Rifle Winchester Model 1895 is a lever-cocking repeating rifle designed and manufactured by Winchester in 1895. Unlike previous models, the rifle was purposefully created to use powerful hunting and military-style cartridges.
| TACTICAL AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS RIFLES WINCHESTER MODEL 1895 | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer: | Winchester Repeating Arms Company |
| Cartridge: | |
| Caliber: | 7.62 mm |
| Weight without cartridges: | 4.1 kg |
| Weight with cartridges: | n/a |
| Length: | 1160 mm |
| Barrel length: | 712 mm |
| Number of rifling in the barrel: | n/a |
| Trigger mechanism (trigger): | Kurkovy |
| Operating principle: | Manual reloading with Henry brace |
| Fuse: | n/a |
| Aim: | Front sight and sector sight |
| Effective range: | 600 m |
| Sighting range: | 1800 m |
| Initial bullet speed: | n/a |
| Type of ammunition: | Integral magazine loaded with five-round clips |
| Number of cartridges: | 5 |
| Years of production: | 1915–1917 |
History of creation and production
The Winchester M1895 would have remained an experimental model if it had not been for the shortage of small arms in the Russian army at the beginning of the First World War, which forced the tsarist government to buy everything that could fire around the world. Firm Winchester Repeating Arms Company agreed to remake the rifle for the Russian cartridge 7.62×54 mm R, and until 1917 shipped about 300 thousand of these rifles to Russia, which amounted to about 70% of all rifles of this model produced.
For these rifles, the shape of the magazine was changed, and special guides appeared on the receiver, which made it possible to quickly load the magazine with cartridges from a standard clip from a Mosin rifle mod. 1891. In addition, rifles made for Russia had an extended barrel with a bayonet mount. The new barrel length required lengthening the fore-end.
M1895 rifles mainly entered service with units of the Russian Army located in Finland and the Baltic states (especially many M1895s went to Latvian riflemen).
At first, Russian soldiers liked the Winchesters. Dissatisfaction was expressed only in the fact that it was inconvenient to move the lever when shooting from a prone position - it kept touching the ground. But already in the coming winter it was discovered that the Winchester M1895 refused to work even in 10-degree frost - due to the minimum tolerances, the mechanism froze.
M1895 of the Russian type were produced until 1936. The total circulation was 426 thousand pieces. The last warehouse balances were sent to Soviet Union under Lend-Lease in 1942, but they were almost never used at the front, but were transferred to the paramilitary guards, from which even the Berdanki were removed in the fall of 1941, and to commercial hunters.
In other armies, the M1895 was seen very limitedly. Thus, the US Army ordered about 10 thousand M1895 caliber .30-40 Krag during the Spanish-American War, but the war ended faster than the first batch of rifles arrived. One hundred of these rifles were issued to the 33rd Volunteer Infantry Regiment for testing during the Philippine-American War (a December 25, 1899 report on these tests emphasized that the .30/40 Krag cartridge was excellent for military use). The remaining 9,900 rifles were sold to the M. Harley Company, almost all of them shipped to Cuba in 1906. Later, some rifles from this batch ended up in Mexico, where they were very popular among the Pancho Villa rebels.
Design and principle of operation
The Winchester M1895 has a bolt-action action, operated by a Henry brace. This type of bolt made it the fastest-firing repeating rifle of its time. The shutter is locked by a wedge that moves vertically in the grooves inside
There is probably no person who has not heard of the Winchester rifle. This weapon is a legend that is firmly entrenched in the history of development firearms. This rifle is often called “the weapon that conquered the West,” but if you look at it, its distribution in the United States is greatly exaggerated, mainly thanks to literature, and subsequently cinema. When watching films about brave cowboys, one gets the impression that other models of rifles simply did not exist at that time, but this was far from the case. Nevertheless, this weapon can safely be called revolutionary, since it brought the rifles of that time to a completely new level in terms of rate of fire. Advertising at the time claimed that a shooter could fire 10 shots in less than 15 seconds with the first Model 1866, a rate of fire that was truly impressive for a hand-loading weapon.
The secret of the rifle lies in the original design of the safety bracket, which is also a reloading lever. As often happens, the first model was not developed by Winchester at all, but by inventor Henry in 1861, who introduced a new weapon with a fundamentally different, previously never used manual reloading system. Winchester became interested in the invention, bought all the rights to this weapon and started production of the first model of the 1866 model, calling the weapon after itself, and the name of the inventor is mentioned only in the name of the reloading bracket. The first model had a fifteen-round capacity, and loading was carried out from the front of the rifle, this significantly slowed down the speed of its loading. Winchester upgraded the weapon to reduce its ammunition capacity to 12 rounds, but loading was carried out through the side window, which was much more convenient and faster in comparison with the first version. With the beginning of the proliferation of cartridges with a center-fire primer, rimfire ammunition lost its relevance. It was necessary to modernize the weapon so that it could be fed with new ammunition, and this is how the Winchester model 1873 appeared. In addition to adaptation to the new ammunition, the weapon has undergone a much more thorough modernization than it might seem at first glance. Firstly, the quality of the barrels has increased significantly; it should be noted that the first samples had extremely weak barrels made of very low quality steel, which is why they were not widely used. Secondly, the reloading mechanism has undergone changes; it has been debugged and configured in such a way that jamming, which had previously been quite frequent, especially if reloading was carried out while moving, completely disappeared. Finally, thirdly, the brass reloading bracket was replaced with a steel one, since the former had a very bad property of bending and subsequently breaking.
As you can see, the first model of the rifle was not the best, if not disgusting, this explains its low distribution. However, all the shortcomings were eliminated, and a new model of 1873, reliable as a Swiss watch, appeared on the market. It’s impossible to say that people immediately rushed to buy it. On the contrary, remembering the first model of the weapon, they tried to avoid the new product and treated it with a degree of skepticism. Back then, weapons were bought not for a year or two, but actually for life, and accordingly the price for them was not the smallest. However, a good example of a weapon could not remain unnoticed all the time and gradually, its sales began to gain momentum. In the end, even the most die-hard skeptics recognized the perfection of the new weapon, but the understanding of what was what came too late, in addition to this rifle, other models of weapons appeared on the market that could successfully compete with it, but still from 1873 to 1926, when the second Winchester model was produced, it was created and accordingly sold out more than 900 thousand weapons. This figure only seems so huge, in fact, over a period of more than 50 years, for the huge population of the country it is nothing, especially considering that more than half of the weapons produced were exported.
One of the most common misconceptions about this rifle is that it was in service with the US Army. This never actually happened, despite the fact that the armed forces at that time experienced an acute shortage of weapons and refused to adopt the rifle. The reason for this, paradoxically, was the high rate of fire of the weapon. Interesting fact is that the word “hard drive” in the modern world of computers is associated not with weapons by the new generation, but with a hard drive, an information storage device. This name was attached to the device due to the fact that the first non-separable hard drive had two modules each with a capacity of 30 megabytes, and inside the company it was called 30-30, and one of the project managers for the development of this device noticed the similarity with the name of the Winchester model of 1894.30 -30 Rifle? Hence the name was attached to this device within the company, and the name became widespread thanks to the PR department, which compared the new drive in terms of reliability with the model of a weapon in an advertisement.
Thus, the Winchester rifle of the 1873 model, and subsequent Winchesters, owe their fame not only to the original reloading method, which is much more convenient than juggling the bolt bolt, but also thanks to books, cinema, and such a successful comparison with the first hard drive. Many compare this weapon with great cultural figures, nodding to the fact that the rifle gained its glory only after death. However, it is wrong to talk about the death of the Winchester rifle as a whole without specifying the model; the Henry brace, the main distinguishing feature of the Winchester, is still used, but already in modern models weapons.
Long before the advent of reliably working automatic reloading schemes for long-barreled weapons, designers struggled to increase the rate of fire of military rifles. The unitary cartridge (a bullet, an igniter capsule and a powder charge are combined together using a cartridge case) gave a powerful impetus to the development of handguns.
Further improvement of hand-held firearms went in two directions: increasing the range of aimed shooting and, especially, the rate of fire. The rate of fire of a weapon is usually understood as the number of aimed shots that a trained shooter can fire in 1 minute. Despite the fact that the unitary cartridge made it possible to increase the rate of fire of the weapon almost 5 times compared to separate loading, the appearance on the battlefield of mobile artillery and, especially, the prototypes of the modern Gatling machine gun, forced us to look for new ways to increase the rate of fire of military weapons.
It should be said that exactly military weapon has had and continues to have an impact on hunting. All innovations were first used and further developed specifically on military small arms, since to this day small arms are used to solve large number tasks. If we talk about the 19th century, then the perfection of small arms of any army could easily influence the outcome of an entire war with an enemy armed with less modern rifles.
The idea of making a multi-shot rifle suggested itself. Thus, various systems began to appear, the most famous of which was the bolt-action reloading system. However, the fastest-firing weapon was the one with the Henry bracket.
Powered by the shooter's muscular strength, the lever combined with the trigger guard made it possible to reload the weapon with a simple movement down, forward and back. The disadvantages of such a scheme could be attributed to the excessive complexity of the design and, as a consequence, its cost.
With the involvement of the most brilliant designer of weapon systems, John Modzes Browning, rifles with a Henry brace were constantly improved, becoming simpler, more reliable and faster-firing. However, this weapon was not adopted by any army in the world due to the high complexity of production and price. However, Winchester rifles and carbines were extremely popular among expeditionary forces, officers, sheriffs, and even bandits.
That is, among those who purchased weapons with their own money. By the end of the 1880s, competition Winchester carbines In terms of rate of fire, only revolvers were equal.
Introduced in 1892, the Winchester 92 model became the fastest-firing non-automatic weapon, maintaining its leadership to this day! The reason is simple: revolver ammunition is shorter than rifle ammunition. Consequently, it is possible to reduce the length of the bolt stroke, and with it the amplitude of movement of the Henry bracket. As a result of moving the hinge point to the front of the trigger guard and introducing vertical locking elements, the Model 92 began to outperform revolvers in rate of fire, and simply suppress them in firepower. If the revolver had only 6 cartridges, then the Winchester 92 (depending on the version and caliber) had from 7 to 14. Moreover, the carbine could be reloaded, while the revolver could only be reloaded when the cartridges were used up.
And the butt and longer barrel made it possible to reach longer targets. In fact, the Model 92 became a kind of prototype of a submachine gun, when a pistol (revolver) cartridge is used in a long-barreled weapon to suppress the enemy at short range.
Gradually, its glory began to remain in the past due to the advent of simple and cheap to produce self-loading weapon systems. For a long time, interest in the Model 92 remained only among fans of Western and cowboy-style shooting.
Beginning in the mid-1930s and especially in the 1950s, high-power revolver cartridges called “magnum” began to be developed and put into production in the United States. Their appearance was due to two reasons: strong competition from self-loading pistols and the desire to obtain a compact and very powerful weapon for penetration individual funds protection and, including, the capture of large animals while hunting.
It was during this period that the Model 92 found a second life. For some time it was produced directly by Winchester, but it became truly popular only thanks to the Brazilian company Rossi. The Rossi 92 model was able to win the hearts of gun lovers and hunters, mainly due to the ability to choose a caliber and an affordable price. It is worth noting that the original Winchester 92 and the modern Rossi 92 do not have a single stamped part. Everything is produced either using metal-cutting equipment or using high-precision casting. Rossi 92 has several differences from the original, designed to make the weapon safer and more technologically advanced.
The only difference visible from the outside is the firing pin locking flag at the top rear of the bolt. Many users consider it a fuse and are not happy with its slender size. However, the flag specifically has a small working platform, since it is intended only to block the firing pin while unloading the weapon. The thing is that the Rossi 92 can only be unloaded by working with the Henry clamp, sending the next cartridge into the chamber and removing it from there. The safety function is performed by the trigger, which can be put on the safety cock.
The rest of the differences are already inside.
A coil spring is cheaper to produce and more durable. Other innovations include a bright yellow cartridge feeder (so you can visually determine whether there are cartridges in the magazine or not) and 4 holes under the rear sight for installing an optional Picatinny rail.
Everything else (including the manual fitting of the parts of each instance) remained the same. But the main highlight of the Rossi 92 is the ability to use magnum class revolver cartridges. The margin of safety that Browning built into the design of the Model 92 allows the weapon to fire even ammunition such as .454 Casull. This cartridge with a bullet weighing up to 20 grams is capable of delivering muzzle energy up to 3200 Joules, which is comparable to the energy of the .308 Winchester cartridge with a much higher stopping power at short-circuit. Less powerful ammunition available is the .357 Magnum, .45 Colt and .44 Magnum. In a 50 cm long barrel, a revolver cartridge has a muzzle energy that is approximately 30-40% higher than that when fired from a short-barreled revolver. Flatness of trajectory and lethal force quite enough for all types of hunting for medium and large animals at distances up to 150 meters.
The undeniable advantages of the Rossi 92 in any caliber include its weight and size characteristics. Since the Rossi 92 is reloaded by the shooter’s muscular strength, the weapon does not have components and mechanisms responsible for the operation of the automation. The location of cartridges in the under-barrel magazine does not require the use of devices for connecting detachable magazines. Thus, a weapon that has the same cartridge characteristics as a self-loading one is noticeably smaller in size, more compact due to the absence of protruding parts, and significantly lighter. This is very important for those types of hunts where you have to overcome tens of kilometers of rough terrain a day.
The absence of a gas outlet or other automation simplifies the maintenance of the weapon - to service the Rossi 92 after shooting, it is often enough to clean only the barrel bore.
Rossi 92 is available in two types and three barrel lengths. Carbines have a round barrel and are 16 or 20 inches long. The rifles have an octagonal barrel and are 20 or 24 inches long. Rifles and carbines are available in all of the above calibers except .454 Casull. The latter is offered only in the form of a carbine with a 20-inch barrel and a modified magazine design with the ability to load and unload the weapon through the front end.
The excellent fighting qualities of the Model 92, laid down by John Browning, coupled with the ability to use powerful magnum class cartridges for hunting, allow the Rossi 92 not only to remain in service even after 125 years from the year of creation, but also to compete (and in some ways even exceed) modern systems hunting rifled weapons.
To inchester
Winchester Repeating Arms Company
The name of magazine and later automatic rifles produced from the 2nd half of the 19th century. American small arms company. The name “Winchester” was given after the founder of the company, O. F. Winchester.
Winchester is widely known as a rifled hunting weapon. Winchesters with reloading using a lever-trigger guard and with an under-barrel tubular magazine were one of the first widespread repeating shotguns and were extremely popular, although their prevalence in the United States of that time was somewhat exaggerated thanks to the literature and cinema of the 20th century.
Oliver Fisher Winchester
Oliver Fisher Winchester
(1810-1880)
American entrepreneur, manufacturer of small arms and ammunition. First, he founded a clothing factory, the commercial success of which prompted him to acquire the Volcanic Repairing Arms Co. (1857), which in 1867 received the name “Winchester Repiting Arms Co.”
The company's chief gunsmith designer, B. T. Henry, created the Henry repeating lever rifle (patented in 1806). This rifle was used extensively in the American Civil War and was the first in a long line of Winchester rifles that included the famous Model 73, the weapon of choice for the settlers of the American West.
The rifle has undergone some changes in the magazine - now it began to be filled through the side window, and not from the muzzle, as in the original model. True, the magazine capacity decreased from 15 rounds to 12, but at the same time loading was sped up.
Winchester lever-action rifles appear in almost all Westerns set during the corresponding period. For example, the plot of Anthony Mann's film Winchester '73 (1950) revolves around an 1873 model rifle, which is played as a prize in a shooting competition.
Winchesters are also found in Russian cinema. In the film "The Turkish Gambit" Fandorin is armed with a Winchester rifle of the 1894 model, although the action takes place during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. In the movie “Ours,” Bogdan Stupka’s character uses the so-called “Russian Winchester” - a variant of the Winchester M1895 rifle chambered for 7.62×54R, which was produced in the USA by order of the Russian Empire and was supplied to the troops in small quantities.
In 1877, the Russian-Turkish War began. The main firearm of the Ottomans was an American rifle equipped with a Winchester under-barrel magazine. This weapon was studied by Russian gunsmiths after it came into their possession as a trophy. Subsequently, high accuracy, excellent alignment and excellent workmanship prompted the Imperial General Staff to recommend this model for purchase. It also had disadvantages: the penetrating power of the cartridge did not meet modern requirements, but this issue was resolved in the first year of the First World War. A carbine was designed especially for the Russian army, designed for a standard three-line caliber cartridge of the Mosin rifle. In the army, however, this model, which was based on the 1895 model, widespread didn't receive it.
Usually the name “Winchester” refers to the most popular model of 1866. The first advertisements stated that a skilled shooter could empty a rifle magazine in 15 seconds. This suggests that this rifle had a high rate of fire - about 60 rounds per minute. By the late 1860s, rimfire ammunition for rifles had largely fallen into disuse. With the advent of the centerfire cartridge, a new Winchester rifle was released - the legendary Model 1873.
Winchester - who created famous rifle updated: December 2, 2017 by: website
