Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company taking a look at a pair of
German pre-World War One carbines.
This is a Karabiner 88 and a Gewehr 91.
Don't let the name surprise you, they're both carbines.
It's just one of them happen to get named Gewehr,
we'll get to that in a few minutes.
Now the origin of these guns, of course, goes back to
basically the development of the French Lebel in 1886
using smokeless powder. This pretty much revolutionised
military rifles, it made everything else that
existed obsolete pretty much overnight.
And it forced everyone else to all of a sudden scramble to catch up, and the people
most interested in catching up and remaining on par with the French militarily were, of course, the Germans.
Now, what that led to was the development of the Gewehr 88. This was the so-called "Commission Rifle".
It was put together with elements from a number of different designers.
They probably should have just gone to Mauser, but they didn't. Instead they ended up with
basically a Mannlicher style bolt, Mannlicher packet loading, or en bloc loading system,
the bolt head was designed by Schlegemilch, they had a barrel jacket designed by a guy named Mieg,
which would kind of take the place of a handguard. Helped with free-floating the barrel,
helped with keeping their hands from getting burned when the barrel got hot.
And they've put all of this stuff together and you end up with, well, a smokeless powder repeating rifle.
And now they need one for the cavalry, because the German cavalry have
kind of been getting the short end of the stick for almost 20 years at this point.
The previous rifle before the Gewehr 88 that was in use with the German military was the Gewehr 71/84.
This was an improvement over their single-shot Gewehr 71 by giving it a Kropatschek style tube magazine under the barrel.
Not a bad system, a bunch of people used Kropatschek systems during this period.
However, it's not really a system conducive to making a carbine. For the same reason that the French never...
Well, the French developed the Berthier instead of having a Lebel carbine for the cavalry.
The problem is twofold. First off, when you make a carbine out of a tube magazine gun,
you reduce the magazine length substantially, you reduce the capacity. I suppose sort of second and a half
problem is that ... you do run the risk of magazines detonating in tube magazine guns like this.
But then the other issue is for cavalry on horseback, reloading a tube magazine is kind of a tricky proposition.
It takes a lot more dexterity than dropping a round into a single-shot breech,
or loading a Mannlicher-style packet all in one go straight into the rifle.
So the 71/84 carbine was something that they tested, but never actually adopted or produced.
And so even by 1888, a lot of the German cavalry were still using single-shot Mauser 71 pattern rifles.
Or, maybe even worse than that, some of them were still using converted captured French Chassepot
needle rifles from the Franco-Prussian war. This finally had to change.
And so the goal was to actually adopt a carbine and a rifle of the Gewehr 88 pattern at the same time.
That didn't quite work out because they were trying to, like, get contracts and get production
started for the carbines while they were still figuring out some of the details of how they wanted the guns
to actually be designed. But they came close, and production of the Karabiner 88 actually began in 1890.
That's not bad, considering that it took them a year or two to get the Gewehr 88 production started.
So, while there were four big state-run arsenals in Germany at this point, the carbines, the Karabiner 88,
was actually contracted out to a pair of smaller commercial companies, C.G. Haenel and V.C. Schilling,
both companies in Suhl. And they were given contracts to make 200,000 of these carbines, this guy.
And these would be issued out to cavalry.
And they were a little behind schedule in their production of course, because of some of these issues.
They had to actually figure out exactly how they were gonna design the guns, and then they also had to get
some of the tooling and gauges from the state arsenals, as this was developed based on the Gewehr 88 system.
But production actually went through and by the mid-1890s they basically had all of these guns done.
... We'll take a look at the mechanics, and how they changed this from the long rifle version in just a moment.
But before we get to that, I also want to touch on the fact that we have a Gewehr 91,
which is basically the exact same thing with the addition of a stacking rod here under the muzzle.
That was necessary because when they got around to giving these carbines out, they gave them to cavalry,
and then they decided also to give them to all of the other sort of special troops who didn't need a full-length rifle.
So guys in the supply train, bicyclists and artillery men.
And one of the problems they had with the artillery guys is ... you've got a crew of guys running a big cannon,
you don't really need them to be carrying their rifles slung on their back all the time.
It's much more convenient for them to be able to stack the rifles in a little tripod,
or a quadrapod, or however many they've got in the crew. Stack all the rifles over on the side,
they're easily and immediately available if they need them, but you don't have a rifle flopping around
on your back while you're trying to do things like carry ammunition for the cannon, load it, all of this sort of stuff.
The problem is there's no way to stack the Karabiner 88 because it doesn't have a stacking swivel.
It also doesn't have a bayonet lug, so you can't like fix a bayonet and then use that
(you use the bayonet's quillions to stack the guns). So they came up with ... an additional version,
the Gewehr 91, where they just stuck a stacking rod on.
Now you can give it to the artillery, they can put it in a ... nice neat little pile, keep the guns off the ground,
and have their hands free and not have the guns flopping around on their back
while they're trying to do other, more important jobs.
So that's the reason that these two different versions exist.
The stacking rod's not so great for trying to slam into a cavalry saddle, but you do need it for the artillery troops.
Now with that explained, why don't we go ahead and look at the specific details of this,
and how it differs from the long rifle.
I don't know if it comes through on camera so well, but these are really remarkably light and handy
little carbines. Really great for manoeuvrability. 17.1 inch barrels, 37.4 inch overall. That's a 435mm barrel
and 0.95 metres of overall length, and they weigh in at 3.1 kilos, which is about 6.8 pounds.
So you don't really want something much lighter or shorter than that with a full power military rifle cartridge.
But for their purposes these things, really fantastic. And I can see why they were actually relatively popular guns.
These used the same basic action as the Gewehr 88, so turn bolt,
Mannlicher-style 5 round en bloc clip to load. When you chamber the fifth round, the clip falls out the bottom.
The Gewehr 88s went through a couple of improvements. One to close off the bottom of the magazine well,
and then eventually they were updated further to use Mauser-style stripper clips.
The carbines, both the Kar 88 and the Gewehr 91 carbines, never went through those updates,
so they all remain packet loading guns, and you will not find stripper clip guides mounted on them.
The bolt handles were made in this distinctive flattened sort of spoon pattern.
There's a little bit of checkering on the bottom of the bolt handle here,
because it's pretty pretty close and tight to the stock there.
You need as much leverage as you can get to open it up, especially if you have a sticky case.
But that was a change made to make the guns sit better in a cavalry scabbard.
And that's how these were intended to be used, ... in a scabbard on the side of a horse.
With that in mind, they also gave them this nice style of cavalry nose cap.
It's rounded both on the front and the back so that this will slide easily both in and out of that scabbard.
And that protects the front sight from being banged around or knocked off of its zero
... when it is slung, scabbarded I suppose.
They initially wanted a rear sight that had a couple of adjustments down the length here,
kind of like you would get later with the Mauser 98 pattern.
But they discovered that if you actually set the sight to one of the longer settings, and
had it partially lifted up, you know, like this.
Well, then it would tend to get caught when you threw the rifle into its scabbard and bent.
So instead they went back to this original, it's really the Gewehr 88 pattern, where for long range
you flip the sight all the way up, and then there are actually two battle sight zeros on these guys.
So you've got a notch there for a close-range zero, and then for a slightly longer battle sight zero
you have a second leaf here that you can just roll up and use instead. So that was their workaround
for not being able to have a couple of easily selectable settings with a slider when the sight's horizontal.
One feature that they developed for the Kar 88 that actually would go on to have a very long service life
with the German military, was the way they attached the slings. So, they didn't want to have a sling swivel
on the bottom of the stock, because a cavalry trooper, if he's going to have this rifle slung,
he's gonna have it slung across his back diagonally, not over a shoulder, just to keep it stable and retained.
So, instead of a sling swivel, they came up with this idea of just cutting a slot in the stock
and you would pass the sling through here and then it has a buckle that holds it in place on this side.
And then, on the front there's just a band on the side.
So there's no ... loose sling swivels kind of flopping around to get in the way,
or to interfere, again, with sliding this thing into a scabbard. Now I should point out that this sling swivel
is on the wrong side. Someone's put this barrel band on backwards, it should be over here.
But I'm not going to pull the nose cap off to swap that around, so be aware of that.
At any rate, this pattern may look recognisable, because it would go on to be used on the Kar 98k,
which the Germans made, like, a bazillion of through World War Two.
We should also take a look at the markings. The receiver side is marked Kar 88 instead of Gewehr 88.
We have a bolt release and a flag style safety back here.
Just like the Gewehr 88, there's a button in the front of the trigger guard.
This allows you to release the clip before it's completely empty, should you want to.
The serial number of the rifle is on both the barrel jacket here as well as the receiver.
And these were done in increments of 10,000 with letter suffixes. So this would be the third batch of 10,000.
I'm sorry, fourth, the first batch had no suffix, then A, then B, then C and so on.
I believe total production of the Kar 88 was about 225,000 guns.
And they were initially manufactured by Schilling of Suhl, and Haenel of Suhl.
Although the Erfurt arsenal did come in in 1891 and build a batch of them as well, so you'll find those as well.
And there are a few out there that have been made from reclaimed Gewehr 88 receivers,
you know, if they needed a new receiver for a repair, or something like that. And so you will
occasionally see guns that have other manufacturer's marks, because they were using Gewehr 88 receivers.
On the Gewehr 91s of course, the receiver's marked Gewehr 91.
Serial number patterning is the same. The receiver markings are basically the same.
This one is actually an Erfurt made gun. And this has that 'S' marking over the front of the receiver.
That indicates that the chamber was updated for the spitzer cartridge.
I forgot to mention these on the 88, but there's also a series of proof marks and property marks on the side of the receiver.
One other marking you will typically find on these are unit markings.
You may find that on the front sling band, as on our Kar 88 here.
Or on the front of the nose cap, as you see on the Gewehr 91 here.
This one has also been cancelled out, and that was also typically done if the rifle was taken out of service,
or transferred to a different unit. The unit marking would be cancelled, you know, crossed over.
There are a number of different styles to how they cross these out.
But if it was issued out to a new unit, then you'd see an undefiled unit mark somewhere else on the rifle.
The one feature that ... actually differentiates
a Gewehr 91 from a Karabiner 88 is this stacking rod under the muzzle.
You can see how that would be a problem if you are trying to throw this thing into a scabbard.
However, it gives the artillery and other troops an easy way to stack the rifles.
So that's added on, that's the only difference between these two. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon
to find these guns sporterised and people having cut those things off, which is really unfortunate.
One other neat thing I can point out given these two particular rifles is, this is our Kar 88
this is our Gewehr 91, the 91 has been updated with an improved safety mechanism here.
This little extension on the side of the striker is a gas deflector.
So one of the problems with the Gewehr 88 design was that it didn't have any good system for
redirecting gas in case you had a ruptured cartridge.
It would ... tend to come back straight along the side of the bolt and into the shooters face.
So they added this very simple, but effective, little block here
that would deflect gas out to the side should you have that happen.
The Kar 88 here has not been updated with that improved feature, while the 91 has, in this case.
Total production of the Gewehr 91 was actually substantially less than the Karabiner 88.
I haven't seen any firm numbers, the best estimate I've seen is like 65,000 of them.
Then they are definitely harder guns to find than the Kar 88 carbines today.
Now when it comes to actual use of the guns, interestingly the first use of them,
the first issue of the carbines was not, like, to some elite heavy cavalry squad.
It was actually to the Prussian rural police to deal with a miners strike in the Ruhr.
... Someone had a direct connection to the Kaiser and went, "Hey, we've kind of got a bunch of angry miners here,
and the police are armed with maybe revolvers at best. Can we get some hardware?" And the Kaiser figured,
"Well, I've just approved this fancy new top-of-the-line carbine. Let's send some of them over."
So that was the first couple thousand were actually issued out to the Prussian rural police.
After that, of course they did go to the cavalry. They went to the artillery troops and some of the other specialised troops.
But, not for all that long. So in 1909 the Germans adopted a cavalry version of the Mauser 98.
This was using a more powerful spitzer cartridge. ... Technically the same cartridge, it's still 8x57, but
the bullet diameter changed a little bit, it's a lighter bullet at a higher velocity.
It's a better cartridge than the round nosed version of the 8mm Mauser
that they had developed around the Gewehr 88.
So they've got new carbines, they are ballistically better, ... they don't have some of the design
issues that the 88 family did. And so they were starting to issue those out, and the
88 carbines and the 91 carbines were slowly being surplus, they were getting rid of them.
Until World War One happened, and of course when World War One broke out now you know what?
We're gonna kind of stop surplusing guns. And a lot of this stuff would come back into issue.
Everything that was still in inventory. In fact by the end of the war
they had no extra reserves of these rifles, because they had all been issued out.
... They're shorter guns, they're handier, they're lighter guns than the Mauser 98 carbines.
And so they were actually really fantastic rifles for guys who are doing jobs where they had to be armed,
but they probably weren't actually going to use their rifles. So guys like artillery crews.
And these would see extensive use there, they'd also see use in the airborne corps, like the balloon troops.
What are you really gonna do with a rifle from a balloon? But you kind of ought to have something.
And this is a lighter gun than a Mauser 98. And for those early aerial jobs, weight was really an important factor.
So if you can give someone a rifle that's maybe a pound lighter. Well, why not, what does that hurt?
After World War One, however the guns pretty much all disappeared, because as light and handy as they are,
the Treaty of Versailles strictly limited the number of arms that the German military was allowed to keep,
and they had way more Mauser 98 pattern guns, including ... Mauser 98 pattern carbines,
than they were allowed to have. And they were not going to bother with keeping some of this
obsolete technology when they weren't allowed to even keep all of their modern guns.
So after World War One these things were all dispersed, they were destroyed, they were sold as surplus,
they were converted into sporting guns, that sort of thing.
... Unfortunately that makes them relatively scarce guns today, especially the Gewehr 91s
which they didn't make as many of as the carbines. So finding these two in really fairly decent condition,
I mean, at least finding these two that have not been sporterised, is pretty cool.
If you would like more information on either of these in particular,
... you can take a look at Rock Island's catalogue page for them. That'll have their pictures,
and their description, and their price estimates. And you can access that by way of Forgotten Weapons,
which is linked in the description text below.
Thanks for watching.