Why weren't lever action guns used in the first World War?
Why weren't lever action guns used in the first World War?
Alexander Rivera
Austin Stewart
Bolt action is better, you can't use pointy bullets in a lever, and they require more fine machine work and parts than a bolt gun.
Noah Howard
The actual reason is that the consensus was that bolt-action was perfectly fine and levergats led to wasted ammunition.
Gavin Anderson
Except they were in limited numbers. The Russians bought a bunch of Winchester 1895's to use.
Eli Hernandez
Would the fact that it's easier to reload a bolt in a trench setting since you don't have to shift the fun gun play a role? Seems like levers would either take time to maneuver the gun or expose yourself
Ryan Cook
Combination of issues.
One of the biggest ones were most countries already had the tooling to upscale production of more bolt actions, versus suddenly trying to develop and then mass produce new lever action rifles. All nation's were suddenly finding themselves needing to arm and mobilize millions of people, so attempting to develop and adopt a new service rifle was no one's priority.
Other issues as to why lever actions weren't even really adopted before the war was institutional inertia of all major militaries being used to using bolt actions. This institutional intertia also brought concerns like the potential waste of ammo from being able to shoot rapidly (remember just mere decades before the same militaries were afraid of trusting their soldiers with a magazine on their rifles for the same ammunition concerns).
Lever Actions also tended to be tube fed, and with most rifle ammunition not having a you s too there were somewhat legitimate concerns of the cartridges in the tube striking a primer and detonating. Note the Winchester 1895 was developed with an internal magazine and was fielded in small numbers by the Russians.
Carter Martin
>be Russian in WW1
>sitting in trench with my Winchester 95
>rifle pointed at the enemy trenchline
>barrel resting on a sandbag
>see enemy
>thisiswherethefunbegins.jpg
>fire
>jump out of trench and work the lever of my rifle
>jump back in trench and fire again
>jump back out to work lever
>catch an 8mm to the lungs
>die wishing I'd picked a Mosin
Aiden Myers
>jump out of trench and work the lever of my rifle
What?? Why?
Brody Garcia
Because, as the user I was replying to said, you would evidently have to expose yourself to reload one.
Julian Hughes
most of them are small caliber
and you cant use tube magazines with pointy bullets and center fire cartridges
Levi Martinez
FPBP, pointed-nose bullets were better for long range and can't be used in lever guns. Bolt actions are also faster to load via stripper clip than lever guns can be loaded via gate.
Justin Cruz
for the same reason bolt action guns and machine guns weren't used in the first World War:
they were.
Jaxon Wilson
Dominic Ward
Whole thread and no one mentioned lever guns not ideal from prone?
Oliver Adams
Small is a relative term, .30-30 is just fine for military and hunting use. Across the range most combat occurs at it's maybe a more handy then 8mm Mauser or .30-06, while being lighter and more compact.
Jace Price
But they were, leverguns were much more expensive at the time and werent as robust as a bolt gun.
The 1895 winchester is the pinnacle of lever gun design, other than cost and some fragility issues they were fine, as long as your armorer can repair them.
Brayden Parker
Institutional inertia. Yes, there are reasons why bolts are better, none of those mattered for trench warfare. A .44-40 has plenty of range for trench fighting, nevermind .30-30.
Jackson Thompson
And when you work the lever you open the receiver to the ingress of mud and such.
Nathan Price
Not worse than any bolt action of the period, open actions were common in small arms until the 50s.
Isaiah Morris
They were.
Dominic Perry
>and can't be used in lever guns.
They can, you just cant use tube mag.
Angel Wright
more fuddlore
youtu.be
Lincoln Murphy
>Why weren't lever action guns used in the first World War?
Mauser fever
Jackson Price
you don't need to shift at all to work the lever, dumbass
Caleb Gonzalez
Every weapon looks better with a bayonet
Angel Bennett
hard to cycle a lever gun prone
easy with a bolt action
Matthew Johnson
It's a joke directed at who he was replying to, you don't actually have to do that to cycle a 95, just tilt it sideways.
Asher Murphy
That whole thing was bullshit, with properly hardened primers tube mags should not be a problem.
This dudes right, all that no pointy bullet in tube mag is straight fuddlore carried on from the theory of late 19th century gun makera. It makes sense but in reality its a non-issue.
Connor Reyes
Have you even shot a lever action firearm?
Lincoln Howard
They did though
William Rivera
Spitzer bullets, much less camming action compared to bolt, not as soldier-proof as bolt, and tube mags suck as the French learned with the Lebel.
Asher Clark
The Russians would use anything in WW1 (and WW2) for that matter.
Robert Carter
The 1895 seems to have done just fine in the trenches. The 1897 trench gun also exposes all its guts when being cycled and it also did really well. Mud ingress is more of an issue when the weapon is being carried for days on end, not for the >1sec when it's being cycled after a shot.
Jordan Cruz
I don't feel like linking to everyone who said it ITT, but anyone who brings up
>MUH LEVER GATS CAN'T USE POINTY BULLETS
is a massive retard. The Winchester 95 used a box magazine and spitzer bullets. Even if that somehow wasn't possible, the Lebel used a tube mag with spitzer bullets. Bullet design has precisely nothing to do with whether lever guns are viable or not. The real reason that bolt actions were prefered was because they were already in inventory, they are much easier to design to handle a modern high pressure round, they're less complicated to produce and maintain, they're easier to shoot while prone, and in all honesty, lever guns aren't innately faster to operate than a bolt gun. Lever guns with toggle locks are fast, but any lever gun that fires a full powered cartridge is not much, if any faster than a decent bolt gun. Not to mention the fact that the fire rate of your individual infantryman just isn't that important to begin with.
Sebastian Sanders
Talking out of my ass, but hard to use lever action prone?
Adam Peterson
youtube.com
I'd imagine as long as the troops were otherwise capable having lever actions instead of bolt actions would not be an impediment to their success on the battlefield
Dylan Garcia
The Winchester 1895 was formally adopted by the Russians. You're simply misinformed.
Joshua Green
They were. The Winchester 1892, 1894, and 1895 were all used by Entente militaries.
Nathaniel Hall
Nigger. There are lever actions that use a box mag design and not a tube magazine. Like the winchester 1895 that shot that 30 40 krag round, which is pic related.
Parker Cox
Forgot to upload pic.
Carter Young
Tubular magazine sucks my dick
Alexander Rodriguez
They were. Russia issued quite a lot of 1895s.
Cameron Price
In compact spaces just tilt the rifle 45ยบ retard.
Jaxon Morgan
Exposed action while open maybe the dumbest argument about guns that pops up regurally. Literally pour mud into any bolt gun and see how that works. I suspect that the 1895 would actually win anyways because it would win one in 10 thousand times.
Nathan Morales
It's impressive how retarded you people are