Lebel Model 1886 rifle
The Lebel Model 1886 rifle also known as the "Fusil Mle 1886 M93", after a bolt modification was added in 1893, is an 8 mm bolt-action infantry rifle that entered service in the French Army in 1887. It is a repeating rifle that can hold eight rounds in its fore-stock tube magazine, one round in the elevator plus one round in the chamber; equaling a total of ten rounds held. The Lebel rifle has the distinction of being the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. The new propellant powder, "Poudre B," was nitrocellulose-based and had been invented in 1884 by French chemist Paul Vieille. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolas Lebel contributed a flat nosed 8 mm full metal jacket bullet. Twelve years later, in 1898, a solid brass pointed and boat-tail bullet called "Balle D" was retained for all 8mm Lebel ammunition. Each case was protected against accidental percussion inside the tube magazine by a primer cover and by a circular groove around the primer cup which caught the tip of the following pointed bullet. Featuring an oversized bolt with front locking lugs and a massive receiver, the Lebel rifle was a durable design capable of long range performance. In spite of early obsolete features, such as its tube magazine and the shape of 8mm Lebel rimmed ammunition, the Lebel rifle remained the basic weapon of French infantry during World War I. Altogether, 3.45 million Lebel rifles were produced by the three French state factories between 1887 and 1916.
Operation, features, and accessories
In operation, the bolt is turned up to the vertical position until the two opposed front locking lugs are released from the receiver. At the end of the bolt's opening phase, a ramp on the receiver bridge forces the bolt to the rear thus providing leveraged extraction of the fired case. The rifle is fitted with a two-piece wood stock, and features a spring-loaded tubular magazine in the fore-end. Taking aim at intermediate distances is done with a ramp sight graduated between 400 and 800 meters. The ladder rear sight is adjustable from 850 to 2,400 meters. Flipping forward that ladder sight reveals the commonly used fixed combat sight up to 400 meters. The Mle 1886 Lebel rifle has a 10-round capacity: eight in the under-barrel tube magazine, one in the elevator, and one in the chamber. The Lebel rifle features a magazine cutoff on the right side of the receiver. When activated, it prevents feeding cartridges from the magazine.The Mle 1886 Lebel rifle was issued with a long needle-like quadrangular épée bayonet, the Épée-Baïonnette Modèle 1886, with a length of 52 cm.. With its X-shaped cross section, the épée bayonet was optimized for thrusting, designed to readily penetrate thick clothing and leather. The bayonet was dubbed "Rosalie" by French soldiers who were issued it during World War I.
Origins and development
The Mle 1886 Lebel rifle was the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. This new propellant, made of stabilized nitrocellulose, was called "Poudre B" and had been invented in 1884 by Paul Vieille. Three times as powerful as black powder, it left virtually no combustion residue. For this last reason, the new powder enabled the reduction of the caliber. The increase of the bullet speed in the barrel required a stronger bullet than the older lead bullet. New cartridges were designed where the lead was placed in a full metal jacket from a deformable alloy.The French military initially planned to adopt a wholly new rifle design and spent the year 1885 determining the optimal caliber and testing the Remington-Lee rifle, which performed well during the Sino-French War. A Mannlicher rifle was to be tested in 1886 in order to compare it to the Lee, and a brand new cartridge was to be designed as well.
However, in January 1886, a new revanchist French war minister, General Georges Ernest Boulanger, cancelled these plans and requested the urgent application of these two technical breakthroughs to the design of a new infantry rifle. He appointed General Tramond in charge of the project, which had a one-year deadline.
Firstly the 11mm Gras cartridge case was necked-down into an 8mm case, a transformation carried out by Gras and Lt. Colonel Desaleux, which necessitated a double taper handicapping French firearms design for decades to come. The repeating mechanism, derived from the French Mle 1884 Gras-Kropatschek repeating rifle, was implemented by Albert Close and Louis Verdin at the Chatellerault arsenal. The bolt's two opposed front locking lugs, inspired from the two rear locking lugs on the bolt of the earlier Swiss Vetterli rifle, were designed by Colonel Bonnet. The 8mm flat-nosed FMJ "Balle M" bullet was suggested by Tramond and designed by Lt. Colonel Nicolas Lebel after whom the rifle are named. However, Lebel did not lead the team responsible for creating the new rifle. He amicably protested during his lifetime that Tramond and Gras were the two superior officers who jointly deserved that credit. Nevertheless, his name, which only designated the Balle M bullet as the "Balle Lebel," informally stuck to the entire weapon.
The Lebel was designed to be backwards compatible so it could use up existing stores of parts. It used the straight trigger and horizontal bolt action from the army's single-shot 11mm Mle 1874 Gras and shared the tubular magazine from the navy's Mle 1878 Kropatschek rifle. The Mle 1884 and Mle 1885 Kropatschek rifles, still chambered for the 11mm Gras black-powder cartridge, were later adopted by the army as a transitional repeating firearm. The Mle 1885 had a two-piece stock and a massive steel receiver and closely resembles the Mle 1886 Lebel.
Boulanger ordered the production of one million rifles by 1 May 1887, but his proposal was entirely unrealistic and would require impossible speed; Boulanger would be sacked the same year for provoking a war with Germany. The Lebel rifle was manufactured by three government arsenals: Châtellerault, St-Etienne and Tulle, mostly during late 1880s and early 1890s. It featured a two-piece stock and a massive receiver designed to withstand the higher pressures developed by the new smokeless powder-based cartridges.
In 1893, an improved version of the M1886 Lebel was designated Fusil Mle 1886 M 93. Its most useful improvement was a modified bolt head which directed hot gases from ruptured cartridge cases away from the shooter's face. The firing pin and its rear knob had already been modified in 1887 while the stacking rod remained unchanged. Lastly, the fixation of the rear sight onto the barrel was substantially improved during that 1893 modification.
Between 1937 and 1940, a carbine-length version of the Lebel was issued to mounted colonial troops in North Africa. This carbine variant, the Mle 1886 M93-R35, was assembled in large numbers at Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle, beginning in 1937. It used all of the Lebel's parts except for a newly-manufactured shorter barrel of carbine length. It used new sights based on that of the Berthier carbine and a shortened Lebel bayonet. The carbine's shortened tube magazine held only three rounds.
While advanced for its time, the Lebel rifle design was not without shortcomings. It became outdated much faster than any of the magazine-fed rifles of other European militaries which followed the French example during the late-1880s and 1890s. Where the service rifles of other countries could be quickly reloaded with stripper clips, bullets had to be loaded into the Lebel individually. The Lebel's tube magazine also greatly affected the rifle's balance when being fired.
Competitors and successors
Upon its introduction, the Lebel rifle proved vastly superior to the Mauser M-71/84, the German Army's replacement of the Model 1871 Mauser. France finished its rearmament program with the Lebel in 1889, just 18 months after Germany had completed its rifle replacement program with 780,000 M-71/84s. The new French rifle alarmed Bismarck. Tests at Spandau arsenal in the winter of 1887-1888 found that the Lebel could fire 43 rounds of smokeless powder ammunition per minute compared to just 26 of black-powder ammunition for the M-71/84. The inferiority of the Mauser M71/84 and its 11mm black-powder ammunition was one reason why Bismarck opposed going to war with France that winter, despite being pressed by War Minister Waldersee.The Mle 1886 rifle proved to be a sturdy and serviceable weapon, but one which became rapidly outdated by advances in military rifle and ammunition designs. As early as 1888, the German Army's Rifle Testing Commission had introduced in response a completely new turnbolt magazine rifle with a spring-loaded box magazine: the Gewehr 88 "commission" rifle. Above all else, it had been designed around the first-ever rimless military cartridge using the new smokeless powder ammunition: the Patrone 88 cartridge. The early Gewehr 88 was followed 10 years later by the successful Gewehr 98 which originally was chambered for the Patrone 88. Shortly after the 1903 pattern S Patrone cartridge evolved out of and replaced the Patrone 88. The adaption of existing Patrone 88 chambered fire arms to the S Patrone was fairly easy and quickly realized.
Outclassed by Germany's Mauser rifle, the French military decided in 1909 to replace the Lebel and its rimmed cartridge with more advanced designs. While the bolt-action Berthier rifle was first issued in 1907 as a stop-gap to arm colonial troops, the French defense ministry planned to leapfrog other military forces with an advanced semi-automatic infantry rifle. This new weapon was the Meunier rifle, also known as the Fusil A6, which chambered a more powerful 7×59mm rimless cartridge. It was adopted in 1912 after an extensive competitive process. However, its manufacture, which was to begin in 1913, was suspended because of the imminent risk of war with Germany. Instead, and during World War I, the French Army chose the easier and less expensive solution of adopting a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle which incorporated some Lebel parts: the Fusil Mle 1917 RSC, once again in 8mm Lebel caliber. It was manufactured in large numbers during 1918 and issued to select soldiers in infantry regiments. However, the Mle 1917 RSC was criticized by infantrymen as being too heavy, too long, and too difficult to maintain in the trenches. Furthermore, it also needed a special five-round clip to operate. In the end, the aged M1886 Lebel and variants of the Berthier rifle remained in service until the Armistice of November 11, 1918 and beyond.