Small Arms of WWI Primer 036: French Gras 74 and 14

the Great War was one of attrition and all sides would scramble for more and more firearms sometimes this meant dusting off obsolete designs but how far back can you really reach well for friends it would be 1866 hi I'm Matthias and this is not quite in frame there we go this is the French model 1874 Gras rifle let's go ahead and get this over to light box weighing in at 9.3 pounds and with an overall length of 51 and almost 1/2 inch this single-shot black-powder rifle was long obsolete by the start of the war now before we talk about this rifle we need to step back all the way to 1863 in February of which Napoleon the third would actually decree that he wanted something that would beat out their current system that tavaa tier of breech-loading conversion of old muzzle loaders well he wanted something that they could put up against the Prussian made device a needle rifle now around the same time in history we are smack dab in the middle of the united states war of southern secession and many observers have started noticing during that conflict the superiority of the metallic cartridge in battle now at the same time though France has to kind of look over their shoulder because German unification is in full swing and the really the most compact summary I can give this experience in Europe is that Otto von Bismarck is basically twirling his arms in every direction and given everybody a black eye this put a lot of pressure on France because although they want to get the best possible singular unified issue service rifle they could for their country at this important stage mmm they had to balance that against what they could produce quickly not just adopt quickly but actually get the production rolling and so with very little to no domestic production of metallic cartridges in effect at that time especially in their state-sponsored Arsenal's because they did not prefer to use private corporations they hedge their bets a little closer to home and stayed with that paper cartridge now they would ultimately adopt a system that was put forward by one and on Alfonzo Shah suppo born in mutsig in 1833 chess PHA had both a father and an uncle in gunsmithing he would go to trade school in Paris and then work for shatter all saint-étienne and the mutsig Arms Factory among others now there's a lot more to the shafts post story and we will definitely cover it someday but for now let's just get the basics in 1866 France would adopt this single-shot black powder paper cartridge needle rifle the most notable feature is the rubber operator which sealed the system against gases exiting from the rear now despite not being exactly cutting-edge - a spot was still a fair step up for the French army and it would have quit itself well pretty quickly as a matter of fact in November of 1867 it was fielded in the Battle of Montano in which French papal troops were defending Rome against the Italian unification led by a Garibaldi in that regard general fire would say sire the chest bone worked wonders now despite the ease of production the chest PO did not completely displace the tappet ear before the outbreak of the franco-prussian war a conflict we are very familiar with thanks to our last episode now you could say that it's a dang that there were not more chapeau for the French during that conflict but you can hardly lay the blame for their demise on just the selection of small arms just a reminder Napoleon the third was caught French army destroyed Third Republic you guys know the drill once the dust settled it was clear that the french army was going to need an overhaul from top to bottom and as part of this in August of 1871 the ministry of war woods begin an investigation of all the small arms used during the most recent conflict with the Prussians now being the main infantry rifle at that time a lot of criticism would be lumped onto the shots PO you see the needle was subject to wear and breakage far too fast requiring constant maintenance the same was true of the rubber obturator ring under equipped troops often had to create makeshift replacements out of leather the paper cartridges were also problematic as they were fragile and easily ruined by moisture they suffered from poor ignition making for plenty of duds when they did fire the paper did not always burn completely away and instead fouled the action now on top of all of that also in 1871 Germany adopted the excellent Mauser 1871 rifle so the pressure was on well first things first that cartridge needed to go over time they would work up a metallic cased Center fire black powder 11 millimeter replacement now that process would run parallel with the development of a new rifle during the war the renting rolling block had really stood out but unfortunately its adoption would mean really overhauling the French system I mean they'd have to come up with new factory methods they'd have to come up with new equipment they'd have to bring in new machines this is not something that they're looking forward to what they'd rather do is find a way to capitalize on what they already had and especially make use of over a million chests posed that were already on hand I mean if you think about it these guns are no more than six years old at this point so in September of 1873 the Minister of War would put together a committee which featured the directors of the three state Arsenal's plus the photo workshop these guys would whittle down a number of conversion ideas and new rifles into two patterns that really stuck out and those two patterns would be produced in limited numbers several hundred each and then fielded with three infantry one artillery and one cavalry division for field trials the first was an adaptation of the Dutch Beaumont bolt system this would ultimately be rejected because of its complicated manufacture with no gain on performance or accuracy the v-shaped mainspring fitted in the bolt handle also made this gun very hard to adapt to turn down handle the carbines the action that won the competition was submitted by one bozhil Groth born in 1836 in st. Aman's de perak gall gras would attend a coal Polytechnic graduating in 1856 from there he served in the artillery during the Italian campaign in 1859 he would later be assigned to Tula with the of captain following the franco-prussian war he would become Deputy Secretary of the artillery committee and teach musketry at Camp the Shalom it was in this role that he would submit his idea for a conversion for the chateaux system again turning this thing over to metallic cartridge so ultimately we do know that this was the one of the two that was accepted and it was accepted in July 7th of 1874 I will say though that it only got picked up by the army the Navy would go in a very interesting and different direction we will actually cover that in a separate episode the gras system will be produced by the big three French Arsenal's and from 1874 to 1884 we're going to see manufactured the arms dissent at the end produce almost 1,500,000 rifles and carbines will also see manufactured the arms dish at they're all produce some six hundred thousand rifles and manufactured the owns the tuna produce five hundred thousand rifles so we have the 1874 but don't forget there's still the shots posed out there that need converting and so that would happen as well I mean you're talking about over a million rifles available for very little effort the conversion system required you to replace that bolt system entirely so the entire chest bow bolt is taken out and a new bolt fitted into place they're also reburial not really for the diameter the barrel or anything like that but because of the difference is in the chamber now this could be done one of two ways you could either re sleeve an existing barrel which will be marked t4 transformed barrel or you can go ahead and just replace the entire barrel in which case you get a lovely little N for a new barrel now you can't tell from our example here but the new 1874 s were blued whereas the old shafts opposed had been in the white this guy's seeing a little use while the 66 74 conversions would also be blued bringing them up to fairly even standard ultimately these guns that can be very hard to tell apart there's some minor differences in receiver shape I'm sorry to say I don't have an example here today to get into the nitty-gritty but ultimately they behave exactly the same way they have the same strengths and weaknesses saint-étienne would convert just over 1 million chess PO rifles and carbines to the Gras pattern one final concern for the old model 1866 was the heavy and awkward Sabre style bayonet these would be replaced with the model 1874 spike but waste not want not they are interchangeable so converted 1866 s could retain their old bayonets alright with all that history wrapped up let's go ahead and take a closer look at this model 1874 zooming in first of all I will say the receiver and Barrel should be glued this one's obviously aged a hundred years in plus not as well as some others but it's enough for us to see what's going on anyway single-shot bolt-action rifle yada yada you get the drill there guys in terms of the actual bolt we do lock let me get my patented plastic pokey hand guys we do lock here on the root of that bolt handle and that is it that's our only locking surface this ridge up here contains our extractor that we'll see in a moment and this Ridge right here is what's going to go ahead and guide our cocking piece so when we D [ __ ] this action and I lift up on this bolt handle trying to keep it out of the way you'll see she [ __ ] on back so she is a [ __ ] on open action and it's a centerfire firing pin system get there in just a moment but first let's scoot on down the full length of this guy we have a side mount bayonet cleaning rod all the usual let's prayer back forward to our sights these are quite unusual they will flip forward for our battle sight of 350 meters they will flip back to be adjustable this is going to range from four hundred twelve hundred meters and when we flip them up we can range from 1400 meters on up to 1,800 meters or up and this is done through a double ladder system I don't know if you guys can see how complicated that is but basically I can taking my plastic Patton plastic pokey and I can either read from the lower notch or the upper knotch in order to cage for volley fire and therefore the lower notch I would lead off the left side of ladder and on the upper notch I'd read off the right side of ladder that is a very involved rear sight with a lot of fine adjustment anyway coming back to the bolt let's go ahead and get it out of the action now there is no special trick to this the French just included a screw so we'll take our screwdriver unscrew pull this guy away and now our bolt can come out of the action let me set this guy aside and let's take a look at what we've got fairly advanced at this time we have a separate bolt head we have AV spring style extractor set down in there he's just pinched in matter of fact he's quite easy to remove let me go ahead and start taking this guide down so there's our bolt head and a little push and wiggle there's our V style extractor going in further this groove right here is where we had our screws setup it's also underneath it's going to be our guide for the top of the screw head that serves as the ejector in order to take this gun down further I can decock the action press down firmly on the firing pin and I'm sorry guys trying to keep this in shot is a little tricky that's going to reveal our t-shaped plug at the top which I move laterally there you go that let's our firing pin out the front with our spring then we have our bolt body and our cocking piece these is a fairly simple setup considering the age I will say though there's a lot a lot of milling operations in this gun so in that regard it is fairly complex now this gun also shows signs of what is known as the 1880 modification so if I bring back up the action and we take a look you're going to see a groove milled into the receiver here I don't know that's clear enough for you guys there you go and you're also going to see a corresponding groove move milled into the bottom of the bolt head this was designed because failures of ammunition blowing hot gas back in the shooter space so this was designed to help vent that gas up and out of the receiver earlier therefore not going straight for their eyes out the back all right well with all that covered I think we can probably as I get this reassemble turn it over to an animation so you can more properly see the interior the gras is a fantastically simple gun but it does offer some surprises for starters is [ __ ] on open with helical cuts in the bowl body and cocking piece that drive the latter rearward when the bolt is lifted also a small cut above the chamber guides the extractor up and over the rim of the cartridge let's get this over to Mei I'm gonna do a lot of loading for this one this piece honestly has a weak extractor now let's check that recoil how to do I forgot to flip the battle side but honestly looks like I did just fine pierce that oh the guy that seemed like a little bit of a struggle and it's probably an unfair representation because this is not the best condition gras out there but at the same time these were pushing a fairly old age by the time the Great War so six and one-half dozen the other anyway the Grob wasn't just a good service rifle there were also several carbine variations now these were going to be based off of the previous existing shots po carbine variations and we're going to see them again in the Bertier which is an episode we've already produced so these should seem pretty familiar we'll see a cavalry carbine mounted John d'amour a carbine a jean Darma a carbine for people what aren't lucky enough to have horses and an artillery musket owned the gras was also produced by OE WG Steyr and sold to grease who had used it all the way through World War 1 and World War two it was particularly favored by guerrillas now as we all know we are moving into the generation of repeating rifles and so the gras needed to be updated again and there were some experiments with magazine systems for this gun but ultimately we do know in hindsight from our first episode in this series that the French were going to hit upon something entirely different in the form of smokeless powder and so they would introduce the 1886 Lebel that effectively spelled the end of the development cycle for the gras and so it would slowly filter into retirement as the lapel came into limelight but it still managed to stay on the front lines until about 1897 as it was displaced by these new better guns it would be pushed further out into the far reaches of the French Empire you're gonna see it in colonial hands you're also going to see it push down and things like custom agents and prison guards and forestry people and things like that it just kept sort of moving for further from the center and it would have enjoyed a quiet retirement and slow demise if it weren't for the fact that eventually war were declared in case you've missed just about every other episode of this show I will point out once again the world war 1 quickly became a war of attrition and so all nations were concerned with getting as many supplies including small arms to the front as possible and as part of that the gras was dug right back out now ultimately most of what was done with this gun was that it was put in the hands of guards and other rear echelon troops in order to free up lapel and Bertier rifles for the front but that didn't mean that it didn't make it up there on rare occasion because I have managed to find a number of photos in which you can catch little sights of the Gras sitting really close to the frontline action for such an old gun with over 700,000 serviceable Gras still in inventory this was a great little reserve and so these things could be given away to Allied powers which means that you're going to see them in the hands as aid to Russia and Romania and maybe Greece is going to see some more of these guys since they already used to them anyway and you'd also see the French using them for things like igniters for mortars or for signal launchers these were a great thing to have sitting on the sidelines ready to go for a number of uses that you didn't really want to turn your best rifles - but that's not all these guns would enjoy a whole new fresh life in world war 1 thanks to this which is the fussy Modell 1874 modify 80 and again another modified 14 this is an eight millimeter labelled Gras now weighing in at just nine point five pounds and still 51 point four inches long this is a hefty piece of work while it does now chamber that eat no linear labelled cartridge is still a single shotgun you see while it was nice to have the gras available the French really didn't feel like making a bunch of eleven millimeter rifle cartridges all over again in the midst of this battle and really they didn't want to divert those resources away from their regular rifles and ammunition plus logistically you don't want to add that back into the system so eight Miller was the way to go now when they first considered making these rifles they would honestly try to go ahead and make them magazine loaders they would experiment with the bertier's three shot clip unfortunately remember this is a bolt handle locking rifle that means that our locking is at the rear of the receiver and if we mill away the underside and we've already cut out the right side and we've already cut out the upper side that means there's only one side of the receiver left to barrel that and it's opposite blocking section that means you're going to get a lot of stretching a lot of cracking and it's really not going to work out very well so this would have to remain a single shot rifle but let's go ahead and zoom in on this one and get a closer look at what went into making a Gras into a smokeless powder rifle alright now as you can see this is more indicative of that proper bluing let's get the patented plastic pokey hand the bolt is not going to look any different as a matter of fact because the eight millimeter Lebel was based off of the 11 millimeter gras in terms of the base cartridge remember from our first episode we talked about how problematic that was for Auto loaders and things like that but it worked out really well in this case because there really wasn't any changes necessary to the bolt itself or to the receiver instead all we had to do was go ahead and reburial these guys right from the start so the big changes will be the addition of an 8 millimeter barrel and as you can kind of see right here let me get where I can balance this guy there's that edge right there what they did is they went ahead and cut off oh good lord guys there you go they went ahead and cut off the front of the old barrel and then reamed out the interior and reamed down the diameter of the new barrel shoved it right over now what that does is you get to keep your old front sight and you have compatibility with your old bayonets and it's quick and easy to do and again it fits your old front band that just brings everything up to a fit minimum fuss alright if we roll this back we've got a new handguard that's just a little help with that extra heat on firing although with a single shot rifle I don't think you're gonna get through too many rounds all at once we have a sort of labelled slash Bertier style rear sight that's been updated for the baldy cartridge this is a little lower profile a little shallower notched again it's the same sort of setup where we fold forward for our battle sight we then have an adjustable from I believe 400 to 800 on the wah incremental slide so if I had it right there I'd be 400 then popping her up we have our volley sight that cranks up to a very very optimistic 2,300 meters alright uh otherwise not a lot of changes to this gun just the new barrel just the new sight just the new handguard and refitting the old front end but while I have this one here it has a very clear marking that I'd like to go ahead and explain that's indicative of all draw rifles if you can see this little red plug here there's old Big O rumor in the u.s. that this somehow contains holy water but that's not really Frances thing especially by the time we get into the republic's instead this box would plug is a harder wood plug that has a sort of French army property mark that means that this is a military rifle versus a civilian one it's as simple as that alright when all that covered good lord we can go ahead and get this gun over to me as well once more same as before I'm not gonna put it here I'm stopping the world you never gotta go it went fine smokeless listen extract much better and what if the air were jelly all right let's see that target okay okay okay I see your turn that looked like it went a lot smoother and it probably had more to do with the condition of the gun than it did the actual ammunition anyway these guns would be produced from November of 1914 through October of 1915 and I should say that roughly 150,000 were completed now they weren't just done from the 74 to the 14 like this one here that also those old 1866 s would still receive that same treatment so you can see a marquee as long as Modell 1866 - 74 m 80 m 14 that's fairly impressive now just like the Gras 1874 these 14 still weren't meant for frontline duty and would stay back in the hands of guards and things like that most notably they were recognized for their use with the guard devoid of communication these guys were established to protect vital military lines of communication initially rails and canal ways but they would expand to Telegraph and telephone networks they were originally staffed by those too young or too old to serve at the front but the young guys and even some of the old would be dragged into the fighting their primary duty was to watch out for saboteurs and spies but much of their work ended up being checkpoints and reporting damaged lines now I admit this is a lackluster service life for something as interesting as this 8 millimeter conversion but if you think about it 150,000 more rifles on the rear means 150 thousand more rifles on the front that arrivals on the front so it's incredibly important in a war of attrition and it's just fascinating to talk about all right now this is not the last version of this gun and as a matter of fact it wasn't even tossed out after the war because we are going to see some March 4 ball and that means on into the 30s which is impressive the other version though was a heavy barrel at least to have been noted and when I say heavy barrel I mean a gigantic ball barrel it was fitted with these amazing long-range target sights I wish I had a photo for you guys but I don't really have an explanation for what this gun was for it probably was used for some sort of ammo testing but it's kind of fun to imagine that somebody would come up with a single-shot Gras sniper rifle with target sights that would have been just fascinating although again I really don't think so turning back to that 11 millimeter cartridge I did say earlier that the French weren't that into producing it well they didn't want to make it much for rifles they were however using it for machine guns both France and Britain would work up aerial machine guns using the 11 millimeter gras cartridge as a base that was because it worked well with incendiary ammunition the sort best used against German Zeppelin's but we'll cover that more in future episodes for his rifle design Antoine Alfonzo chapeau would receive the Legion of Honor with the rank of knight he would serve as an arms inspector until his retirement it would pass away in 1905 bozhil Gras would also serve as an inspector and remain active in the model 1886 is development in 1891 he would rise to brigadier general and continuing his roles as inspector of artillery and chairman of the artillery committee he would pass away in 1901 well what the history all squared away let's go ahead and get this thing into May's hands one last time and talk to her about her experience shooting the Gras alright we've made room for may who has become an expert in single-shot rifles of the great war now let's get her opinion though on the Gras both in the wolf 1874 variety and in the 1914 conversion we'll get to this in a moment so why don't you start us off with the ergonomics so economics for these guns weren't really that different so I'm just going to talk about this one now it's long and it's heavy and it was much more awkward than what I was anticipating the stock is fatter so it kind of felt like I was having to get a like always constantly having to get a better grip on it like I just didn't quite have enough I have a big enough hand to really get my hand wrapped around it and the buttstock on the bottom was pretty rounded so when I was trying to fit it into my shoulder it just felt like it didn't really want to sit deep into the meat of it so I was having a hard time shouldering it easily and the straight wrist on the stock y'all know how I feel about that now it just it didn't really have any resistance so when I was shooting pulling back it just felt like my hand wanted to slip every single time and the comb on the stock while average I didn't think it was quite high enough I feel like I didn't I wasn't quite able to align with the sights very easily so like I really felt like I had to kind of tuck my cheek over the top of it which was a little bit awkward um as far as the bolt goes or bolt action goes I felt the [ __ ] on open was stiff action itself was smoother than what I was expecting however it it didn't want to stick every once in a while but it was still much better than what I was anticipating overall it's a little long and awkward yeah these are guns that are definitely showing their age by one moreone while they do have a good point of balance that's really about the last lasting impression you're going to get for these guys I agree they feel a little chubby up against my face the combs don't feel like they're perfectly set where they should be they're just they're not a well organized a fit gun because they are really a throwback to 1866 not just 1874 anyway we should probably though get into some of the actual differences between these two guns because we do have a different cartridge different sight picture and of course the inclusion the handguard which I doubt made much of a difference but why don't you walk us through like what really stood out between the two guns so let's actually first start off by talking about shooting these guns now the trigger on both of these was fantastic I was not expecting that it was a long pull through clean break smooth all the way through it was fantastic I wish there been more pros with this gun because that was honestly a wonderful surprise now the recoil was another story because with these two guns it wasn't really that much of a difference I mean you've got a heavy slow bullet versus a light fast one so there wasn't too much of a difference except I will say that 8-millimeter felt a little bit sharper so that that was really the only perceivable difference on my end but going into the site's next I will say there was a significant difference because on this older version these older sites they were actually much deeper like I could actually I had a great I better view with these and I did with the newer ones like it's just deeper not whereas the newer sites on this gun they had the handguard blocking them a little bit and then they weren't as deep they're a little bit flatter so I just didn't have quite a I didn't have as good a line of sight so yeah shooting wise a little sharper where's the sights are a little bit better on that one but let's but it alright I guess that brings us to our final question as always out of the two of these is there either that you would be comfortable fielding in the Great War okay so can I hit something with it yes is it gonna go bang yes do I want to bet my life on it know it while these were fun to shoot on just a day at the range it's not exactly ideal for battle conditions in my opinion especially during the Great War of all times I would actually bet my life on the rolling block over these guys so yeah I'm gonna give that a solid no unfortunately you know that's not a unfair assessment as a matter of fact the French didn't really consider to be a frontline weapon either just like we said so I guess the most you would ever do with one of these is stand around and guard things with the bayonet on the end and maybe you know threaten a few people here there or just sort of spy on your neighbors while you're bored walking through the neighborhood I was part of some other task but honestly I kind of feel bad for those guys too because these are heavy I wouldn't want to have to haul one around if my only job was to mostly be checking on telegraph poles so ultimately I'm afraid the grah outlived its usefulness getting into the Great War but it did fulfill a role so we've covered it and as usual I'll go ahead and courage everybody please stick around afterwards for our updates all right thank you all thank you everyone alright this updates going to be a little brief first of all I'll apologize for the sound quality as you can tell I had a cold I was going to try to wait a couple extra days to film this one but then hurricane rolled through anyway we get some preventative work we went ahead and move the collection out this is now moved back but I have to sort of sort everything get it all back on the walls so a lot of work ahead of us I do want to say special thanks yet again to patreon supporters because the only reason we were adaptable enough to do this is because we have the funds to just sort of go up and down the road and protect the collection so it's very very much appreciated there's more in the works guys but that was at the time I'm honestly scattered so thanks for watching I'll catch you later

Channel: C&Rsenal

Views: 139,172

Keywords: firearms, guns, WWI, History

Id: q3PLWIENSPw

Length: 35min 53sec (2153 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Remington_Underwood]

I heard England was also involved in WWI. Did they use rifles as well?

[u/uncleboz]

this one seemed a little off with the audio, but thats excusable due to the storms near othias

[u/manfrommacau]

The C&Rsenal series is just so great. Love it.

[u/ForgottenWeapons]

If anyone wants an M14 conversion in 8mm Lebel, let me know - I have one for sale. :)

[u/cristorf]

I want a single shot rifle now. It just seems so satisfying to shoot