Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
with a pair of German World War One Tankgewehrs.
Now, what's very special about this
and frankly the reason I have them both on the table
is because this is simply your
typical standard production Tankgewehr,
where this is one of the only 300
of the early Kurz model first production guns.
And perspective maybe skews it a little bit,
but this guy is actually about 4 inches shorter than the standard production.
So, a basic thumbnail history of these, ... by the way if you would like more detail on
the developmental history of the Tankgewehr, I would encourage you to check out
the C&Rsenal video on this firearm. I'll link to that at the very end.
But the thumbnail sketch of it is, once the French and the British
start showing up to World War One battles with tanks,
the German military kind of freaks out a little bit.
They need something that they can use to actually address these new weapons.
"How do we fight a tank? It's been intentionally armoured enough to be
... pretty much immune to machine gun fire." Now there were several things that were done.
Tank were often sitting ducks for artillery, especially with their mechanical unreliability.
The Germans would develop pretty good practice at taking 77mm field guns,
hiding them such that they could pull them out and direct fire into groups of tanks.
And that was very effective, that was probably their most effective anti-tank weapon.
They would also use trench mortars,
as well as indirect artillery fire on tanks, also very effectively.
But what they really wanted, what they came up with was
"We want ... basically a .50 plus calibre machine gun that we can use
that will be able to penetrate tank armour."
So this would use a newly developed cartridge.
And they developed, in quite short order, the 13.2mm 'Tank und Flieger' round,
which was intended for use on both tanks and also aircraft at the time.
Now, the original intention was to develop an enlarged,
basically an oversized Maxim gun to use this cartridge.
As part of that ... it came to light that well, we are going to need to test the cartridge,
do ballistics, pressure, all that sort of thing.
And that's going to require just a very simple bolt action sort of test bed,
and we can get a bolt-action test bed up in production a lot faster than an entire new machine gun.
So while the Nürnberg Company, which had made Maxim machine guns,
... set about developing the 13.2mm version of the Maxim,
Mauser took on the job of developing a single-shot bolt-action version.
And that would be the Mauser t-gewehr, Tankgewehr.
By the way, yes ... the Germans did use the word "tank" in World War One,
"panzer" would come after the war, so.
Tankgewehr or Tank Abwehr Gewehr.
Now, the first production guns were ready in May of 1918,
May 10th of 1918 was when production began.
And about the first 300 were of this pattern, and it's actually marked "Kurz",
and the idea is ... it actually has about a 33.7 inch barrel,
but it's a very large profile barrel, and you'll see that in a moment.
So they changed the round to get a little more energy out of the cartridge,
and they realised, "We really don't need quite as much of a wall thickness on the barrel."
So they extended the barrel 4 more inches to just under 38 inches,
but at the same time they also turned down the profile quite a lot, and
as a result the long-barrelled gun is almost 2 pounds,
or almost a kilo, lighter than the short gun, which is a little counter-intuitive.
Now, there are a couple of other subtle differences between these,
and those we should take a look at up close.
So both of these have standard Mauser markings on the barrels,
although this one's a little more visible because it's been filled in in white.
So it's a Mauser barrel banner logo with the date, they're all 1918 dated.
The standard guns are serialised and proofed here on the back of the barrel, the chamber area.
And then they are also going to be serialised on the receiver, as well as
on the main diameter of the barrel, and also on the barrel band.
And a bunch of places on the bolt assembly, which we'll get to later.
The short versions are actually marked Kurz, and then serial numbered and proofed.
So this one is number 86 out of, again, about 300. Got a serial number there.
And then this one is numbered on the barrel, but not on the barrel band.
As a general rule, Tankgewehr stocks were made in two pieces
so that they could utilise smaller pieces of wood, make more efficient production.
And you can see the space here, that's where the two pieces of this stock [fit] together.
You will occasionally run into a single piece wood stock,
on the ... standard production guns,
but this, our early Kurz model, actually has a single piece stock.
And I suspect that that was standard production, and it was
one of the other changes that was implemented when they lengthened and turned down the barrels.
That's when they also added in the use of two piece stocks to conserve wood.
Also worth pointing out that the trigger guard is longer on the standard model
than it was on the early Kurz model. Not by a lot, but just a little.
And the sights were also slightly changed.
So this is our standard production gun, it is marked up to 500 metres.
And if you look at the side of the rear sight bar here,
the notches, ... the ability to actually lock this slider in place, they end at 500.
Above that it just slides, because you are not supposed to be shooting beyond 500.
Frankly, the armour piecing effectiveness of the Tankgewehr cartridge
(which was quite good a close range, we're talking a little over 20mm of penetration at 100 metres),
it dropped off to the point of being basically not practical by 300.
So even 500 metres here is optimistic.
Well, on the early Kurz gun it's still only marked up to 5, but it does have notches
all the way out to what originally would have been the original 2,000 metres.
So I don't know if some of the gunners were getting a little overly ambitious
with the shots they were trying to take, or if was just simply a matter of production efficiency that
if we're not even going to mark it, there's no point in putting the notches there
and putting the cuts in the side of the rear sight.
Here we can actually see one of those classic optical illusions.
The actual bore diameter is identical on these two guns,
but this one looks smaller because the overall outside diameter is so much larger.
You can clearly see the difference there. In fact if we look down the length of the bore
it sort of comes through on camera here, but
the early Kurz model is basically not tapered from the barrel band.
And that's what they change on the standard production,
is they add a substantial amount of taper to reduce the weight of the barrel.
You can also see the two different patterns of bipod here.
The guns were initially used with MG 08/15 bipods,
the mounting lug on the guns is standard, identical, interchangeable with the 08/15.
However the spikes are rather small, and there just wasn't enough ground support
on these to keep the gun floating, essentially, on mud.
So what they did was redesign a stronger, larger, bipod.
This one here, which has a casting at the top, tubular steel [legs], and then much larger pads and spikes.
So this will do a much better job of keeping the gun from sinking into soft soil.
Technically speaking ... the guns probably ought to be swapped,
because the earliest guns would have still had MG 08/15 bipods.
This was developed ... later on, and is probably more appropriate to the standard production gun,
but this is how they came into Morphy's, and so I'm not going to switch them around.
As for the bolt assemblies, I can only spot one difference between them,
and that is here on our early Kurz gun the ejector is a little bit shorter
than it is on the standard production. You can this cut's much higher up into the breech face.
This suggests that they had some problems with ... insufficiently energetic,
ejection of empty cases on the early guns.
And so they lengthened the ejector and at the same time its slot in the bolt.
The extractors don't appear to have changed.
So the extractor as originally designed was clearly sufficient.
Sorry, I lied, there is one other very subtle change, and that is
on the production model we have ... this sort of angled cut on the front of the firing pin.
And on the early model, the Kurz model, we do not. So.
Slight change there, probably for handling gas in case of a ruptured case or primer.
Naturally it is extremely cool to have a chance to actually take look at one of
the Kurz, or shortened, versions of the Tankgewehr.
They only made 300 of them, only a handful survive today around the world.
I'm not sure if there even is another one beyond this here in the United States.
But I thought it would be a great opportunity to compare them side by side,
and the table hasn't collapsed yet, so we are doing well.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.