Best sidearm of Great War

[tyrodtom]

A good portion of the WW1 era American army was made up of country boys, already familiar with firearms.

These men grew up hunting squirrels in the early morning in the summer, and turkey and deer in the fall.
Not too far removed from Wild West traditions of Colts, Winchesters, S&W, and Remington rifles and pistols.

A lot of them had a lot of exposure to firearms before they ended up in the war.

In European armies most of the enlisted men had never held a gun unless they were from Serbia, Montenegro , or one of the southern islands of Italy .

 

[Elmas]

A good portion of the WW1 era American army was made up of country boys, already familiar with firearms.

These men grew up hunting squirrels in the early morning in the summer, and turkey and deer in the fall.
Not too far removed from Wild West traditions of Colts, Winchesters, S&W, and Remington rifles and pistols.

A lot of them had a lot of exposure to firearms before they ended up in the war.

In European armies most of the enlisted men had never held a gun unless they were from Serbia, Montenegro , or one of the southern islands of Italy .

Exactly.....

Giovanni Corbeddu Salis, Sardinia, second half XIX° C.

 

[The Basket]

There was a weapons embargo on China from 1919 but pistols were not classed in the terms so that's a loophole.
C96s and Spanish copies sold like hot cakes.

 

[Shortround6]

They may have sold like hot cakes but the arms embargo wasn't anything near 100% effective and in any case it ended in 1929 which is before most of the full automatic C96 versions were built, wither German or Spanish.

ARMING THE CHINESE

In some cases they got around the embargo by simply selling equipment (machinery) to equip arsenal/s to manufacture weapons inside China. This includes a chemical factory to manufacture TNT.
Illegal arms dealers were dumping WW I surplus in China in multiple rail car loads.

 

[soulezoo]

I will say this:

If you are relying on putting shoulder stocks to pistols, you are doing it wrong.

 

[Elmas]

I will say this:

If you are relying on putting shoulder stocks to pistols, you are doing it wrong.

Certainly, but it must be considered the time frame when shoulder stocks appeared.
Semiauto pistols were produced at the end of the XIX° C, about thirty years before that designing and mass producing a semiauto rifle that could be carried by a single soldier was possible. So the possibility to shoot ten of more rounds in a few second to some minds appeared very promising, for irregular troops, for example or when aviators, after a few weeks of a sort of sportmanlike behaviour and before finding a way to install a MG in an aircraft, tried to kill themselves at the end of 1914. Probably as aviators were mostly Officers and upper class, and they had their personal C96 at hand.
Rightly, Generals never considered shoulder stocks of any value in a mass conflict.

 

[The Basket]

Of course today a shoulder stock and lengthened barrel seem nutty but not in the early 1900s.
That was the only semi auto hand held weapon in town and offered firepower in a small package. So a Luger Carbine with 32 rounds will be an effective short range shooter and in an emergency will get rounds downrange when a comrade is trying to work the bolt on a K98.
A dead end but since virtually every pistol in this era has a shoulder stock then its certainly the fashion and somebody thought it was fantastic.

 

[Shortround6]

Shoulder stocks for pistols go back to before the American Civil war, How much earlier I am not going to guess.

Model of 1855. Used standard .58 cal minie ball or roundball but reduced charge from musket.
Intended for Cavalry or mounted troops. Ram rod is attached to the weapon and it is equipped with a tape primer system. Much like a cap pistol, cocking the hammer advanced the tape and fresh pocket/dot of priming compound was placed over the nipple meaning the trooper didn't have to fumble with percussion caps while on horse back.
They were popular on Colt revolvers during the Civil War. One version even used the stock as a canteen.
A few units (mostly irregulars) carried up to four revolvers per man to avoid reloading on horse back.

 

[parsifal]

Shoulder stocks for pistols go back to before the American Civil war, How much earlier I am not going to guess.

Model of 1855. Used standard .58 cal minie ball or roundball but reduced charge from musket.
Intended for Cavalry or mounted troops. Ram rod is attached to the weapon and it is equipped with a tape primer system. Much like a cap pistol, cocking the hammer advanced the tape and fresh pocket/dot of priming compound was placed over the nipple meaning the trooper didn't have to fumble with percussion caps while on horse back.
They were popular on Colt revolvers during the Civil War. One version even used the stock as a canteen.
A few units (mostly irregulars) carried up to four revolvers per man to avoid reloading on horse back.

That's very interesting to me. Ive read somewhere that during the Mexican wars, the Mexican cavalry had been equipped with a nearly useless carbine that some sources describe as more like a pistol with a stock.


Mexican cavalry was meant to be modelled after the Napoleonic cavalry of the French army (I think). Certain British light dragoons had been equipped with a light and short pistol, good for about 10m range. These pistols were patently unsatisfactory, and were replaced by a weapon known as the Paget rifle. This was essentially a cut down version of the Brown Bess and was basically obsolete before it was designed. It was outranged by the French carbine, which Ive read had a barrel about 14 inches longer than the Paget rifle. French cavalry could engage regular Infantry with this weapon, though it was not advisable. British cavalry was so outclassed it had no hope. With no lancers and no workable mounted firearm, the british cavalry units had a hard time of it. As did the Mexicans, who found their short carbine/pistols not worth the trouble.

 

[Shortround6]

Thank you for the reference to the British Paget carbine. After a short internet search (I make no claims as to the accuracy of the results)
It seems the Paget was a smooth bore with about a 16 in barrel. Effective range would obviously be short. It was of .65 caliber and used a .62 in ball, powder charge is not given in the sites I did find which makes comparison difficult.
Interestingly the British sold 15,000 to Mexico in the late 1820s and so they were used at the Alamo, other battles in Texas and later in the Mexican war.

At the time, if not equipped with a short carbine, cavalry was often equipped with one or two single shot pistols which hung in holsters over the saddle pommel. One reason they were called horse pistols. They were not commonly carried on the belt and thus could be larger than a "belt" pistol.

The American "pistol" of 1855 was pretty much a cut down musket in that it used the same diameter barrel and projectile. The powder charge may have been about 2/3s (?) of that used in the full length Musket however with a definite effect on range. Only a little over 4000 were built and they were not a great success.

 

[Elmas]

In fact semiauto pistol with shoulder stock was not the mother of the semiauto rifle but of the SMG.

 

[The Basket]

On one of the YouTube gun channels I watched the person chose a .32 ACP Savage over a Webley Mk VI.
10 rounds over 6.
455 v 32 ACP
Recoil v less recoil.
Semi v Revolver.
Small size v Big.
Light v heavy.
Interesting point about the Webley is that it is heavy and big and solid to pistol whip good.

 

[Shortround6]

Not every one who makes a YouTube video is really an expert.

 

[soulezoo]

Not every one who makes a YouTube video is really an expert.

AMEN to that!

 

[The Basket]

The Savage 1907 32 ACP is certainly no firepower super star but it does have distinct advantages over the Webley Mk VI. Although one could argue that the only point of a firearm is the bit where the round hits the enemy and if it dont kill em then you're carrying a paperweight.
The Savage is lighter and smaller with less recoil, more rounds, easy to reload, can have quick follow up shots and would fit nicely on the hip. The Webley is basically big. Certainly from the big is beautiful school of thought.
Of course the Savage was not used by the Americans but by the French as a Ruby alternative.

 

[Shortround6]

The Basic problem with the Savage (which was a nice enough pistol otherwise) is the .32 ACP cartridge. Which has always been about the bare minimum for police or military duty. In some cases it is below the minimum. The goal of any military/ police/self defense pistol cartridge is not necessarily to kill but to render the target incapable of further offensive action as quickly as possible. There is no pistol cartridge on earth that is a 100% certain one shot stop cartridge. However the smaller rounds, .22LR, 25 acp, 32 ACP and various 32 caliber revolver rounds have a rather poor record on stopping people with a single hit. If you have to shoot an enemy more times with the small caliber pistol to get the desired results then what does that mean to your supposed extra ammunition capacity?
Even with 9mm, .40s and .45 they are now teaching double taps. With a .32? Triple taps?

The less recoil than the Webley is a bit of mis-direction, no army at the time provided enough ammo for training for it's troops to become proficient with pistols and while the Webley fired a heavy bullet, it did so at a low velocity and from a heavy pistol. Yes it will have more recoil than a .32. But was it so bad as to cause poor shooting? The Service Webley round was little more powerful than the .45 ACP mid-range target loads.

 

[soulezoo]

The service Webley was closer to 2/3's the energy of .45 ACP loads (average .45 load being 230 gr. bullet at ~825 fps from a 5" barrel)

 

[The Basket]

The Savage 32 ACP was a self defence pistol and French war use was based on necessity and that it used same round as Ruby. The 45 version was beaten by the 1911.
The Webley Revolver had been going for a good few years before ww1 so a tried and tested design used against locals who carried spears and not Mausers.
The British kept revolvers well after ww2 as main sidearms so that is saying that they were happy enough.
If you had to shoot 3 taps on the Savage 32acp then still got 7 rounds left!

 

[Shortround6]

recoil is more proportional to momentum than energy, momentum being just mass times velocity but 265 grains X 600-620fps is certainly going to come out lower than 230 grains X 825fps.

.45 target loads are 185-200 grain bullets at 750-770fps.
The Webley is roughly half way between the two.

I am not counting the mass of the propelling charge or velocity of it's exit. change would be minor.

for the 32 Auto the momentum is roughly 1/3 that of the .45 but to figure recoil you need the weight of the gun. a 40 ounce gun is going to recoil at 1/2 the speed of a 20 ounce pistol using the same cartridge.
A .45 auto Pistol in theory would have a free recoil speed of about 10.9fps while a 20 oz . 32 auto would have a free recoil speed of around 8fps. (free recoil would be if you could get the pistol to fire without any means of support, as in being held in hand or vise).
Energy of the recoil goes back to being proportional to the square of the speed.

Felt recoil is another matter and takes into account the shape of the grip and how it fits the hand, any sharp edges or rough areas and so on.
It also covers the "action" of a pistol. A revolver pretty much "sits" there, it fires, recoils and then everything stops. Automatics fire, recoil and have varying amounts of metal moving about on top of the pistol. It may not change the total amount of force transmitted to the hand/arm but does tend to keep the disturbance going on longer even if it is just the slide/bolt going back forward.

I have a heavy .22 revolver on a .38 frame, 3 target .22s that go well over 40ounces, and a .22 conversion kt for a .45 auto. While the last does kick much less than full .45 loads it is the hardest to shoot rapid fire with (5 shots in 10 seconds) as it moves around the most. a much greater mass of metal bouncing around on top with each shot. When shooting 5 shots in 20 seconds (timed fire) there is very little difference in scores/difficulty as you have more time to recover.

Armies often looked for "magic bullets" to lessen time/money spent on training. The reduction in recoil that was to accompany the change from the .455 Webley to the .38/200 and the No2 Enfield may not have been as great as anticipated. The cartridges had almost identical velocity and the .38 used a bullet about 75% of the weight of the .455 Webley so things should have been on the right track. Unfortunately the new pistol weighed about 70% as much as the old pistol and so, while nicer to carry, it really didn't do a whole lot for recoil reduction.

 

[Shortround6]

.
If you had to shoot 3 taps on the Savage 32acp then still got 7 rounds left!

If you need 3 shots per adversary then the 10 shot 32 is good for 3 1/3 adversaries. If you need to double tap the .45 then the 7 round 45 is good for 3 1/2 adversaries and the Webley is good for 3 adversaries.

It won't work out like that in real life but small caliber pistols loose a good part their "high" capacity advantage in real life.

A 10 shot 32 acp beats the hell out of a 6 shot 32 revolver though and guess what, the 8mm Lebel 1892 revolver was an anemic, 32 caliber revolver. No wonder .32 ACPs looked good to the French.