Craig's series of posts during June 2003 on Gunboards.
The thread was very long, many contributors, though none of the others contributed to the same degree as did Craig and I will include only his comments due to the length and the fact I do not know if the other contributors would like their comments "reborn" (I know reading mine they are rather embarrassing in their ignorance...)
It also included a outline of the KS rifles, I will include them also due to their value and the continuity of the information he provided.
This post shows the depth of Craig's knowledge and is a good example of his contribution to our understanding of German military rifles:
last updated at Jun 06, 2003 10:31 a.m. (1 times)
INTRODUCTION DATE OF RADFHRER GEWEHR 98
- Jürgen Kraus, Die feldgraue Uniformierung des deutschen Heeres 1907-1918, Osnabrück, Biblio, 1999, Bd. 1, S. 498 (in section on Bicycle troops; my translation)
"The [question] of the correct method of carrying the rifle - on the bicycle or across the back - was grappled with for a long time. So that it could be carried across the back the Prussian War Ministry introduced a special "Rifle for Bicycllists" on 11.12.1913. (91) It differed from the [regular infantry] rifle in [that it had] a bent bolt with corresponding cutout in the stock, a side-mounted sling like the carbine as well as a stronger ["stärkeren"] lower band like the carbine. This rifle was put in service in Bavaria on 29.12.1913. (92)"
(91) Pr.Km. 2150/13 geh AL KA Mü; Mkr 3993, pred. 112
(92) Bayer. KM. Nr.34, 150, Ebd.
(All documents located in the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ab. IV Kriegsarchiv, München)
JENSEN'S ARTICLE
Jensen's THE RADFAHRER GEWEHR appeared in KCN, Sep. 1989, p.6-8.
All the rifles he mentions are extensively rebuilt/mismatched and he does not provide a DETAILED description of any of them. To summarise his description:
The Radfahrer receiver, sights and barrel are those of a regular Gew 98; the left side of the receiver is marked Gew 98.
The bolt is bent and has a full-round knob.
The stock has a cutout for the bolt handle and slot for the sling like the K98.
The lower band is fitted with a bracket for the sling on the left side, is wider than the Gew 98 band, and is secured by a small bolt from the bottom.
The illustration provided shows a rifle with all of these characteristics. Note that the rifle illustrated has a sling adjustment hook on the upper band and a hole through the front of the triggerguard for adjusting the sling...
RADFAHRER GEW 98 SPANDAU 1914 SN 12xx
This rifle (unlike the specimens Jensen describes) is fullly originally matched. It is iillustrated
in Ball, Mauser Military Rifle of the World, 2d. ed., p. 112.
It conforms to Jensen's overall description BUT the upper band has NO hook for the sling and the triggerguard has NO hole for sling adjustment. This makes perfect sense; a side sling is fitted and there is, therefore, no requirement for either the hook or the hole through the triggerguard.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE PRE 1913/14 DATES
1) Field trials of the principle of the side sling/bent bolt done using existing rifles. Given the number of pre-1913/14 specimens Jensen discusses and likely survival rates I think this is unlikely.
2) Modification of existing pre 1913/14 rifles to 1913 specs at depots or by unit armorers
to speedily outfit bicyclist companies of the Jäger battalions. In this scenario the design is specified and manufacture begun at one or more arsenals; simultaneously, some rifles already in service are retrofitted. Retrofit rifles use existing standard Gew 98 upper bands and triggerguards. Given the pressure of mobilisation requirements in 1914 this seems to me to be more likely.
SURVIVAL RATES
See Jensen. Wacker, System Adalbert, says that surviving examples of the Radfahrer were utilised in developing the Kar 98b. It may be that some of the Kar 98bs built on Gew 98-marked receivers started life not as regular Gew 98s but as Radfahrers. At the outbreak of the war there were not (relatively speaking) very many bicycle troops and if (as Walter says) production was terminated in 1914 then the total number of Radfahrers was quite small to begin with.
We don't know where the specimens here in the US came from, nor when they came here. Most bicyclist units seem to served on the Eastern Front in WWI where there was no US involvement
and the likelihood of them being taken as war trophies by US forces during or after WWI is low. I suspect that they may have come back as WWII trophies.
FURTHER RESEARCH
Unfortunately the Prussian War Ministry archives were bombed flat by the British in 1945 so unless records show up from somewhere else and are published we are unlikely to know much more. It is entirely possible that there are more records on this topic to be found in the Bavarian archives, but somebody will have to go look for them...
Wacker, op. cit., mentions that the Radfahrer served as the conceptual prototype for the Kar 98b. If there are records surviving relevant to the Kar 98b perhaps they include something useful on the development of the Rafahrer...
It might pay to examine the unit histories of the Jäger battalions. Sometimes such histories
mention trials or give introduction dates for arms in a particular unit. The indices for such works are usually deficient so the entire work has to be hunted through to find the kernel of data one is looking for...
We need much more precise and detailed descriptions of known specimens than we now have. WaPruf2
last updated at Jun 06, 2003 10:49 a.m. (1 times)
As I noted in my previous post:
1) the Bavarian date of adoption is 29.12.1913, 18 days after the Prussians adopted it ( a common pattern of adoption dates); Saxony and Wurttemberg usually follow Bavaria in sequence.
2) my rifle is made at Spandau.
3) my rifle is illustrated in Ball, Mauser Military Rifles of the World.
The rifle is Prussian accepted; the marking disc is blank.
WaPruf2 6.6.03
ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION OF A RADFAHRER
Johnson & Lockhoven, International Armament, Cologne, 1965, v.1. p.390.
AND JUST TO MAKE THINGS A LITTLE MORE INTERESTING:
"The armament of the bicycle companies was not uniform. At first they had Gewehr 98s, then they received in part [some] Kar 98s or also "Radfahrergewehre", that is, Gewehr 98s with bent bolt handles and side slings." (my translation)
-Eckardt & Morawietz, Die Handwaffen des brandenburgisch-preussisch-deutschen Heeres 1640-1945, Hamburg, 1973, p. 195.
A GENERAL OBSERVATION
I have not yet seen a contemporary photo of anybody armed with what is clearly a Radfahrer.
WaPruf2 6.9.03
last updated at Jun 10, 2003 02:32 p.m. (6 times)
COLONIAL SERVICE RIFLES
If anything, more obscure than the Radfahrers.
All I know of are Spandau and date from 1900 t0 1903. They have all the characteristics of a conventional early Gew 98: flat-sided bayonet stud, first form firing pin, early style Lange rear sight registering on 200; it has been asserted that the reason the sights were not changed was to permit snap shooting at close quarters in the bush. The bolts are bent down in a curve (like the Kar 98AZ/Kar 98a) not at an angle (like the Radfahrer, Kar 98b and Kar 98k). and there is a clearance cut for the bolt knob which is full round. They are converted to the S Patrone and have an S stamped on the barrel behind the rear sight and sometimes an S stamped on the marking disc (in addition to whatever else there may be on the marking disc.)
The marking disc is usually stamped K.S. (Kaiserliches Schutztruppe = Imperial Defense Force) followed by a number. I Have disassembled three of these rifles. In one case the disc was right-side-up as found and marked as noted. In the other two cases the disc had been reversed and the side showing was marked K.S. (no.) The original disc markings were struck out; in one case, the markings are visible and indicate issue to a Feldregiment (of which more below) and in the other case the initial letters were illegible but the balance looked like a standard Kompagnie/Waffennummer sequence. One rifle had the original bolt SN ground off and a new (matching) number added; another has an originally matched bolt.
These rifles seem to have been issued exclusively to the Schutztruppe DSWA; PERHAPS to the Schutztruppe DOA and Kamerun; not to Togo, which had only a police unit. The KS DSWA was a mounted outfit with one camel company; they fought as mounted infantry; i.e., moved on their horses/camels but fought dismounted, like infantry. The KS DSWA was an exclusively European; no native units but there was an auxiliary (supply) outfit comprised of Bastards (mixed native/European "tribe") who supported them.
The Germans had a lot of trouble keeping the lid on in DSWA. They didn't impose controls on firearms for the locals until very late in the game and their colonial policy was far from enlightened. In 1904 the Herero started a rising which the Germans didn't succeed in putting down until 1907. They did so by virtually exterminating the Hereros. When the uprising broke out the KS was caught flat-footed out of the immediate area and had to redeploy; their numbers were not large and they were rapidly reinforced by Navy personnel on station and then extensively reinforced by units sent out from Germany. There is an large body of literature on the Herero uprising extensively illustrated; in not one case that I know of are Colonial G98s shown in the hands of units during the rising - there are Kar 71s, G71/84s, G88s, Kar 98s, and straight-bolt standard G98s, but no bent-bolt Colonial G98s. Prior to (?) and during the uprising the Schutztruppe DSWA was organised into Field Regiments.
Fast forward to 1914:The South Africans drive on DSWA. Some die-hard Boers try to join the Schutztruppe (which already has a Boer Kompagnie) but they are cut off by the loyalist Boers under Smuts et. al. The CO of the KS DSWA puts up a good fight but sees his mission as confined to the defence of his colony only and is finally boxed in and surrenders in 1915. The South Africans take the KS DSWA POW, amnesty most of them and send them home - with their rifles and ammo so they can keep the lid on the locals. Smuts gets a lot of flak for this.
The South Africans discover something in the order of 10,000 rifles in store in DSWA. Why? To arm the Boers who the Germans expected to join en masse in case of war. They haul the loot back to Johannesburg, where some of it is photographed in huge heaps. Some of the rifles go home with the South Africans as trophies,; others are buried (some got dug up in the late 1980s). The interesting thing is that contemporary photos of this period both of German and South African origin show classic Colonial G98s, i.e., with bent bolts.
So sometime between 1907 and 1914 the Colonials appear.
Based on the extremely limited number of Colonials I have examined it looks to me (from the unit markings) that they started out as straight-bolt jobs, perhaps some already in the colony and others brought out from Germany with the reinforcements and were then modified to bent bolt configuration. Unfortunately the marking regs for the Schutztruppe have never been found so we don't know when the K.S. (no.) came into effect which might give us some sort of clue as to when this was done.
I suspect that the bolts were bent and the stocks inletted locally. Some support for this notion is found in Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon, Leipzig, 1920, Bd.1, S. 197: topic: "Armament: .....Since for special constructions (sic) the Army administration did not come into question their supply resulted through cooperation with private industries." This according to
Major K. Zimmerman, KS Kamerun, the author responsible for sections in the encyclopedia relating to military affairs.
2004 is the centennial of the Herero uprising and there is considerable academic activity in Germany and elsewhere planned in that year in the way of conferences, studies, etc. since in the last five years or so some German historians have postulated that the extermination of the Hereros is forerunner of Nazi genocide in the World War II era. We may see some studies of the KS DSWA in the appropriate specialised press which may shed more light on their rifles.
The Colonial rifle in Ball is mine; it is 100% matched.
NB:An article on the Colonial rifle was published in DWJ some years ago and an English translation of it was then published elsewhere; I will add the citations to these articles to this post tomorrow.
WaPruf2 6.10.03
RADFAHRERS DURING WWI
Did some further checking. There was a large EXPANSION of Radfahrer companies during WWI and some were grouped into brigades. Altho initially companies attached to Jäger and Schützen battalions many of the new ones were independent; some were numbered, some named for their C.O. They were frequently used as mobile reserve units.
HILFSKORN (AUXILIARY FRONT SIGHT)
There are so many references to these in the literature I don't think there is much point in listing them. The earliest reference to them I have seen yet is in Schwarte, Die Technik im Weltkrieg, München, 1920. For photos of the real thing see: Luc Guillou, Mauser fusils et carabines militaires, La Tour du Pin, 1992, p. 64.
COLONIAL REAR SIGHTS: CLOSE SHHOOTING IN BUSH
The source for this notion, such as it is, is an article by Hans Fromming, Die Bewaffnung der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe von Südwest-Afrika, DWJ, H.8., Nr.8, Aug. 1966 S.42-47. A badly translated version of this same article appears in: International Arms Review 2, Oakland, N.J., n.d., pp.208-211.
This article has to be used with great caution. The author illustrates a Colonial (hereafter in my posts indicated as a Kol. Gew.) which has a K98AZ bolt in it; he provides no specific description so we don't know if the bolt matches or not; he illustrates a Stempelplatte marked S. and K.S.712. with the implication it is on the illustrated rifle but he does not say specifically that it is from that rifle...
My translation of his remarks with reference to the rear sight is:
"The [rear] sight was the previously [i.e., prior to the S Patrone] normal Lange sight, where the lowest setting was at the 200m position. [so far, no problem-ed.]. The sight curve was changed [sic!] from the usual 400m setting of the Gewehr 98 [set up] for the S- cartridge to 200m so that with [this] setting close-in targets could be more quickly acquired and engaged."
As I read this, he is saying that the the rifle was initially fitted with an S-Patrone sight but had that removed and replaced with a M88 Patrone sight. I have grave doubts of this, and would be interested to know what the date is on the rifle he is basing his description on, but he does not provide that information...
LOCAL MODIFICATIONS (bolt? rear sight?)
To quote our friend Zimmermann, this time in Schnee, op.cit., Bd. 3, S. 651:
"Weapons of the Police and Schutztruppen: 1. Handweapons. The equipment of the Police and Schutztruppen with hand firearms is proportional to the weaponry and military skills of our opponents in the particular defence areas ( Schutzgebiet; think: colonies-ed.). - In
German Southwest Africa, whose inhabitants have modern breechloading weapons and are recognised sharpshooters, the Schutztruppe ([both] officers and enlisted men) and the Landespolizei carry army rifles modified for local conditions known as Schutztruppengewehr."
This, of course, does not specify what the modifications are or by whom, where or when they were modified...
FURTHER QUESTIONS
We are in the same position with the Kol. Gew. that we are with the Radfahrers: we lack sufficient specimens accurately and completely described to reach any firm conclusions.
Is there a Kol. Gew. with K98AZ-type bolt original to it?
Are there any Kol. Gew. with dates AFTER 1903? If so, what kind of sights do they have?
S PATRONE IN THE COLONIES
Again Zimmermann, op.cit., loc. cit.:
"In German East Africa the European [troops] are armed with our modern magazine rifles for S-ammunition...the [Askaris] and Police are in process of being gradually rearmed with S- [ammunition capable] modern weapons....In Kamerun the Europeans and coloreds [sic] of the Schutztruppe and Police [are equipped] with the Kar 98 [sic; version not specified - ed.] (Army model for S-ammunition) [which implies Kar 98AZ -ed.] except for the two companies in the Muslim
area which are already equipped with Schutztruppengewehren 98 [
Kol. Gew. - ed.] but for which gradual replacement with Karabiner 98s is proposed. ... The Police in German New Guinea have in part modern repeaters for S ammunition, in part older weapons which are to be replaced in the forseeable future."
To this I add that there are specimens of Kar 98As (Not Kar 98a)
known with unit marks P.T. (no.) = Polizeitruppe Togo; I don't have any information on whether they are in the Patrone M88 or S Patrone.
AMMUNITION
This is a summary based on Zimmermann's article in Schnee, op.cit., Bd. 2, S. 601:
Ammunition supplied in watertight (soldered shut) cases; artillery ammo loaded and ready to shoot in the case (but not fused). Ammo packed in loads suitable for carriers: 25-30 kg. In the case of 11mm ammo this meant crates of about 500 rnds. and for 8mm 675 rnds; MG and artillery ammo carried on wagons (usually ox-drawn) or horses. I add that crates of unopened 8mm still survived in South Africa as late as the middle 1980s and may still be there.
SCHUTZTRUPPE TACTICS
Schutztruppe officers were VERY carefully selected from volunteers from the Army, Navy and the occasional Cadet schools (the Colonial service was not thought glamorous enough for the nobility to bother with). The EMs and NCOs (both active and reserve) were almost invariably long-term residents or locally born natives of their colony; in DSWA there was a bunch of Boers who had emigrated from South Africa to get away from the new regime who were also members of the Schutztruppe. These people were used to the climate, had survived the local diseases, knew the terrain, the wildlfe, the locals, their customs, language and their fighting techniques. The KSDSWA was, as noted previously, a mounted outfit which fought as infantry; highly mobile and flexible; they had some light artillery and MGs. They were widely scattered in small posts all around the colony and operated with considerable independence. When the Herero uprising broke out there were not enough of them to suppress it and so reinforcements were sent out from the homeland. The reinforcements were commanded by officers trained for the prevailing style of European warfare as were their accompanying troops. None of them were used to the climate, the diseases, or operating over long distances without an extensive support echelon. The regular officers of course virtually ignored just about any advice they got from the Schutztruppe; that is certainly one reason it took the Germans three years to put down the Hereros. The Hereros were classic highly motivated and well-led guerilla fighters. They could (with the assistance of the Schutztruppe) be found; they could rarely be fixed and fought, and when they were they were invariably defeated. Most of the time they melted off into the bush and the German regulars were too cumbersome to chase them... The famous Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, later commander of the KSDOA (which during WWI stayed in the field and surrendered a week after the Armistice only on orders from Berlin) learned his trade fighting the Hereros. The Germans finally succeeded in putting down the Hereros by taking no prisoners, destroying their crops, villages and cattle, poisoning their wells and driving them into the Kalahari desert and keeping them there until most of them died. WaPruf2 6.11.03
last updated at Jun 12, 2003 09:50 a.m. (1 times)
REAR SIGHTS
On the three Kol. Gew. I have actually inspected all had matched sights.
The point about a special version of the rear sight which looks like the original Lange for the M88 cartridge but is really designed for the S cartridge is a good one and has occurred to me as well. The problem I have in determining the situation is that I have no really good large-scale profile views of an original M88 sight and I have no access to an actual specimen. One might expect the mill cuts for the elevator to perhaps be different and/or the depth of the sighting v-notch to be different.
MORE ON TACTICS
On the few occasions the Germans could fix large numbers of the Hereros AND concentrate their troops timely AND surround the Hereros before they dispersed they had to go in and "winkle them out", supported by MG and artillery fires if available. The Hereros were masters of cover, concealment, surprise, evasion and escape.
WaPruf2
