The first guy to try it, Pyotr Nesterov, died in the ramming of an Austro-Hungarian biplane. He also escaped captivity in the UK and returned to Germany during the warĪlso, some Russian pilots, pre-armament, would ram Austro-Hungarian aircraft, sacrificing their landing gear at the expense of shredding the wings of their enemies. Oddly, I have it that a German flieger, Gunther Plueschow flying a Taube managed to down a Japanese plane with a pistol… Near Tsingtao in 1914, I think. They simply have been used in, and won, more gunfights than anything else. They are still today considered the premier “gunfighters'” handguns of all time for a very good reason. 45, followed by the Colt Model P (1873 Single Action Army or “Peacemaker”) in its various iterations. One effect of this was that in a historical study one some ten years ago, it was determined that the 9 x 19mm P.08 had killed more men in combat in its existence than any other pistol. Plus shotguns, which latter alarmed the Germans quite a bit, with good reason. One of the latter was a copy of the S&W Military & Police chambered for the 8mm French M1892 revolver round it was nicknamed the “92 espagnole” (“92 Spanish”) by the troops. The French issued mostly cheap 7.65mm blowback self-loaders of the “Eibar” type, made in Spain, plus any revolvers they could acquire. and French forces issued handguns nearly as extensively as the Germans did. It fit the requirements for the kind of war they were fighting better than anything else available. In the German army, once trench warfare began and it was realized that rifles were impractical for trench raiding due to length and low rate of fire, the Germans issued any handgun they could get to every soldier, with the standard Parabellum 9 x 19mm pistol being the most numerous. Handguns were for officers only in most armies, partly as a mark of rank but also due to a mistrust of the lower classes. The “German military bureaucracy” was more about effectiveness than class distinctions. With a large magazine and self-loading action, it was much better for use in aircraft than the typical bolt action infantry rifles – and there was no mud to get into the action while airborne. A second pattern was made for use by fliers, and this was accepted and used in service for that brief period between the introduction of military aviation and the adoption of aerial machine guns.ĭesignated the FSK-16 (FliegerSelbstladeKarabiner 1916), it was used primarily by balloon and Zeppelin crews. Once war began, Mauser once again submitted the design for use in an infantry configuration, but the system was too delicate for infantry combat. This was sold in mall numbers as a sporting rifle, and tested by the military a few years before the war. The short recoil idea was disliked by the military for a shoulder rifle, and so Mauser redesigned it to be inertially locked with a fixed barrel. It began with the model 06/08, a short-recoil, flap-locked design made in both rifle and pistol form. Paul Mauser dedicated much of his life to the development of a practical semiauto military rifle, and did manage to have a design that was used in combat by Germany in World War One.
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