History of WWI Primer 061: French and Italian Chamelot-Delvigne Documentary

we've seen quite a few early cartridge weapons dusted off for the Great War so let's carry on and see one more today with a once exceptional but now obsolete handgun still in the fray [Music] hi I'm Matthias and this is the French revolver model 1873 a sham lo delle Vigne let's get a look in the lightbox at a little over 9 and 1/2 inch in length this isn't the largest revolver we've seen but it's still weighs in at 2.5 pounds making it very stout it has a six shot cylinder which chambers the 11 millimeter French ordnance cartridge now once again since this is a history show we have to take a couple steps back before we can take one forward and in this case we're talking about a handgun that was still kicking around for the World War 1914-1918 and yet the model name has it all 1873 so we are going to have to turn pretty far back and we'll start with mr. Delvin Gustavo Henry delle Vigne had been born in Hamburg in 1800 he joined the French army young and reached the rank of captain in the Royal Guard he would resign during the 1830 July revolution probably a smart move before that he had already started his arms development career with an 1826 muzzleloading design focused on deforming the loaded ball to better engage rifling thanks to a narrow chamber he further experimented with conical rounds and had he stuck with it he might have actually beaten out the minie ball he also developed a rampart gun for the French military which was a breech-loading black powder monolith although his musketoon of the same year was rejected along with a few other ideas now I didn't see anything about his political leanings during that time but being part of the Royal Guard and with the upset it's not a bad idea to take a break from the military and some of his designs yes may have been adopted but most were not and I think he was just getting a little tired of armed services so delle Vigne would turn his attention towards commercial revolver design that's sort of the big industry at that time revolvers were not necessarily new technology but they were hitting that sort of peak in their development just before the modern revolver as we understand it today a lot of things were being invented and it's a good place for mansion and a good place to find some patent torte and in part of that he would join up with a Belgian arms maker by the name of J Shamu and that's about all I got I seriously couldn't even find this guy's full first name just a brief mention of its previous employee with the arms maker Rene but delle Vigne must have relied on him heavily as he got first billing on the gun presumably this was another big picture small picture matchup we see so often delle Vigne probably would have been the big idea and system man and sham Lowe was most likely the engineer making it actually line up and work seeing it through prototypes anyway we now have the two men working together regardless of how much we know about one of them and they are developing a revolver very specifically they start around 1858 dropping patents and they're improving every other year in terms of following the patents that they are indeed dropping and what they're leading towards is a good compact reliable pocket personal revolver these took on a number of variations I will not be covering today but they eventually evolved into an incredibly simple action for the time single and double action gate loading pin fire system with an offset hammer to allow for lower profile sights despite the pin fire mechanism these were produced by the brothers Pirlo and the liege and they did alright in the market but as years passed delle Vigne could not resist thinking like a military man and pursuing the all too lucrative military contract so michelle samlot and delle Vigne took their patents and applied them towards a larger fuller framed military pattern revolver and in this regard they remember this is a pin fire era they went with the French Navy's 12 millimeter pinfire cartridge as their basis for the military pattern and they also produced a bet hedging 9 millimeter version as well and both of these for what they would present to the French authorities to say look look I am back to designing Marshall arms and these are superior to what you're packing now again this pistol was more of a layout change that used the same basic action and patents of the original pocket design just set out in a way that you could actually use on horseback it features both single and double action and then offset hammer previously mentioned loading ejection we're on the left side with a manual ejecting rod mounted to the barrel now I know this doesn't look too advanced being pinned firing with an open top but the internals were top-notch and dead simple for that time they would remain nearly unchanged until our gun today so I ask that you reserve judgment for now the resulting system patents appeared starting in 1862 but the gun would be trialed by the French pistol commissioned in August of 1867 and that really only happened at the insistence of Napoleon the third following French experiences in the Crimean War and the Mexican intervention French officers took note that the British and American made revolvers were fairly impressive by their own hodgepodge of often still percussion-cap weapons it sparked a wave of private purchases particularly by cavalry men so good old Charlie ordered a commission set up at Vincennes with a mission to study possible martial revolvers with an eye towards universal adoption this was hopefully going to clean up this mess of models and calibers all over the French forces anyway 1867 the French officials get to look at the open top pinfire sham lo delle Vigne the precursor to this gun and they like it a lot it's very accurate it's very simple for the time it's durable again for the time it's smooth it's sensible and the one thing that really stood out for them is that it used a side plate to access the internal mechanism and that seems odd to say because it seems so obvious now but at the time most these revolvers would have been solid frames with sort of maybe like a cutout portion under the grips and then if you want to like put Springs in or out or oil it you'd have to kind of reach in I mean I've rebuilt webley's and things like that and they're set up that way they don't have a side plate so you have to like get in there and sort of arrange the springs like a ship in the bottle you just place everything set pins and slide it it's all blind to work and it's a pain in the Kiester so when you're the kind of it for the first time experiencing a revolver where you take off two or three screws and the side of it just comes off and you just see everything laid out before you for to check for function to oil to see if there's anywhere that's brilliant especially from a military perspective that's simple and quick it makes it easier on your field armors yada-yada you get the point so that part in aren't knocked them right out of park that would stay on their minds throughout the rest of the trials but it doesn't mean that the gun was adopted right away because they were also looking at other designs that were new from lefaucheux Perrin another big name and Adams these are guns that are they've got their own beautiful features that we are not going to go in today they kind of slow the Commission down they're going wait a second do we really want to make this investment blind let's take a look let's take a look and again this is kind of famous for fringes that's by committee they want to just be absolutely sure to the point of delays and so in this case I have to give the French one piece of credit which is that you're on the verge of the metallic cartridge centerfire era and what they were looking at the time were pin fire so if they had adopted fast well they might have adopted wrong so good on them for holding off but it does create one particular problem the goddamn Prussians that's right the franco-prussian war which we've lovingly covered before with our rolling block episode took a lot out of the famous French ego handguns had especially been neglected and while a few John Don Murray and Navy luffa shows had watered in ad hoc the majority of available pistols were still single-shot percussion models again like a rolling block episode France weird to have to turn to the US and buy up whatever it could get its hands on this mostly meant stocks of cap-and-ball Colt and Remington revolvers already dated technology for a heavy expense and still a military defeat as we well know this conflict would finally solidify the French will to actually improve their armed forces and so we see things like the adoption of the Gras instead of a chef's Poe rifle part of this delay though and the war actually also put our heroes and low-end dovey in a better position for the next trials because that gave them time to fully consider an update to their system and integrate it to new centerfire technologies and a stronger frame yada-yada remember before open-top pinfire not the best system but by 1871 when the pistol commission is back at it in full force again ready for an adoption an immediate adoption they've got something much better looking and it had to be pretty slick because the French requirements were for the time insanely strict they demanded that it may not be a break open design this is probably point out the old Galland we'll get there in a moment it must be solid one complete piece no little accessories to bend or lose the cylinder must be easily removed for cleaning the loading gate must be simple easy to use and cannot open inadvertently the ejector rod must be strong and impossible to snag and Bend the pistols accuracy was going to be judged at 25 meters but they still wanted a nice flat trajectory making a 50 and 100 meter shot possible the ammunition was to be a centerfire metallic cartridge they wanted a half [ __ ] notch this may not have been a half [ __ ] safeties we know it I'm not entirely sure I think it's more of a manual rebound position more than a moment it must be single and double action and features simple strong lock work it must have an inspection plate for easy cleaning that goes back to that disassembly plate you must be able to disassemble it without any additional tools and importantly the springs must be simple strong and easily reproduced or repaired by average tradesman now none of the entrance would meet every standard of the competition so it became a bit of a guessing game as to which points to focus on so let's look at what sham lo and delle Vigne cooked up preserving the simple action they had gone to center fire the top strap now meant that it was a solid frame revolver with more strength for modern cartridges moreover it was further upgraded with a simple rugged loading gate it had a capped ejector rod sheath safely away to prevent bending or breakage and a simple push-button release for the central rod to free the cylinder for cleaning Plus that dis assembly plate was simplified down to one single screw now let's take a moment and finally get a quick look at the internal action we have a three flat and 1v spring working set up the hammer runs off a large mainspring and the sear off a smaller one also set in the grip the trigger also doubling as a cylinder stop has its own V spring the hand is pushed forward by another small flat spring pressing against the inside of the action cover now this may seem a bit complicated to us but we've seen the bow do remember this mechanism existed over a decade before the cold lightning which I would compare for you right now but I spent an hour trying to sort it out from diagrams and then I had to see an optometrist and the therapist for another six hours to get myself sorted back out as far as I can tell from the trials there was only one simpler action than the sham lo delle Vigne and that was provided by a Charles francois hollande another big name in revolver development but I'm not going to go into deep detail on his personal history today I just want to say very influential very interesting man but let's take a look at what exactly he had put into the competition we mostly think of his simultaneous ejecting 1868 pattern but remember the French trial said no break opens specifically because of this gun so just like with shambleau and Devine he had taken his action and applied it to a solid frame gate loader layout to fit the trials and it was pretty neat no tools needed to disassemble and an internal action reduced to only eight components actually let's go ahead and take a look see much simpler than the shambleau delle Vigne and if this seems familiar to you better take a look at her Colt new army and army special episodes because the Americans really did like the Galland action with a little modification so yeah the Galan got a lot of attention from the committee and the man himself was a well-known designer he even went so far as to publish a book detailing his ultimate military revolver the Galan de guerre was beautiful don't get me wrong but it just didn't stack up as a military revolver against shambleau Delvin for the French specifically number one the ejector rod was a little weak and prone to damage and that was a big no-no for some reason French were very very worried about this in addition while easy to disassemble the components the sort of Springs and buttons you had to hit to get everything apart they were complicated and therefore took more time and energy to mill and assemble and honestly it made people fearful that they would also get damaged and it's more to replace on the gun if it takes damage and then on top of all of that it was a little bit too compact which is an odd argument and probably easily rectified but it's something that stood out to the French I don't know so the final peg though was the price it was just a little bit more well maybe a lot more expensive to manufacture it hadn't really considered exactly what went into every milling operation and therefore the good old C and D the shambleau delle Vigne that thing was going to be cheaper by the unit and that's a huge consideration when you're dealing with a very large Imperial style army pennies count plus the sham lo delle Vigne had already been adopted elsewhere during the course of the trials this is the Swiss model 1872 which would later evolve into the model 1878 the Swiss had been keeping track but the same revolvers as the French and had decided sooner that they appreciated the advancements afforded by mr. Devine and mr. sham Lowe at the same time Italy was also considering the same revolver but we'll get there in a moment now I've laid this story out as a showdown between two particular designs and well three designers but you get the idea realistically though this was a big revolver trial and there were a lot of designs submitted with some interesting names the problem is it's a lot of detail to go into and the guns are sort of evolutionary dead ends in some places and it doesn't really help fill you in on this one it's just nice to sort of see the sort of one best competitor against this gun and why you could do with a little less if it cost you a little less you do if you really care about this particular period this set of trials and I think it's an interesting period in history check out the books that are listed in description below because they are full of full-color photography of trials handguns that are almost impossible to even find in the US and it's a very nice little peek into sort of when these last waves of developmental history to the revolver the next one you know the next little step is gonna be swinging out cylinders and things like that but realistically the mechanisms are really getting polished right in this period very good reading very far outside of our scope today though so let's get back on track and talk about ammunition this is the 11 millimeter French ordnance cartridge although I am showing you the load data for the sort of last iteration of it after the adoption of smokeless powder the original was even weaker and what we're looking at doesn't really beat out 32 acp i've tried walking back just why the French went with such a mild cartridge I'm betting it was a combination of easy shooting and a fascination with phosphor bronze you see it's an alloy that is extremely corrosion resistant as a matter of fact it remained popular on ships propellers so I don't I don't know whether they gotten rid of phosphor bronze but anyway very corrosion resistant a fairly strong alloy although not as good as you know later steel that we've seen guns and obviously while an interesting side note in the development of handguns it did not catch on still the French and the Swiss and probably the Italians all tried out phosphor bronze cast revolvers and apparently did not go with them but in the process I'm sure they probably worked up this particular cartridge and then just sort of rode with it or I could be a little bit wrong it's just a strong speculation from my point anyway just because we have selected or rather eliminated all the competition and we're down to just the shambleau Delvian it doesn't mean that this is actually the adopted handgun of France at that point instead we're going to see a limited production and it's going to be centered out of something 10 mm the big big production starts in 1873 which is where this gets its name although realistically during that year only maybe 6070 pistols actually got put out and more started carrying off in 1874 and what they were doing is they were gearing up for big extended trials that means the Shawn Don Murray the shows the dragoons and other things that I can't pronounce got to take the guns on field exercises so the 1871 would become the model 1873 which still underwent minor changes in that first year or less again best to get into some heavy reading if you care about whether or not the screws were being drilled all the way through the frame or into blind key ways that's a lot of detail for an episode like this so full production really gets kicking in 1874 and that gives us our gun as we have it here today so I think those of you who know the show know we can finally get a closer look hey revolver now just to recover this is a hefty 2.5 pounds with a single cut pal and double kapow action now you may notice no hammer rebound that thing is flat on there until we start to cycle again now there is a manual half cocked position which was it just managed to flow into but that's not a safety position so even if I let's see we'll drop this all the way through I will manually set this into a half [ __ ] it is not a half [ __ ] safety in sense of a mechanical manual safety this is a don't fall on a primer kind of safety and it's a system that realistically becomes automatic for most pistols around the same time that this one was adopted we've seen it in other systems and it's unfortunate that it wasn't represented here because it represents a big advance in safety no no it is a gate loader and again this predates our Abadie system for the moment which means that if we pull the trigger at the gate up and we're still gonna be firing the gun so when you load this you pulled to your position you pull out your rod which is kept by a cap here it is very stiff so I'm going to push up forward and grunt there we go grunt flip around she's back we will manually align our chamber and our cylinder if we had spent casing in there and we will push it forward and manually push it back we will roll align visually forward and this is a tedious process nothing about it is automated for you whatsoever I am sorry so sorry to say now the one good thing is that the pistol disassembles really easily let's take a look at that so we got a big button let me get my patented plastic pokey doodad big button here it looks like a screw but it's also button when I depress this it's going to free the axis pin for the cylinder which is right here to go forward if I keep depressing it and going further forward I can go past the second notch the whole thing comes out so you'll notice there's a projection on one side that is actually a screwdriver I'll by the way with the gate opened our cylinder remember that was part of our terms our cylinder is now free to slide out assuming I actually pulled the ejector rod all the way forward and get it other way there's a slight bit of spring pressure there guys sorry my mistake so cylinder pops right out part of our conditions through the trial flip this guy around the other part is that had to disassemble with no tools well this is what we've got we've got our little projection and it will key right on this screw here and it will turn although being a well over 100 year old revolver I don't really want to putting extra scuffs so I'm gonna go to a screwdriver and just go ahead and pop this guy out for you it's also a lot faster than sitting there with a sort of right angle oddity and cranking around 50 times so we'll spin this screw out this is the lone screw for disassembly do not lose it this is the only thing to sort of get lost the rest of this is tabbed into place so there's our inspection plate free and clear and our grip comes free and clear and we can see the internals of our action oh look at that so if you want a quick preview before I get to the animation it's just single Hey and then without throwing Springs everywhere we'll try double Hey very smooth very functional system and again very easy to get in and out of and to get cleaning so honestly this thing does everything trial board wanted in the big picture so hey no wonder it was adopted but before we get too far into opinions let's go ahead and get a better closer look at how this works with the animation from Bruno will load this revolver up one round at a time and take a closer look inside the most unusual feature of the sham lo delle Vigne is probably that claw shaped Paul that sits in between the hammer and the trigger in single action the hammer pulls up on the Paul and therefore pulls back on the trigger and up on the hand the hammer is held back by a sear which is then released by the trigger [Music] in double-action the seer has just cammed out of the way instead that paul lifts up on the hammer and then releases it automatically now not pictured in this animation is the fact that there is a flat spring on the paul it just was a little bit hard to see and it was available in our 2d comparison earlier unloading is equally slow we're going to have to flip over our objection rod and punch each case out one at a time this looks fast in the animation but you have to manually index each chamber into position alright now let's get this over to main and let her try it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] a little slow to load a little slow to unload and definitely a mild cartridge but remember this predates the reich's revolver I feel like I would take this number the rights for Oliver anyway this gun official adoption in August of 1874 and from then on until 1885 you're gonna see it roughly 350,000 1873 s produced it becomes the overtime becomes the universal revolver of France it replaces a bunch like a myriad of smaller designs because before this little guy there's much more of an ad hoc system with you know different divisions and things taking what they needed and buying them in little batch Lots we've seen this before with other armies this is really the modern handgun of France now if you happen to have one that's dated after 1885 on the barrel chances are it was a refurbishment at a later date and certainly they didn't just go out of service at that point although we'll get in that history more in just a moment my sources say that these ring up a hefty 59 gold frog price tag but a more expensive model 1874 would follow costing 63 22 that's right a more compact officers model would be revealed in 1874 making it the model 1870 for guys if you can't keep this trade I can't help you these were overall lighter finer fitted and deeply blued instead of a polished white steel like the 73 a total of 36 thousand and 84 seem to have been produced making it roughly 10 times as rare to my knowledge army model 74 s have an end prefix in front of serial the Navy models have none at all although there are commercial and civilian examples of both the 73 and 74 so I check for a naval anchor mark on the butt as well just to be sure I should point out the Navy 73 and 74 s actually came a little bit later especially in the 11 millimeter ordnance cartridge because the Navy Wow they were doing their own damned thing the French Navy does what the French Navy does and it doesn't really particularly care what the army does unless it gets a steep enough discount on whatever that thing might be I mean heck they even skipped out on adopting the 1874 Gras instead they'd go all the way up to the Krakow Patrick hybrid which we will discuss later for now though they had just adopted a modern revolver in the model 1870 luffa show with a much more powerful 12 millimeter cartridge on par with 44 russian way better than 11 million ordnance so why would they want the army leftovers also for being fair the army production was taking up almost all the Arsenal production at that time so as a few years go by and the Army's wrapping up what it needs well maybe it's time for the Navy to start considering using that revolver I mean it's there and then you need revolvers and if it's going to be super cheap anyway they get it from the government instead of private purchases ok fine but we are keeping our 12 millimeter cartridge we are not messing around with that week 11 millimeter crap so that results in the nearly identical models 73 and 74 M these are recognizable by the over barrel marking m4 marine or maybe modify for that special cartridge they are exceedingly rare as production from 1877 to 1886 encompassed only 13,000 188 73 s and just about 1570 fours like I said these only lasted so long and the Navy would take a number of 73 s in standard 11 millimeter ordnance especially after the update to smokeless powder making the 12 millimeter cartridge a near non-factor for World War 1 and speaking of smokeless powder this little guy becomes a bit of an anachronism by the time it's released I mean like we covered earlier no Appetit and gate loaders themselves are starting to be kind of not the cool thing and no not even a rebound position on the hammer let alone the hammer block this is a very old revolver in a lot of ways despite its modern features and so they start looking for a replacement about the time that they're coming out with smokeless gunpowder we know in Heinz that that will be the model 1892 which we've previously covered however there would be a transitional model we have not covered in great detail the 1892 history was one of our earlier shorter shows and I'd love to address it again someday regardless we're talking about production ending in 1885 and then we take a number of years to get to the 1892 there's a transitional model or two in between people are done with this thing long before it's even replaced it's just it's no longer cutting edge and in a lot of ways it's fairly weak but lucky for a hussar lucky for the 1873 the French don't think handguns are all that important so even with the adoption of the 1892 they never quite make enough of them to completely displace this revolver in service and then well war were declared so that means big slow and not very punchy gets to keep serving all the way through the Great War the 11 millimeter ordnance cartridge stuck around the 1873 and 74 revolvers stuck around and we've seen several episodes about massive influx of Spanish made revolvers and pistols the Ruby you know nearly a million of those and the 1892 is on hand and weirdly enough look the official handgun was the 1892 and they didn't even produce a single extra one during the war because they just went for Spanish handguns well they weren't going to throw these guys out either so you have two revolvers that aren't in production anymore that are serving in the lines and I'd love to say it did an amazing job and people spoke about it I don't know of anybody that actually bragged about their sham lo delle Vigne defending themselves it's a slow loader it's an awkward gun but it was there then honestly even after the war the French delayed on committees and honestly had blown a lot of money and have a lot spare these things stuck around all the way up until World War two although by then you're mostly seeing it for things like rail guards they're not maybe an artilleryman here and there they're not frontline weapons by World War two but they still did not retire until post World War two which is insane to think something from 1873 was still kicking it around that long of course I should also add just while we're talking about these guns France was not the only user of the shambleau delle Vigne and not the only one to retain it all the way up until World War one that would also mean that this is the Italian Modelo 1874 an Italian shambleau delle Vigne let's get this in the white box still weighing in at two and a half pounds this guy is 11 and a half inches long that is a big barrel that has a cylinder with six rounds this time chambering the ten point four millimeter italian ordnance cartridge that's right folks Italy France and Switzerland were gun buddies they had been developing cartridges and looking at revolvers all together all in a pile and they all came to the same conclusion and since Switzerland wasn't in the war I don't have to worry about showing you a Swiss version of this but I do have to show you the Italian now these were adopted officially in March of 1876 and I think the most outstanding feature compared to the French is that long barrel although there are some other differences now this comes from focus on cavalry in fact the first extended trials were started with ten cavalry regiments they were later extended to infantry in Alpine officers then to the cotta binary with the army happy the Italian Navy would follow shortly making this a near universal issue handgun for the kingdom like with France and Switzerland the Italians adopted their first centerfire handgun cartridge and they went with big and weak like the others sadly they 10-point four millimeter italian ordnance cartridge started as a truncated cone black powder but by the time of World War one it evolved to a smokeless powder with a round nose and a thin rim at the base of the bullet to keep the muzzle speed up minimizing drag and still engaging the rifling we covered this a bit better in our bode AO episode all right so we have another handgun let's take another look zooming in we'll see let me get lined up significantly longer than that French model although to my hand it feels a little less chunky overall so let's get that out of the way alright so a couple things that stand out one our push buttons not over here our disassembly push button is now slipping is now right here push that pull the rod same deal except he does not have a screwdriver attachment on the rod so you just have to have a screwdriver sorry guys sites are a little taller a little clearer I particularly prefer the grip on this this thing is really much more like the Swiss adopted 1872 I wish I had an example to show you today again single and double action and no rebound it just sort of walks in as you give it another tug Gate loader no assistance no Appetit nothing fancy guys no spring back on the rod works just like with the French realistically I'm not showing you anything all that exciting exciting except for the general profile is slightly simpler construction in the need for screwdriver so I guess the Italians didn't get the best deal in this exchange except for me and that barrel I keep repeating this is really slick so let's see if it makes a big difference though by sending it over to May and seeing how she performs with the Italian model [Music] [Music] [Music] I really like the size and layout of this particular gun maybe it's designed for gloved hands and I've got big meaty mitts but it works out for me now these guys were at first purchased in a 12,000 unit batch from the Pirlo brothers it's the same guys who were selling the commercial versions and doing the trials guns for the shambleau and d'Alene's what I mean this is a sham load of lean but those guys cashed out pretty good before the Italian Arsenal system kicked in and Vicente and the Arsenal at beretta they took over production honestly I couldn't find a total number but it was much much larger than that first 12,000 those original liege made guns are much more rare than these the gun served well with Italy 1876 through the adoption that 1889 Roadeo which technically was supposed to replace this gun we've covered this incredibly simple and rugged revolver before but it's worth mentioning it did not completely displace the 1874 look the truth is the bow do is designed to be inexpensive rugged and idiot-proof folding trigger a later addition of a hammer block original edition of the rebound position still a gate loader in a time when it could have been a Swing Out iron frame for cheap construction I mean we've talked about the Buddha the Buddha was not designed to be better than this gun at shooting and fighting and it used the same car it was designed to be a better military revolver in the sense of pennies and pounds so okay well then that means that there's not really a reason to get rid of this you don't have a clearly superior gun except for some vague hammer safeties and this has a rebound position it's just manual like we covered with the 1873 so if you're a sort of literate self-possessed officer or cavalrymen who has the training for this kind of gun it's not a real danger to you it's a danger to the infantryman which again those guys had bought a hose so a lot of cavalry deeply preferred this gun and didn't want to give it up the extra weight especially the extra barrel length and the very tall clear sights this is a better cavalry weapon than the bidet oh so it's stuck around I mean it kept being produced concurrent for a number of years they wanted these not the new guy and so when the great war rolls around 1915 for Italy these are still plentiful they're everywhere they haven't been retired of pushed out even half as much as the French 1873 is worth so they were a common sight on the battlefield in World War one and when you think about the fact that if you're Italian your choices are and we've gone over and none of these guns now the bow do this big old shambleau delle Vigne or maybe a ruby not as many the co senti pistols no thank you okay but what about the bredis okay the bread is are looking kind of nice so maybe you would choose the Beretta handguns overtop of something like this maybe you choose the bow Jo probably not overtop of this unless you were just an accountant you know this is still a good Italian handgun for the war and it still saw plenty of service the Navy also retained their shambo's and some were even modified after the adoption of the bow do these were pieces that were sent in to be repaired but instead were in a batch gutted and reconfigured with Badillo internals and the iconic folding safety trigger the official retirement date for the 1874 was 1969 the same retire as its replacement again the 89 bidet Oh this gun lasted all the way through the service life of the gun that was meant to put it out of business that's fascinating now that also might be a little bit of a testament to Italian industry that means two world wars for this 1874 shambleau just as well as the French 1873 they're long-legged guns well beyond their prime still doing hard duty now by the way France and Italy were not the only ones to adopt a sham lo del beam pattern revolver as we said Switzerland had their own versions along with the Greek 1874 and later 1884 Navy the Serbian 1876 and the Swedish 1884 Navy there are also some other designs that get lumped in with shambleau Delphine's from other countries especially neutrals like the Netherlands at this time they're actually usually some hybridization of the shambleau and a Galland or maybe just a divergent paths that look similar it's getting into the weeds I'll stick with what we know now these guns are hard to classify you can't really pick whether they're like the first modern revolvers or the last antique revolvers they sit right in that missing link path where some very basic concepts like rebounds and not gate loading just haven't come through now there's not a lot of argument for the rebound but by the way I keep harping on you know the slow gate loading I want to make one thing clear steel and manufacturing we're not completely industrialized as we understand it by the time these guns were out so it's a little unfair to expect them to have Smith & Wesson style swinging out cylinders just because the technology existed in some patents somewhere at that time because the metallurgy to do that no you'd be looking at cracked parts pretty quickly especially trying to give it to troops in the field Gate loaders made sense in their day I just want to put out that one last level defense of these guns anyway the big question now and the question for me in just a moment is whether or not these make do for World War one I mean is it enough to have six shots real quick of big slow and weak is that going to be something that you can bank your life on and I think we need a professional opinion all right once more we made room for me and a pair of rootin tootin point in Trudy's now I guess we kind of have to talk about these in pairs so about the French first yeah well let's give you the French but I'm gonna go ahead and lay you out the Italian because realistically this is the same gun with a different cartridge and slightly different layout little control differences I think we can do this sort of both together through the whole thing that's fact so why don't you go ahead and walk us through what it's like to use this I mean 1873 remember the first version of this was available in 1871 as we understand it it's very old by the time we get to 1914 what's it feel like for an anachronism like this to be on the battlefield starting with the ergonomics all right guys Frenchie's first so first things first when I'm handling this gun it feels very dense like it feels like there's a lot of weight to this guy and not enough gun realistically it feels like there should be more for how much weight there is up here in the cylinder and the barrel like it's ridiculous all of its forward it feels like there's practically nothing back here in the grip which does actually make it a little bit uncomfortable as far as just holding it out there it I don't know just doesn't feel balanced to me I feel like they could have done better the grip itself I do love the angle of it I feel like maybe they could have taken a little extra time though maybe like staying at the grips a little bit to match with the gun that way it's the ridges aren't sticking out so far it does make it a little bit uncomfortable as time wears on when you're shooting more and more with it so just bear that in mind but still nice comfortable grip fits right into the palm of the hand not bad full finger grip also even for our thighs here big boys can handle her now as far as loading and unloading on this guy goes it is a little bit stiff and this is not an AB D system so I've got to lower the gate and then put it in a half cocked position because there is no rebound on this guys I've got to manually load every single close her up flip her back in and now she's ready to go I mean it's a little bit ridiculous like it feels like it takes forever to load and unload this guy I really wish they'd put a nabbed assist on this at least to give that just give me that little bit of extra time but beggars can't be choosers overall she's just a little bit awkward for Revolver they could have distributed the weight better she wasn't terrible though I still perform well enough but we'll get into the performance in just a moment let's talk about the Italian ergonomics now this one just automatically feels better it feels like the weight is way more balanced I mean it honestly feels like it's lighter which is ridiculous because it isn't the weights practically the same it's just better distributed it you just you feel the difference when you're first handle it which is nice and it just looks better too I mean it just looks like they took a little bit of extra time I mean like everything just looks sleeker the grips are a little bit thinner like you're able to get a nice good grip on yeah that purchase is perfect that angle is wonderful in your hand it's it's really really a lovely experience now I will say this does have a longer barrel which does cause me to kind of nose down a little bit so when shooting it does cause me to have to realign my sights a little bit faster and easier sorry getting to the shooting a little bit but I wanted to mention the obvious longer barrel here it does make an impact but I'll get a little bit more into that in just a moment now again loading same deals the other one no rebound got to be able to go to the half [ __ ] position when flipping this one's actually not as bad to flip over actually I will say the French one it does require a significant amount of force to flip the sky over which it really wasn't easy for me at first I found it actually weirdly do it better with my left hand strangely enough but once this guy for the Italian he just flips right over there I do wish they put a little deeper set striations maybe they kind of give you a little more purchase on that but it's not terrible again it's a slow reload unload with this guy no real difference there just wish they'd maybe taking a little bit extra time with you put an AB D on there that's about it but overall for ergonomics this was just a little bit sleeker a little bit neater looking and the features work a little bit better right now in the ergonomics section but yeah it's not bad alright I will say we're beating the Abadie and rebound to death and truth be told a lot of you're probably yelling at the screen that it wasn't necessarily available at this moment in any way so how did they include something that wasn't invented well yeah I know I'm trying to look into the future here it's just this just shows that the system wasn't as good that it was a little bit obsolete which kind of sucks it's true the best systems are future proof and if we're complaining about very basic features then it's not future proof at least not until 1914 we're not selling that this is a bad system at the time there's an incredibly advanced system a beautiful system in 1873 1874 amazing we're talking about 1914 so that's why we're sort of beating on it I just don't want people thinking we're just spitting on it from great heights like we're talking about world war 1 that's always our context the thing is if I look at more one other revolvers I've shot so far there are others that do beat it at the moment which is a little bit rough yeah again benefit of coming later on this is one of the earliest designs we've looked at I mean when we talk about the parentage of this gun we're really looking at maybe like three four years after what's going to be the gasser revolver you know I mean that's how far back we are now we are pre Reich's revolver in terms of this things development so we'll give it a little bit of forgiveness but it doesn't mean that's gonna change our overall opinion of it in the context of the Great War have you reminded me other Reich's revolver yes it's the thing that still exists so nobody's carrying one now thankfully yeah so might make this look a little bit better but let's talk about shooting these two I know you want to go back to France let's do the order okay so let's talk about actually shooting these guys lining up pull the trigger it goes bang what do you think all right line up my sights yeah you know what actually these are pretty tall for a wall verso decent job there the sights I think on this one actually line up pretty quickly I find it as a sit enough point shoot like I said the balance then it does make it a little bit awkward make it feel a little bit heavier than what it is so you do have to get used to that as time goes on pulling the trigger single and double action on this guy are smooth like it is ridiculous it actually is very pleasant I mean don't get me wrong we clean the guns before we shoot them like we're not just shooting them out of the boxes people send them covered in gunk no we do take care of them but even saying that this one was actually is more pleasant than what I was expecting I was totally expecting some snags maybe a mushy pull through nothing who was actually pretty clean so I did appreciate that the recoil I feel like it did want to flip a little bit maybe they could have extended that barrel out that would have hated with a little bit of that recoil mitigation but hey you know it wasn't terrible I still shot alright with it I'm gonna get into the cartridges in a second though but I do want to talk about the Italian a little bit for shooting sights still decent still tall like it love it live in it I do feel like this one was a little bit harder to point shoot and I mentioned it before and the ergonomics it's just because the longer barrel it does want to tip down a little bit so you just got to make sure like pull it up realign your sights it just takes a split second longer and you do notice it single and double on this one single is actually a little bit rough on this guy it is smooth don't get me wrong but it is heavy it is very hard to one-hand so some of y'all might have to second hand that that's some of y'all both eyes here can single hand it pretty easily and I'm annoyed at him at that one for me it's it's a little bit yeah it's it's definitely harder on my hands but double on both guns is it easy enough for me don't get me wrong both heavy pull through 's but both were still smooth so I did appreciate that the recoil on this one wasn't so bad honestly I felt like it was like I said a more balanced gun which aided in it longer barrel definitely a plus I didn't think the record was that bad on this one at all compared to the it's a French buddy here but you know other than that not terrible now I did want to get into the cartridges so we've got a eleven millimeter then we got 10.4 honestly I didn't really feel much of a difference like they're both big slow wheat cartridges and it kind of made me nervous they kind of I kind of feel like I don't have a lot of confidence in this one I mean like four or five five Webley it's a big slow low but I feel like it was strong enough to knock a guy down whereas these two I don't know it's kind of got me guessing I mean supposedly this one went in point for it's supposed to on the original loads have a higher velocity which should help with that but I don't know with what we were able to produce today we just we really couldn't I couldn't feel much of a performance difference so shooting wise I did all right with them I could handle them I can handle my revolvers but I'm a little bit nervous taking someone down on them actually I could probably clarify the ammo issue can I borrow that sure we get this request a wise why aren't we shooting ballistics gel why aren't we doing ammo tests you know that's whatever he wants to see and believe me I would really love to do that but there's a problem which is that we can't on target performance of ammo a lot of it comes down to the actual make up of the bullet let alone the powder so if we're shooting British ammo we're not actually using cordite well then the burn rates ever so slightly different and the pressure curve is ever so slightly different and then that's going to change our impact don't get me wrong but in the bullet itself whether it's jacketed with you know some sort of copper alloy or mal accord or whatever there's so many different ways to make the bullet and all of those must be precisely exact across a box of ammo for us to get consistent ballistics gel performance to tell you that that cartridge in that era was better than some other cartridge in that era it's it's impossible the manufacturing behind it would cost us thousands of dollars per set of five bullets just to get them into the ballistics gel so that we could get all these machines and look and the science behind it and I don't even want to know about the payroll for the chemistry god that sounds like a whole nother job foreseeing Arsenal no we're not that's I don't even know what the licensing is so the truth is we can't just test original ammo against original ammo and if we wanted to burn collectible unlike irreplaceable ammo from the era which I don't want to do if we did do that it's been sitting on a shelf in the powders aged and a lot of that powder behaves differently like we saw in our Kaveri 88 episode leave it for 10 years and it you know evaporates off and then it changes the performance the cartridge and you end up bursting barrels or it ends up being a dud or it who knows there's too many variables to get original ammo tested and so that's why it's very hard to have strong ballistic comparison we can Ballpark our feelings about the general cartridge in general performance we cannot get you an adequate comparison if say like 32 ACP versus 8 millimeter French ordnance it's just not gonna happen sorry but on to that point what Mae was alluding to is the fact that like we said this episode the bow Deo kept this cartridge alive longer that one well the 11 millimeter ordnance it didn't see much evolution after 1890 because it wasn't being used after 1892 is a primary purchased weapon so with the bow Deo is adoption though this guys 10.4 cartridge well it kept seeing some updates and part of that first smokeless was like I said that oddly sort of skirted bullet which was ill able to get the muzzle velocity a little higher we can't make those so we had to go with a led round that's a little bit more comparable to the original cartridge so we're just gonna have to stick with that little piece of data now all of that covered I know that was a lot there's a slight chance that this has a better cartridge by World War one than what we shot today but not by much it's a little okay just a little it's coming up a longer barrel so give it plus 15 points of charisma who knows oh there's a long explanation for it's basically the same thing across the board anyway so with that covered are either of these okay I'm sorry yes thank you or either of these guns acceptable to you in the Great War you know these revolvers are amazing they really are there is so much fun to shoot they're neat little pieces of history they're like the missing link between the modern revolver and really they are they were so much fun I can't give either of them a pass though I really can't because I just can't get over that cartridge it is big so weak it just I just don't feel like it's really gonna protect me or do its job in the war I mean maybe if they've been like 44 Russian or something like that I'd have barely given them a pass even like all the faults not having a B system being like big and clunky like I could have passed it but I just I can't that cartridge holds them back too far so unfortunately this time around I'm gonna have to pass on both of these guys they're gonna have to get it no I think that's a fair assessment let's run it down you have a metallic centerfire cartridge barely you have none of the redundancies or safeties not that that's a huge deal if you're competent with the gun but you get only six shots they're not super great cartridges and you get a lead weight on your hip I'm not saying I wouldn't take it over a shovel oh yeah no I would still take that over a shovel but we're talking about you know pass/fail in terms of feeling confident though you could get good with a shovel yes but you know somebody comes over the trench at you you go over the trench at somebody are you gonna feel fairly confident in the gun to do its job I believe it'll go bang I'm not saying it won't go bang I'm just saying it's gonna be slow far between it's gonna be awkward I'm with me although I will say personally for me that I do real of the Italian 1870 it's gorgeous to my hand it feels right and with just just a Swing Out cylinder it honestly might be Mike my top pick in the revolver terms it just feels so good so for me actually I'm late Bank a little on a gun like this not a lot but yeah I have a special place in my heart for the Italian but that doesn't really put it all the way to the yes category does it so for once you guys have found the floor for me and is a floor I've said no to others before I rhymed that wraps up our episode so catch us next time and again stay late for the updates after the credits bye guys [Music] alright guys I'm gonna go ahead and film this update because I kind of know what's going on and we're getting ready to be very very busy so number one in the course of filming this episode we got something in the mail as part of a trade deal with a certain ponytailed friend of ours we've picked up an actual bucket beach guy an actual sham load elbow day oh so this gun was converted and I'm gonna do a special little extra video on it it's gonna be short just to sort of give you a quick walk through the gun and I'm just gonna do it for the patrons I'll just toss it out there it's not really all that critical for World War one but if you guys are even given a dollar on patreon we'll get you a closer one then as part of that I wanted to say we've sort of hit a limit to our growth spurt so I think 77,000 subscribers and some change for a little over a month now steadily a little I see maybe like a hundred a week or something but we're definitely we're out of spurts like we used to get these you know we'd put something out and people get interested we get another first and so we've put out some interesting stuff lately with the web leaves and things like that and we haven't seen the usual bursts so we know we're sort of hitting the top of our present market now there's a number of reasons for that it could be that that is just our market it might be that you guys watching this now are the people that are going to watch this or it could be that we've just sort of reached the limits of the media groups that we've been in the places we've talked the people we've interacted with so if you know of someone who hasn't heard of us or who has a format that they would like us to appear on or talk to we're perfectly happy to talk to anybody we really like sharing the show and we like sharing the mission to at this point we do have plants that continue to show after World War one and honestly the show gets a lot easier after World War one for us but there's a strong determination to sort of get as complete a picture of the war as possible because it really hasn't been done we're married to the project like I said so anything you can do to help us with the project great put us in front of people you know if you know someone that would like the material teach let me teach grandpa how to check the youtubes okay this we want people to watch this we wanted to be consumed and then honestly it does help us to actually grow because each episode is starting to get almost exponentially harder to produce because of the diminishing list in the demands and you should see some of the weird special stuff we're trying to figure out how to reassemble and repair just so that we can put in from the camera so again you'll see a few of these please after we get our World War One because we'll be able to take stuff as it comes and it will already be working when it comes we just won't take stuff that's not working we don't get that choice right now so all this before we can get please God just until we get to the work and we love all you who are supporting us thank you yes it's momentous and again don't feel the pressure I made this announcement on patreon people were like wall up my donation amount someone looking for a dollar month is fine it's really just a more about trying to sort of reach more people with the message and show them that there's some interesting history here that they might not be aware of and they may or may not want to support even if we don't get extra support I would like extra viewers it's really nice to share all of this since we put so much work into it or if you also want up your donation you don't have to listen to the big beardy do - no don't a dollar fund alright so thank you all who have supported the show with t-shirts for the posters for the patreon we try to do our best to make these things interesting for you and again it's all gonna get lumped into a book just as soon as I have 150 different guns photographed plus who knows what else to get this awesome it's got a little smaller hey one day one day folks anyway thank you all again sorry this was so long and if your patron take a look I'll hunt slap something together for you thanks guys

Channel: C&Rsenal

Views: 134,250

Keywords: firearms, guns, WWI, History, greatwar, bf1, battlefield1, worldwar1

Id: 9mCVxWXNb5Y

Length: 64min 50sec (3890 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2017