German use of the Winchester 1895

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MiG25

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found something interesting that I had never heard of before, Winchester 1895 pattern carbines in German service. This website http://s400910952.websitehome.co.uk/germancolonialuniforms/militaria/rifles.htm indicates usage in South West Africa as well as trials with a Saxon Uhlan regiment. a german wikipedia article mentions 8000 1895 winchester carbines purchased from a Belgian maker.

any one ever heard of this or seen a photo or a mention in a book?
 
The Russians purchased a large quantity of the M1895 Muskets chambered in 7.62 x 54 that they used in WW1. No doubt that some of these fell into German hands after the Russian collapse in 1917. I've never seen any mention of a direct German purchase from Winchester. Although the US did not enter WW1 until early 1917, their sympathies were decidedly with the Brits/French prior to that time, so it is unlikely that any sales/transfers of military ordnance to Germany would have been permitted. While still a neutral the US made and sold large numbers of P14 Enfields to the Brits as well as Mosin Nagants to Russia. I saw one of the ex-Russian M1895 Winchesters in a military museum in Finland.
 
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the website i listed says this:
"The American-designed and Belgian made Winchester lever action carbine was considered for use by the German army. In 1912 the carbine was issued in test quantities to the 17th Saxon Lancer Regiment ("Ulanen-Regiment "Kaiser Franz Josef von Österreich, König von Ungarn" (1. Königlich Sächsisches) Nr. 17") and also to the South West African Schutztruppe for evaluation. It was not taken up as a full time replacement to their Mauser carbines."

the german wikipedia page on that Uhlan regiment says that circa 8000 of the carbines were acquired and cites the winchester archives and the book "Winchester" by RL Wilson.

to me belgian means FN and FN had a close relationship with John Browning. And FN was owned (in whole or part) by Loewe.
 
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NOTHING would surprise me about that period.

The Adolf Frank catalogue for 1911 shows the Remington Model 8 semi-auto rifle...... made by FN and sold as a Browning everywhere except North America. Same ammo, even, all made in Europe.

Ditto the Winchester "Self-Loaders", right to .401 ammo.

And we think that Vickers making Lugers was weird!
 
if you look at old films, of the Spanish civil war, you will see lots of 1895 Winchesters. I was thinking they were supplied by Russia, now you got me thinking it may have been the Germans . or both.
 
Its interesting that the Germans would contemplate the use of the M1895 Winchester, a comparatively complicated and fragile piece, shortly after having designed and adopted the Mauser system, which became the benchmark for military rifles. One wonders what advantages they may have seen in this.
 
purple said:
Its interesting that the Germans would contemplate the use of the M1895 Winchester, a comparatively complicated and fragile piece, shortly after having designed and adopted the Mauser system, which became the benchmark for military rifles. One wonders what advantages they may have seen in this.
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So they could play "Cowboys" too!! :D

I can see it now.... "Stahlhelms and Saddles" - A Spätzle Western! ;)

Spätzle is a German Noodle, BTW...
 
I can find no reference in the book "Winchester" by Wilson to German use of Winchesters or a German contract.
An 8000 unit contract would certainly be known to collectors and especially if German would be highly desirable. Contracts for Turkey, the Belgian Congo and of course Russia are well documented.
When was a lever action Winchester carbine made in Belgium and what model?
 
8000 pieces is a very large quantity for a trial purchase. You would generally expect to see a bn or a regt sized trial unit being issued a couple of hundred pieces for troop trials. Troop trials occur after the ordnance engineers have had a chance to test and break a weapon under controlled conditions. JM Browning did design the Winchester family of lever guns, but Winchester retained patent and manufacturing rights for them. Browning subsequently worked with the FN Company in Belgium, but this only involved the production of some of his later designs, and not the Winchester lever rifles. AFAIK the only non-American production of Winchester lever rifles, until the advent of the late 20th century clones, was in Spain where the M1892, and I believe some of the M1873 carbines, were produced.

The Model 1892 and Model 1894 Winchester carbines did see some limited military use in the early 20th century, incl use of the Model 1892 by the British Royal Navy in WW1, both the M92 and M94 by irregular troops in the Belgian Congo, and of course, the Model 1894 Carbine by the PCMR in Canada. Some 300,000 of the Model 1895 muskets were produced for the Russians in WW1. None of the Winchester lever guns impress me as suitable military rifles under field conditions due to their fragile magazine systems, complex actions, light barrels, and the difficulties which would be involved to strip, clean and maintain them once issued to troops in the field. This makes me wonder why the Germans would seriously consider the M1895 when they had already developed a pretty much stone reliable and soldier proof rifle with the Mauser design. The Mauser works was scaled to produce huge quantities of rifles both prior to and during WW1.
 
purple said:
Its interesting that the Germans would contemplate the use of the M1895 Winchester, a comparatively complicated and fragile piece, shortly after having designed and adopted the Mauser system, which became the benchmark for military rifles. One wonders what advantages they may have seen in this.
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During the siege of Plevna, 40,000 Turks won against 150,000 Russian and Romanian thanks to their Winchester repeaters. Also, a lever action rifle has a faster rate of fire than a bolt action rifle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Plevna
 
@ GREEN, PURPLE:

My highly-coloured friends, the only SANE reason I can think of for ANY use of the 95 Winchester would be as a Cavalry rifle...... and I am pretty sure that it would have failed the trials, especially when faced with competition from the Kar98aZ. The ORIGINAL Kar.98 was a miserable little thing, useful mainly for blackening troopies' shoulders and prompting unscheduled defecations among the horses.

Perhaps some were brought in as a stop-gap measure leading up to the AZ, but, really, 8,000 IS a lot of rifles, especially it is a lot of rifles to plain just disappear.

Which brings to mind: where are all the '66 Winchesters that Johnny Turk had at Plevna? His Peabodies looked like British Martinis and would have been used by second-line troops in the Great War. Allenby would have swept them up and burned them. But where are those incredibly-rare Winchesters?

Anyone?
 
I'm still chuckling at Square-head (It's ok...I'm one of 'em) cowboys starring in "Spätzle westerns"!

This is the first ref I've read about Germans using a lever action for service, and will have to hit the books for something more... As suggested, there were lever-actions in service that may have been captured, and tested by Teutonic folk, but an actual purchase of 8000 should make for a definitive reference somewhere .

Again, it was certainly "interesting times"...
 
There were some very painful lessons learned about the superiority of the magazine fed repeating rifle vs the single shot rifle in the latter half of the 19th century. This was foretold with the limited use of the Henry repeater in the US Civil War, the Battle of Plevna, and the Custer massacre where the Henry armed Indians got into close quarters with the US cavalry and overwhelmed them with a high volume of fire at short range. In the early part of the battle the single shot Trapdoor Springfields had kept the Indians at a standoff range, but when the close range surge occurred it all came unstuck. The close range firepower deficiencies of the single shot rifle were also illustrated against the Zulus at the battle of Isandlwana where the single shot British Martini-Henry rifles could not deliver fire fast enough to prevent them from being overwhelmed and they were killed to a man.

All of this drove the major armies to adopt a magazine fed repeating rifle for their infantry. Soon thereafter came the emergence of all of the magazine fed Mauser, Krag, Lee-Enfield, Mosin Nagant, Mannlicher, Lebel, Carcano and misc other bolt action designs. Lever action rifles were not pursued as military weapons due to some of their inherent deficiencies incl fragility, complexity, comparatively low powered cartridges and lighter barrels. Interestingly Savage also developed a military variant of the Model 1899 lever action. While an excellent sporting rifle, it never gained much interest from the military.
 
I found a New Zealand article about a german made Henry rifle SN 300 found there. The intraweb also has whispers.of Prussia purchasing Henry rifles in 1864 and Spangenberg manufacturing model 1873 rifles in 1880, supposedly these last rifles have surfaced and are in the Winchester book by Houze.
 
MiG25 said:
I found a New Zealand article about a german made Henry rifle SN 300 found there. The intraweb also has whispers.of Prussia purchasing Henry rifles in 1864 and Spangenberg manufacturing model 1873 rifles in 1880, supposedly these last rifles have surfaced and are in the Winchester book by Houze.
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Nice!!

Now all we need to do is convince Clint Eastwood to wear a Tyrolean Hat....

"Raus mein Lawn!"

images
 
smellie said:
@ GREEN, PURPLE:

My highly-coloured friends, the only SANE reason I can think of for ANY use of the 95 Winchester would be as a Cavalry rifle...... and I am pretty sure that it would have failed the trials, especially when faced with competition from the Kar98aZ. The ORIGINAL Kar.98 was a miserable little thing, useful mainly for blackening troopies' shoulders and prompting unscheduled defecations among the horses.

Perhaps some were brought in as a stop-gap measure leading up to the AZ, but, really, 8,000 IS a lot of rifles, especially it is a lot of rifles to plain just disappear.

Which brings to mind: where are all the '66 Winchesters that Johnny Turk had at Plevna? His Peabodies looked like British Martinis and would have been used by second-line troops in the Great War. Allenby would have swept them up and burned them. But where are those incredibly-rare Winchesters?

Anyone?
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You never know what will turn up in Turkey. They have been a "poor cousin" in NATO for years and have always used other people's hand-me-downs. They got both our Canadair Sabres and CF104s when we were done with them. I saw the 104s being flown at Diyarbakir airbase. In the 1950s they even got our 9.2 inch coastal defence guns that my dad had crewed at Albert Head during WW2. When I was in eastern Turkey in the late 1980s I saw them still using the WW2 vintage Long Tom 155mm guns as well as the WW2 made 21/2 ton trucks. At that time we had phased out the newer 1953-56 vintage M135 and M211 'deuces. They also carried the Turkish made M1A1 Thompson SMG. Guards at the Army Museum in Istanbul still stood post with No4 Lee-Enfields. The Turks are tough and professional soldiers and maintain a big standing army, a good ally to have.
 
The turk M1866s were probably scrapped for the brass value of the frames.
A German purchase of 8000 M1895s would be about 9% of the total M1895 production less the Russian contract and would be well known.
 
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