Earliest Assault Rifles

I remember reading in Soldier of Fortune about the development of a version of the recoil action just prior to and during WWII that made .30-06 feel like .22 short rimfire. In fact, one of the prictures depicted the son of the original inventor testifring a man-portable .50 BMG sized autocannon. Unfortunately, there were a series of setbacks to the program:

1: It was Australian in origin, which meant that it had nigh-insurmountable political disadvantage anywhere outside the British Commonwealth. (And plenty of it within it when Britain or Canada and Australia had different parliamentary majorities).

2: It was being worked on in Queensland, which meant a serious disruption of R&D after New Guinea was occupied.

3: Australian test prototypes against first the L1A1 and FAL and then Steyr AUG and FAMAS, according to its inventors, won the contest according to any regular standard of accuracy, reliability, and controllability, but test details about ease of cleaning and loading featured notes that didn't match up with the numerical ratings. Furthermore, the inventors implied that the contest was rigged against them by politicans and quartermasters compromsied by Enfield, FN, FA, and Steyr.

Assuming the possible screwdriver that this could have been made to work if critical research hadn't had to be abandoned and restarted, how would it have changed WWII and Post-WWII warfare to have had a weapon that fired battle rifle calibers at full auto with full rage with the accuracy and controlability (and weight range) of an assault rifle?

Are you thinking of this? The Charleton Automatic Rifle?

charlton_automatic_rifle.jpg



There was a need in the dark days of 1941 in the far east for machine guns. In Australia and New Zealand's case, there was a serious shortage of Bren and Lewis light machine guns, from their armies being away from home along with most of their military equipment. The Charlton rifle was the brainchild of New Zealander Philip Charlton, and was a self-loading conversion of the Lee Enfield that could be fired at full auto in emergencies. The New Zealand gun carried a pistol grip and bipod and were fitted with Bren 30 round magazines, but could still use the standard Enfield magazine in a pinch. There was a gas tube on the right side of the rifle that bled gas from firing that operated a modified Enfield bolt, which was returned to battery by a spring and picked up the next round. The gun could be fired in semi-automatic fashion, or full auto if the trigger is held down. The rifles weight and performance was comparable to the American BAR.

surplusriflecomforumcharleton.jpg


The guns were built by Charlton Motor Workshops in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, but the project was tougher than envisioned and only 1500 guns were completed by war's end. The Charltons were wiped out in a fire in an armory after the war, and the very few examples left are mainly in museums in New Zealand and Australia, with one possibly being in the Imperial War Museum in England. The few Australian Charlton's were based on the Kiwi's work and were made by Electrolux, but were based on Lithgow made SMLEs. They used the standard 10 round Enfield magazine without the pistol grip and bipod of the New Zealand version, making the gun lighter and handier.
 
Shortcut to the AK

There were pratical full auto rifles by 1918, the best of the breed being the BAR. And some countries were using intermediate power cartridges. Just by putting the two together you can have a assault rifle. Let,s say the Italians buy the BAR, build it in their 6.5x52mm caliber, decide it's too heavy for the power of the round and scale it down a bit. They end up with a 1919 equivalent to a FN FAL, but with a cartridge that's better suited for full auto fire. The rifle does so well in Africa that is adopted as the standard infantry rifle, and after it,s use in Spain everybody jumps on the bandwagon in time for WW2, trial models having been developed earlier based on Italian influence.
 

NothingNow

Banned
You mean the 1870:eek::cool: Friberg?
Not what I posted about all those months/years ago, but interesting none the less. the Kulsprutegevaer Fm/Kjellman is interesting, but it's a dead-end cost-wise and by the time it was fully up to date and practical (1914) it couldn't compete on a cost per unit basis with the heavier and larger magazined Madsen model 1902.

Someone once posted how Denmark had such a weapon around 1890 or so. Anyone able to bring that up?

Yeah, I don't have my books with me, but that (the Madsen M/1896 Self Loading Rifle, used by the Danish marines) was the predecessor to the Madsen Machine Gun adopted in 1902, so the action's easily capable of it (and my sources are not clear on whether the M/1896 was fully automatic, or actually semi-auto,) even if it might need some slight modifications to make it useful, like tweaking it to be Select-fire instead of being stuck in one firing mode.

The basic action's pretty sturdy, and rather complicated, but such happens when you have a mixed recoil-operated locking system with a hinged bolt that is patterned after the lever-action Peabody Martini breechblock, and unlike the Freiburg/Kjellman, it was cheap enough to see mass production and extremely wide adoption (from World War one up to about the mid fifties it was the World's most popular Light MG.) Also, it's light enough to be a practical weapon for a single soldier.
madsen_diagram.jpg


It's worth noting, like anytime the Madsen Gun comes up, that the weapon has a pretty good reputation, and was/is still in service as of 2010! Albeit only because the Rio de Janiero police are hilariously underfunded.
 
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NothingNow

Banned
There were pratical full auto rifles by 1918, the best of the breed being the BAR.
No, the BAR was new, untested, and really only had a single advantage over the more reliable Madsen, which was it's fire-selector, and depending on the model, about a kilogram in weight difference, despite only having a 20rd box magazine to the Madsen's 30rd box.

And some countries were using intermediate power cartridges. Just by putting the two together you can have a assault rifle. Let,s say the Italians buy the BAR, build it in their 6.5x52mm caliber, decide it's too heavy for the power of the round and scale it down a bit. They end up with a 1919 equivalent to a FN FAL, but with a cartridge that's better suited for full auto fire. The rifle does so well in Africa that is adopted as the standard infantry rifle, and after it,s use in Spain everybody jumps on the bandwagon in time for WW2, trial models having been developed earlier based on Italian influence.

So, you want something like the Fedorov Avtomat (adopted 1915, ordered 1916,) but more successful? That's fairly easy if someone remembers the Avtomat in the first place, or if V.G. Fedorov himself goes abroad during the Civil War. But the guy had two Orders of Lenin, IOTL, so that might not be likely.

The only reason the Avtomat did poorly was because of a severe shortage of 6.5x50mm Arisaka Ammunition during the Russian civil war, and the factory (now ZiD) being reassigned to produce simpler designs in 1924. It had a good record in the Russian Civil War, and the Soviets reissued them to elite troops in the Winter War, where they were again quite reliable.
 
Madsen vs BAR

Having held both the BAR and the m1902 Madsen, despite not having had the chance to fire them, I agree with the common view that the BAR is a rifle and the Madsen is a LMG. There were a few thousand BAR in France in 1918 of the 52000 built before the armistice and the rifle was ready and there was nothing wrong with it.
The Federov Avtomat is OTL. It is a real assault rifle and should have been mass-produced and changed history. It didn't. Something made in another country might have.
 
Madsen m1986 rifle

There was a semiauto Madsen rifle (the m1896) in service with the Danish navy and coast guard at the turn of the century. It was a recoil operated long and heavy top magazine fed creature that I wouldn't call an assault rifle. Somebody must have a picture they can post. Take a good look at a Madsen LMG. Now take a look at a VZ30 or a Bren. The Madsen main virtue was that it was there first, and lasted long enough for people who couldn't afford new weapons to keep them
 
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Delta Force

Banned
Someone once posted how Denmark had such a weapon around 1890 or so. Anyone able to bring that up?

The Madsen could have been used in such a role, but it was a lightweight machine gun. Machine guns were also incredibly expensive, so it isn't like people were going to be issuing them in great numbers. It also weighed 20 pounds, which is a bit heavy for an assault rifle, it is more like an automatic rifle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madsen_machine_gun

Also, the Chinese had a repeating crossbow that had a magazine for multiple bolts and that was essentially semi automatic. You fired it by moving the equivalent of the slide back and forth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
 
There were pratical full auto rifles by 1918, the best of the breed being the BAR. And some countries were using intermediate power cartridges. Just by putting the two together you can have a assault rifle. Let,s say the Italians buy the BAR, build it in their 6.5x52mm caliber, decide it's too heavy for the power of the round and scale it down a bit. They end up with a 1919 equivalent to a FN FAL, but with a cartridge that's better suited for full auto fire. The rifle does so well in Africa that is adopted as the standard infantry rifle, and after it,s use in Spain everybody jumps on the bandwagon in time for WW2, trial models having been developed earlier based on Italian influence.

The Italians would be ignored, no matter how good their rifle until they clash with a European power and the advantage is proved on the battlefield.
 
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