Interesting mix of weapons – A ZB30, a Mauser 98, and what appears to be an 1891 Mauser. Photo courtesy of Beryl Barnett.
Vintage Saturday: Wingshooting
Belt-fed
Hitler’s Zipper: The MG-42 Universal Machine Gun
The MG42 was developed to be a more reliable and easier to manufacture replacement for the MG34, although both would serve side by side until the end of World War Two. Designed by Grossfuss company […]
Semiauto pistol
C93 Borchardt: the First Successful Self-Loading Pistol at RIA
Hugo Borchardt was a brilliant and well-traveled firearms designer. He was born in Germany but emigrated to the United States at a fairly young age, where he became engaged in the gun trade. He spent […]
Anti-Tank Rifles
Could a Tankgewehr Really Take Out a British MkIV Tank?
The Tankgewehr antitank rifle was developed by the Mauser company and adopted by the Imperial German military as an emergency measure to counter the introduction of tanks to the WW1 battlefield. The question is, did […]
hey, TinTin shot a Mosquito down with a Stuhrmgewehr!
This is not ZB 30 machine gun, but ZB 26:-)
I’m going to take a guess that the one rifle is an M-1889 Belgian.
Almost certainly a Belgian ’89 (or variant), based on the external magazine and the barrel jacket.
Why not; Red Baron was also shot down by rifleman.
I thought he was shot down by a beagle with an active fantasy life…
Very cool reply.
But only after he had shot down the beagle too many times to count.
Were these possibly occupation troops in Belgium or Holland? Their inventory of weaponry certainly seems to indicate that they were members of a second-line unit usually associated with that sort of duty. The Alsatian pup seems to be more interested in what is in the grass just ahead of his ( or her ) nose than in the otherwise dramatic proceedings around him ( or her ).
An Alsatian, or perhaps a Belgian Malinois..?
Could be. Hard to tell from the photographic resolution ( or lack thereof ).
Looking at the details in these pictures mades my head hurt but could the long rifle be a Gewehr 88?
No, because it doesn’t have the barrel shroud. A Belgian 1889 Mauser is probably the best guess.
Actually, it DOES appear to have the barrel shroud, a feature of the original Belgian ’89.
Reasons why it’s not a Commission M1888:
1. Bolt handle BEHIND the rear receiver ring. Gew88s have a split bridge.
2. The construction of the external magazine. If I remember correctly, there’s a “toe” at the front of the ’89 and ’91 magazines which houses a pivot for the follower. ’88s have no such structure.
Chris, that’s a really astute observation, especially coming off an old photo that isn’t all that sharp. My hat’s off to you on this one.
My FIRST firearm was a Commission ’88 cut down to short rifle length (probably for the Turkish Forestry Service) that I bought while in college in the ’70s. I’ve owned several more since then, including a Gew ’91 artillery short rifle. I’ve always been fascinated by the Commission ’88 and its Dutch and Greek cousins. Some day I’d like to own some of the commercial sporter conversions like the ones in the 1910 Alfa catalog.
Okay, you might have had a slightly unfair advantage when it came to identifying the rifle in the photo :-D. That still has to be a pretty impressive ongoing collection you’ve owned over the years — I’m jealous! Seriously, though, I think it’s really great that you’ve had the opportunity to do so, and I hope those commercial sporter rifles will come your way soon. Many thanks for being kind enough to share this with the rest of us!
They really are neat guns with a much richer history than people think, just by virtue of all the countries that used them, including Germany, China and Turkey. If I’m not mistaken they were even used in the Easter Rising.
I am also pretty confident that the longer rifle is indeed a Belgian M 1889 Mauser.
The documentary My Private War has amateur movie footage of German soldiers shooting down a Russian observation plane with rifles early in WW2. So it did happen.