Light Weapons in Romanian Service

The caliber is .44 ( 11mm was the romanian military designation)

Possibly the old trusty S&W .44 Russian, originally developed for the big hinged-frame Russian contract revolvers.
I am still itching to hear news from you concerning manufacturer markings from the Spanish-made S&W copies purchased by the Romanian Army!

Cristian,

Here's a short, but nice article on the Eibar town's hall page, dealing with the local shotgun and handgun industry: http://www.egoibarra.com/es/Eibar/Armagintza
Three of major revolver manufacturers, who got nice contracts from the Allied forces during World War I, Gárate, Anitua y Cía, Beistegui Hermanos y Orbea Hermanos, were forced to start building bycicles after the war...

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on April 01, 2005 09:21 am

If i remember well, also italian army adopted the same caliber, in the same period - 6,5 mm for his Mannlicher-Carcano mod 91 rifles.

I never heared about any M1895 rifles bought by romanian government, especially in 1916.

See this for more informations about french Berthiers rifles (and many other weapons): http://www.wwiitechpubs.info/barrack/inf-f...916-M34-br.html

This post has been edited by Dan Po on March 31, 2005 06:47 pm

Dan Po,

The link has some nice info, but the wrong image on it!! The rifle actually pictured is a MAS 36, whose only common point with the Berthier Modèle 07/15 M34 was the new, rimless 7,5x54 MAS round!
As for calibre used in the Romanian, Portuguese and Dutch Mannlichers, it is not the same as the Italian one you mention: the first is 6,5x53R (also known as 6,5x54R, because of the actual lenght of the case - 53,65mm), and it is a rimmed cartridge, a trait which made the conversion to .303 British fairly easy - this was done first in Australia, during the war, and afterwards, when the new Indonesian army noticed that the heaps of old Dutch Mannlicher carbines could still be turned into something useful...
The cartridge had very good ballistics and this is confirmed by the fact that it soldiered until World War II. In Portugal, it also sparked the development of a modern, rimless ammo, the 6,5X58 Vergueiro round which bettered its model, adopted for the Portuguese rifle Mauser-Vergueiro M.904 rifle.
Basically, the 6,5x53R (or 6,5x54R, to be more exact) Romanian/Dutch/Portuguese is nothing more than a rimmed version of the 6,5X54 rimless Mannlicher-Schoenauer, used by the Greek Army in their Mannlicher-Schoenauer rifles and carbines with rotating magazine, and in some Central European hunting rifles, mostly Austrian.

On the other hand, the Italian Carcano - 6,5x52 - cartridge is different; in the first place, it is rimless, and it was slightly underpowered by comparison.

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on March 31, 2005 07:20 pm

Well, I was intrigated by that too modern aspect for 1916 but .... indeed its a MAS 36 there and not an good old Berthier 07/15


About 6,5 mm calibre ... I was thinking oly at 6,5 mm not at 6,5X64 or 6,5X62. This calibre was very unusual for the end of XIX century and only in the '70s of XX, the world armies started a mass adoption of something simmilar.

Despite of the good qualities of the Mannlicher rifle, the 6,5mm calibre wasn t a good choice for romanian army. He enterd in the WW1 with a weaponary almost total incompatible with the allied contry ones .... Was a realy nightmare for the romanian officials to find in France or UK, in 1916 - 1918 somebody to produce 6,5X64 ammunition.

This post has been edited by Dan Po on April 09, 2005 09:53 pm

Dan,

You must mean 6,5x54R...

Anyway, the choice of small calibres at the turn of the century was not so unusual: after all, two major armies adopted such ammo - Italy (6,5x52 Carcano) and Japan (6,5x50 Arisaka).

Sweden and Norway adopted a very modern ammo at about the same time too, the 6,5x55 (sometimes known as "Swedish", because the Swedes retained it well until the 50's), renowed by its fantastic accuracy, for their Krag-Jorgensen and Mauser rifles. I already mentioned the case of Portugal, a country which developed a specific rifle, the Mauser-Vergueiro M.904 and a propietary round for it, the 6,5x58 Vergueiro - an excellent rifle coupled with a cartridge with extraordinary ballistics, but nobody else used it so when the country joined the general shooting in World War I, the corps sent to France had to be rearmed with British Lee-Enfield S.M.L.E. Mk.III rifles!
Another small European nation, Greece, also adopted a small calibre round, the 6,5x54, for their Mannlicher-Schoenauer 1903 rifles and carbines (a modernised version of this gun was later built by Breda, in the Thirties, but still chambering the same round).

Last but not the least, the U.S. Navy also adopted a cartridge too much advanced for its time in 1895! This was the .236 Lee, or 6x60 Lee Navy, an avant-garde rimless round, created for the straight-pull bolt-action Lee rifle, used by the Navy only until 1907.

It is true that the the search for an "ideal" military rifle calibre has performed a full circle in more or less 100 years. Some of the most gifted small arms designers from the beginning of the XX century (the Mexican Colonel Mondragón, the Russian Fedorov or the Italian Rigotti, just to name a few) knew that such an ideal round should be something between 6/6,5mm, with a case lenght in the vicinity of 50mm.
Interestingly enough, the path towards what we call "assault rifle" was already in the works at that time.
One example: Manuel Mondragón, the genius behind the first semi-auto, gas-operated rifle officially adopted by any Army, was already experimenting with 5,2x68 and 5,5x68 cartridges (conceived in close cooperation with a Swiss expert, Col. Rubin) in his first prototypes by 1894; these guns were straight-pull, bolt-action manual repeaters but he soon moved to semi-auto, auto-loading, gas-operated prototypes in 6,5mm.
Unfortunately, later on he was somehow forced to accept the 7x57 Mauser ammo, as used in Spain and most of Latin America from the turn of the century until the adoption of modern automatic weapons after World War II, due to some shortcomings inherent to the too advanced small calibre rounds: the definitive version of the rifle was adopted as Modelo 1908.
Another example: the first effective "assault rifle", the Avtomat Fedorov Obrz. 1916, was designed with selective-fire in mind, i.e. full-auto and single shot modes, in truly modern fashion. The rifle had a classic wooden stock, but it was fed from detachable 25 round magazines, not unlike those used today in the AK series!
Fedorov wasn't fond of the Mosin-Nagant rifle and he didn't believe foreign bolt-action rifles were much better. Since the 7,62x54R ammo was too powerful to be controlable in full-auto mode, Fedorov opted for an intermediate cartridge of his own, but then he had to use the readily available 6,5x50 Arisaka, bestowed with a much lighter recoil than the standard Russian cartridge and quite effective within normal combat distances...

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on April 01, 2005 11:28 am

From 1st of january 1914 Romania used also the 8mm Mannlicher 1888/90. Dragos, that could be "muschetonul mod.1890"you noticed

The museum surveillance personnel was very nasty. No possibillity to look close the S&W revolver.
But I bought a swing out cylinder revolver M-le 1915. Now I started to think it is not a Pieper Bayard , but a spanish copy of it. No belgian marks anywhere, only the top strap marked M-le 1915, on the leftside of the frame marked 8M/M and on the right side a small (2mm) C over a R ( or R over a C). No other marks ( even spanish).

The Bayard revolvers were bought by the romanian government from a spanish company named Dahetze ( or Daheze). As far I know, there is no spanish manufacturer with that name, maybe they have only procurement activity.

Cristian,

That is probably the name of a sub-contractor - there were lots of them in Eibar during the war years, due to the enormous orders increase. Some manufactured small parts for major firms (sometimes in machine-shops operated just by two or three men), others assembled guns from parts, some were just sellers of parts while a sizeable number made inferior quality copies of copies...
As for the S&W revolver, I must add that there was a specific T.A.C. Modelo 1914, a hinged-frame big military revolver by Trocaola, Aranzabal y Cía, in .44S&W, made for the Romanian government during World War I. However, these revolvers grips bear the maker's monogram in a cartouche, instead of a date(such as "1916").

Ruy

A study published by National Military Museum in Bucarest in the 80es said that according Luggs and Weeks book "Pistols of the world" published in 1978, the romanian S&W has as particularity the year 1916 in a cartouche on the grips
But A.B.Zhuk in Illustrated encyclopedia of handguns 2000 edition said at position 599 that Orbea Hermanos made S&W revolvers with 1914 date (later 1916) on the grip!

Yes, Zhuk is correct - those guns were also supplied to the British army. Maybe the year 1916 is specific to Romanian contract guns. The company Orbea Hermanos, still according to Aleksandr Zhuk, also built a version of the same hinged-frame revolver for the Italians chambered for their regulation revolver ammunition, the 10,4mm Bodeo...
I heard that a very comprehensive book on the Eibar gun industry is being prepared at the moment: let's it will help us clarify this and a lot of other issues.

I just got my hands on a Martini-Henry and I would really like to know if it can be part of the Romanian Small Arms Collection. Earlier in the discussion, last month, we established what small arms were used by Romania, this list also included the "11mm Martini-Henry model 1879". The model pictured here is a Martini-Henry(made in by Enfield), dated 1887, single shot, lever action and probably in the 11mm cartridge(not the .303 brit). Has Romania used this?
It is unlikely I will be able to get my hands on an actual Martiny-Henry with Romanian markings, without robbing some history/military museum in Romania.



This post has been edited by Suburban on May 15, 2005 03:53 am

It seems to be a Martini Henry Mark IV british made. Romanian Martinis were made by the austrian Steyr