I thought it was because the round was already widely available, what with Russia having received 600k of them bought directly from Japan and another roughly 180k from the UK and ex-Mexican order, plus apparently about 400 million of rounds of ammo?
And rather than being “too poor” it was the need for the rifles RIGHT NOW that drove buying them - there wasn’t the time or the resources to set up manufacturing for the rifle or ammo.
Russia wasn’t the industrial powerhouse that Nazi Germany was to enable it to create a whole new calibre… and it wasn’t alone - the UK and USA also didn’t create new calibres between the wars even though they tested them - sticking with the “old” pre-WW1 ammunition literally due to economics and fossilised thinking
6.5mm Arisaka was chosen because the 6.5mm Fedorov was declined and the 7.62x54mmR was too powerful which caused too much recoil and the gun wore off too quickly.
The 6.5mm Fedorov ammo was declined before the war even broke out because they didnt have the logistical capacity for it.
so Tsar bad, Russia good, I had a commie friend with this kind of ideas… not the brightest guy.
And no actual reason to make a whole new line for a small-demand ammo - just like the UK and USA between the wars for various rounds smaller than 303 and 30-06.
Great communication philosophy - chuck out random unintelligible comments
Clearly not true.
The original 150 1911 trial models were made for 7.72mmx54. The 1913 model in 6.5 Federov was trialed and found quite good, but the ammo was apparently prone to jamming and would at least require more developments.
So the issues already discussed re economics and start of WW1 stopped any thought of taking time to improve it.
Because I was contemplating on trolling you or to actually meaningfully participate, but since you wrote this detailed post with evidence, I would feel bad for trolling you
Keeping guns in reserve and producing them are not the same, Berdan II was in reserve until 1955 (Finland).
Fedorov was produced until 1924 when production was ceased because Soviets favoured guns firing domestic ammunition which is real shame considering that it was the most advanced gun in their inventory at the time.
Its true that the Fedorov seen use in the years following but that was overall limited because ammunition was scarce, again wasted potential there, but still it was actually the most logical decision to use Arisaka round in 1916 as for stopping production it’s arguable but still logical.
They were never really interested in adopting it in the first, but feeding issues were the final nail in the coffin.
he didn’t say that. At the end of the text I saw it was written: that the trigger mechanism received a switch for firing bursts. 3 lines are the old imperial designation for the 7.62 caliber.
No. They were exactly like that and did exactly that. The Tsarist officials did not like the idea of self-loading and automatic weapons, because they were afraid that soldiers would waste a lot of ammunition. This led to tragic consequences in the First World War.
Fedorov never mentioned the military’s demands in this regard in his memoirs.
The Fedorov automatic rifle was used as a machine gun during the WW1. Also, the original version of the Fedorov 1913 was only semi-automatic, automatic modification was made during the war, which contradicts the idea of limiting firepower with a 3-round burst.
I have no information on what specifications were given, but considering that more than half of the rifle were tested in 6.5mm Fedorov which the army already rejected, it seems that Fyodorov and his team actually enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in the design.
Fyodorov was inspired by the French Chauchat so it’s unlikely he would design a burst fire mode and it’s even weirder that only 2 rifles that have the exact same specifications get burst fire.
Let’s be realistic here if burst fire had existed they would have at least tested that on at least a 6.5mm rifle as well.
It’s more than a hundred years old prototype rifle of which only examples were made and we only know that firing was done in bursts.
But if it really was burst fire mode it would specify how many rounds it fired at once and it’s also suspicious that we don’t see this mechanism return in any later Soviet-Russian weapons
The 3-round burst is pure fantasy, even if you believe it was burst fire, we have zero information on how many rounds it fired at once.
I’m not even sure why they would pick a controversial gun when they could have given us a 5 round Fedorov rifle for BR2 which would have been perfect since USSR doesn’t have a TT semi-auto on BR2. A 25 round Fedorov rifle chambered in 6.5 Fedorov would have been great fire boost as well.
I don’t even care if Fedorov rifle is trash or OP, I just don’t want another G43kurz injustice.
I would really hate if Fedorov rifle was changed weeks or months after we have unlocked it.
There was no controversy before they somehow decided Fedorov 1913 is a burst fire rifle.
No one thought it should be able to burst fire before. And if they had released a fullauto rifle from the very beginning, no one would jump out and argued it should be burst.
That was the case for a lot of militaries - indeed pretty much standard - it was also a consideration when the first repeating rifles were built as far back as hte American Civil War.
And the fact that he personally traveled around the world and bought weapons for the army.
The Empire had no intention of developing weapons in principle. And any attempts were drowned in the incompetence of the higher ranks and in corruption.
In the summer of 1916, a company from the 189th Izmail Regiment, consisting of 158 soldiers and four officers, was armed with automatic weapons designed by V. G. Fedorov. According to the Journal of the 5th Department of the Artillery Committee of the GAU No. 381 dated September 6, 1916, the weapons set of the aforementioned company included:
6.5-mm submachine guns (machine guns) with 15-round magazines in the amount of 8 pcs.;
3-line self-loading (in the terminology of those years - automatic) rifles in the amount of 45 pcs.
Several 3-line automatic Fedorov rifles were adapted to install magazines from the Madsen light machine gun, their trigger mechanism received a translator for firing in bursts. Rifles of 3-line caliber were equipped with bayonets-daggers.
What are you talking about? This particular rifle, 45 of which were issued to soldiers, took part in battles in World War I. Several of them, that is, more than one, had Madsen magazines and fired in bursts.
