staff, that privileged the volume of fire rather the possibility to use the rifle for sniping, a sistem of warfare that was very seldom used by Italian Army and that the Italians hated.

About this...

In the 15-18 war a Brigade was formed exclusively from Sardinians, as our dialect is absolutely incomprehensible for other Italians and also officers were. They were all shepherds, all excellent hunters, quite used to wildlife and to stay awake at night, to avoid to be robbed from the other shepherds. To avoid to reveal their position they smoked in this way, with the embers of the cigar inside the mouth as this old veteran does, quite a useful way to smoke without be nailed from a sniper....


_View: https://youtu.be/ONFspwq2jn0_


Very fighting people: night expeditions were organised in the trenches to capture enemy snipers using this silent weapon, a tool that any Sardinian sheperd, even today, perfectly masters.










A very famous Sardinian bandit, in the '60s..

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## Shortround6 (Sep 8, 2016)

A lot of things are relative. Most of the pre WW I and between wars bolt action rifles were similar in costs and resources to build. Granted some might be 20-25% different than another but they were all built of forged steel for the major parts and took a lot of machining. When you are talking about rifles by the million/s even small percentages add up to considerable sums. 
Some of the sub-machine guns of the stamped variety could be built very cheaply. 3-5 sub-machine guns for the price of one rifle. SO in that case _any _of the bolt action rifles were expensive and took a lot of time. 
As far as the magazine system on the Carcano goes, not only did the Austrians and some other Balken countries use it but so did the French on the 1907 and 1907/15 rifles and carbines. Perhaps not the best but again comparing it to 5 shot rifles using stripper clips not that different in either sustained or "burst" (1-2 minute) fire power. 
I am a target shooter but I try not judge military rifles by target standards. That is like trying to compare sports cars and pickup trucks 
For a country who's major military adventure was in North Africa the Italians seemed to screw up the rifle design though. Not that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the Carcano but NOT cutting the barrel so short, shifting to a spitzer bullet, and using better sights would have made for a more effective rifle for open spaces ( and the better bullet would have helped whatever MGs that used it, it would require new sights however).
BTW I have used my 6.5x308 at both 600yds and 1000yds (although only one week end at 1000yds) and been at no disadvantage in _hitting _compared to .308s firing match bullets so I don't believe any of the military 6.5s would have been at a significant disadvantage _given _*proper *bullets. 

I note that the Sardinian bandit has at least one if not two Beretta sub-machineguns as back up


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## The Basket (Sep 8, 2016)

My ramblings are thus....
The Type I Carcano used 6.5mm Japanese in a stripper clip so the ability was there to use something different and the Japanese ammo was a pointed bullet. The Carcano by 1940 was very old so still using a rounded bullet was bizarre. Although assessment of Italian engineering often uses words like inefficient and poor quality so anything is possible.
Could the Carcano be loaded singly? The fact the clip couldn't be reloaded singly is the same as the Garand. So not unique. The hole at the bottom also has an advantage as detritus could drain out whereas with a Garand it could pool.
One assumes either the Italians were satisfied with the Carcano or didn't have the ability to make anything else.

Of course the Carcano is linked with Oswald but that's something that has bugged me. A collector a would certainly add a Carcano to his cache but why would Oswald buy a strange Italian rifle with that unusual ammo which is rarer than 30-06? I assume that a gun savvy guy would have his pick and choice of Mauser and Garand in 1960s Texas so the choice of the Carcano don't sit right.


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## fastmongrel (Sep 9, 2016)

The Basket said:


> The fact the clip couldn't be reloaded singly is the same as the Garand. So not unique.



You can load single rounds into the Garand, Its one of the big gun myths. Not that you would want to load it singly when you can bang in a a new 8 round clip in a second.


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## The Basket (Sep 9, 2016)

It does seem the clip could be reloaded individually or of course you can stick a round up the spout.
I wonder if that was trained or GIs learning a new trick.
There was a 7.35mm spritzer Carcano rifle but not entirely sure what happened to it whether it was binned due to war pressure or it was rubbish.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 9, 2016)

You can't fire any rounds from the Garand and then "top off" the magazine to bring the count back up to eight. Yes you can load one directly into the chamber when the magazine is empty.








It is possible to load the clip part filled, target shooters do it with 2 rounds for the National Match course of fire but it is a bit of a juggling act and it is done with a range officer watching and _waiting_ until ALL competitors are ready before continuing with the range commands. However the rounds and clip are inserted together until the clip latches in place. Trying to add rounds with clip already in-place means fighting the magazine spring while trying to keep all rounds in line (none jumping forward) and getting the 8th round into the clip is hard enough when doing it outside the gun and using two hands. A common move when loading outside the gun is to gently tap the noses of the bullets on a hard surface to make sure they are all fully back in the clip. A round that is spaced forward a bit may cause a jam. 



The Basket said:


> There was a 7.35mm spritzer Carcano rifle but not entirely sure what happened to it whether it was binned due to war pressure or it was rubbish.


There is some confusion on the 7.35mm spritzer Carcano rifle, some sources claim they were rebored 6.5mm rifles and others say they were new manufacture (or both?). In any case the reason it was dropped was that the Italians had millions of rounds of 6.5 in stock and couldn't manufacture the 7.35 fast enough. 
Sorting out the truth is sometimes hard as some of the stories don't make a lot of sense. Switching from a .268in bullet to a .300/301 bullet isn't going to gain much in the way increased wounding power. A roughly 10% change in diameter? Switching to a Spitzer with an aluminium nose vs a round nose bullet with the Spitzer having a much greater tendency to flop side ways does make sense. However the necessity of changing caliber doesn't as it isn't hard to design a 120-130 grain aluminium tipped spitzer in 6.5m that will do the same thing. Of course you have to use the proper rate of twist in the rifling to keep the bullet stable in flight and yet not over stabilized so it does flip when you want it to.
The quality of the 7.35mm Carcano rifle/s was every bit as good as the 6.5mm ones. The guns were very far from being rubbish even if some of the details were a bit questionable.


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## tyrodtom (Sep 9, 2016)

Oswald bought a Carcano because it was cheap, $19.95 with the scope, from Klein sporting goods. $19.95 for a rifle then was about like paying $250.00 for one now.

I got my first deer with a Enfield Mk5 jungle carbine my uncle had bought, mail order, from a ad in The American Shooter magazine, for $25.00 in 1962.
In the early 60's there was probably still surplus ammo floating around for the Carcano, we had no trouble finding cheap surplus ammo for the .303 at that time.


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## fastmongrel (Sep 9, 2016)

Its very easy to put single rounds into a Garand the spring isnt that heavy, I found this with a quick google 
_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMkZOOp6gJo_


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## fastmongrel (Sep 9, 2016)

Bore out a 6.5mm barrel and cut new rifling and you end up with approx 7.35mm. The Italians had warehouses full of Carcanos that had the Lands shot out. I presume the Italian accountants thought it would be cheaper to machine the barrels and chamber throats than make new barrels.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 9, 2016)

Thank you. I learned somethings.


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## fastmongrel (Sep 9, 2016)

Bloke on the range seems to have some good videos on his youtube page. I love the M1 but I am deep down a Lee Enfield man I really liked this vdieo

_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-EdQuAxAII&feature=youtu.be&t=250_


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## tyrodtom (Sep 9, 2016)

I think a lot of the bad reputation the Carcano has, came from it's use in the Kennedy assassination.
The cornerstone of some of the conspiracy theories is that it was such a bad rifle, that it was unlikely that it could have successfully made the shots. 

Throw enough BS around, some of it sticks, and some of it stuck on the Carcano.


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## The Basket (Sep 9, 2016)

What rifles were around in 1963 that the average man in the street could buy for $20?
Surely Oswald would go Garand. He trained on one of those in the Marines. It just the choice of the Carcano is so odd. I doubt Carcanos were very popular or common.

The Jungle Carbine was a nickname and never official. It didn't serve in the uk for long due to wandering zero. So how did it find itself on the US market?


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## tyrodtom (Sep 9, 2016)

Google 1962 surplus rifle ads. The Carcano was the cheapest of the WW2 era surplus rifles available. Though you could get a Martini falling block for less.
A surplus Garand cost around $80.00 in those ads.
$20.00 may not sound like much now, but Oswald may not have been paid much more than that a week.
I worked for a funeral home the summer before I joined the USAF in 1965, I brought home less than $30.00 a week. My first paycheck in the USAF was $88.00, that was for a month.

The No5 Mk 1 may not officially been called the jungle carbine, but that's what we all called them. The deer weren't aware of the wandering zero, and neither were we. It worked fine in close brush country like I hunt locally. Though I would have preferred a model 94 in 30.30.

The late 50s and early 60s was the golden era of surplus sales. I remember one of my friends dad made a go cart for him from the electric starter from a WW2 bomber, and he paid less tham $10.00 for it.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 9, 2016)

When evaluating military weapons, or other things, a number of factors com into play.
Even for things like rifles they actually have to viewed as a "weapons system" even though a simple one. 
The Carcano was a well built rifle that is-- good forgings, well machined, good finish (for the most part, many war time guns from many nations were poorly finished). Many rifles have idiosyncrasies that don't make sense at first glance to people familiar to other guns/tactics.
However as a "system" the rifle is largely dependent on ammunition and here the Carcano was let down, both by Italian military ammunition and in the American market. To deliver good "accuracy" a rifle needs good ammo. Not only good new ammo but good _old _ammo (ammo that has been in storage for 20-40 years) and here the Carcano ran into trouble, some lots of ammo having poor sealing around the primer allowing moisture to get into the primer and powder making the cartridges inconsistent. It has hard to get a good group if the ammo is going bang, bang, bang. pop, BOOM, bang. The Carcano also used an oddball bullet. It was .268 in diameter instead of the much more common .263-.264 of many other 6.5mm cartridges which meant even American handloaders had trouble making ammunition for it. It was only after about 2002 that an American company offered a .268 bullet so from the end of WW II on even American experimenters were using undersized bullets when trying to evaluate or compare the Carcano to other rifles.
Many countries had problems with ammunition quality during war time and at times accepted some pretty poor stuff. 
A 3rd consideration is the sights and ergonomics. The Carcano never got a decent set of sights. They were stuck with the pre turn of 20th century sight system until just before WW II when the Italians turned to the simplified fixed sight setup. Perhaps that was an attempt to simplify things for the troops in combat. 
Military rifles were often regulated (or sighted in) at the factory or arsenal by using different height front sight blades (or filing) and drifting the front sight left and right in the front sight base to establish a "zero". However different "lots" of ammunition will often shoot to to different points of impact even if the velocity is the the same. A few inches left or right may be acceptable for military use but leaves civilian users less than impressed. Trying to use different bullets or hand loads can really shift point of impact even if the group size is small. 
The Short barreled Carcanos suffer due to the short sight radius. The greater the distance between the sights the less the point of impact will shift for the same sighting error (front sight not in exact center of rear sight). This is true for many of the short carbines but very few of the European short carbines showed up in the US in numbers (except for the Swedish Mauser Carbines).
One source claims the short carbines were built using cut down rifle barrels. The Carcano rifles (long barrel) used gain twist rifling in which the rifling twist started slow (about one turn in 19in of barrel) and the twist changed as the rifling went to the muzzle with the twist ending at somewhere between 1 in 8 or 1 in 9. Cutting the barrel back to just under 18in inches may have left the the final rifling twist to slow to stabilize the long 162 grain bullet. 
Point of personal information, My 6.5 Rem bench rest rifle has a 1 in 10 barrel and while phenomenally accurate using 120 grain bullets it threw Sierra 142 grain match kings sideways in a pattern (not group) the one time I tried at 100yds. My 6.5X 308 rifle uses a 1 in 9 barrel and with the higher velocity with it's larger powder charge shoots 142 grain bullets just fine at any range I have tried (1000 yds max). 
Later Short rifle Carcanos (1938 and later) used a constant rate of twist rifling. 

With the large variety of different Carcanos and the difficulty in making sure you have good ammo ( post war testers or civilians could hand load most different calibers to evaluate different _rifles _without depending on factory/government ammunition) evaluation of the Carcano in the 50s and 60s could have had very mixed results. 
I would note that US practice called for the rifles to be accuracy tested at the factories with certain lots of ammo of known performance while ammo was accuracy tested in special test guns ( universal receivers fasted to heavy duty benches/tables and with very large diameter barrels) in order to reduce the variables. Ammo testing was NOT done with standard service rifles and rifle accuracy testing was NOT done with what ever batch of ammo that was handy. Function tests or durability tests would be done with whatever would go bang.

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## The Basket (Sep 9, 2016)

The Jungle Carbine was a shorty version but still used full power 303 which seems slightly mad. The Carcano carbines used a weaker round to begin with but recoil will be much harder and flash will be a proplem with a cut down SMLE.

I suppose anyone familiar with Italian engineering such as Ducati or Alfa Romeo will probably run a mile from an Italian rifle!


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## tyrodtom (Sep 10, 2016)

Right now I have a Enfield No.4, Mk1, but shortened to Jungle carbine length, and with the flash hider and upper hand guard, a fake jungle carbine, but without the mill cuts in the receiver, and chamber area, to cut weight, that the Number 5 had. Those cuts to lighten it are generally considered the reasons for the No.5 not holding a zero. My fake No.5 may be a little harsh recoil wise, but a .303 is not a .308, and it has no problem with a changing zero. 

Still a fairly good deer gun for the type of country I hunt, just a little heavy.


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## The Basket (Sep 10, 2016)

Sounds right.
Most jungle carbines are cut no.4
Not true no.5
So yours should be ok.


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## Elmas (Sep 10, 2016)

In italian ( but there is a book in eglish, for those interested...)

Storia del fucile 91


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 12, 2016)

The Basket said:


> What rifles were around in 1963 that the average man in the street could buy for $20?
> Surely Oswald would go Garand. He trained on one of those in the Marines. It just the choice of the Carcano is so odd. I doubt Carcanos were very popular or common.
> 
> The Jungle Carbine was a nickname and never official. It didn't serve in the uk for long due to wandering zero. So how did it find itself on the US market?



I bought a Model 95 Mauser 7x57 in 1966 for $19.95 in never-issued condition, still in the original Deutsche Waffen cosmoline. Coulda had a '98 in 7x57 for ten bucks more, but on $45 a week, that was a bit of a stretch. In high school ('61-'65) I drooled over the surplus ads, some as low as $14.95, and my friends all had SMLE Jungle Carbines, Carcanos, M1917 Enfields, etc. By the time I was in the market, Garands were up to $125, and the ones available were pretty sloppy and worn out. Garands were still being issued at that time. All Guard units had them, and I humped one around in ROTC from '65 to '67, then in Navy boot camp in 1970. To this day, back country general stores around here carry .303, 7x57, 8x57, 7.65 Mauser, 7.7 Arisaka, and of course, 7.62 Russian.

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## fastmongrel (Sep 12, 2016)

XBe02Drvr said:


> I bought a Model 95 Mauser 7x57 in 1966 for $19.95 in never-issued condition, still in the original Deutsche Waffen cosmoline.



Sweet have you still got it that would be a collectors item now especially if it had the Orange Free State mark on it.


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## XBe02Drvr (Sep 12, 2016)

fastmongrel said:


> Sweet have you still got it that would be a collectors item now especially if it had the Orange Free State mark on it.



No such luck! It's marked: "MAUSER CHILENO 1998", and it's not rare. They were imported by the tens of thousands in the mid '60s, and mostly sold in this part of the country. As a peacetime Mauser, it's a pretty gun, though, with the Chilean coat of arms and the Deutsche Waffen logo engraved in the blued receiver. It's had about 30 rounds down the barrel in 50 years. More time cleaning than shooting.

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## fastmongrel (Sep 12, 2016)

Still a beautiful gun.


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## tomo pauk (Sep 12, 2016)

Thank you, people, for such informed posts.


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## yulzari (Aug 23, 2017)

See 
_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-lJZPF_fJQ_

and 
_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zngrvMQKFY_

for two separate positive views on Carcanos.


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## The Basket (Aug 23, 2017)

Ian from forgotten weapons used a 7.35mm Carcano in a shooting match and although he praised the rifle beforehand the match was not easy.
He was less impressed afterwards.
Firing a weapon under stress...even artificial stress can show up weakness that isn't there on a sunny day.


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## yulzari (Aug 28, 2017)

To be fair Ian was using an old rifle of unknown history with modern ammunition so feed issues are always possible unless the modern ammunition and clips are matches to service ones; not to mention operating a right hand bolt action left handed. Carcanos are not noted for feed issues with service quality rounds and undamaged clips. Even though the service clips were loaded from mixes of random different ammunition batches and manufacturers. I agree with his video above and with a 6.5mm the flat trajectory difference drop between 50 to 300 metres is so trivial to even allow for. One fixed sight does the job.

I agree with the stress issue. Training makes all of the actions automatic by sheer repetition. Poor Ian (oh the horror!) has to cope with a new gun monthly. It all contrasts with lobbing my musket balls in like 0.76: shoulder mortar where the drop from 50 to 200 metres is measured in metres not centimetres.

Ian and Othias (and Rob on Britishmuzzleloaders) are the pinnacles of well researched and well presented serious Youtube vidoes on old guns. Would that others used them as models to emulate. Especially the 'Yee Hah!' and the 'mumble Hi this is me mumble and I have no script and am making up the dialogue as I go' brigades.


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## Shortround6 (Aug 28, 2017)

I would take issue with the following



yulzari said:


> I agree with his video above and with a 6.5mm the flat trajectory difference drop between 50 to 300 metres is so trivial to even allow for. One fixed sight does the job.



The Italian 6.5 had among the worst bullet and the lowest muzzle velocity of any of the service 6.5mm rounds.
160-162 grain _round nose _bullets have a miserable ballistic co-efferent despite the great sectional density and a MV of around 2200fps when fired from a short barreled carbine means the trajectory is worse than an AK-47 or SKS.

I ran a ballistic program using the numbers from Hornady's 160 grain .267 bullet for Carcano's and if sighted dead on at 200 yds (not meters) it is 17in low at 300 yds. In meters it is worse. 200 meter zero is 22.5cm low at 250 meters (still good) but 58.4cm low at 300 meters and 110 cm low at 350 meters.

going to the 7.35 Carcano improves things somewhat. 200 yd zero is 13.5in low at 300 yds or in metric a 200 meter zero means 18cm low at 250meters, 46.5cm low at 300 metes and 87.1 cm low at 350 meters.

Being 14cm high or so at 100 meters may be trivial in combat. But that fixed rear sight may have been a real problem in North Africa. Remember, only ONE Breda 30 LMG for every two squads or a bit over 20 men so "firepower" at much over 300 meters is a bit lacking for a platoon.

I would be a lot less critical if the Italians had even fitted something like this.





semi finished.
keep the 200meter zero and give a 2nd sight blade/leaf for a longer range (at longer range they should have time to fool with the sight.)

For comparison the US .30-06 M2 load (150 grain flat based bullet at 2700fps) was good for something like 8.4 cm high at 100 meters with a 200 meter zero and would be about 13cm low at 250, 33cm low at 300 and 61cm low at 350meters, at 400 meters the round would only be 98cm low with the 200 meter zero. In other words the US rifleman had about an extra 50 meters of range (400 vs 350) for the same drop as the Carcano (average).

Most other military rifles will fall somewhere between the two.
For Jungle or urban fighting perhaps you can do without the adjustable rear sight but for dessert fighting (as we have relearned) or even mountain fighting limiting the effective engagement of your soldiers to under 300 meters is and was a mistake.


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## yulzari (Aug 29, 2017)

I agree totally that the Italian 6.5mm round had the worst ballistics of the period 6.5mm but still quite useable. My point was only that it was flatter within the 50 to 300 metre range than the 7.35mm even though they deliberately made the 7.35mm quite light for a flatter initial trajectory. They had twigged that, in a modern army v army fight over 300 metres (more like 200) you use the machine gun. Rare snipers excepted. In the same circumstance individual small unit actions take place at the shorter distances so a simple robust match of sights to ammunition and rifle is the optimum for the average conscript.

In assymetric warfare the lesser enemy has no requirement to take or hold ground. Merely to inflict casualties so it makes sense for them to use 'stand off' rifles which prompts the reaction of the greater force to change it's rifles for ones with greater range to meet the threat. 

The Carcano 38TS is not a great rifle but it was a very sensible choice for the users at the time.

The Soviets, post WW2, sought a better SMG replacement for the same distances and went for the 7.62x39 which sacrificed controllability for power. Personally (FWIW ,which is very little) I would be happy with a more powerful SMG than 9x19 or 7.62x25. Possibly 9x25 controllable with a slow rate of fire and a light bipod and an adjustable sight for the arching trajectory. Crucially backed up by a full power LMG gun group. The Italians went over what they could make in quantity and the 38 TS seems a very sound choice. Not the best possible but a sound one they could actually make then. If you started from scratch you would not make a 38 TS.


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## Shortround6 (Aug 29, 2017)

Originally chambered for either 9mm Steyr or 9mm Mauser export. War time production for Germans was 9mm parabellum. 
Had a removable weight in the bolt to adjust rate of fire. 

The 7.35 Carcano had a flatter trajectory than the 6.5. Both weren't very good compared to other rifles although good enough below 300 meters and 300 meters is pushing it with that fixed sight.


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## The Basket (Aug 30, 2017)

I doubt anyone would consider the Carcano brilliant. Is firing an old rifle with old ammo fair? Dunno but it's entertaining and certainly brings up points rather than sitting at a bench taking aim at 25m. You know that Ian is going to be fair and objective as he seems to love old underdog guns. The 7.35mm Is rare so its good he shoots anything.
Boer war lessons again. How far can average infantry joe shoot with iron sights?


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## yulzari (Aug 30, 2017)

ZK 383 Shortround. That will do nicely.


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## Shortround6 (Aug 30, 2017)

The Basket said:


> How far can average infantry joe shoot with iron sights?



That depends on the sights, the training and the field of view/terrain.
It also depends on the expected targets. 

Designing your weapons for _average_ conditions means your troops are in deep excrement when forced to fight in conditions that are NOT average.

The Carcano used poor sights, so did many other rifles. Not just the fixed part but that V notch is hard to use. Front blades varied.




now in poor light or target in shade this is a difficult sight set up to use and leads to poor shooting.




This is better (different model Carcano) but even better would be a square rear notch.

even better is a rear aperture but that is hard to rig up on a Carcano.

Italians went to the 7.35 because of the poor performance of the 6.5 in North Africa and East Africa. Places that had longer fields of view/ranges than much of Europe. Then they crippled it with the fixed sight. 

From one web site " The Italians had made the ambitious decision that most engagements were at a range best suited to a 200 meter battle sight (ultimately true in much of WWII) and that an adjustable sight was likely just a distraction.* Ranged engagement should be handled by more appropriate equipment than riflemen*."

bold part by me. Good theory, trouble is that the *more appropriate equipment *either didn't exist in the Italian Army or was in short supply. We have been over the Breda 30 MG before. It has the same trajectory problems as the Italian carbines as it used a short barrel. It was issued at about 1/2 the rate that many other armies issued LMGs. That is one Breda 30 for every 20-24 men. The infantry company got a boost in fire power with the attachment of a 45mm mortar squad form the Battalion mortar platoon. three 45mm Brixa Mortars with a max range of 520 meters effective range being a bit shorter. This pretty much means that "Ranged engagements" need to be handled by the Company/Battalion Breda 37 tripod mounted MGs and 81 mm mortars. German, American and British Armies had better radios/field phones--artillery support to handle the "ranged engagement" scenario also. 

The 200 meter idea works pretty well in urban fighting or in the Italian hills/mountains, not so good in North Africa. 
The British used a two position sight on a number of No 4 Lee-Enfields (and then complicated things with a bunch of instructions on how fitting and removing the bayonet would change impact of the two settings).

If your troops can not handle the "distraction" of a two position sight you either need to look at the quality of your recruits or your training program. Many Beretta 38 submachine guns used a position flip sight so the concept is neither new or novel. 

There was a study done years ago (one of many such studies) that showed about 98% of all rifle fire was done at 400 meters or less, 50% of rifle fire was done at 200 meters or less which means that 50% of all rifle fire was done OVER 200 meters. 
Granted studies vary from army to army depending on last war fought and terrain they were fought in but blowing off the 250/275meter to 400 meter range band and saying you will use other weapons to cover it (and then not providing adequate weapons to do so) seems like a big mistake.


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## yulzari (Aug 30, 2017)

Amongst other things I use an Enfield Snider with the classic period '_looking at the pyramid of Ghiza down a railway cutting'_ 'V' rear sight. I have learned that it is most useful in intermediate distance settings. At 100 yards I use a fine sight (ie the tip of the fore sight is only just visible. At 150 yards the tip should reach the top of the 'V', At 200 yards move the tangent forward to the 200 position and so forth. With a flat shooting modern (by comparison) rifle this is far less necessary but I have made use of the system even then but an aperture sight has more merit. All of this presumes a soldier with extensive training and practice. The average Italian conscript might be better off with less to think about under stress. I know that applies to me. Few can even judge how far away is 200 metres and 200 metres looks bloody close when you are looking at people who intend to kill you however far away it seems when you look at a target on a range.

I do recall a Bundeswehr report of the 1950's where they surveyed ex WW2 soldiers experiences and over 50% of Mauser 98K users had never ever adjusted their sights. I recall my L2A1 SMG training where the instructor said that the weapon had sights for 100 and 200 yards. 'Do not use it at 200 yards as it will only draw you to the attention of the enemy and may annoy them'. He was the same chap in L9A1 pistol training who passed each of us a house brick and invited us to throw it down range. _'Right' _he said '_ don't bother to use this pistol at any greater range except to make the buggers duck or run away'
_
Anyway. As I said you would not choose to make a 38 TS if you began from scratch in 1938 but I differ in that I think it was a sound choice from what they could do. As a period bolt action the Carcano was a simple to make sound period rifle. Not outstanding but perfectly useable. With Italian manufacturing at the time it was as well to leave it broadly alone and concentrate on more and better LMGs and MMGs. This is the bit that went wrong rather than the rifles. There were any number of foreign good LMGs they could have licenced like Britain did but Fascist NIH syndrome prevented that.

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## The Basket (Aug 31, 2017)

Engaging targets at 400 metres or hitting targets at 400 meters. Question is using Carcano irons what is the distance the average Italian infantryman can hit a man reliably every time?
The Italians post war used the Garand and it would be interesting to find out if the change from the Carcano made any difference to thier infantry training and tactics.


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## tyrodtom (Aug 31, 2017)

The biggest problem with hitting a man at 300 or 400 meters is knowing the range, easy to know on a firing range, but not so easy in a real life .
I know there's markings on scopes you can use to estimate range, but if there's nothing in sight of a know size, those markings are not going to help.

People aren't very good at taking a WAG at range estimation, unless they do it a lot, and then cross check themselves.

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## Shortround6 (Aug 31, 2017)

I am not sure of the reasoning that demands a man in combat be able to hit his enemy with every shot fired?

One would think that even a reasonable percentage would work just fine. And reasonable could be well under 10%. After all even artillery doesn't kill one soldier with every shot fired and artillery shells are much larger, heavier and expensive to deliver to target area than rifle bullets.

The gun and ammo have to be better to allow for the human errors. 

Here is an old British ballistics chart.





Please note the Mark VI ammo is the old 215 grain round nose bullet while the Mark VII is the 174 grain spitzer flatbase. The most common round used in WW I and the "issued" round for rifles in WW II.

The firing opportunities at men standing nearly erect and stationary at 500-600yds are going to be few and far between but one can see that the spitzer bullet offered a range advantage.

Some armies had "battle sight" settings and those varied. ANd some issued instructions for holding on the enemies belt at close ranges and on his shoulders at longer ranger ranges, This of course assumes your enemy will so kind to expose himself from about the knees up and stand still. 
Some of this may have been for morale boosting, or confidence building. The flip side of that is close misses sap morale/confidence. Distant misses may tend to blend into the battle ground noise. 
I do know that when pulling targets on the hi-power range most of us could tell by the sound when a bullet hit our target or the target next to ours. once the bullets were hitting targets a dozen or so feet away they tended to blur. 
You don't always have to kill or wound ALL of the enemy. You do have to cause enough casualties and convince the remainder to either retreat or surrender. 

For a rifle squad or platoon to engage at longer ranges (like 400 yds/meters and beyond) it had better be at the direction of the squad/platoon commander and not up to the individual soldiers (unless there is a general order for harassing fire) And then it should be up to the squad/platoon commander to give a range estimation or to watch a few trusted troops fire a few ranging shots before ordering the entire group to fire. 
In a dug in defensive positions ranges to certain landmarks (buildings, trees, large rocks, etc. should be known (or the leaders are not doing their job).


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## yulzari (Sep 1, 2017)

Thus in a defensive position one can put out ranging marks.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 1, 2017)

True, I believe the British (at least?) would set out range stakes during some of the Colonial wars.

A rifle, with appropriate ammunition (spitzer bullet, decent velocity) should be effective, *IF* the conditions allow, to 4-500 meters. after that things get a lot more difficult really quickly. For example the area that a soldiers bullets will fall into (assuming good aim and proper sight settings for range) at 600 meters will be 2.25 times the area that they will fall into at 400 meters. This is just simple geometry but shows the diminishing returns. Throw in the more difficult aiming "mark" at the longer range, mistakes in range estimation and wind and things get bad really quick. 
Limiting the effective range of your rifles to 250-300 meters with poor sights seems like a poor choice.

to reply to this part of an earlier post:

"I do recall a Bundeswehr report of the 1950's where they surveyed ex WW2 soldiers experiences and over 50% of Mauser 98K users had never ever adjusted their sights. I recall my L2A1 SMG training where the instructor said that the weapon had sights for 100 and 200 yards. 'Do not use it at 200 yards as it will only draw you to the attention of the enemy and may annoy them'. He was the same chap in L9A1 pistol training who passed each of us a house brick and invited us to throw it down range. _'Right' _he said '_ don't bother to use this pistol at any greater range except to make the buggers duck or run away'"
_
As to the ex german Soldiers it is an interesting number but leaves several questions.
1. what percentage were pre-war trained vs mid war or late war.
2. what areas did they fight in? North Africa, Russian steps, Cities, Normandy Bocage, Black Forrest? 
3. what was their "job"/MOS in modern terms. Riflemen or assistant machinegunner/heavy weapon crewman or ammo carrier? 

As to the British instructor, I have no idea how much time he had or how how much time/ammunition each soldier had for training/practice.
Was a "familiarization" course of instruction or real marksmanship course of instruction?


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## yulzari (Sep 2, 2017)

Shortround. The survey was drawn from my memory but I believe it was a crude assessment drawn of all troops in all theatres in all periods.

The L2A1 SMG and L9A1 pistol were familiarisation at that point. SMG training went further into it's use. Principally as personal defence. If you can keep the b*ggers 200 metres away then that is your chance to leg it. If you have enough of you to go offensive then the 200 metre fire will act as suppressive fire to let you advance to an accurate range. Ideally right on top of them. Essentially classic section/platoon assault without a gun group. I found it to be a perfectly good weapon within it's range as long as you made the users use the stock and actually aim it. Unaimed ill trained fire will get through magazines as fast as they can load the things. A lightweight burst fire short automatic rifle with good magazine capacity.

Pistol marksmanship in the British Army? Unless you were set for using it clandestinely there was no such thing in the 70/80s. Unless you had to conceal the thing I could see no point in them anyway.


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## Elmas (Sep 2, 2017)

Assuming that a normal person offers a maximum target 60 cm wide, at a distance of 400 meters that is less than one tenth of a degree.
Look at a protractor to appreciate how much (not much..) is one tenth of a degree.
And of course the target must cooperate standing perfectly still, if possible in perfect light,and with no smoke or dust around.
And the shooter? Is he moving or still, standing, kneeling or prone, is using the rifle belt or has the rifle resting on a sand bag, is he perfectly trained or not, brave or coward?
I can perfectly understand that to the Carcano many improvements could have been done, first to the bullet, but I understand also the Generals that thought the Carcano suitable in a general operational environment for the the 95% of an army of conscripts of a poor country like Italy of the '30s.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 2, 2017)

Elmas said:


> Assuming that a normal person offers a maximum target 60 cm wide, at a distance of 400 meters that is less than one tenth of a degree.
> Look at a protractor to appreciate how much (not much..) is one tenth of a degree.
> And of course the target must cooperate standing perfectly still, if possible in perfect light,and with no smoke or dust around.
> And the shooter? Is he moving or still, standing, kneeling or prone, is using the rifle belt or has the rifle resting on a sand bag, was he perfectly trained or not, brave or coward?
> I can perfectly understand that to the Carcano many improvements could have been done, first to the bullet, but I understand also the Generals that thought the Carcano suitable for the the 95% of an army of conscripts of a poor country like Italy.



Again I am not sure were this idea that we need 100% effectiveness or else we can revert to a lowest common denominator comes from.

Back in the days of muzzle loading muskets they sometimes fired thousands of rounds of musket balls to cause one causality. With the coming of muzzle loading rifles and Minie balls the distance increase between the combatants but the number of rounds fired didn't go down much, hundreds or thousands of rounds fired per casualty. Of course the troops didn't line quite as close together in multiple ranks any more (at least after the first few battles) and after a few years were often taking cover when they could. 

Perhaps only few soldiers out of every 10 can put even 30-40% of their bullets through a building window at 400 meters when laying down and resting the rifle, but by using poor bullets and crappy sights you take that option away from them and their squad/platoon leaders. If your enemy has that option and IF the terrain allows such shots you are at a disadvantage. 
I doubt the Islamic extremist enemy in the Middle east is comprised of skilled marksmen that hit with every round fired but their use of long ranged rifles has forced the US and NATO forces to rethink the whole 5.56mm from short barrels idea as even with optical sights they cannot effectively return fire, however hand the short rifles are for house clearing/jumping out of/into vehicles. 

If you are too poor to put even a minimally adjustable sight on a rifle and train the conscripts to use then don't go to war in the first place. 

The Carcano could have been improved rather cheaply by just changing the bullet, as was done by both the Japanese and Swedes in 6.5mm caliber and by many other nations between the the years 1900 and 1930. Even the US changed from the .30-03 (220 grain round nose bullet) to the .30-06( 150 grain Spitzer) well before the 1st world war. The British .303 that the Italians held in high regard went form the 215 grain round nose to the 174 grain spitzer before WW I and the "wounding power" came not from the difference in diameter but from the spitzer bullet shape combined with a nose filler made of aluminium (and other materials during wartime) that shifted the center of gravity rearwards and helped the bullet tumble on impact. Bullet going sideways has 3-4 times the frontal area of one staying point on making nonsense out of a 35-36% increase in frontal area. Not every bullet will flip/tumble but_____
There was no real need to change to the 7.35mm round.


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## The Basket (Sep 3, 2017)

A few points. Italy was the weakest of the colonial industrial powers so this must always be seen in reference to what they do. They were in no position to fight Ww2 although Mussolini thought otherwise.
I agree the change to 7.35 was silly because it didn't offer much and a 6.5mm spitzer bullet offered just as much. Although the 7.35mm was weak sauce and the Japanese did at least make a 7.7mm with more power.
Maybe another thread to start the 7.62mm debate.
If my memory serves the sights on the SMLE were set for 2000 yards and that is stupid beyond belief. As the sights themselves were expensive to make


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## yulzari (Sep 3, 2017)

There was a period from the introduction of the rifle musket up to the introduction of the man portable machine gun when the possibility of using massed long range rifle fire had a very useful role. Not least in keeping field artillery and cavalry at a great distance. Also in engaging bodies of infantry at similar distances of 800 to 1,600 metres. This by officer directed mass fire creating a beaten zone. Few rounds would hit the objective but they would make that area hazardous. The classic example was Plevna. When breechloading rifles allowed fire from prone positions expedient intrenchment became the norm which removed bodies of infantry from the list other than whilst advancing and recuperator barrelled field artillery removed most of them from the list too later on whilst cavalry reluctantly accepted that they were too vulnerable and operated principally as mounted infantry and reconnaissance . The long range rifle sights were then a sensible and useful part of the military use of the rifle.

Once the machine gun became along in numbers it proved to be the better choice as it could direct and maintain such fire by a limited number of specially trained troops. Bar the few sharpshooters riflemen reverted to the closer ranges as a sort of much better musket. To take and hold ground. The long range volley sights disappeared with WW1 as machine guns became commonplace over time.

So the Carcano began it's life in the days when fire at long ranges was necessary and ended when it was superfluous.

The decision to make short range sighted Carcanos must indicate the Italian Army understanding of these changes. That also meant the provision of sufficient modern long range alternatives. To which we must then add the mortar as well as the machine gun.

The criticisms might be best directed at the failures in these than at their supporting rifles. On the good side they did eventually get to a complement of 2 LMGs per section. On the bad side they were Breda 30's.

I do agree that they might have been best served with a better 6.5mm bullet than a wholesale change to 7.35mm but it is fair to say that, by the 1930's, the better 6.5mm was the 7.35mm. Changing the 6.5mm as well would have meant not only producing new/ converted 7.35mm rifles but also converting the sights on all the existing 6.5mm ones. I suspect, but do not know for certain, that the 7.35mm was a big a round as existing tooling could accommodate in making new barrels. 

If we look at the users. Italian troops seem to have been quite happy with the Carcano, especially the short ones, other than the alleged weak effect of the usual 6.5mm bullet. The 38 TS seems to have been one of the most popular versions so the customers were not complaining. 

One might well put it all down to being stupid enough to go to war when you are not ready and don't even have to. A machine gun that needs to oil it's rounds is a sign that you are barking up the wrong mechanical tree.


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## The Basket (Sep 3, 2017)

The type I Carcano is an interesting one as it used the 6.5mm Japanese round.
Changing to 7.35 Spitzer round in 1938 is woeful and 28 years after the British.
Volley sights were added to Lee Enfields for long range but it was certainly expected that new smokeless powder meant that combat was going to be 1,000 metre rifle duels and the British experience in the Boer War played that out. Which is why the P13 was tested and why the Ross rifle was a made for long range. The Carcano was remarkably unchanged for so long and the carbines were certainly small and light and handy. If the 6.5mm round nosed Carcano was so longed lived then I would say that's a weakness of Italian industry and not the strength of the gun.

Oilers were still on Japanese guns as well and thier are similarlity to Italian and Japanese guns. Feels to me anyway.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 3, 2017)

The 7.35 was chosen as the size needed to clean out the rifling of the 6.5 barrel and then recut the grooves. 
The Swedes had gone from a 156grain round nose to a 139 grain Spitzer for their 6.5mm round and the Japanese had done the same thing. Both had done it several decades before the Italians came up with the 7.35. 
There was also several advances in powder during the almost 5 decades between 1891 and 1938 models (R&D taking a few years before production) so better performance could be had with no increase in peak pressure. 
The Carcano rifle/carbine as a mechanical device was not as bad as most post war comments make it out to be.

However unless the real intention on the 7.35 project was to "_save" _worn out barrels it was a pretty useless exercise as better performance, both external ballistics and terminal ballistics, could be had by using a new bullet in the 6.5mm case.
It would still need new sights. However in an emergency the new and old rounds could at least be fired in the same guns.
The Germans had more than one type of 7.9mm. The US had two different 30-06 rounds that needed different sight settings as did the British with the .303, granted one of them was intended for machine guns but at least it would fit and be fairly close to the sights at under 200 yds. 
The Italians complicated things even more by going to an 8mm round for the tripod mounted machineguns. 
Soldiers tend to like light rifles/carbines to lighten the load. For the Italian soldiers marching around in North Africa (Italians being very short on trucks) I would imagine having a light/short carbine was nicer to carry than long heavy rifles. The US troops tended to pick up the M1 carbine when they could although it had serious shortcomings as a battle rifle in other than jungle/urban conditions. 

With the Italians being dissatisfied with the round nose Carcano bullet in the African wars they fought in the 1920/30s one would think that they would have realized the importance of being able to fire at more than 200-300 meters, however the the campaign in Abbyssinia was so lopsided in terms of weapons used that perhaps that lesson was lost.


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## The Basket (Sep 3, 2017)

From a surplus point of view, especially today...the Carcano rounds are not readily available and there are better rifles.
Unless you're Oswald. So probably the worst choice of the main powers. Only the Mosin could be worse. 
One point that Ian on forgotten weapons maybe fudged it to say that the 6.5mm or 7.35mm is intermediate and a forerunner of AK. Er...no. Carcano is a main battle rifle of its era not a 1950s Soviet assault rifle. It has to be judged against the K98 or the MAS 36.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 3, 2017)

The Basket said:


> The type I Carcano is an interesting one as it used the 6.5mm Japanese round.
> Changing to 7.35 Spitzer round in 1938 is woeful and 28 years after the British.
> Volley sights were added to Lee Enfields for long range but it was certainly expected that new smokeless powder meant that combat was going to be 1,000 metre rifle duels and the British experience in the Boer War played that out. Which is why the P13 was tested and why the Ross rifle was a made for long range. The Carcano was remarkably unchanged for so long and the carbines were certainly small and light and handy. If the 6.5mm round nosed Carcano was so longed lived then I would say that's a weakness of Italian industry and not the strength of the gun.
> 
> Oilers were still on Japanese guns as well and thier are similarlity to Italian and Japanese guns. Feels to me anyway.



The Ross and the P13 were both designed and "adopted" (in theory anyway) at a time when the Machine gun had yet to make it's presence really felt. The rifle was still the primary weapon of the battalion or regiment. Even in 1914 many European armies only had 4-6 machine guns per battalion or even regiment. (the US had, for the most part, _ four _Bennet-Mercier machine rifles per _regiment _in 1914)
Scale of equipment, tactics, doctrine and thinking changed fairly quickly in four years compared to the 20-25 years before WW I. 
While a lot of thinking went on during the 20s (some of it nonsense) there was very little purchasing of new guns as budgets were small and nations were tired of war. Purchases increased and new weapons gained traction in the 30s due to the political situation/s. some of the WW I stuff wearing out, and the extra peacetime allowing for enough R&D to allow new designs to come out fairly well thought out and refined. 

I would also note that even such technical advances as field phones or field telegraph could make a difference it how a battle was conducted. During the Boer war for instance the Artillery had to be able to see the enemy in other than seige conditions or else reliance was placed on semaphore flags or blinking lanterns or runners to correct fire for hidden guns. All are time consuming, limited as to how far the observer can be from the guns and thus limited in poor visibility. 
With either telegraph or phone wires the artillery observer could be several miles from the guns. The guns could be well out of rifle fire range. Corrections could be more speedily given or artillery fire supplied to targets in front of a infantry battalion or regiment. 
With the provision of 8-12 tripod mounted machineguns per battalion ( 24-36 per regiment?) the long range firepower of the battalion/regiment shifted from the rifle to the machinegun. Long range being 800 yds and up if not shorter, The provision of bipod mounted machine guns at squad/platoon/company level meant that fire could be under taken by these guns at 500-800 yds. The difference in ranges being pretty much the stabilty of the mount/s and nothing to do with the gun or cartridge.
Please note the US, British and Germans all introduced boat tail bullets to extend the range of tripod mounted MGs by hundreds of yds (extreme range went up over 1000yds ) French 8mm round already had a boat tail. 
However the training needed not to mention the problems of observing the the effects of the fire (fall of the bullets) tended to put a damper on this long range use. 
The adoption of the 81mm mortar (the British 3in was really 81mm or close enough) also tended to take over the long range fire mission from the tripod mounted MGs. or supplement them. 

However to jump to the conclusion that the regular rifleman in the squad/platoon/company no longer needs to able to fire at even 300 yds (200 yd or meter battle sight) or more is quite a leap. It places a real burden on the squad/platoon/company machineguns and mortars (if an army is so equipped)


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## Shortround6 (Sep 3, 2017)

The Basket said:


> From a surplus point of view, especially today...the Carcano rounds are not readily available and there are better rifles.
> Unless you're Oswald. So probably the worst choice of the main powers. Only the Mosin could be worse.
> One point that Ian on forgotten weapons maybe fudged it to say that the 6.5mm or 7.35mm is intermediate and a forerunner of AK. Er...no. Carcano is a main battle rifle of its era not a 1950s Soviet assault rifle. It has to be judged against the K98 or the MAS 36.



I think that he was making the point the 7.35 was ballisticly the fore runner of the 7.62 x 39. It also has the low recoil impulse of the intermediate round.
The last I can appreciate as I had a target rifle built in 6.5mm x .308 well before the .260 Remington came out because I was tired of taking the recoil from my .30-06. we were firing 88 rounds per match from prone. It was actually my left hand that was taking the punishment from the hand stop. Using 120 grain match bullets at pretty much the same velocity as a .308 could fire 168 grain bullets (about 2600fps) I had about the same trajectory and wind drift at less recoil. I later had another rifle built using a case about 1/2 in shorter that used less powder for the same velocity.

Given a 120-130 grain spitzer bullet at 2500fps and the 6.5 Carcano could have matched the British .303 for for trajectory over 400-500 meters. recoil would still be low.


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## Elmas (Sep 3, 2017)

Already told but...
A Friend of mine served from 1943 to 1945 in the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. He told me that, before 8th of September 1943, in the Italian army MPs (say Beretta M 38 etc.) were scarce as hen’s teeths (Tommy guns were a prized prey among Italians in N.A.) while immediately after 8th of September they appeared in thousands.
Same sparing attitude of the Italian Generals that sent our troups in Africa in 1896 armed with old fashioned Vetterli-Vitali Mod. 1870/87, stating that for an African Campaign they were “more than enough” and so favouring the terrible defeat of Adua.

He himself, during the whole war, was armed with an MP, and this was one of the three or four stories he told me about his experience.
So, my Fried told me, everybody in the platoon wanted to carry one, but as a machine pistole in certain circumstances is not effective as a rifle, after some scaring situations, the Tenente commanding the platoon had to establish who had to carry MPs and who rifles.


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## yulzari (Sep 4, 2017)

Going back to the original post. I would say that the Carcano was right at the back of the leading pack but still fit for purpose. A sound piece but there are better. The weakest part being the ammunition which was adequate but could have easily been better.

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## Shortround6 (Sep 4, 2017)

In WW I the Carcano may have been no better than many others (but not a leader) but also no worse than many others. 
By WW II the failure to adopt a spitzer bullet in the original 6.5mm caliber was probably a mistake but that is ammo and not really the rifle.
The adoption of the 38 TS carbine in 7.35mm was certainly ill timed and the combination of the Breda 30 with the Carcano carbine was not a good pairing at all. A few Breda 30s were made in 7.35mm but even if that version had gone on into mass production you had a machine gun that, technical issues aside, had one of the shortest effective ranges of any LMG used in WW II. That leaves the Platoon/company commander with few options if trying to fight in an open landscape. An urban or wooded/hilly landscape equalizes things. 
we argue a lot about the US M1 rifle (not carbine) and the BAR. The Bar only needed a few decent rifle men per squad (not even 1/2 of the riflemen) using semi-automatic rifles to make up for it's deficiencies as a LMG. Subject to question if the US got that many decent riflemen with wartime training. 
The Italians had no such "back-up" for the Breda 30. The Carcano carbines, of either caliber, didn't have the rate of fire or ballistics (or sights) to plug the gaps in the Breda 30s capabilities. 
Had the Italians been using a Version of the Cz 26/Bren gun or MG 34 and had greater numbers of them and then used the Carcano equipped troops as ammo carriers and short range defense/close assault troops perhaps the deficiencies of the Carcano wouldn't be as important. But they didn't and the other platoon weapon, the 45mm Brixa mortar had problems of it's own. 
If, as Yulzari says, the Italian army horded the Beretta Submachine guns in storage, then the Italian troops also had a short range firepower deficiency. 
One source says that of the different models of Italian hand grenades, one widely issued model had around a 1/3 dud rate which does little for the Italian's ability in close combat. 

People want to find an easy answer to the Italian's poor performance in WW II and find it easy to blame one weapon or another. On average the Italian soldier did rather well considering the range of weapons they had to work with and the logistic support and fire support (artillery) they got. Throw in training/leadership issues and the average Italian service man gets a bum rap.

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## mikewint (Sep 4, 2017)

From Pearl Harbor to VJ Day American industry supplied 47 BILLION rounds of small arms ammunition. Most shots on the field of battle (probably above 90%) are fired simply to provide the enemy with an excuse to keep his head down, and not with intent to kill, nor to wound, nor even particularly aimed at the enemy but simply fired in his general vicinity.
In WWII estimates were 20,000 rounds per kill
Vietnam saw this climb to about 180,000 rounds
Iraq/Afghanistan estimates are at over 250,000 rounds per kill

Battle reports and field studies suggest that almost all soldiers -- regardless of the nature of their country, government, society, religion, culture; regardless of when and where they fight; even, to a lesser extent, regardless of the weapons used (so long as one side doesn't have an overwhelming technical advantage) -- will adapt their behavior to control the level of casualties.

With or without the approval of their leaders (and the front-line leaders they respect and must contend with most are inclined to feel the same way they do), the troops will invent tactical responses that limit their exposure to approaching ammunition. That in fact is WHY it takes so much of the stuff to kill them. They'll hide, they'll dig in, they'll even run away if they have to. Rarely will they stand up and let themselves be shot in droves.

Interestingly, the level that soldiers can tolerate without going completely nuts right away (as opposed to post-trauma) seems to hover right around 10 percent throughout military history. That's a rough-and-ready general figure that seems to apply to many individual fights and to most full wars.

If you refer to a book about a unit that fought through an entire war and if that book includes a list of unit members and their fates, you may be surprised how few men actually got killed in action. This is true even of extended, heavily fought wars like WW2.

Of course, there are exceptions: Japanese soldiers fighting to the death in the Pacific, massacres of tribal warriors by Europeans with machine guns, etc. Sometimes a force will win a lopsided, bloody victory over even a good enemy force, thanks to better training, or tactics, or leadership, or luck.

Even then, it may be surprising how many survive, not only as POWs but also as fugitives who later regroup and fight on. In the aftermath of Gettysburg, Lee quickly gathered in his local and dispersed forces, recovered his stragglers and wounded, got new recruits, and restored the Army of Northern Virginia to its pre-Gettysburg strength before the Army of the Potomac.

One need not focus on post-1900 wars to encounter this "soldiers-are-hard-to-kill" phenomenon. The American Civil War is notorious for the amount of firepower employed without direct effect on the enemy (indirect effects, such as running away or huddling behind a rock, are a different matter). Trees were chopped down by rifle bullets in some battles. Yet most troops did avoid death and wounding even in these hellish fights.

Total casualties were often appalling emotionally. Yet, objectively evaluated, they are remarkably low compared to what one would expect from so much concentrated firepower. Civil war total deaths are generally put at 600,000 lives (some now estimate 800,000). But we must remember that most of those deaths were due to disease. Battle deaths amounted to roughly 100,000 on each side. That's in the general neighborhood of the 10 percent, as a portion of all who served. For the Union the percentage was even lower. Naturally a few units suffered much worse then again some toted up only minor casualties.

Consider the tactic of walking in formation across open fields which happened in a lot of Civil War battles. Those who survived such advances and became veterans owed their lives to (1) to poor enemy marksmanship (Civil War troops got limited training and consistently fired too high); and (2) to the thick gun smoke that rendered them invisible much of the time (chemistry that yet to develop smokeless powder to replace black powder).

Soldiers soon learned what it took to survive. Consider the Confederates' gallant charge on the third day at Gettysburg. Perhaps half of Longstreet's corps never climbed over the fence at mid-field, huddled behind it during the heaviest fighting, and retreated as soon as the charge was broken and it was respectable to move back to the Confederate lines. It has been estimated that Union firepower was sufficient to have guaranteed 100 percent casualties in the Rebel ranks, IF all the gray-clads had charged as far as the ones in front did.
It is difficult to deny one of the Civil War soldier's most common and perceptive principles: "Never send a man where a bullet can go."


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## Elmas (Sep 4, 2017)

Certainly if Italy lost the war it was not because the soldiers were armed with the Carcano, as in due order main causes were, by my personal point of view, of course:

1 – lack of food for the whole population

2 – lack of oil, coal and raw materials

3 – lack of confidence in the Nazi Germany, both in the ordinary people and in the Monarchy, except a tiny number of high ranking fascists

4- lack of suitable electronic hardware, in numbers, for Army, Navy and Air Force

5 – lack of a consistant aviation and in particular of engines

6 – lack of up to date armoured forces and artillery (the best italian artillery was wasted in Russia)

7 – lack of a consistant logistic chain, included transports, with troops still going by train in the best case, by foot generally

8 – lack of a clear strategic vision in the High Command

9 – lack of adequate training, expecially for the Navy

10 – lack of adequate individual equipment, in particular shoes and winter garment

11 – lack of a suitable individual armament

and so on.

So, by my personal point of view, individual armament of the average italian soldier during WWII is not very high in the list of shortages of the Italian Army in WWII.

My Father was 14 when the war broke so he could not, but some older friends of him did volunteer, and the vast majority was sent to North Africa. After some months some, mostly wounded, they did return.

_“Vittorio, we are overwhelmed”_ they said to my Father _“do not believe in the Mussolini’s propaganda. We are practically starving, our shoes are broken, we are infested by lice and our tanks are tin of sardins in comparison the those of the enemy...”_ And that was in 1940/1 well before the massive american human and industrial power entered the war. Not difficult to understand that, after losing the Ethiopia, and the food in the nation getting more and more scarce, the whole italian population perfectly knew that the war was lost and there were no German tricks that could change the cards.

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## yulzari (Sep 4, 2017)

My father fought in North Africa and never thought that Italian soldiers were individually poor opponents but lacked leadership and kit. The large numbers of prisoners was a function of their immobility leaving them stranded when Axis forces withdrew. The Germans always seemed to have lorries. 

It is curious that the more powerful and accurate the long arm the more rounds are used to hit the enemy. In musket days it was a few hundred fired per casualty. As Mikewint says above this has gone up by a factor of hundreds today. But then you had to stand up to fight with a musket and you can fire them only so often. In the same vein bayonet charges rarely resulted in a bayonet fight. Usually the weaker or less determined side ran away. Nevertheless, in the days of standing up to musket fire, artillery and bayonets the vast proportion of military casualties were from disease. 

We focus on the weapons but logistics and hygiene would win your period wars better than having the best weapons. You didn't have to outnumber your enemy. Only out survive him over the course of campaigns. Che Guevara was not caught and killed by better weapons. It was the US rations given to the Bolivian troops that made them able to pursue him continuously.

_BTW, as an OT triviality: did you know that Che Guevara used his mother's name, as was often the custom there. His father's family came from Ireland so Ernesto Guevara in the usual naming custom would have been Ernie Lynch. I have a classic 'Che' T shirt I had made with 'Ernie Lynch' emblazoned as the name. Sadly so few people notice and fewer ask why._


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## Shortround6 (Sep 4, 2017)

Thank you.

I would also note, as regards to artillery, that it is not only the number of guns/tubes or how modern the gun/carriage but the supply of shells (the guns are just the delivery system for the shells)_ and _the command-control system for the artillery. How many radios for the forward observers and for the different batteries to co-ordinate fire or lacking enough radios, enough field phones/telegraphs and enough wire.
The Italian gunners were often noted as standing by their guns to the last minute and doing everything they could to support the infantry but artillery duels are a really a battle of logistics and without a decent supply of shells and adequate transport to get the shells to the guns the exact model of gun becomes much less important. 

Modifications to the Carcano rifle/carbine would have been one of the easier things to fix but also would have had the least effect in the end to the Italian war effort.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 4, 2017)

yulzari said:


> My father fought in North Africa and never thought that Italian soldiers were individually poor opponents but lacked leadership and kit. The large numbers of prisoners was a function of their immobility leaving them stranded when Axis forces withdrew. The Germans always seemed to have lorries.
> _._



Sometimes commandeered from the Italians. 

It may not be so much the evolution of the long arm as it is the advent of automatic weapons that saw the vast increase in number of rounds fired. 
In round ball musket days it was uncommon to fire more than a handful of volleys before one side or the other charged. Since it was nearly impossible to reload while running that pretty much stopped the shooting wither you were charging or running away. 
Minnie balls changed combat in that they finally stopped standing up shoulder to shoulder and one behind the other and thus stopped being a mass target (miss one guy but hit the guy next to him) and quickly (comparatively speaking, round ball musket tactics had been fixed for decades if not well over a century) changed to laying down or taking cover behind objects making for much smaller targets which require more rounds fired.

The idea of interdiction fire or harassing fire didn't really exist in black powder days either. 
Perhaps I am wrong but I don't know any cases of platoons of troops firing their muzzle loaders in the general direction of the enemy at random times during the night hoping to catch one or two individuals stumbling around in the dark.


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## mikewint (Sep 5, 2017)

For that matter aircraft who fly out over enemy lines and drop ordinance are in reality just an extension of artillery, albeit with a smart delivery system rather than just ballistic.
During WWII the US supplied 11 million tons (US tons: 2000lbs: 909kg) of artillery shells to the war effort.
Harassing fire in Ye Olde times often took the form of cannon fire. Muskets could reach 176 yards but with little accruracy so most firing was done at 50 yards or so. The besieging forces would fire their cannons throughout the entire night so as to deprive the opposing forces of sleep then attack. Santa Anna employed this tactic at the Alamo. By the 11th day of the siege he had his cannon on two sides of the Alamo and he began a continuous bombardment of the walls. The defenders were up the entire day and night of March 4-5 trying to repair the crumbling walls. March 5 1836 was the 12th day and the bombardment continued all day and into the night finally stopping at 10PM. The exhausted defenders were soon all asleep including 3 sentries sent outside the walls. At 1 AM March 6 the 13th day of the siege the Mexican army began to move into position surprising and killing the three sentries. Laying in the grass within 100yds of the walls the attack began at 5:30AM. The Mexicans began shouting alerting the defenders or the attact would have been a total surprise. By the time the first shots were fired the Mexicans were at the walls.


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## Shortround6 (Sep 5, 2017)

That was harassment with a purpose or goal in mind.

In Vietnam the US often fired artillery rounds almost at random into the surrounding country side with no idea if there were enemy forces there or not. No spotters, not even an hours old contact report. It was "called" harassment fire but if there was nobody there to harass? 

At times the only people loosing sleep were the American gunners, the troops that shared the fire base and the Vietnamese civilians the US was supposed to be protecting. 

I believe (but could be corrected) that some bases also fired machine guns and/or mortars at random times during the night over the wire even if there was no indication that the enemy was really there.


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## mikewint (Sep 6, 2017)

Not that I was in Arty or spent a lot of time at firebases but I do not recall any such random Arty shots except to dial in a gun that had been moved or altered or crew training. We had our grid maps and there was in most cases a FAC overhead WITH an SF spotter on board as the AF pilot generally was not all that familiar with ground operations or requirements (the AF loved their jets).
Most firebases had quad 50s spotted around the base but again I do not recall any random firing of them unless sentries spotted something or at least thought they did. Sappers were common and the bases were surrounded with various types/kinds of booby traps so if one of these tripped... Night firefights were kinda cool as we and they used different colored tracer rounds


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## Old Wizard (Sep 7, 2017)




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## fastmongrel (Sep 10, 2017)

Shortround6 said:


> The idea of interdiction fire or harassing fire didn't really exist in black powder days either.
> Perhaps I am wrong but I don't know any cases of platoons of troops firing their muzzle loaders in the general direction of the enemy at random times during the night hoping to catch one or two individuals stumbling around in the dark.



During the Crimean War skirmishing parties of British troops fired at Russians at all times of the day and night to keep them honest. The Russians still had smoothbores whilst the British had Minie rifles so they were safe in the knowledge they wouldnt be geting it back with interest.


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## Elmas (Sep 10, 2017)

It depends...
During WWII the escorts of the Axis convoys to N.A. were told to release from time to time some depth charges "to harass" British submarines.
Those charges were an infallible way to find the convoys, if Enigma or other sources did not tell the accurate routing to the Commanders...


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## Elmas (Jan 24, 2018)

In Italy some newspapers say that nowadays between some Lybian militias it is possible to see Fucile mod. 91, more than 120 years after its first appearance… very well kept, it seems…


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## The Basket (Jan 24, 2018)

They got ammo?
6.5? 7.35?
Maybe got rifles but ammo for Carcano is the key. There ain't any about so unless got a secret stash then they are just clubs.


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