Spanish civil war rifles

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MD

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I was reading a novel set partially in Spain in 1938 during the Spanish civil war. The author irritated me somewhat by writing that the Republicans fighting the fascists were using 7mm and 7.7 mm Mauser rifles among others, but had difficulty as well because they required 10 different calbres of ammunition for their Mauser rifles.

I have known for years that the Republicans fighting the German and Italian backed Franco forces were armed with a mish mash of weapons, so I looked it up.

Disregarding the huge variety of light machine guns, handguns and machine pistols used, I read that they used Spanish Model 93 Mausers in 7x57, Spanish made Tigre rifles in 44-40 (a Winchester model 92 clone) imported K98 rifles in 7.92, a variety of Mausers in 7x57 from Mexico and a real mix of other rifles from Poland and the USSR including Vetterli, Arisaka, Lebel, and Gras Kropatschek rifles, French Lebels and Lee-Enfields, Steyr rifles, Mannlicher 88-90 rifles and possibly even some Ross rifles, and of course Mosin-Nagants.

It must have been a logistical nightmare getting ammunition for all these rifles. I read that a single brigade might have been armed with rifles in 6 or 7 different calibres.
 
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I recall reading somewhere account of some republican troop armed with M95 Steyrs with plenty of ammo but NO enblocks for it.They used their rifles in single shot mode.

Even in this way rifles started overheating,things started breaking,no parts in sight...Snafu altogether.They way memoirs describe it this entire war was like that for both sides.
 
And beyond this there was the complete lack of war materials of every
description. It needs an effort to realize how badly the militias were
armed at this time. Any public school O.T.C. in England is far more like
a modern army than we were. The badness of our weapons was so
astonishing that it is worth recording in detail.

For this sector of the front the entire artillery consisted of four
trench-mortars with _fifteen rounds_ for each gun. Of course they were
far too precious to be fired and the mortars were kept in Alcubierre.
There were machine-guns at the rate of approximately one to fifty men;
they were oldish guns, but fairly accurate up to three or four hundred
yards. Beyond this we had only rifles, and the majority of the rifles
were scrap-iron. There were three types of rifle in use. The first was
the long Mauser. These were seldom less than twenty years old, their
sights were about as much use as a broken speedometer, and in most of
them the rifling was hopelessly corroded; about one rifle in ten was not
bad, however. Then there was the short Mauser, or mousqueton, really a
cavalry weapon. These were more popular than the others because they
were lighter to carry and less nuisance in a trench, also because they
were comparatively new and looked efficient. Actually they were almost
useless. They were made out of reassembled parts, no bolt belonged to its
rifle, and three-quarters of them could be counted on to jam after five
shots. There were also a few Winchester rifles. These were nice to shoot
with, but they were wildly inaccurate, and as their cartridges had no
clips they could only be fired one shot at a time. Ammunition was so
scarce that each man entering the line was only issued with fifty
rounds, and most of it was exceedingly bad. The Spanish-made cartridges
were all refills and would jam even the best rifles. The Mexican
cartridges were better and were therefore reserved for the machine-guns.
Best of all was the German-made ammunition, but as this came only from
prisoners and deserters there was not much of it. I always kept a clip
of German or Mexican ammunition in my pocket for use in an emergency.
But in practice when the emergency came I seldom fired my rifle; I was
too frightened of the beastly thing jamming and too anxious to reserve
at any rate one round that would go off.
Click to expand...

George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia
 
I have a 70/87/15 Vetterli which was used in the SCW, and I used to own a M91 Mosin Nagant that also would have been there. Definitely a different time period, and ammo would definitely have been one of the biggest issues.
 
I have a few SCW rifles - a Mauser 93, a Tigre (no El, actually), a Polish WZ29, a Winchester 95 and a Mosin 91. The M93 is in nice shape and all matching except the bolt, which is so stiff I won't shoot it - I don't have a headspace gauge but I have no doubt it would fail. The Spanish army stored rifles and bolts separately - not shocking in a country so unstable, but when the Republicans armed the various militias they just opened up the armouries and the crowds made no effort to match up bolts to rifles and likely didn't know they were supposed to.

I read a book once that described a crowd passing around rifles and boxes of bolts. Also Astra pistols still in the factory boxes with two mags each, so those at least would have worked!
 
They are very hard to find in good condition. Most bore are finished. I has lucky to find a nice all matching m93 with decend bore last year. A bit pricey but rare to find. Even the stock and cleaning rod are matching
 
I listened to the audio book "Ode To Caledonia", written by George Orwell. It was narrated by a fellow with a nice British accent. With Orwell's sense of humor and this fellow's accent, it was an excellent listen.
 
kjohn said:
I listened to the audio book "Ode To Caledonia", written by George Orwell. It was narrated by a fellow with a nice British accent. With Orwell's sense of humor and this fellow's accent, it was an excellent listen.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I bought it for Kindle/iPad/iPhone/laptop on amazon.ca for next to nothing. Interesting read and an interesting guy.
 
Though it's not a rifle, but still very interesting SCW artifact I have recent acquired. Astra 400 are not common in Canada but this one is special among other. It lacks all standard Spanish proofmarks, including alphabetical date of production. This fact along with serial number range allows to identify this Astra as made during SCW when factory felt under control of Nationalists. Thus lack of proofmarks. Of course it's matching pistol.

 
The Astra 400 pistol is a very well made and very unforgiving pistol. I had one chambered for the 9mm Bergman round and it would handle 380acp/9x19/9 Bergman without a hiccup. It was accurate with all three as well. Of course the extractor was holding the base of the cartridge back against the slide face but there was never a hiccup or stoppage. They made up a bunch for the Nazis as well if memory serves. These pistols were also offered on the commercial market I believe.

Lucky you to have a nice one.
 
bearhunter said:
The Astra 400 pistol is a very well made and very unforgiving pistol. I had one chambered for the 9mm Bergman round and it would handle 380acp/9x19/9 Bergman without a hiccup. It was accurate with all three as well. Of course the extractor was holding the base of the cartridge back against the slide face but there was never a hiccup or stoppage. They made up a bunch for the Nazis as well if memory serves. These pistols were also offered on the commercial market I believe.

Lucky you to have a nice one.
Click to expand...

In "Hatcher's Notebook", he talks about shooting .380 ammo in Lugers and P-38s. The rds did not have to power to operate the slide, but shot well. The cases were only held by the extractor, as you said. This dispels the myth about semi-auto rds like the 9mm and .45 ACP needing to chamber on the case mouth. Maybe, in the best of all possible worlds.

Back in the early days of IPSC, we didn't have taper crimpers. Everybody roll crimped their 230 LRN and our loads all worked well. I used to sort my .45 ACP and 9mm brass by brand name; civilian or GI. Now I don't and I'm sure I have every possible case length imaginable. They are just loaded to the same OAL.

One of my favourite gun writers, Wiley Clapp, tells about a friend who delights in tormenting him with reports of 1" groups at 25 yds shot with a 1911 from a Ransom rest using range pick up brass.
 
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