CHESSPOT – Wikipedia

It Chassepot , O Model rifle 1866 , is an individual weapon supplied to the French army in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is one of the first retune rifles with AGO percussion used in large -scale operations.

He took his name from Antoine-Alphonse Chassapot (1833–1905), the inventor of the rubber shutter system that equipped it. He was adopted by the French army on August 30, 1866, after a long debate in the light of the sensational results that the Prussian shotgun Dreyse had obtained in the battle of Sadowa the same year.

The chassepot is also a weapon with swivel-blurred shutter, but it is a generation later than the Dreyse, which entered the service of the rest 25 years earlier: the shutter gum seal (see below) and the length of the barrel They allowed a useful flow rate of up to 1200 meters and the firing was very robust and reliable. Despite having a lower caliber (11 mm instead of 15.4 mm of the Prussian rifle), the chassepot bullet has 30% more speed, improving precision and penetration. The French technicians had correctly found that the smaller caliber bullets (compared to those in use at the time) had better ballistic characteristics and maintained more than effective vulnening power, even if it was not advisable below 10 mm, since The residues of the black powder (used at the time) quickly clogged the reeds with too small diameter ^[first] . The firepower of the Chassapot gave the French in 1870 a real tactical advantage which, if better exploited, could have proved decisive during the Franco-Prussian war.

The French army that barred the way to the countryside of the Agro Romano for the liberation of Rome, a Garibaldian expedition to annex Rome to Italy, and defeated it in the battle of Mentana (1867) was equipped with this weapon. The French were easily reasoned by the Garibaldini, equipped with obsolete weapons in advance: the French commander Pierre Louis Charles De Failly, at the end of the clash, commented: ” Our chassepots have done wonders ».

The rifle was replaced in 1874 by the Gras Modèle 1874, which used a cartridge with a central percussion and not paper metallic cottage, such as on the chassepot. All the chassepots still in use were converted to accept the same cartridge ( Model infantry rifle 1866-74 ). Some specimens also undergone the subsequent changes indicated by the M80 punch.

The chassepot is a retune rifle, single-sided and with swivel-blurred shutter: this means that the shooter, to operate the weapon, must rotate the shutter upwards by acting on the handlebar, then scroll through it for back for Put the culatta alive: at this point it introduces a cartridge in the room (a paper cylinder containing the load of black powder, the ball and the trigger), then pushes the shutter forward, and blocks it in closing by turning the shutter to the right. In this way the cartridge is in the room, the dog is armed, the shutter is firmly blocked and the weapon is ready to fire.

Components [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The rifle is made up of four parts: the cularettebed canna/block, the shutter, the chest and the supplies.

On the barrel, screwed to the culatta, the base of the high, the viewfinder and the detention and the guide for the bayonet on the right side of the sprint are fixed. The lift is of the type with ritto and cursor on the base with steps, with the rated rated from 500 meters up to 1 200 meters, plus a fixed -a -set line of combat at 150 meters (when it is overturned) and intermediate positions on the steps a 200, 300, 350 and 400 meters. The edge of culatta is screwed to allow the shutter to slide and the manual insertion of each single shot.

The rod is the most innovative and revolutionary element of the Chassepot rifle: produced starting from a round full of steel, it was pierced vertically with a special pierce machine, then tempered, rectified and rigorous. The car drilling of the barrel was a procedure then almost unknown in Europe but well known instead in the United States and in fact the French technicians of Tulle, where the rifle was initially produced, they equipped very appropriately to import the overseas machinery. Until then the rods of the rifles were in fact made for forging, that is, by wrapping a hot steel slab on a spindle, then welding the flaps for beating; The vertical drilling of the solid one, on the other hand, made it possible to obtain much more resistant and precise reeds and constituted a real revolution in the Armiera technique.

The shutter is made up of four components (from the back to Avanti): the dog, the shutter cylinder, the mobile head and the needle. The dog with the foal, wrapped in his spring, are inserted in the shutter cylinder; The foal ends with the aug holder in which the needle is inserted. The shutter cylinder, with the handlebar, is connected to the shutter head; The head is the most innovative part of the closing system: in fact it adopts the de bange system, that is, it is made up of a rubber ring on a metal support disk, with a tube in the center in which the needle flows; At the time of the shot, the gases themselves compress the disk and the rubber ring expands, ensuring the gas estate. Obviously the rubber went to rapid wear, but could be replaced on the field by the soldier himself. Chassepot had so brilliantly solved the problem of escaping gases, who had always haunted the designers of rear weapons and had always made them unbridled compared to those in advances that have always been used by the military. In the Prussian shotgun Dreyse m.1841 the solution was a conical coupling between shutter and culatta alive (steel steel), which being more elastic compressed by closing the mating; But the system did not work too well and the gas estate was quite summarized. The elastic rubber swallow was much more effective and made it possible to develop higher pressures, to the fullest advantage of the range and precision of the weapon.

The wooden case is in one piece, drilled along the stem to host the cleaning wand and carved at the band and mouthpiece. The wand is in timing steel and has a cylindrical head, a shoulder a short distance from the head that goes to fit on a border of the mouthpiece, thus keeping the wand in place, and a threaded end to screw it in the case.

The supplies for the cane locking system are made up of the mouthpiece and the band with the upper shirt for the bandoliera; To these are added the metal calciolo, the bridge of the trigger and the lower shirt on the profile of the football shovel.

As for the aimed systems, they consist of a ritto and cursor rash, graduated from 200 to 1 200. meters (from 1874, up to 1 700 m to adapt to the metal cartridge) and from a triangular blade viewfinder.

Mechanics [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The closure is ensured by a screw on the right side whose tip acts as a guide to the helical groove on the shutter cylinder, and from the shutter handlebar firmly resting on the shoulders of the Bridge of Culatta. The low pressures of the black powder allow the scheme to work effectively. To open the bunk the dog manually arises by moving it up to the shooting tooth; Then the shutter handlebar is rotated 90 ° and gets back; Camera the cartridge and carries out and rotate the shutter. By pressing the trigger, the snap tooth releases the dog; The foal is launched forward driven by its spring and the needle, crossing the central hole of the shutter head, penetrates the cartridge envelope, hitting the trigger of Mercurio electrocuted; The percussion of the inner causes the explosion of the charge.

Cartridge [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The cartridge m.1866 consists of a fuel cardboard tube, treated with wax to try to protect it from humidity, within which a charge of 5.4 grams of French black powder is contained. B. The triggering capsule, in copper suddenly brightly of mercury, is inserted in the back of the cardboard case; The ball, in 11.8 mm caliber naked lead and weight of 24.6 g, is placed at the top of the cardboard cartoon and kept in its place by means of a silk band closely linked by a string. A rather complex set of 12 parts, somewhat sensitive to the humidity and manipulation of the soldiers. In fact, the cartridges were distributed in carefully sealed packages to be opened only at the time of use. The defects did not end there, because the cartridge after the shot left a considerable amount of residues in the weapon, which made it necessary to clean up the cularette every 15-20 shots. In addition, the lack of any extractor (the cartridge was in fact designed to burn completely at the time of the shot) made it far from easy to extract it from the culatta, in the event of jams.

The Chassapot cartridge, however, is really a generation forward compared to that (for its revolutionary times) of the Dreyse: the trigger is in fact placed on the back of the cartridge, rather than the basis of the bullet, and the percussor no longer has to perform the risky operation to cross the entire cartridge to strike the capsule, with obvious advantages of reliability and safety of use. It is true that in the United States the metallic cartridges were already well known and had already been used widely in the Secession War (1861-1865) but it was the first time that an important nation adopted a retrocaric weapon on the vast scale a Avile-blurred shutter with central percussion case, although still in fuel cardboard: and from this scheme all the ordinance rifles of the world will derive, up to the Second World War.

The first test on the field of the then brand new Chassepots (kept secret by the French authorities up to that moment) was in the Garibaldi expedition of 1867 in the pontifical states. Napoleon III, who was then the patron saint of the Papal States, sent a shipping body armed with the chassepots m.1866, which influenced serious losses to the volunteers of Garibaldi, still equipped with surplus and percussion rifles, inexorably overcome by the French weapon of new generation. The episode was carefully evaluated by military analysts.

But the real moment of glory of the chassepots came during the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871). The defects of the rifle m.1866 were many, starting with the rapid clogging of the culatta by the residues of the fuel cardboard cartridges, and by the rubber swallow that had to be controlled and changed often, and each soldier in fact brought different ones; But when the weapon was in order and in trained hands he fired really well, with remarkable precision and power. In the battles of Gravelotte, St. Privat and Metz the French infantrymen electrocuted the Prussians from almost 1 000 meters away, much earlier, that is, that they could use their Dreyse rifles, whose useful flow did not exceed 400 meters. The Prussian officers learned at a high price to change their combat tactics so as not to expose themselves to the French rifles, much higher than theirs: every time the very trained German infantries tried to face the French according to the traditional battle tactics of advanced advance in ranks Tightened, under the command of particularly fiery and conservative generals, the result was invariably a massacre. The rifles and the Hunters French fired calmly, thoroughly aiming from 6-700 meters and even more. The effects of the French bullets were then so devastating that the Prussian commander Helmuth von MolTke protested, accusing the French of using explosive balls: in reality, the French bullets were in simple naked lead but were shot by the chassepots at supersonic speed (400 m/s ) which generated such a violent impact as to cause much more serious wounds than those caused by the Prussian bullets, that having a subsonic speed (280 m/s) they had far more reduced terminal effects.

The modest number of chassepots available, in the face of the enormous quantities of mobilized men, and above all the fact that only 500 000 cartridges were available to the declaration of war ^[2] , he explains in part why the French weapon could not do much to change the fate of the conflict, unfavorable to France from the beginning. In addition, France had adopted one of the most advanced weapons of its time but had not developed any tactics that would allow to exploit its qualities: the French infantrymen fought exactly with the same procedures of 1840. The m.1866 was unable to give the France the superiority in battle for which it was designed: but only because it had not been produced quite en masse.

Infantry rifle Mle 1866 [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

It is the standard variant for the infantry troop and is the one described so far.

Mle 1866 rifle for African cavalry [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

Mle 1866 cavalry rifle [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

It is a variant of the gun Shorter and lighter, intended for cavalry and in particular to dragons’ regiments. This rifle maintains the same mechanics and the same ammunition as the original weapon. This, due to the lesser weight of the weapon, causes a much greater recoil but still manageable by the operator.
It weighs 3,600 kg and the barrel is shorter than 13 centimeters than the gun , bringing the total length of the weapon to 1.175 meters.
The particular conditions of the port of a cavalry weapon also imposed other small changes: the shutter handlebar is folded, so as not to differ from the stem when the shutter is in closing; Since the bayonet is not foreseen, the guide and the detention on the right side of the barrel are missing; The lower shirt for the bandoliera is moved in front of the trigger guard, while the upper shirt is moved to a third band, placed between the half -barood band and the mouthpiece; The rash, ranked only up to 1 000 meters, has the corners of the rounded cursor and the ritto, when demolished, is grossed between two edges to avoid the impacts; The net wand does not present the shoulder and the head gets directly into the mouthpiece. As with all the weapons of the dragons, the supplies are in brass.

Mle 1866 gendarmerie rifle [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The rifle for the national gendarmerie coincides with the cavalry rifle , with the difference that this presents the detention, towards the sprint of the barrel, to unexpected the mle 1866 ring bayonet with a cruciform section, 51.3 centimeters long.

Mle 1866 artillery carabiner [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The musket version, intended for artillery servants, is introduced by ministerial decree of 13 January 1873. uses mechanism and ammunition of the gun , but the total length of the weapon is reduced to 0.984 m, while with the bayonet combined at 1.555 m; The weight drops to 3.150 kg unloading and 3,800 kg with the bayonet. The mosquette has the shape of the ranging and the bent handlebar common to the rifle , while on the rod he retains the detention and the guide for the MLE 1866 saber-bayonet as the gun . The barrel is fixed by a band with a shirt and a brass mouthpiece; the net wand, as on gun , has a shoulder that stands on the mouthpiece. To compensate for the major effects of the culatta asymmetry on a much shorter weapon, the reeling of the barrel is right instead of the left -hander and the viewfinder is moved 1.2 mm to the left. The rash is graduated up to 1 200 meters and the satisfactory precision, despite the powerful recoil on the shooter’s shoulder.

Saber-bayonet mod. 1866 [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The chassepot bayonet saber has brass handle with t groove and block button. The Elsa has a branch curved forward and ending with a knob, while the other branch ends with the ring that engages the sprint of the barrel when it is smart. The groove coincides with a guide and a stop on the right side of the barrel. The blade is of the Yatagan type, with a single thread, 57 centimeters long.

Bayonet mod. 1866 [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

It is a cruciform section bayonet, more than 50 centimeters long. It is inserted on the sprint of the barrel, where it engages a special detention. It is used on the rifle for the gendarmerie.