Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Royal Danish ... Arsenal Museum, The Tøjhusmuseet,
taking a look at a pair of 1896 Madsen-Rasmussen rifles,
these ... are a very interesting early semi-automatic rifle.
This is a development from the 1888 Madsen-Rasmussen rifle,
which was in fact the first military adopted
(although not in large numbers), self-loading rifle.
Now, I have an earlier video on that 1888 rifle.
If you haven't seen it, you should definitely go back
and watch that to understand some of the context
of where this 1896 pattern rifle came from.
However, where this would go would ultimately not be the shoulder rifle at all,
this would turn into the Madsen
(or, as it's properly pronounced in Danish, the 'Massen')
light machine gun, and as a light machine gun
the mechanical concept that these rifles are based on would become very popular and very successful.
They were never bought by any really huge militaries, but they were sold to a
vast number of smaller military forces. And they were in use ...
Well, the Danish military used them until the 1950s at least, the Brazilian police
would be using Madsen light machine guns into at least the 1990s.
So they were a very prolific and long-lived system. Which is really cool,
especially considering how early these things were actually developed. So,
this is basically a semi-automatic, falling- block system. It's a very unusual design,
and very much steampunk, early technology sort of system.
Now in this particular guise, what they have done is
replaced a Martini style of charging lever down here,
with an actual bolt handle on the side.
Now remember that this ... as a falling-block rifle,
this doesn't have a bolt that cycles back and forth. It has a bolt that just cycles up and down.
So the charging handle is a pivoting lever, not a straight-back handle.
So when I cycle this, it's going to come back like that.
It is a recoil operated rifle, and I think I should stop talking about it, and actually show you the inside.
So we have two different examples to take a look at here. And the one in the back,
this guy, is one of the standard Danish naval rifles,
the Flaadens Rekylgevær, or a naval recoil-operated rifle.
And so we'll take a look at this. However, I can actually show you a little bit more of this one.
This is, I don't know exactly to be honest, it's a prototype or an experimental gun,
and I am not sure if it comes just before or just after the standard naval rifles.
It does have a number of extra features. It's got an ejection port cover, its got a monopod,
and, for our purposes, what's most important is that it's much easier to open up and take a look inside.
So, let's start with this one, and then you can see exactly how this gun actually works.
Alright, we'll start with the magazine. This is sort of a magazine.
It's actually kind of more like just a cartridge holder, because there is no spring in it.
This is simply a gravity-feed magazine. And to take it out, we're just going to pull it towards the camera here.
There we go, so it pivots out this way and then just lifts off the gun.
As you can see, there's nothing in there, there's no follower, nothing, there is just this tab.
So I what I will do is pull this back, that tab is spring-loaded. You would then fill it with cartridges,
I would presume 10, and then in order to make sure that they don't fall out, you push that forward,
tab engages. That holds your cartridges in for you. You can then put the nose in here,
like that, and then push the magazine into the gun. And when you're ready to actually use it,
you pull this tab back again, so that it can feed. Now, this is offset,
it's not centre lined on the rifle, and that's because of the falling block system.
So, if I open the top cover here, we can get a view inside. (I should take the magazine off at this point.)
Right, let me show you the cycle first, and then we'll go through it step-by-step
So you can see here that the whole barrel assembly is cycling backward with the bolt.
That's because it is a short recoil action.
Now the first thing that's going to happen
is
this guy is going to push a cartridge laterally into the action here.
It's going to come back onto the top of the bolt,
we'll ignore this upward travel of the bolt for a moment.
Then when the bolt starts to go forward (there we go),
it lines up with the chamber, and then that little rammer is going to push all the way forward.
It's going to push a cartridge into the chamber and then cycle backward here.
The bolt then lifts up and in this
position, the bolt is now locked. So you can see into the chamber.
... If it were loaded you would be able to see the head of the cartridge case there,
However the case head is fully supported around its circumference, and
having a little bit of the actual base of the cartridge exposed doesn't cause any problems.
So in this position, it's locked, you are then ready to fire,
and we have back here a
firing pin, right there, and we have a hammer that's going to drop,
right there. So that's the hammer, and at that point the rifle fires. It does fire from a closed bolt.
Then this whole thing is going to cycle backward and when the bolt goes up,
right there ... that is actually clearing the chamber,
so that the cartridge can be extracted out the bottom and kicked out
through this ejection chute.
Well, I don't have any good way to actually show you that, but the cartridge is going to
come out here and get kicked backwards, right through that chute and out of the gun.
This does have a little cover that you can close,
and that cover automatically opens when you cycle the action,
like that.
Right, let's go through this one more time briefly. When I pull the handle,
the handle is actually lifting that lever, which is pulling on
this tail of the whole bolt and breech and barrel assembly.
That's very similar to the Madsen light machine guns.
So it's going to come back to here,
and then the cartridge gets rammed forward, breech ... rises, locks, and it's ready to fire.
The recoil spring is located right here, underneath this metal cover.
There is nothing else in the butt-stock, so just that. In fact, I can show you that on a partial cutaway gun.
So here's a partial cutaway example, and that is the recoil spring.
And when I cycle this, you can see that compressing,
like so.
You can also see on this cutaway, very clearly, the barrel reciprocating.
We have a shield here at the front, and you'll notice (I don't know if you can see it),
but this is actually connected. This is a sleeve that wraps around the barrel
and comes all the way back to the receiver back here.
So the front sight is on this bearing which is eventually, ultimately, connected back to the receiver,
not just sitting on the stock. And that's important because when the gun cycles,
the barrel is going to go back, like so (and lift off the table too).
Alright, so here's the the wider view on this whole thing. And this experimental version of the gun,
or prototype version of the gun, has a complete dust cover that
can open on the top so you can see what's going on and clear malfunctions.
Not that you'd ever get any with a design like this.
We can also see that it has a monopod on it, of sorts. That's a kind of unusual feature,
and it doesn't show up on the standard production guns.
It's just a single foot there with this sort of shield. So you could easily stab that
into the ground and you've kind of got ... an 1896 Danish Arisaka, I suppose.
That folds down for stowage,
and the tip of the monopod foot snaps into this. So to reopen it you just push this button in,
or pull the whole thing back. There we go.
These rifles have a pretty simple rear sight, pretty typical of the time period.
We know this is definitely a prototype rifle because the rear sight doesn't actually have any numbers on it.
It's got markings, but they never actually noted out what those ranges are.
And then the front sight is a pretty typical barleycorn.
Now to compare that to the standard Danish naval production version, which
... They did only make 50 of these, but it was a standard and accepted, adopted military firearm.
You'll see that the top cover on this one is much shorter.
This is hinged, but I'm actually not sure how to open it, I have been fiddling with them and haven't
figured it out, and I certainly don't want to break one of these, so I'm gonna leave it at that.
We have a serial number on the barrel assembly and the breech assembly here. This is number 54.
And we also have a shorter rear sight. It goes out to 1,200 meters, and for the long ranges we
flip it up, like so.
Same style of Barleycorn front sight there. Same style of recoiling barrel, of course.
The production versions work exactly the same way.
They still have this ejection chute on the bottom of the gun,
but they don't have the dust cover for it.
That would have been a very good thing for an infantry rifle, but not really necessary
for a naval fortress defence rifle. These got stored in pretty nice conditions,
and didn't have the problems of potential mud and dirt that an infantry rifle would.
Couple interesting quirks about this. As far as I can tell, it doesn't appear to have a manual safety.
This is for disassembly,
as is this lever.
There's a lug here on the bottom of the grip, but I believe that is the lug for,
or one of the lugs for, attaching the recoil spring on the inside, because that doesn't move.
This pistol grip design is actually really quite comfortable. In fact in general,
these are are quite comfortable rifles to handle and manipulate.
They're a little bit awkward to cycle, because that handle does go up, you ...
Today we would want a rifle that you can very dynamically cycle it from the shoulder.
This thing you kind of have to take the rifle down and hold it securely in order to charge it.
But boy, for 1896, considering your other options in self-loading rifles,
which are very, very limited, these things are remarkably modern and handy.
One thing I should briefly touch on, the serial number here is 54.
Now the best information I have says that 50 of these were purchased by the Danish Navy.
That could mean a couple of things. It could mean that information is wrong
and they actually bought more. It could also mean that the first small number
of rifles were prototypes or developmental guns from the company, and when the Danes
actually bought them, they bought number 10 through 60, or 11 through 60, or something like that.
So there is one other cool accessory here with this experimental version of the rifle.
And you'll notice on the front band, it has this little loop and that is for a hook,
right there, which connects to a muzzle cover. This is a nice little pressed brass muzzle cover.
Sits on there nicely like that and helps protect the rifle.
... This was something that was exclusive to the experimental gun, because the standard
production ones don't have this hook on the front band for it.
But it's just a really cool little ... accessory there.
As I mentioned, the ... Danish Navy purchased 50 of these and actually issued them out.
They were in Danish naval inventory until the 1930s, believe it or not.
And with that purchase it looked like there might actually be a significant commercial future for these rifles.
So in 1898 the two designers, Madsen and Rasmussen, sold their rights ... for the patents
to what would become the Danish Recoil Rifle Syndicate,
which would become known as the Madsen Company.
The initial chief engineer of the company was a Danish lieutenant named Jens Schouboe.
And so his name is actually on a lot of the later machine gun patents, and when
these were tested by the US, they were called the Schouboe rifle, because of his involvement.
Ultimately, the rifle would not go anywhere, would not have any further substantial development.
And it would be the machine guns that would take over and become very popular.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed taking a look at these two.
I think ... as far as I have been able to tell, all of the surviving 1896
Madsen-Rasmussen rifles are, in fact, here at the Tøjhusmuseet in Copenhagen.
They never ... expanded any farther than that.
So, a big thanks to the museum for letting me come and do some filming.
And if you enjoy seeing this on the net, I would appreciate it if you consider taking
a look at my Patreon account. It's folks there that make it possible for me
to travel to museums like this, and bring you guys guns like these.
Thanks for watching