Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today, courtesy of Inter Ordnance or
Royal Tiger Imports, we're taking a look at an M38 Carcano.
This is a Fucile Corto, or short rifle.
And it is the rifle that Italy developed for World War Two.
And I will argue that it is conceptually one of the
very best ... bolt action rifles of World War Two.
I know that's a bold statement, but hear me out.
The origin of this rifle goes back to the 1920s when
the Italian military started to get concerned that their 6.5 ammunition
just didn't have the terminal effectiveness.
It wasn't deadly enough, ... it just wasn't good enough.
It was in fact the very first 6.5 cartridge ever to be adopted,
it was a relatively low powered cartridge by what were becoming the standards of the day.
You've got the Germans over there with their super- powerful 8mm Mauser, and the Americans with .30-06,
and the British with .303. Everyone's got big bullets.
And the Italians are sitting here looking at their little 6.5 going, "Well, maybe it's not so great."
So they start investigating a larger cartridge, and by 1935 they basically have it finalised.
And it's going to be 7.35mm, which is basically .300 inch as opposed to 0.308 inch.
It's a .30 calibre cartridge at 7.35x51mm.
So the same case length as what would eventually be adopted for the NATO standard round.
It fired a 125 grain projectile at approximately 2,500 feet per second.
A little bit less than that out of a carbine, 2,500 out of this guy.
Now they didn't have a lot of money to put into this project.
So they wanted to be able to convert existing rifles to the new pattern, the new standard, and the new ammunition.
In fact, ... the chambers of the 6.5 and the 7.35 are similar enough that you can actually rebore
a 6.5 barrel to 7.35 without having to change the chamber end.
Which is maybe part of the reason they didn't make that cartridge any longer.
Part of the idea was they wanted to convert existing rifles, so they didn't have to make everything new from scratch.
However, they did create a new standard rifle.
They knew that like, "OK, the M91 Carcano, the rifle is way too big, it's clunky, it's obsolete.
The carbines are maybe a little too short for everybody. We want something new for the standard infantry."
And they sort of took a page from the French plan,
where the French ... plan was to have a semi-automatic rifle for front-line infantry,
the guys who are the standing army and the best qualified soldiers.
And then have an ... effective but economical bolt action for the second line troops,
for reservists, for the reserve army, you know the stockpiles of arms.
The Italians did the same thing with this. Their plan was to have a semi-automatic rifle for the hotshots,
... well, the main infantry in the standing army, and that was going to be made by Armaguerra.
And war pressures, the outbreak of World War Two, prevented that from happening. Only a small number of those were made.
And by the way, I have a video on that. So if you're interested, check it out.
The M38 was then going to be the secondary bolt action rifle to support the semi-auto.
The idea being we don't want to have to pay to make, you know, a million semi-auto rifles
so we can give one to every currently serving soldier, and also have this big reserve stockpile.
Our big reserve stockpile will be these guys.
So in a rather forward-looking recognition of the realities of combat,
one of the big changes they made was to replace the rear sight.
They took that whole fancy adjustable 2,000 metre, or even 1,500 metre on the carbines, rear sight,
threw it away and replaced it with a fixed 200 yard notch.
Not because their soldiers couldn't shoot, but because they recognised that in actual combat
virtually nobody was ever taking shots at over about 300 metres.
So why are we spending all the time and money to put this fancy 2,000 metre rear sight on the rifle?
98% of what we need is done with this. It's simpler, there's nothing to break, there's nothing to go wrong.
Nobody's going to accidentally set their sights wrong and then miss.
So they did that. They gave it a bent down bolt handle like the carbines. They gave it, oh, you can't see it there,
they gave it a side mounted sling set up.
In many ways that changes they made, ... the features that they chose for this,
are kind of analogous to what the Germans did with the Kar98K.
They gave it a much shorter barrel than the original rifles.
It's just a little bit longer than the carbines at just over 21 inches, 536mm I believe.
They gave it a really cool folding bayonet, which we'll take a look at in a moment.
And then they kept all of the basic mechanics. So the bolt is identical to ... all of the other Carcanos.
The magazine is identical, the action, the receiver,
the whole rear end of the stock, all that stuff is exactly the same.
Both for training familiarity, and so that they didn't have to retool anything and they could easily convert existing guns.
By 1938 this project was all set and good to go, and they started making 7.35 guns.
So let's take a look at this thing up close.
Alright, like I said, the mechanics are the same. This is a basic Carcano action.
Identical really to everything going back to the original long rifles.
Our changes are mostly in here, so let's take a look at this up close.
We now have a simple fixed rear notch sight. Nothing you can change, nothing to go wrong.
And it is marked with the calibre of the rifle. Because they were transitioning to a new cartridge
they wanted to make sure people were able to keep the cartridge straight.
And I'll touch on this in a few minutes, but they would also eventually make these guns in 6.5,
and so on a 6.5 example it says "Cal 6.5" up there.
They also changed the profile of the barrel shank here.
Instead of having flat facets where they put on markings, it's now just turned round or conical.
However, the basic marking scheme remains the same. We have our serial number here.
We have our manufacturer, this is Terni.
And then we have the date of production. Which on this one is upside-down and is 1939.
The XVII is the Roman numeral 17, because 1939 is the 17th year of the Fascist Era in Italy.
After Mussolini came to power they started marking dates in both manners on the rifles.
In a further effort to make sure people didn't mix up the two different cartridges
they also marked the 7.35 calibre guns on the stocks.
This one's a little worn down, but you can still see it there pretty clearly.
One thing I do want to point out, most of the [M38s] in 7.35 in the United States came by way of Finland.
In the ... early summer of 1940 Italy would supply almost 95,000 of these rifles to Finland.
And the Finns marked them with an "SA" in a box right here.
So this one ... having come by way of Ethiopia through Inter Ordnance, is kind of cool
in that it's fairly scarce in the US to have M38s in 7.35 that are not Finnish guns.
Anyway, moving along. We have a little trapdoor in the butt plate here.
There was no longer a cleaning rod stored under the barrel. Instead you got a three-part cleaning rod,
... three segments that would screw together, that fit in a little hole under this trapdoor.
Unfortunately, I don't have an example of the rod to show you.
We have a finger groove that was added to the stock, a little surprisingly,
none of the Carcanos before this had that feature. It was there ... for actual ease of handling.
And it also actually makes a convenient way for troops to identify 7.35 calibre guns. Kind of like the AK-74.
We have an upper handguard with a barrel band and front sling swivel. Note these swivels of course are on the side,
because carrying the gun across your back is really more convenient for most people than over the shoulder.
And then we have a bunch of hardware out here. So a nose cap with a traditional style of bayonet lug.
Front sight. And you'll notice there is a cutout, kind of like the M91 Moschettos, for a folded bayonet blade.
Well, since they were redesigning the whole rifle with this new concept of simple and efficient,
and only do what you really need, they did the same thing to the bayonet.
So the new M38 pattern bayonets were substantially shorter than the early M91s.
Really more of sort of a utility fighting knife style of thing than the old school sword bayonet idea.
And in order to make this thing handy, they actually made it a folding bayonet.
So I have a button here that allows me to fold the blade forward. I can then rotate it around, snap it back into place.
And now the bayonet is, well, it's in the folded position and I can snap it onto the rifle just like so.
And I can carry it there without the rifle actually being any longer, without risk of accidentally poking people in the eye.
And then when I need to use it I simply push the button, pull the blade back,
snap it out like that.
Now they did also issue them with scabbards, so you could carry this thing on your belt as well.
But the idea was it's a little more convenient to carry it out here.
In fact on the early pattern of bayonets which we have here,
they even changed up the idea of how to operate the bayonet lug, giving it a side latch, right there.
Now this actually didn't work very well, it wasn't reliable, and it would come flying off the rifle periodically.
So they had a second type that was much more prevalent, where they got rid of this lever thing
and gave it a traditional button back here.
They would eventually then develop a third pattern where they realised the whole folding thing was
really kind of a waste of effort. And they used basically the same material, the same components,
but they just fixed the blade in the extended position and got rid of the hardware that allowed you to fold it.
So three main patterns. There was, I believe, a fourth one that was the fixed blade version
but made from scratch as a fixed blade. Not a conversion of a folding design.
So this was the standard M38 bayonet.
We should talk briefly about the 7.35 cartridge. It used the exact same clips.
So we got a steel one, which was more common. We got some brass ones here that were a little less common but also used.
This is more of a spitzer bullet, where the 6.5 was always a pretty seriously round-nosed affair.
This was designed to keep as much in common as possible with the original 6.5.
So the case head is identical, the bolt face of the ... rifles in the two different cartridges are identical.
The clips are identical. The magazines are identical.
They really did as little as possible, as little as they really needed to, in changing the cartridge.
Just to give it actually a lighter-weight bullet, but larger in diameter, which they figured would be more effective.
And moving at a higher muzzle velocity, so about 200 feet per second faster than the original 6.5,
because this is actually a lighter bullet. So the 6.5 was 162 grain, the 7.35 was a 125 grain.
... 1938 didn't give them very much time to re-equip the entire Italian Army with Model 38s in 7.35 calibre.
In fact didn't give them hardly any time at all. And by 1940 they had already realised that,
"Oh boy, this was a mistake. Like I immediately regret this decision."
The problem was logistically they are now at war, at World War,
and trying to supply two different cartridges to two different rifles that kind of look the exact same.
Especially when you consider not just the Fucile Cortos, the Model 38s,
but the conversions that they were making of the Moschetto and the TS, the Truppe Speciali Moschettos,
the carbines, they're converting those carbines to 7.35 at the same time.
And so you've got some guys have them in 7.35, some guys have them in 6.5.
You don't want to mix up the ammo because that could be dangerous ... at worst, and at best case it just doesn't work.
Make sure the right ammo goes to the right units,
in addition to like the right ammo going to the right guy, because sometimes you even had mixed ... rifles within a single unit.
And ... even if you got all that straight now, well, you've got machine guns also to deal with.
Are we changing ... the calibre of our heavy machine guns? Are we making only new 7.35 machine guns?
It was a disaster. By 1940 they cut off the 7.35. They said, "Forget it. We're going back to 6.5 for the duration of the war."
And so they actually stopped making M38s in 7.35 and just started making them in 6.5.
And they did the same thing with the other patterns, with the Moschettos, both patterns of Moschettos.
And they would eventually actually make another sort of long rifle, the Model 41, in 6.5. But that's a subject for a separate video.
So what we end up with are 6.5 and 7.35 versions of basically every Italian rifle that was part of the Model 38 program.
The Italians would continue to use these guns through the end of World War Two.
And then in fact they continued to use them in some roles through the 1960s and '70s.
Mostly reserve stuff and that sort of thing.
But I believe, I will argue that, the changes made to the Model 38,
the short-range fixed sight, the short barrel, the side mounted sling attachments, the bent bolt.
Just the very handy nature of this rifle, I think make it a real contender for the best bolt action rifle of the war.
It has a quick to load 6 round capacity.
In either calibre it is lighter shooting than the cartridges that spurred the Italians to develop 7.35 in the first place.
It's a much more pleasant gun. 6.5 especially is a very pleasant thing to shoot out of one of these short rifles.
Yeah, to my mind like I'd much rather have one of these
than an 8mm Mauser that's bigger, heavier, kicks more and holds less ammo.
So, a controversial opinion perhaps, but there it is.
So a big thanks to Inter Ordnance for providing this rifle for me to show to you guys.
They have a whole bunch of cool stuff on their website,
not just a huge variety of Carcanos, but a whole bunch of other cool stuff.
All of these rifles came out of Ethiopia and there are some great stories behind them, so check those out.
And thanks for watching.
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