Manufacture d'Armes de Chatellerault Berthier M1892 Carbine

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Manufacture d'Armes de Chatellerault Berthier M1892 Carbine

Palmetto State Armory

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Named after its inventor, Emile Berthier, a French civilian engineer in the Algerian railways, the Berthier's three-shot vertical-feed Mannlicher-type en bloc magazine could be loaded by clips, greatly increasing reloading speed, a particular convenience for cavalry and other mounted troops. A spring-loaded arm fed cartridges to the breech, and when all cartridges had been loaded, the empty clip fell out by gravity through an opening in the bottom of the magazine. Berthier carbines were first issued in 1890 and 1892, and had

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been designed by Emile Berthier, an engineer at the French Algerian Railways,to be used with standard 8mm Lebel ammunition. After the adoption of the new Lebel Model 1886 rifle, French military authorities attempted to develop a carbine version of the rifle for mounted troops. A prototype carbine was created by simply shortening the existing barrel, forearm, and magazine tube of the Mle 1886 rifle. However, this design was soon rejected for insufficient accuracy, as well as being too slow and cumbersome to reload with single cartridges while on horseback. In response, the French Army held a series of rifle trials in 1887 to select a suitable carbine. One of the prototypes submitted was designed by Émile Berthier, a mechanical engineer in the Compagnie Bône-Guelma (one of the five subsidiary companies of the Algerian Railway System). Berthier's design for the original carbine was adopted in 1890 as the Mle 1890, utilizing a 3-round en-bloc clip. The first Berthier carbine came into production as the "Carabine de Cavalerie Modele 1890", which was officially adopted for service on March 14, 1890. The main production facilities were the Manufacture d'Armes de St Etienne or MAS and the Manufacture d'Armes de Chatellerault or MAC. The search for a suitable small arm for mounted troops was given greater urgency by the Germans' development of the Karabiner Modell 1888, a carbine variant of the Gewehr 1888. It was issued to essentially all French artillery and cavalry troops. As the high Command appreciated the performance of the Mle 1890 Berthier carbine, a second version was specifically produced for artillery service, the " Mousqueton Mle 1892" which could mount a short blade bayonet and thus had a re-designed forend stock. However it continued to feature the 3-round En-bloc clip of the Model 1890 carbine. During World War I, after complaints from combat troops regarding the limited capacity of the 3-round charger and mud ingress into the well opening, the Berthier's magazine was increased to hold a 5-round "en bloc" charger. Furthermore, a hinged metal plate covering the bottom opening of the magazine well was added. The final result was the Mle 1892 M16 5-shot carbine which was well received, but did not appear on the front lines until the summer of 1918. Though inferior overall to Mauser's double-column box magazines, the Berthier weapons had to retain the Mannlicher en bloc system, as the rimmed and tapered 8mm Lebel cartridge could not feed properly from a Mauser-style box magazine. The Berthier Mle 1892 M16 carbine, with a 5-round charger, had a deserved reputation of solidity and reliability that kept it in service until the early 1960s. The Berthier clip itself was an innovation over the earlier Lee and Mannlicher designs. Berther ClipMannlicher style clips used by the German Commission rifle were weak and tended to bend out of shape easily, while Mannlicher clips used in rifles such as the Steyr-Mannlicher M1895 were sometimes criticized as being expensive. To create a strong yet cheap clip Berthier chose an inexpensive spring-steel design (a similar tin design would also be chosen by John Garand in the United States M1 Rifle for the same reasons) that could be pressed in a single operation on a simple workshop press. The expense of magazines in the 1880s and 1890s had shot down the original Lee rifle design, and limited British soldiers to a single magazine for each of their rifles, so a cheap charger was essential for a weapon designed to be used in the colonies. The clips for the weapon cost less than half-a-penny each, a fact trumpeted in newspapers of the time, making each cost only a fraction of the ammunition that it contained, yet they were strong enough to be retained and reused if needed. Berthier simply married this magazine system to a modified, reduced-size Mle 1874 m80 receiver and took much of his bolt design from the current Lebel Mle 1886.