WWI and the Cei-Rigotti rifle

In 1890-1900 an Italian officer made the first assault rifle. Most of it's functions where finished between 1903 and 1911. In the end it had: selective fire capabilities, single shot, and burst, intermediate-powered ammunition, and also as the first successful implementation of gas operation in a rifle. The rifle fired 6.5 x 52 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition fed from a 25-round detachable box magazine.

Now this gun was considered unreliable, for what reasons I am unsure, I think it was for misfires. But WI Amerigo Cei-Rigotti worked on improving this gun so it could be used in the field?

What affect would such a rifle have on WWI?
 
In 1890-1900 an Italian officer made the first assault rifle. Most of it's functions where finished between 1903 and 1911. In the end it had: selective fire capabilities, single shot, and burst, intermediate-powered ammunition, and also as the first successful implementation of gas operation in a rifle. The rifle fired 6.5 x 52 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition fed from a 25-round detachable box magazine.

Now this gun was considered unreliable, for what reasons I am unsure, I think it was for misfires. But WI Amerigo Cei-Rigotti worked on improving this gun so it could be used in the field?

What affect would such a rifle have on WWI?

There would be two possibilites. One, the Royal Italian Army adopts this "new" kind of rifle, making Italy the first country in the world to invent the assault rifle & its army the first one to adopt it. With this rifle, Italy would well maintain order in its colonies as well as confidently embark on its plan of conquest in africa. The second possibility (and perhaps the likeliest to happen, unless those Italian generals were open-minded on new ideas) is to have the rifle's inventor leave the army & become an entrepreneur, selling his "innovative" rifle to other countries. By the beginning of the first world war, both the allies & the central powers are armed with these. Expect much bloodier battles and higher casualty rates.
 
Would the battles be as bloody? Or would this be a way of making them more mobile? Or would it be simplpy killing soldiers in the same amount as WWI but in a shorter period of time?
 
In 1890-1900 an Italian officer made the first assault rifle. Most of it's functions where finished between 1903 and 1911. In the end it had: selective fire capabilities, single shot, and burst, intermediate-powered ammunition, and also as the first successful implementation of gas operation in a rifle. The rifle fired 6.5 x 52 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition fed from a 25-round detachable box magazine.

Now this gun was considered unreliable, for what reasons I am unsure, I think it was for misfires. But WI Amerigo Cei-Rigotti worked on improving this gun so it could be used in the field?

What affect would such a rifle have on WWI?

Probably little or non, most of the casualties in WW1 were caused by artillery or machine gun fire. The same applied in WWII.
 

CalBear

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... By the beginning of the first world war, both the allies & the central powers are armed with these. Expect much bloodier battles and higher casualty rates.

Bloodier than the Somme or Verdun? Not possible.

As noted earlier, the big killers were Artillery and heavy machine guns. Infantry weapons were a distant third. The introduction of an assault type weapon may have had some effect late in the war, when the 'storm trooper" tactics came into play, but given the mindsets of High Commands on all sides there would have been no significant tactical impact due to the new weapon (If High Explosive shells and machine guns had no effect on tactics why would an assault rifle?).

You MIGHT see a crisis arise with rifle ammunition similar to the "Shell Crisis" since the availablity of an automatic rifle would burn up far more ammunition per soldier than happened IOTL with bolt action weapons.
 

perfectgeneral

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The British did assess this rifle pre-WWI according to wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cei-Rigotti
The article lists the problems as poor case ejection and frequent misfiring.
Even in a single shot only model this rifle would have been a war winner had Britain really gone for it. The lighter, cheaper 6.5mm round would have boosted UK logistics. As for improving the assault rifle. Assault rifles make trenches less defendable. I think buying the licence, then setting Enfield to work on making it work is the way to go for a POD.
 
Even if the rifle had no reliability issues whatsoever, it is very unlikely that it would have been adopted, for the same reason why assault rifles were not adopted in time for WW2- the prevailing logic of the time was that soldiers with automatic weapons would be inclined to waste ammunition needlessly and by doing so create an unsustainable strain on logistics. Also large stocks of cheap reliable bolt actions still lying around.
 
in that case it could be a sort of squad type weapon, with only 1per 10 soldiers having one (you know trusted ones and the like) or just have it as an officers weapon...

maybe i dunno
 
The reason WW1 was a stalemate, and MGs and arty caused most casualties was because there was a severe shortage of portable heavier firepower to carry to the next trench. How do you overpower a MG nest with a few bolt action rifles? WW1 became mobile again when LMGs and light trench mortars came into widespread service, enabling infiltration parties to carry decent firepower instead of relying on fixed heavy firepower that they couldn't communicate with.

If this rifle was in service in numbers from 1914 the infantry would have some of that extra firepower they needed to overpower opposing trenches. If there was a related LMG version of this rifle that would be handier still.
 

perfectgeneral

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Check out the Fedorov...

http://world.guns.ru/assault/as86-e.htm
In 1915, however, the need for lightweight automatic arms forced Russian Army to order manufacture of Fedorov automatic rifles with detachable magazines of bigger capacity. Since production of the new cartridge was out of question, it was decided to convert 6,5mm Fedorov rifles to Japanese 6.5x50SR Arisaka ammunition which was in abundance, being purchased through Great Britain along with Arisaka rifles. The change of ammunition involved only minimal changes to the rifle, including chamber insert and new range scale for rear sights. In 1916 Weapons Committee of Russian Army decided that it is necessary to order at least 25 000 of Fedorov automatic rifles. In early 1918 orders for Fedorov rifle were limited to 9 000 guns, but as result of turmoil of the revolution and following Civil war only 3 200 Fedorov rifles were manufactured in the city of Kovrov between 1920 and 1924, when production was finally stopped.

Since we were supplying the ammo, might we have gained a license to build these? The first reliable assault rifle. Give the grunts Arisaka rifles with a company Lewis gun (or two) adapted to 6.5x50SR Arisaka ammunition. When it is time to go over the top issue them with the assault rifle and three 25 round magazines. Do you think they could have smoke grenades too?
 
In addition to Cei-Rigotti and Fedorov, there was Mondragon (hailing from Mexico, of all countries). It is interesting how all 3 trends, which rule the world of infantry automatic weapons since 1945, appeared almost simultaneously around 1890-1910. Fedorov and Cei-Rigotti as predecessors of AK-47 (although I would consider Italian design more of M16-forerunner, autoloader which primary forte is semi-auto fire, not full auto), Mondragon as full-power single-shot autoloader along the lines of Garand and M14.
 
http://world.guns.ru/assault/as86-e.htm


Since we were supplying the ammo, might we have gained a license to build these? The first reliable assault rifle. Give the grunts Arisaka rifles with a company Lewis gun (or two) adapted to 6.5x50SR Arisaka ammunition. When it is time to go over the top issue them with the assault rifle and three 25 round magazines. Do you think they could have smoke grenades too?
Fiodorov previewed whole family of weapons based around the same design and had some machine-guns built on the same scheme .
 
I would be pleased to get such links too :). I only know, that there were such machine-gun and the construction of its magazine was used in Degtyarev's machine-gun (DP).
Resources on Fedorov machinegun are rare. Most mention it as chapter of Soviet armour's history, AF being standard equipment of the early Soviet tanks. See this for example. Although Max Popenker seem to support the idea of Fedorov being inventor of the concept (see Modern Firearms - Assault Rifles - Intro). As far as I remember from some Russophone sources, this "machinegun" was nothing else but heavy-barelled version of the standard Avtomat (idea later poped up as AK-47/RPK twin, the latter being heavy-barrel version of the former).

BTW, I doubt very much that Avtomat's magazine was used for DP, as Avtomat uses sector magazine and DP disk one, much like Lewis gun. Although I do believe in cross-pollination of ideas between Fedorov and Degtyarev. After all, Degtyarev started his career as metalworker in the Fedorov's lab.
 
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