Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to continue
our look at the Berthier system with the 1907/15.
So today we finally get to World War One in this story.
Now the 07/15 would become one of the two primary infantry rifles
of the French military during World War One, and in the years after.
And it became accepted like this because it was a lot
less expensive and faster to produce than the Lebel rifle.
So going into World War One the Lebel was the standard infantry rifle,
however it had been out of production since about 1904,
it was expensive and slow to manufacture
because it was a relatively complex gun,
and it wasn't really ideal when World War One broke out.
And the French military needed a lot more guns very quickly.
So what they did instead was turn to the existing colonial rifle, the 1907 Berthier,
and took a look at this and went, "You know what? This thing's pretty well set up."
And as early as late 1914 the French arsenal system was tooling up to start producing a lot more of these rifles.
Now the modification of that into a new infantry pattern rifle would be complete by 1915, hence the designation 1907/15.
And they only made a couple of changes to these rifles.
The primary one being to set them up to use the standard Lebel pattern bayonet.
And they did a number of other things over the course of the war to simplify manufacture.
For example, certainly by 1917 (and possibly earlier), they'd standardise the barrels
so that the Lebel and the Berthier used the exact same barrels.
So you only had to produce one and then you could put that barrel on either type of rifle.
Because it's important to remember, while they weren't manufacturing so many Lebels at this point,
they were repairing a lot of them. And they were repairing a lot of Berthiers too.
There were a lot of small arms that were damaged in combat and would be sent back to arsenals and repaired.
Now there would be four major facilities that produced 07/15 Berthier rifles.
These would be the two major French arsenals of Saint-Étienne and Châtellerault.
There was a major arsenal at Tulle, but Tulle was more of a repair arsenal at this point.
They did what manufacturing was done on Lebels and they repaired rifles, but they didn't make new Berthiers.
You will occasionally see Berthier receivers marked Tulle and those are post-war guns, so we'll get to those later on.
The third company was Etablissements Delaunay Belleville. They were actually a car manufacturer,
they made very high-end luxury automobiles in France prior to the war.
And they retooled their factory to manufacture 07/15 rifles.
And in fact one of the two we're looking at here is a Delaunay Belleville example.
They didn't make many, but they did contribute to the war effort in that way.
And the fourth ... company or production facility is Remington here in the United States.
We also have a Remington example right here. Now Remington is by far the least successful of these.
And so we'll start with the quick story of Remington's Berthiers.
In 1915 of course the United States was neutral. The United States was a huge industrial power,
probably the largest industrial power at the time that was not actively involved in World War One.
And as a result the US started getting a lot of orders for ordnance material.
And a bunch of gun companies took advantage of this, Remington being one of the biggest.
Remington took in orders, in particular for two different types of rifles.
They were going to manufacture Mosin- Nagant M91 rifles for the Russian military,
and they took a contract to manufacture 07/15 Berthier rifles for the French military.
Now their existing factory wasn't big enough to do this, so they started building a new factory.
And that new factory was going to be big enough to do this French order and this Russian order simultaneously.
And it didn't really work out so well. It turned out decent for the Mosin-Nagant,
but the French order was subject to a lot of problems.
Tooling was slower to produce than they expected, there were a couple of labour strikes that slowed things down,
both ... actually constructing the factory and then building the rifles in the factory.
And then they had problems with the technical drawings for the rifle.
So one of the things that the French specifically required was complete parts interchangeability
between other Berthier rifles manufactured at all of these other production facilities.
Because they did not want to be dealing with, you know, "Oh, this is a Remington bolt, they can only fit a Remington gun."
... Nope, that's completely unacceptable. And that makes sense in the context of a large scale war like World War One.
You don't want to deal with those logistical problems.
They also had a pretty specific timetable of when deliveries had to be made,
and they were expecting the first deliveries in the summer of 1916.
So Remington had about a year to get their factory built, their production tooled up,
the first guns accepted, and then start actually shipping rifles. And they were expected to do about 200 rifles per day.
They never came close to that. In total they manufactured ... somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 rifles,
probably closer to 15,000 or 20,000.
And one of the clauses in their contract with the French, ... well, several of the clauses, were a series of deadlines.
And they needed to have something like 20,000 rifles ready to ship in August of 1916.
And they came nowhere close to meeting that requirement. And at that point the French
... already knew that they were going to be updating this rifle ... with a whole bunch of improvements,
what would become the Model of 1916 improvements. So in August of 1916
you know, they knew that this was going to become an obsolete pattern for them,
and Remington had just missed ... the first significant timetable deadline in the contract.
and as a result the contract was cancelled right there.
In total 9,440 of these rifles were actually sent to France,
where they were accepted into French military service, often after some substantial reworking.
There were issues with the technical drawings like I said, and some things like the way the front sights were calibrated,
... Remington or their workers had kind of misunderstood or misinterpreted
the blueprints and done it differently than the French wanted, so.
They also had problems with chamber cuts and bore diameters. They weren't really very happy with Remington production.
And to be fair, Remington bit off way more than they could chew during World War One,
trying to take advantage of as many lucrative contracts for foreign rifles orders as they could deal with.
So the remainder of the Remington guns, ... the ones that they had built all the parts for before the contract was cancelled,
were then assembled into complete guns and Remington sold those on the US commercial market.
So almost exclusively what you find here in the United States are Remingtons with no serial number.
Because the serial number was something that was going to be added after ... formal French military acceptance.
So once the contract is cancelled they're left with this glut of a couple thousand of these rifles
and bayonets and ammunition that they were also making for them,
and they ended up selling those on the collectors market.
So you typically find them here either in pristine condition with no serial number,
because they were never issued and they were just bought and put on a shelf.
Or often sporterised, because in order to convince the US commercial market to buy a new rifle in 8mm Lebel,
which nothing else in the United States used, Remington had to price them pretty cheap.
And so they were often ... a good candidate for a sporting rifle, you buy the thing from Remington
then you cut it down and make it into what you want it into.
So you find a lot of that in the US these days as well.
Anyway, as for the other three manufacturers, Delaunay Belleville was the next smallest,
they did about 170,000 or 169,000 rifles towards the end of the war, like 1917, 1918.
Then Châtellerault did about 436,000 of these rifles, the 07/15 long rifles.
They were focusing more on carbines at the time so their production of long guns was a little ... smaller.
And then the Saint-Étienne Arsenal produced the vast majority of these,
somewhere between 1,000,000 and 1,200,000 of them.
When we get to this point in World War One, a lot of the records are missing, hard to find,
a lot of this stuff is actually still considered ... a state secret in France.
And so a lot of the records aren't available, and tracking down the details of some of these
production timetables can be very difficult.
At any rate, we have a total of something like 1.6 to 1.8 million 1907/15 Berthiers manufactured during World War One.
So a lot, a very substantial number of these guns.
... By like the spring of 1917, these were being replaced by the new Model of 1916 pattern.
It was adopted in '16, but it took several months for the tooling to get worked up
on the various new parts that would be used and there was a transitional period.
We'll get into the Model of 1916 in the next video. But for now,
let's take a brief look at these 07/15s up close so you can see how they differ from the colonial rifles that preceded them.
Alright, if we take a look at the barrel shanks, as you're probably getting used to now,
we will have here the manufacturer and the date.
So in this case RAC is Remington Arms Corporation, this is the Remington example,
and they actually marked the model number here instead of just the date of production, so these are going to say 1907/15.
On the standard rifles you would either have typically an MAC or MAS for Saint-Étienne or Châtellerault.
This is a Delaunay Belleville, so this is Etablissements Delaunay Belleville, and this is a 1917 production example.
And on the opposite side of the barrel shank we have the serial number.
This Delaunay Belleville is a B prefix gun, they only made 170,000 so they used the A and the B prefix only.
Looking back on the receiver here we will see the company name spelled out there in that traditional French script,
Delaunay Belleville, and this is a Model of 1907/15.
By the way, because of the repairs that were done during the war, a lot of guns got recycled.
And not everything is going to meet the strict rules of the original production markings.
So something that you will actually see occasionally from time to time is a rifle, an 07/15, that's just marked Model of 1907.
And that would come about when a 1907 colonial rifle was damaged in combat and rebuilt.
It would be rebuilt to the modern 1915 pattern and retained the original markings, but was built to the current spec.
On the Remington of course we have the same thing, it's marked Remington Model 1907/15. However,
up here on the barrel shank we have no serial number at all, because this rifle was never sent to France.
This was completed after the contract was cancelled. So it stayed here in the United States and was sold on the commercial market.
Remember that until 1968 it was not legally required to serialise rifles,
So Remington ... obviously already had all of the logistics in hand for these rifles,
they didn't need serial numbers for tracking them in-house because they'd figured out how to set that up without serial numbers,
because that's how the French wanted it so the French could serialise them.
As a result these guns have no serial numbers, there will be none on the barrel shank.
And then there will not be any on the other locations where you'll typically see them, the magazine well, the stock, and the bolt.
Only a couple changes were made from the colonial pattern 1907 to the infantry pattern 07/15.
And you can see one of them here, and that is the replacement of this long bent bolt handle
with a somewhat heavier and straight bolt handle.
This was actually done after about 80,000 rifles had been produced.
So the very first batch of 07/15s will have a bent bolt handle,
but then after that you've got, you know, a million and a half that have a straight bolt handle like this.
And then the muzzle end of the guns was also changed, so this is the colonial, this is the O7/15.
The swoopy fancy curving stacking rod has been replaced with this straight one.
And then the bayonet attachment system has been changed.
So the colonial rifle still has the standard Berthier pattern bayonet lug,
the 07/15 would be changed to use Rosalie,
the Lebel style of bayonet. So this attaches with a locking collar right here.
(The spring on this one's a little loose.)
And then the back end of the bayonet fits into this round socket on the front of the nose cap.
Obviously this was an important logistical improvement.
... If you're going to have two standard patterns of rifle for the infantry
you ... at least didn't want to have to deal with giving them different bayonets at the same time.
And by the way, if you noticed that the front sight changed, be patient.
... This is part of that transitional thing, the new front sight would be part of the M16 package that we'll discuss next.
Anyway, other than those two changes, the bolt handle and the nose cap bayonet lug setup,
everything else about the colonial rifles stayed the same.
... The 1907/15 would still use that same 3 round Mannlicher style Berthier clip, chambered for 8mm Lebel.
By the way, I had a couple people ask about why there is no interrupter on the Berthier system,
something like in the Mosin-Nagant to prevent rim lock. And the answer is actually in the cartridges.
So unlike the Russian 7.62x54 rimmed or the British .303, there's actually a double taper on the 8mm Lebel case.
So it's tapered here and then the taper increases right here before you hit the shoulder.
So if you actually push these two rounds together, like they would be in a clip,
you'll see that the contact surface is actually the second taper. And because of that,
because of the angle of that taper, the cartridge rims are not in a position to actually interfere with each other.
They just barely come into contact, but you won't have one sitting behind the other.
So for that reason, when you have them in one of these clips, ... the rims are not going to lock against each other,
and as a result there's no need for an interrupter mechanism in the rifle.
So that is pretty much the story of the 1907/15 Berthier.
Side by side with the Lebel it's interesting in that they present two substantially different rifles.
The Lebel had a larger magazine, but it was a heavier weapon, it was slower to load.
The Berthier had a much smaller magazine, only 3 rounds instead of 8,
but it was much faster to reload, it was a simpler gun to operate,
and it's a better balanced gun really. There's just a lot less weight up front on the Berthiers.
So, which one would you prefer? It's really kind of a toss-up. It's one of those very interesting
questions where there are substantial differences.
Most of the time when you're looking two contemporary bolt action rifles they're basically for practical purposes the same.
But the Berthier and the Lebel do present some real differences.
Anyway, we will continue this next time with the Model of [1916],
and that is going to be the model that is probably the most common to find in the United States.
Or probably even in France these days for collectors,
because while a lot of these guns were made in this configuration during the war,
once the war ended there would be a series of upgrade programs to try
and get all the guns in French inventory up to the 1916 standard.
So finding original matching examples like these in their World War One form ... can be a little difficult sometimes.
Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed the video. If you enjoy French rifles enough to want to proclaim it on a t-shirt,
make sure to take a look at the shirt over here. There's a link to pick up one of those in the description text below,
but do act quickly if you want one because those are only available until July 28th. ...
Thanks for watching.