Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Rock Island
taking a look at a very unusual magazine-fed Vetterli rifle.
This is an Italian Navy Vetterli-Ferracciu
(I think I'm pronouncing that correctly),
four shot, box-magazine fed, Model of 1870/90 rifle.
Now the backstory on this is that of course
Italy adopted the Vetterli pattern as its first
breech loading, self-contained cartridge firing rifle in 1870.
And it was just a single-shot rifle at that point.
And actually, much like the French, the Italian Navy adopted the Vetterli, of course,
and after a few years realised that like,
"This is fine, this is a good thing, this is better than ... non-cartridge guns.
But we often have guys who are going to be outnumbered.
A naval landing party is, whether they're fighting in colonial Africa or a near-peer European adversary,
marine landing parties are kind of always outnumbered by their adversary by definition.
And so it would be nice if we could give these guys rifles that had
more ammunition in them, repeating rifles."
And so just as the French Navy adopted the Kropatschek system with a tube-mag fed rifle,
well, the Italian Navy in 1882 adopted the Vetterli-Bertoldo, which is what this rifle is based on.
And it also has a tubular magazine ... in the stock underneath the barrel.
It held 9 rounds in the case of the Vetterli, and it would serve
well, I don't know how well it would serve. It was adopted in 1882 and it would last until about 1890.
At which point the Italian Navy decided to rebuild a lot of these guns into this, the Vetterli-Ferracciu,
which has a 4 round box magazine instead of a 9 round tube magazine.
Now tubular magazines have their downsides. They're kind of slow and awkward to load,
frankly, it's not really that much faster to shoot a tube magazine than it is a single-shot rifle.
It's faster if you start with the gun fully loaded, until you empty the magazine.
And then ... in some ways it's actually easier, it's faster, to reload a single-shot rifle
and keep shooting than it is to fill up a tube magazine like this or a Lebel or Kropatschek.
So there are some definite reasons why they may have gone to a box magazine.
But it's a rather unusual box magazine, and these are very unusual rifles, so let's take a closer look at it.
Alright, let's see if I can do this: the proper full name for this rifle would be the
Carabina a Ripetizione Vetterli-Ferracciu Modello 1870/90.
Which may have been abandoned because it was using up the Italian strategic reserve of rolled Rs.
At any rate, we have a lot of basic Vetterli elements here.
You can see the hook trigger guard that is typical of these. The same safety.
The bolt works the same way as all the standard Vetterlis.
It is a slightly different bolt to accommodate the different magazine pattern,
and it was a slightly different bolt for the Bertoldo version.
In fact you can just barely see it, if ...
right down in there, the stock still has a round cutout in it, a round tube in it, for cartridges.
Because these Ferraccius were converted from tube magazine Bertoldos.
You can see they have put the cleaning rod on the left side of the stock.
That is a little awkward, normally you put it under the barrel,
but in this case there is, or there was, a tube full of cartridges under the barrel.
So the cleaning rod goes on one side, the bayonet lug goes on the other side,
for, in this case, the same reason.
Now the magazine here has these distinctive little flanges coming off the back,
and those are for the magazine cut off.
Because, you can see the feed lips in there, well if I squeeze these together
I can pull the entire magazine down and it locks into this position.
So that's engaged, that's disengaged.
And what that's doing is simply pulling the feed lips and all
down to the point that the bolt will not pick up a cartridge when you close it.
So this is a way that you can hold the magazine in reserve,
and drop single rounds in here on top.
And feed from them until such time as you are ready to engage the magazine,
and pop it up into position [and] you've got four rounds ready to go.
... The reason for a 4 round magazine I suspect is because by the time that these were adopted,
the Vetterli-Vitali had been adopted. Which was a four round magazine of a totally different style.
But it was adopted by the Italian Army, and while I haven't been able to try it,
I suspect that the Vitali clips will fit in the [Ferracciu] system.
And that would give them a nice way to standardise
on the same charger/loader clips that were already in widespread use with the Army.
Got a few of the markings here we can take a look at.
We've got a serial number on the barrel there,
and it's also on the buttstock here.
This rifle was made in Brescia in 1882.
The rear sight on the Ferraccius is, well the whole rifle itself is new enough that this sight was calibrated
for the smokeless powder version of the 10.4mm Italian service cartridge.
Which was, for reference sake, a 247 grain bullet travelling at just a shade over 2,000 feet per second.
I think it's worth pointing out just briefly the bayonet lug up here.
The Navy did initially experiment with ... like a cutlass style of bayonet.
They ultimately would abandon that, and these take instead a standard Vetterli or Vetterli-Vitali pattern of bayonet.
Probably the most notable place where the Vetterli-Ferracciu actually saw service
would have been in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
Italy was one of the European nations that responded because, well,
Italy had Italians who were in China at the time who were in danger from the Boxer rebels.
And so the Italians responded to protect their citizens.
And in particular the cruiser Elba that responded to China
had a contingent of Marines who were armed with these, and took them ashore circa 1900.
Now, there were probably some other uses. And in fact the Vetterli-Ferraccius would remain
in Italian ship armouries really actually into World War One.
Basically in those places where they were so unlikely to be needed
that, "Well, we just haven't got around to replacing them."
This would, of course, ultimately be replaced by the Carcano.
The Ferracciu being adopted in 1890, the Carcano in 1891,
obviously this was not ... the top of the line rifle for very long at all.
But Carcanos were more needed elsewhere.
And until production could really get everything up to speed,
then these would remain in sort of reserve use on a few ships in the Italian Navy.
So, it's very cool to get a chance to take a look at one of these,
they are obviously very uncommon guns to find. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.