Carbine triviata...

car·bine noun \ˈkär-ˌbēn, -ˌbīn\
1: a short-barreled lightweight firearm originally used by cavalry.
...
French carabine, from Middle French carabin carabineer First Known Use: 1592

From the earliest days of general-issue shoulder-fired firearms, it was quickly apparent that regular infantry arms were a little bulky to be lugged around on horseback by the cavalry, while pistols, although eminently portable and useful from horseback, had a hard time hitting targets much smaller than the proverbial broad side of a barn at any kind of distance, and thus was born the carbine.

By the late 19th Century,, the specialized bolt-action carbine was reaching something of a zenith, actually spawning several sub-variants.

Broadly, cavalry carbines tended to have sling hardware on the opposite side of the stock from the bolt handle, allowing the carbine to be slung securely diagonally across the back so it wouldn't be as likely to bounce off at a gallop. Since cavalry were still equipped with sabers and/or lances, cavalry carbines often had no bayonet lugs. Their bolt handles were almost always turned downwards, so as to make them less likely to snag on something while slung behind.

Carbines for engineers, mountain troops, artillery, bicyclists, and others tended to be much more like shortened infantry rifles (and sometimes were.) Sling loops tended to be in the regular place, and these carbines generally had a lug to take the standard bayonet and sometimes had a straight bolt handle like the longer infantry rifles.

The top carbine in the picture below is an Italian Moschetto Mo.91 per Truppe Speciali, made at the Brescia arsenal in 1917: It is a carbine version of the M1891 Carcano intended for special troops like artillery, engineers, and others. It has a tangent rear sight graduated from 600 to 1500 meters that folds forward into a recess cut in the wood handguard to expose a 300m fixed battle sight. If you look toward the toe of the stock, you can see a repair in the wood where the original bottom-mounted sling swivel was moved to the side during an arsenal refit at some time. The bayonet lug on the nose cap is also interesting, since it is oreinted side-to-side rather than fore-and-aft; the hole in the bayonet crossguard would be slipped over the muzzle, and then the bayonet would be rotated onto the lug until it latched. Note also that the 91 T.S. carbine has a cleaning rod threaded into the forend like the larger rifles do.

A pair of Carcano carbines.

The bottom carbine is a wartime Terni-manufactured Moschetto Mo.91/38 Cavalleria: A 1938 revision of the original Carcano cavalry carbine. These came from the factory with side-mounted sling loops and a rather flimsy folding bayonet that was about as confidence-inspiring as having a coat-hanger shank taped to the muzzle of your carbine when you were standing watch in a dark Libyan foxhole and there were Gurkhas in the wire. The '38 revision did away with adjustable rear sights entirely, substituting a fixed 200m notch.

Both carbines here fire the Italian 6.5x52mm Carcano round from 6-shot Mannlicher-style clips, the Carcano action being heavily cribbed from the German Gew.88. The 6.5 fired a heavy-for-caliber round-nosed projectile that had a disturbing tendency to travel in one side of an enemy and out the other without doing much damage in the middle, since its cylindrical dimensions made it extremely stable and not prone to yaw. Interestingly, the Carcano fired this bullet through a barrel with gain-twist rifling, which twisted progressively faster as it went toward the muzzle, at least until WWII production exigencies made them do away with this feature.

These handy little carbines are short and compact, even by modern standards.

Schmidts and K.31's: A tale of two bolts.

When the time came for the Swiss army to replace their black-powder Vetterli rifles, they cast about for only a few years before settling on a design by Col. Rudolph Schmidt, working out of Bern.

He had come up with a straight-pull bolt action design in which the bolt body itself was nested inside an outer sleeve. The sleeve carried the lugs which locked into mortises in the receiver body, and was rotated through ninety degrees when the bolt handle was pulled to the rear, by means of a lug on the operating rod acting on a helical track in the bolt sleeve.

The earliest Schmidt rifles were elaborate pieces of machinery; every part of the bolt assembly, from the cocking ring to the operating rod, was machined from steel forgings. For whatever reason, Schmidt had the actual bolt body itself projecting far forward from the encircling sleeve, while the locking lugs were at the extreme rear end. This resulted in the tubular machined steel receiver of the rifle being extremely bulky and heavy when compared to the various other rifle designs emerging at the same time, as well as requiring a fair amount of time and ordnance steel to manufacture; two strikes against a weapon from the standpoint of any bureaucracy.

Further, the breechface was the better part of a foot from the locking lugs. When the catridge was fired, a force of several tons was exerted straight back against the column of the bolt (know as "bolt face thrust"), and that long, thin column of steel was only supported by those two lugs at its rear end. This could lead to compression, flexing, and premature wear or failure of the action.

As higher pressure cartridges were introduced, the Swiss redesigned the rifle by moving the lugs towards the front of the bolt sleeve. This made the arrangement much sturdier and allowed the use of modern ammunition. They also lightened the rifle's receiver by milling several lightening grooves in it, and made it less bulky by going to a smaller-capacity magazine.

However, the basic layout of the long bolt protruding forward from its sleeve remained, and despite the lightening cuts, the receiver was still longer, heavier, and much more difficult to produce than its contemporaries. This solution, finalized in 1911, could be no more than a stopgap.

In the 1930s, Switzerland introduced a new service weapon. Following the trail blazed by the Americans and the British in dispensing with two different length weapons, they standardised on a "carbine" length weapon for everyone.

The new rifle had a much shortened action, the forward extension of the bolt body having been "telescoped" back into the sleeve. Even though it was roughly the same overall length as the earlier Schmidt K.11 cavalry carbine, the K.31's barrel was longer, due to the length saved in the receiver. Manufacture was further simplified by doing away with the complexly-shaped operating rod and going to a simple, flat piece. All in all, it was a far more practical weapon for mass production.

Despite these shortcuts, the K.31 retained a reputation for fit, finish, and accuracy that lived up to the legacy of its Schmidt-designed forebears.

Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine: A Samurai Mauser.

When Commodore Matthew Perry's ships dropped anchor in Uraga Harbor in 1853, the insular Japanese were brought face to face with a harsh ground truth; if they wanted to remain free from the colonizing spree being engaged in by the great European powers, they needed to modernize. They did so with a vengeance.

By the early 1870s, the Japanese army was armed with German Gew.71 Mausers and French Gras rifles, but they didn't rely on foreign small arms for long; in 1880, they began equipping with the Murata Type 13, a homegrown single shot bolt action sporting a melange of Mauser, Gras, and Dutch Beaumont design features; Winchester was contracted for 100 prototypes, and then production commenced in Japan. Ironically, it would be another twelve years before the land of Commodore Perry would replace its side-hammer Springfield Trapdoors with a bolt-action rifle.

ABOVE: Arisaka Type 38 Cavalry Carbine, photo by Oleg Volk.

When Japan shocked the world by beating a European power in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, they were equipped with a new rifle designed by a Colonel Nariaki Arisaka in 1897. He trumped this design eight years later with a rugged rifle based on the Spanish M1893 Mauser, known as the Type 38 Arisaka, (Type 38 refers to the 38th year of the Meiji Restoration, with 1868 being Year 1.) This rifle would go on to serve as the primary Japanese service rifle for the next thirty-four years, and remained in production in some factories until the Japanese surrender in 1945.


LEFT: The knurled knob on the rear of the bolt served as both a safety and a gas-deflecting flange. Photo by Oleg Volk.






Col. Arisaka's rifle was made in both rifle and carbine formats and had several innovative features, some more useful than others. The rifle handled escaping gas from a ruptured case very well, being equipped with both gas vent holes in the receiver ring and a large round knob on the rear that doubled as both a safety and a flange to direct gas away from the firer's face. Famous gunsmith P.O. Ackley considered the Type 38 to be the strongest military rifle action he'd ever tested. It certainly was a rugged looking rifle.

RIGHT: The front sight was drift-adjustable for windage, and was protected by sturdy "wings". Photo by Oleg Volk.

The stock was somewhat blocky in shape, and the butt was of two pieces fitted together tongue-and-groove style, which allowed stocks to be made from smaller blanks. The rifles came from the factory with sliding sheet-steel dust covers, but these were frequently discarded by troops in the field as they rattled as they got loose. The sights consisted of a triangular front blade protected by beefy wings, and a rear ladder-style sight that was graduated to 2,000 meters on the carbine version. The infantry rifle had sling swivels on the bottom attached to the butt and barrel band, while the cavalry carbine had its swivels on the left side of the stock. Both took the same long sword bayonet. Unlike most Mausers and Mauser derivatives, which required a cartridge nose or punch to release the magazine floorplate for unloading, the Type 38 could be unloaded safely by releasing the magazine floorplate by means of a finger-operated catch inside the triggerguard.




LEFT: The Type 38's 6.5x50mm round, in this case a 156gr Norma soft-point, with a 5.56mm NATO round and a .30-'06 M2 ball cartridge for comparison.







Like many other rifle designers in the late 1880s/early 1890s, Arisaka selected a smallbore bullet, in this case a 6.5mm projectile. The military loading launched a 139-grain projectile at 2500 feet per second, giving it slightly better-than-average wallop among the military 6.5's. The flatter crack of the 6.5 was easily distinguished from the deeper muzzleblasts of the .30 caliber rifles used by the Allied forces in the Pacific during WWII, at least according to most memoirs of the time.

ABOVE: The receiver ring of the Type 38. Note the ground-off mum, indicating a surrendered weapon. (And no more inscrutable or mystical than the canceled "Broad Arrow" on a de-milled British weapon; it just means it's not Imperial property anymore.) The markings below it read "Type", "8", and "3" from bottom to top. Also note the dual gas-escape vents. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Not only did the Type 38 see service with the Imperial Japanese military, but excess rifles were also sold to fellow allies Great Britain and Russia during WWI. Rifles found in the US today will generally either be battlefield-captured souvenirs, or surrendered pieces brought home by returning GIs and sailors or imported after the war by surplus houses. The latter can be distinguished by the fact that the chrysanthemum symbol, an Imperial property mark much like the British "Broad Arrow", on the receiver ring will be defaced or ground off. Prices will start at under $100 for a tatty infantry rifle with a ground mum, and can climb north of $500 for a nice carbine with intact mum and dust cover. Ammunition is still loaded by Norma as well as some specialty houses, but expect to pay dearly for it. This is a rifle for which it is definitely worthwhile to reload, especially since the strong action allows the caliber to shine. As with all WWII weapons, expect a lot of volatility in pricing over the next years as the war passes from living memory, with the passing of the generation who fought it.

Japanese Type I rifle: An unusual hybrid.

In the late 1930s, Imperial Japan's ongoing invasion of China was beginning to place a strain on the ability of her arsenals to keep the army supplied with rifles. With the army taking all the rifle production from home, the navy was forced to go shopping for a source of rifles for their naval infantry. A call to their new Axis partner, Italy, resulted in one of the more unusual military rifles of WWII.

ABOVE: Japanese Type I rifle. Photo by Oleg Volk.

The new rifle, referred to as the "Type I", was a hybrid of Italian and Japanese features. (Sort of like ramen al dente, or a teriyaki beef calzone. Mmmm. Anyway...) The rifle's action was that of the Mo. 1891 Carcano, which itself was a more-or-less direct ripoff of the old Gew.88 "Commission Rifle", sans the usual Mannlicher-style magazine. In its place was a Mauser-type box magazine that could be fed rounds from stripper clips. The rifle was chambered for the standard Japanese 6.5x50mm cartridge, and the furniture and sights were pure Arisaka, down to the two-piece dovetailed buttstock. Unlike other Japanese service rifles, they were not marked with the Imperial chrysanthemum on the receiver ring. In fact, except for the serial number and various small proof marks, they were remarkably devoid of markings of any sort.

Never common on the US collector scene (less than 60,000 were produced; compared to millions for most other WWII service rifles) it's possible to go many years without ever seeing one at a store or gun show. It's not listed in the Blue Book or the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. It's mentioned but not pictured in Japanese Rifles of World War II and Scarlata's Bolt Action Military Rifles book. At the previous gun store I worked at, an old guy walked in the door with a long rifle in tow:

"Hey, I got this ol' military rifle. A buddy of mine tol' me that this lady that works here knows a lot about ol' army guns, collects 'em, even, and could tell me what it's worth."

"That'd be me."

As he started to heave the rifle up onto the counter, saying "I think it's Japanese...", I heroically kept from squeaking "Ohmigod! It's a Type "I"!" I'd never seen one in the steel before.

"So, what's it worth?"

"Well, sir, it's hard to say. The gun isn't in any of the usual price guides. Obscurity may work against it, the bore is a nasty dark orange with corrosion, and ammo is so expensive that an empty magazine means the gun's nearly totalled. On the other hand, it's cosmetically nice, and someone who knows what it is and is just dying to have one for their collection may be willing to pay well to get it. What do you figure you need to get out of it?"

"Well, I'd like to get out of it what I've got in it..."

"Which is? If you don't mind me asking..."

"Naw. I paid $75 for it, and I reckon I've got $5 worth of my time in running it over here. How's $80 sound?"

"Let me call my boss."

I walked in the back room and rang him on the cell phone. Bear in mind my boss at that shop didn't know one milsurp from another. To him, they're all just junky old rifles.

"Hey, I've got this guy that wants to sell us a Type I." *long pause* "It's a rifle with Arisaka-style parts on a Carcano action." *longer pause* "Anyhow, it's an oddball old Japanese rifle. He wants $80 for it."

"I dunno, money's still kinda tight right now. You think we could sell it for $150?"

"Hell ye... er, I mean, I know somebody who'd pay $150 for it."

"Who?"

"Me!"

"Okay, give him $80."

Back out front.

"Here you go, sir."

"Thank you very much, ma'am; if I find anything else, I'll let you know."

Later, my boss apparently decided that he could live with making only a $50 profit off me, instead of a $70 one, which was just fine with me. The rifle in question turned out to be one that was produced at Beretta, rather than one of the more common government arsenal-produced specimens. Ammunition is still produced by Norma, but at today's prices, two and a half boxes actually equal what I paid for the rifle, so until I get dies in the caliber, it won't get shot much. Whether it gets shot or not, it's an interesting artifact from WWII and makes for quite the conversation piece.