8mm Lebel

[floodgate]

I have wondered off & on about the odd double-taper on the 8mm Lebel case, and others here have mentioned it, too. I was reading a reprint of H. J. Blanch's 1909 book "A Century of Guns" (he was from the well-known family of London gunmakers) and spotted the drawing posted below in the section on current European military arms and ammunition, which made it all clear; it is to allow the rimmed cases to feed from the magazine without the rims snagging each other.

BUT, that raises another problem. The original 8mm Lebel rifle, as I understand it, had a tubular magazine (note the meplat on the M86-93 bullets), and it wasn't until the Mannlicher-Berthier carbine and the later rifles with the 3- and 5-round box magazines were introduced around 1890 (with the solid bronze spitzer "Balle D" bullet coming in 1898 ) that this case profile would have helped in feeding. Whoever designed the 8mm Lebel case must have been looking forward to a box-magazine feed system. (Then there was the infamous Chauchat machine rifle with its full-semi-circle magazine, that was discarded in WW I as fast as they could be issued.)

Ideas? Comments?

Floodgate

[KCSO]

Maybe 1/2 right? The Lebel taper let you load fmj bullets in a tubular magazine. The taper sets the points just enough off center that coupled with the annular ring around the primer even pointy bullets don't come near the center of the primer.

The other thing to think about is that it might just be an accident of design, the quickest way to get a Gras case to 8 mm. Remember from Vielle's powder to finished Lebel was only abut 6 months and all they really did was beef up an existing design. I do know from putting the bullets in a plastic tube and pushing them together that they tend to buckle at the taper, offsetting the points.

I can tell you for sure that the case design had NOTHING to do with the later Berthier rifles and the 3 and 5 round strippers as they were not designed until 1890, and they were made to fit the existing ammo. The double taper does allow the bullet to feed slick as snot on a marble from the feed ramp of the Lebel and if you can get use to yanking back when you feel like slowing down the Lebel will rip off the rounds.

The French were much like the British in the 1890's and they took what they knew and combined it with what they were learning and then made it work. For example even though by 1893 the French knew that the Lebel round was no good for machine guns and poor for anything else they stuck with it till 1936, and the British stuck with the 303 till 1954. No one in 1890 had any idea what a sucessful military round would look like and that is why they did not have 30-06's. The only ones to get it right were the German's ( and the folks who stole from them) who were willing to scrap what didn't work and go quickly on to what did, and the Swiss who just did it right the first time.

[KCSO]

One more thing, that's a nice drawing, but they don't fit like that in a 5 round clip.

[drinks]

Every time I look at a 7.5x55 SR case, I am amazed, it looks like an AI , long, .308.
And it was designed 70 years, more or less, before the .308.

[floodgate]

One more thing, that's a nice drawing, but they don't fit like that in a 5 round clip.

JIm:

Yeah, I had forgotten until after i posted that those were Mannlichers, and used the en-bloc clip. But note that the M86-93 (pre-"Balle D") bullets illustrated had flat noses - just in case. I still wonder what the point of the shetch was, though; still looks to me like SOMEONE was thinking vertical-stack magazine.

Doug

[KCSO]

I have some original rounds from 1890 and 1917 and some Kynoch rounds. The early rounds did have the flat point, but by WWI they went to the pointd bullet and that is when they put the groove around the primer, supposedly to make them safe for the Lebel. While it is hard for us today to be impressed with a 232 gran bullet with a F/P going at 2100 fps it was a big deal to folks in 1886. I'll bet there was more spyig, lying and dieing over smokless powder than the atom bomb if the whole story be told. I shoot Lebel and Berthier and I know that in the five round clip the ctgs nest just like 303's do in an Enfield, rim ahead.

Due to the fact that to raise the lifter in the Lebel you have to slam the bolt back pretty hard I shoot mine as a single shot most of the time.

I am going to try and run that drawing out to 5 round just to see what a clip wouold have to look like with the bullets siting that way, it would have to be nearly a 1/2 circle it think.

[floodgate]

Jim:

"I am going to try and run that drawing out to 5 round just to see what a clip wouold have to look like with the bullets siting that way, it would have to be nearly a 1/2 circle, I think."

Yes indeedy!

From the 9th Edition, "Small Arms of the World", look at the 8mm version of the Chauchat Machine Rifle with its semi-circular 20-round magazine, below. It was a long-recoil design, with gas boost from a muzzle trap behind the flash hider. W. H. B. Smith says, "This is one of the most poorly-constructed weapons ever developed...The recoil in this gun is excessive and the accuracy very poor. This weapon is poor both in workmanship and design." I saw one in a collection at NOTS, China Lake when I worked there back in the '60's; I wasn't even tempted to take it down and look it over.

It was also set up with a straight magazine for the .30-'06 and - I believe - the 7.65mm Belgian rounds, per the second scan below;. It was issued in this form to the first US troops in the AEF, pending availability of the Benet-Mercie machine rifle and the Colt-Browning M1917 LMG; the soldiers reportedly tried a few shots, jammed them solid, threw them away and went scrounging for whatever else they could find.

Doug

[StarMetal]

Doug,

For a five round magazine I think it would very much look like a Mosin Nagant or a Steyr M95.

Joe

[floodgate]

Joe:

Here are the 3- and 5-round versions, from W. H. B. Smith's "NRA Book of Rifles". The stock was sorta bulged out ahead of the trigger guard to cover the three-round magazine, and looks sorta cute. The 5-round had the bulged-out stock, but the rest of the magazine stuck out even further. It makes the Mosin-Nagant look GOOD!

Doug

[StarMetal]

Doug,

Buckshot would love it !!!!


Joe

[hydraulic]

Doug: I was discharged from USNOTS May, 1960. Dental Tech.

[Frank46]

I seem to remember the chauchat being issued to american troops caused we ticked off the brits who wanted the troops under their control. And they didn't want to give us the lewis gun which was way better. History channel show had a segment and the chauchat was the worst thing ever foisted upon any soldier. Frank

[floodgate]

Doug: I was discharged from USNOTS May, 1960. Dental Tech.

hydraulic:

I was there 1959 - 1977 at Mich. Lab, so we overlapped a bit. I hear the place is still going strong. "Bent Ramrod" is there currently, I believe.

Doug

[hydraulic]

Floodgate: You must have been one of the civilians working at Mich lab. Did you know Dick Rushelelli down in the PR dept.?

[floodgate]

Hydraulic:

Yeah, I knew Dick R.; he did some PR on our stuff in the Research Dep't. Nice guy!

To get us back on topic, we got into cloud seeding using a pyrotechnic formulation to generate fine crystals of silver iodide. Did quite a bit of reloading of various pyrotechnic and flare cartridges. Some of the bigger stuff even used cast "grains" of the mix, though I didn't get into that end of it. Lots of adventures in strange parts of the world; lotsa funny stories, and some not so funny. But don't get me started...

That was a wonderful place to live and work, especially as my wife and I had both been raised 80 miles north on 395, in Independence, and had friends and relatives there.

Doug