Old School Semiautomatic rifles

Why did WW2 nations (and WW1 nations, for that matter) not adopt a rifle like the 351. Winchester Semi-auto?

Was its stub nosed round too nonlethal for the modern battlefield?

Winchester Model 1907 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

5 or 10 round magazines:

 

I believe you hit the nail on the head with your first swing there Wolfy, it is just not up to snuff in the "lethality" department for use on the battlefields of the time. It couldn't compete with the shouldered rounds fired through the Mauser, the Lee-Enfield, the Mosin-Nagant or the Springfield with its 03 and 06 cartridges. They all existed before or during its introduction.

I wonder if it even made a decent deer round? Never have read up on it, I suppose there is somthing about that even in the Wiki article, just never looked.

 

Agree with Clint. Military doctrine of the time(s) was a rifle with 800-1000 yard acccurate lethal range.

From Wiki:

Probably made a decent CQB weapon.

 

At least one belligerent in WW II DID adopt a rifle like the Winchester Model 1907: the US built millions of M-1 Carbines, which had similar handling characteristics and lethality (a little more than the .357 magnum pistol cartridge). The M-1 Carbine was very popular with US troops, and captured examples were enthusiastically used by both the Germans and Japanese.

 

what about the old browning automatic rifle (sport) that can fire 300 winchester magnum or 7mm remington mag semi-automatic?

 

Not in 1907, when the original questioned rifle was offered.

 

In the run-up to WW1 the focus was on full-size high-power rifles for use by expert riflemen, driven partly by the experiences of the Boer War. The Brits were at the point of swapping the .303 for a more powerful .276 when WW1 broke out. Nobody was really interested in weaker rounds, and a semi-auto .30-06, 7.92x57 or similar would be horribly expensive at that time.

During WW1 nobody had much joy with semi-autos, they were generally too expensive and too unreliable for mass issue to the poor saps in the trenches. Honourable exceptions were the BAR and the Federov Automat, but they were very specialist items compared to the millions of bolt-actions in use by the cannon fodder.

Between the wars everyone was interested in semi-autos and pretty much everybody at least trialled some, but only the US had the cash to get them into service before the kick-off. Again, full-power cartridges were the order of the day, although the US almost managed to persuade themselves to go with the .276 Pedersen. Instead submachine guns started to become common.

During WW2 the pressure was really on to boost infantry firepower and many combatants fielded semi-auto rifles, semi-auto or full-auto carbines, and the first proper assault rifles started to show up.

This covers things pretty well.

 

Thanks so much for sharing such useful information


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