m/1851 to m/03 - Andrennian Military Rifles - 1851-2022

Andrenne

bastard
OOC Notes!
The title is unorthodox because it is meant to be the title of an in-character book. This thread serves as both in-character "pages" of this book and as an out-of-character reference for Andrennian military firearms. The title may be updated at a later date. I will be updating posts as I change or add new information. If for whatever god-forbidden reason you need to reference these rifles regularly, this thread will always have the most up-to-date information available. The pictures in this are, of course, out-of-character reference images and the in-character images of this book would be the real rifles. "zirconzz" is not an in-character individual, it's the name I regularly use on Discord and the internet at large.

Credit to A.M. del Aguila, Ian B. Roberts, and Satirius for making the Krag-Jorgenson, Lebel, and Gewehr 98 rifles I used as references and to piece together some of the more complex parts of this rifle.

VGsEld6.png
5cvtVJp.png


The Kanzlei Ge. m/93
6.5x55mm "Adriennic"


The Kanzlei Ge. m/93 is, at first glance, a fairly standard bolt-action rifle of the late 19th century. Although it has it's quirks. For one, a unique Kanzlei action. Very Andrennian, not often seen outside of Andrennian rifles as a result. Secondly, and most prominently, the magazine design. The m/93 does not have a traditional style of magazine. While many other rifles of its era use an integral box magazine loaded by a charger or stripper clip, the magazine of the m/93 is integral with the receiver (the part of the rifle that houses the operating parts), featuring an opening on the right-hand side with a hinged cover. Instead of a charger, single cartridges are inserted through the side opening, and are pushed up, around, and into the action by a spring follower. Later, similar to a charger, a claw type clip would be made for the m/93 that allowed the magazine to be loaded all at once, also known as the Kanzlei "speedloader magazine". Rather interestingly for a design of this period, the m/93 also possessed a magazine cutoff. The cut-off does not allow cartridges in the internal magazine to be fed into the chamber by the advancing bolt. This was intended to be used for firing single rounds when soldiers were comfortably firing at distant targets, so the magazine could be quickly turned on in case of an incoming charge or issue to charge the enemy.

The design presents both advantages and disadvantages compared with a top-loading "box" magazine. Normal loading was one cartridge at a time, and this could be done more easily with a Kanzlei than a rifle with a "box" magazine. In fact, several cartridges can be dumped into the opened magazine of a Kanzlei at once with no need for careful placement, and when shutting the magazine-door the cartridges are forced to line up correctly inside the magazine. The design was also easy to "top off", and unlike most top-loading magazines, the m/93's magazine could be topped up without opening the rifle's bolt

The m/93 was first presented in its original prototype form in 1889, though the designation of that prototype has been lost to time since there aren't any surviving examples with designations on them- therefore it was later given the false designation "KGe. m/89" by historians in order to be in line with other Kanzlei prototypes of the era and have something to refer to it with. The Royal Army agreed with several aspects of this original prototype, but it had originally presented in a proprietary Kanzlei cartridge, 6x53mmR, which was rimmed, and thus not something that the Royal Army desired. This example also had a larger 10-round magazine, unlike the later production models. The Royal Army didn't really like this design too much in practice; the large magazine was unreliable and made the rifle heavy because it carried 10 rounds. As the magazine was located entirely on the right side of the rifle, this also ever-so-slightly offset the weight to the right. Furthermore, the prototype Kanzlei action of this model was also too weak.

Rather than outright reject this design, the Royal Army decided to work with Kanzlei, which saw Royal Army Captain Isak Larsson take the prototype rifle into his own hands briefly, then send it back to Kanzlei, who sent it back to Larsson, so on and so forth until they ended up with the KGe. m/91 prototype a couple years later which they presented to the Royal Army again. The reason this was done at all is because at the time this rifle was being presented, Andrenne's other arms companies had little interest in rifles. Sprekker was still a pistol manufacturer, and Gylling primarily made shotguns. Kanzlei was the only arms company actually capable of creating a military bolt-action, as they'd done so previously for the Royal Army. The new m/91 prototype had been much better received. They'd worked tirelessly to create the 6.5x55mm m/91 KKsv. (kulkassevyy[1]) cartridge, better known as 6.5x55mm Adriennic, a long, round-nose ball cartridge, and they'd removed the bulky 10-round magazine in favor of a much lighter 5-round magazine. They had also attempted to simply strengthen the existing action, although it still proved too weak for the rigorous testing of the Royal Army. 6.5x55mm Adriennic would become Andrenne's standard service cartridge moving forward. The m/91 prototype underwent a few more, mostly minor changes over the next two years, resulting in the m/92* prototype. Some of these minor changes included changing the design of the bayonet lug, changing the design of the sling loops, changing the design of the magazine, modifying the iron sights, and changing the design of the stock. The largest changes were to the action. Kanzlei completely scrapped the old bolt and action, and developed a new Kanzlei action, which would become the standard for most Andrennian military bolt-action rifles from this point forwards. After undergoing service trials in late 1892, it was finally accepted for service in early 1893 as the Gevihs modell van 1893, or in Mercanti, Rifle model of 1893. As we know, this was then shortened to "Ge. m/93".

The terminology of this rifle has led to some considerable confusion and misnaming over the many years since it entered service. It has sometimes appeared with its prototype designation of "KGe. m/91", which is something we can thank Andrenne itself for. Many early Andrennian movies utilized prop weapons based off of the m/91 rather than the actual service m/93 rifles, primarily because the Royal Andrennian Army wasn't actually willing to let nascent movie producers use their fancy new bolt-action rifles as props. They were, however, given permission to create their own prop rifles from the m/91 prototype rifles, which of course had proofmarkings and designations on them that corresponded with the KGe. m/91 prototypes. The fallout of this is that most people, especially at the time of those early movies being released, didn't particularly know the differences between a KGe. m/91 and a service Ge. m/93, nor were they expected too. This ended up leeching into bits and pieces of media over the years causing the occasional mistake from people unfamiliar with Andrennian firearms. Early first-person shooter games based on the Fascist War were particularly guilty of misnaming the m/93, although this mistake has long since been corrected. On occasion, the modern "Gs." designation used after 1951 has also been applied to the Ge. m/93, which is inaccurate. This can mostly be blamed on a simple assumption that the designations "Gs" and "Ge" are interchangeable. While this is technically correct in a linguistic sense, as they both represent the word gevihs, they are official, separate, Andrennian military designations. Yes they both represent a rifle, but they are not interchangeable. "Ge" is used in pre-1951 firearms, and "Gs" is used in post-1951 firearms. This shift has never been explained and there is practically no documentation for it whatsoever, nor is there truly any practical reason to make such a change.

[1] Andrennian word for a rifle cartridge.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top