It likely isn't terribly noticeable, but we've been slowing down here.
From Life Magazine, January 6, 1910.
The Great War is wrapping up and with it daily posts almost certainly will as well. It's not that we haven't enjoyed tracking things on a frequently or even daily basis from the Columbus Raid forward, it's just that we have no intention whatsoever of going forward with that sort of thing from November 11, 1918 on. This isn't "This Day In History" blog. We've already done a "Today In Wyoming's History" blog and that is more than enough (and we still add to that from time to time). Indeed that one turned into a book (which you should buy. . . Christmas is coming up).
I did give some thought to continuing on with this sort of thing after World War One to catch the end of the Spanish Influenza Epidemic but I'm not going to do it. History doesn't work that way. It may seem that things are compartmentalized, but they aren't. For Americans the Punitive Expedition flowed into World War One, which was my point in keeping this blog going like I was on frequent posts, often with century old newspapers, and then the Spanish Flu came up in the midst of it and because of it, but the so did Prohibition, and so did the revelry of the Jazz Age. That's how life really works, but that's not how a student can approach it really.
So as we "countdown" the days to the Armistice, we're also counting down the days of daily posts of the "today. . ." type entry.
You may have noticed that things have actually slowed up already. That was inevitable as the end of the war became sort of a vague running fight as it became obvious that the Central Powers were done. So there were no more big battles, and hence none to report on. The end of World War One, in fact, began to resemble the end of World War Two, in which units simply advanced day after day, some units encountering stiff resistance, some encountering surrendering German (or Austrian, or Hungarian, or Ottoman) troops. So that sort of entry has slowed up. After the last really huge event of the war, which has slowly started, the Kiel Rebellion, there isn't a lot to read about as the war was mostly just Allied soldiers marching on foot and getting into occasionally fights. Things didn't happen more quickly, quite frankly, as in World War One all of the armies mostly advanced by foot still. By World War Two, just a little over two decades later, the Allies were advancing every day in 6x6 trucks, which speeds things up a lot. So blog entries here, while still daily, have actually slowed up.
But other things have as well. For one thing, after three years (also about the start of the Punitive Expedition) we deleted our Reddit Account.
Deleting on Reddit means that the account is truly gone. You can't restore a deleted Reddit account.
I had really mixed feelings about Reddit to start with, and I still do. I mostly don't like it. It claims to be the Front Page of the Internet but it's really the 7th Grade Home Room While the Teacher is Out of the Classroom, of the Internet. It's a mess and mostly deserving of a poor reputation. But I did like the "100 Years Ago Today" Subreddit. Nonetheless, we're out the door and not posting there anymore. And we can't, as we deleted the account.
Deleting it wipes out the temptation that would have been there to keep on keeping on, and frankly I was getting sick of Reddit. The point at which you feel you have to post on some page on the net daily like that is when you should get out and wipe out the temptation. I can post here when I want to. I don't have to every day and in fact there's been years prior to 2015 when months would go by between posts. I don't see that happening now (unless a certain event which I'm hopeful for does occur, in which case there will be big changes here indeed), but that is the case. Being a blogger is supposed to be fun avocation for when you can't be outside, not a job. A lot of Redditors don't seem to realize that.
Indeed, that's why in my view even the allegedly very best sites on Reddit are mostly junk. They're prisoners of their moderators who take their positions all too seriously and often, if you can check up on them, have thin qualifications indeed. The supposedly good Ask Historians subreddit, for example, mostly wipes out posts with dictatorial moderating. If you bother to look it up, you'll find that one of the moderators is a grad student studying the historiography of the sexual history. . . something only an academic could care about and which qualifies you not to be a moderator, but rather a barista at Starbucks, barely. In that fashion the subreddit reflects the nature of academic historians who tend to detest historians who aren't academics, as if they own history, even though their own fields of study often render their work, frankly, utterly meaningless. I haven't checked up on all of them and there's no reason for me too, I should note, but this is sort of emblematic of the that site, which is supposedly one of the best Reddit has to offer.
Not that I'm picking on that one alone. The History Subreddit is junk as well with no effective controls, which is typical of most of Reddit (and oddly has one of the same moderators). The Subreddit dedicated to Catholicism is a Rad Trad war zone in which absurd flights of fancy about returning the world to a mythical golden age when the world was ruled by pacific Catholic monarchs who cared only about their people are taken seriously, even though thinking like that retards serious thinking. The economic Subreddits are haunted by adherents to all of the ridiculously absurd adherents of every wacko version of Socialism that were the pets of 19th Century Socialist thinkers who mostly sat around Paris coffee shops smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee before switching to wine about 9:30 in the morning, discussing their latest socialist/anarchist/winniethepoohist theories before stumbling to the beds of their paramours around 1:00 p.m (although the Distributist subreddit had some thoughtful posts on it fairly regularly). About the only thing worthwhile on Reddit is the 100 Years Ago Today sub, but as for about a week I was vaguely feeling "well I have to post there", it was time to make it so that I couldn't. About the only thing really left worth noting was the daily death toll for British Empire nurses due to the Spanish Flu, and that was just depressing.
I thought about doing the same thing with the Twitter feed we have here, but it doesn't have the same "gosh we must post" aspect to it and is easier to ignore. The Pinterest account associated with this blog is the same way. There is one, but it mostly serves as theoretical advertising back to this site when we have an interesting photograph in a post that we accordingly link back to that site. Pinterest, quite frankly, is even bigger junk than Reddit, which is saying a lot, as its a random mishmash of crap.
Anyhow, this blog will in fact live on after November 11, 2018, and it will feel weird not track daily events. But at that point my purpose for doing that will have departed and I won't keep doing that.
This returns us back to the original focus of the blog, which was theoretically research, or actually research, for a novel that was set in the Punitive Expedition. While starting off on that it occurred to me that my desire to be accurate in the novel was difficult as there were a lot of things I just didn't know about, particularly on the details and warp and woof of daily living. The blog has served to fill in a lot of those details and I will say that the 100 Years Ago sub did as well (as has the great A Hundred Years Ago blog which we'll continue to lurk on and post entries back here on), but mostly accidentally for the Subreddit as I posted photographs that I started looking up in 2015 and then read the articles, mostly those posted by a Redditor called "The Alaskan" who wrote really interesting posts on it. He dropped off, however, and then reappeared, and then dropped off, even though he's a site moderator (and that was a well moderated site. . . but one now advertising for moderators. Another frequent poster called Michael Noir also did interesting daily posts but he suddenly dropped off as well (another reason for us to depart, as we don't want to be the only one carrying the ball on it and certainly don't want to feel obligated to do so). Perhaps everyone in the group who posted regularly came due to World War One, and indeed the sub itself notes that it was set up to study WWI by the originator, much like this blog was set up for a similar purpose. If so, perhaps it's served its limited purpose.
Anyhow, with the end of the Great War this thread will return more to its original format, which will also mean reduced posting. Frankly, if it carried on with daily stuff, it'd get really boring, if it hasn't already. That may mean that the readership drops off, but we're not a subscription based newspaper with bills to pay from our daily publication, so if that's the case, so be it.
Another reason, we'd note, that this we're doing this is that life is busy and we've been busy with life. Blogs are just a hobby and once a person feels compelled to blog they're a problem. We've had a super busy couple of years and as a result it's been surprising that we've posted so frequently. Btu there are things to do, and they need to be attended to. So focus here has been dropping off.
Not that the blog will go away. Rather, the posts will be more like they were the other day when we ran a couple on hunting during World War One. They'll go back to focusing on that earlier time, but not on an anniversary type basis.
1. Lyndon Johnson announced that actions over North Vietnam would cease the following day, citing progress in the Paris Peace talks. Air operations had been going on over North Vietnam since 1965.
F-105s bombing and being lead by a B-66.
2. The University of Colorado's UFO Project issued a report that UFO's were bumpkis and that further pondering them was a waste of time. It's conclusion that "Our general conclusion is that nothing has come
from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific
knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us
leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably
cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced
thereby." was guaranteed not to be accepted by those who held contrary opinions in spite of the evidence.
3. The Harris Poll revealed that Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey was within 3% points of Nixon's 40% as the country headed to the polls. George Wallace was commanding 16% and 7% hadn't made up their minds.
2. In the Balkans the Italians and French took Shkoder Albania, while the Serbs took Podgorica, Montenegro.
3. Combat stopped in the Middle East with the formal surrender of the Ottoman Empire.
In Cheyenne they learned of the Ottoman's quitting. . . and also the residence problems of the former Governor Osborne.
They learned the same in Laramie. . . where nurses were being called due to the flu and the next conscription cohort was being notified.
4. Hungarian revolutionaries seized public buildings and King Charles IV was forced to recognize the success of the coup. Austro Hungaria as a political entity was effectively over.
On this day in 1968 the North Koreans landed a commando force on South Korean shores in an attempt to establish guerrilla bases in South Korea. The attack was part of a delusional series of increasingly aggressive moves that grossly underestimated the lack of support for communists in South Korea.
The landings promoted a massive reaction in the South with 70,000 troops being deployed to counter the 124 commandos who landed and attempted to infiltrate South Korean villages. 110 of the force were killed. Under 70 South Koreans, of which 23 were civilians, died in the event. Three Americans lost their lives.
Coming in the hottest year of the war in Vietnam, and dating back to an attempted raid in January that coincided with the Tet Offensive, this event served to remind that the Korean War had ended in an armistice, not a true peace, and the North Korean effort continued; even violently.
Officers and men of the U.S.S. Mount Vernon, October 30, 1918.
1. The Armistace of Mudros was signed which would bring the war with the Ottoman Empire to an end the following day.
The conditions of the treaty basically required the Ottomans to give up their empire.
The treaty was negotiated solely by the British for reasons that remain unclear. This caused displeasure with the French. It also meant that the treaty was harsher than it had to be, as unbeknownst to the Ottomans, the British demands, nearly all of which were accepted, and which gave the right to interfere in Anatolia, were more than the British really would have agreed to. Having said that, the Ottomans would have accepted nearly any term proposed and the treat could have been harsher.
The treaty was unpopular in Turkey and would provide part of the reasons for the Turkish revolve of the following year which would result in a regional conflict once again involving some of the Allied powers.
While the surrender would take place the following day, some Ottoman forces reacted by surrendering on this day. And at least Yemen dates its independence to this day.
Headlines in Cheyenne informing readers that the Austrians were seeking to quit the war.
1. Austria seeks an armistice from the Italians, and also with the Allies in general.
The Casper Daily Press, no doubt under pressure from its other Casper competitors, announced that it was gong to a weekly in this same issue in which it spoke of Autro Hungaria's desire to get out of the war and the continued ravages of the Spanish Flu.
2. The Allies occupied Vittorio Veneto, Italy.
3. The German Navy abandoned its plans for final offensive operations. Mutinous sailors would soon return to their ships and demonstrate their loyalty, at first. Before that, however, the mutiny spread to Wilhelmshaven.
4. The State of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs proclaimed its independence from Austro Hungaria. Czechoslovakia was also declared as a state on this date.
5. The Ottomans held their positions at the Battle of Sharqat, the first time that they had done so for weeks.
1. Having received orders to set sail to engage the British fleet, German sailors at Schillig Roads mutiny and refuse to prepare to get underway and refuse to weigh anchor The crews of two of the ships, battleships, commit sabotage on their vessels. What would become the Kiel Mutiny had commenced.
2. The Germans scuttle seven submarines based at Pula, Austro Hungaria. Another was scuttled at Trieste, Italy.
3. Czechoslovakia declares independence from Austro Hungaria.
4. Revolution breaks out in Hungary as the Hungarian National Council proclaims its independance from Austria.
Hungarian revolutionaries, including soldiers, with Aster flowers. The flowers gave their name tot he rebellion, the Aster Revolution.
5. The Austro Hungarian high command ordered a general retreat from all northern Italian positions.
6. The Allies capture Makri and Evros in Macedonia.
7. The Germans established nine new air squadrons.
This church is the oldest church in the United States. Built between 1610 and 1626, the church is still an active Catholic church offering two Masses on Sundays.
This church serves as a reminder that our concepts of North American settlement are often somewhat in error. This church in is the American Southwest and has been in active use for over 400 years, a figure longer than any church in the American East, and a demonstration that much of what we associate with European civilization in North America was already further West at an early stage than we sometimes credit, and that what became the North American civilization was already less European, in significant ways. This church, for example was constructed by regional natives.
That's more Americans who died in the Vietnam War.
Shoot, that's also more Americans than did in the Korean War.
It's approximately 1/5th of the number of Americans who died last year from heart disease.
For that matter, it's about 1/5th of the number of Americans who have died from AIDS. . . total.*
It's about 2.5 times the number of people who died from "gun violence" of all types last year, although to be fair, there's no such thing as "gun violence" in the first place, only violence. For that matter, it's probably actually more like 7 times the number of people who are murdered by people who use firearms to commit the murder, which is another figure yet. That means that about 2/3s of those who are killed in which a firearms is involved are suicides.
That also means that its over 4 times the number of people who are murdered in the United States every year.
Did you know that?
Probably not. It's simply not discussed much. The Flu has no demographic that advances it as a public health crisis and there are no celebrities that associate themselves with it.
It just goes out and really kills, and only those who know the dead seem to care.
*Which means that the number of Americans who die each year from heart disease is roughly equal to the total number of people who have died from aids.
One of the things I did, when I did that, was to address rifles and shotguns, but only very briefly. I did that in a super long footnote, at the end of the post.
Well, in thinking about it, that wasn't really fair, as that is one way that things have changed, sort of. So here we take a little closer look at that topic.
Rifles are the thing most associated with big game hunting, although in recent years bows have really come in strong. Bows were something that weren't allowed in my state when I was young and I've never personally adjusted to them. I love hunting, but bows don't appeal to me. Interestingly, at one point my daughter took up shooting bows, at a time in which we were also in 4H, but she wouldn't compete with them. Go figure. Maybe back in the Middle Ages our ancestors were victims of Welsh archers or something and we've never really gotten over it.
Anyhow, in North American most hunters use rifles. Some use shotguns, usually with slugs but sometimes with huge shot. Folks who use shotguns do so because the ranges they're shooting at are really close, and shotguns are pretty darned effective in those circumstances but, at the same time, have low danger of carry so there's low risk to other people.
Floridian hunters with shotguns in the early 20th Century. I posted this photograph in our first thread on this topic.
Outside of shotgun territory people mostly use and used rifles. So we should take a look at that.
And it'll be sort of a short look. The reason for that is that in 1918, and for that matter 1908, or 1898, the story is of the Winchester Model 1892 and the 1894.
That may sound simplistic, but it isn't. From the point of their introduction in 1892 and 1894 up well past World War One, and even to the present day the Model 1894, together with the 1892 simply defined the American hunting rifle. It would take World War One to really change that, and even that didn't happen to rapidly.
Even if you know nothing at all about firearms, you would recognize the 1894 The 1894, in its carbine variant, came to so define the "cowboy" rifle that it's appeared in zillions of Westerns in the hands of cowboy actors, and in fact was very commonly used for a cowboy arm for movies set well before the 1894 was introduced. It shared that position with the 1892, which so closely resemble each other that I can't tell them apart in a photograph.
River crossing scene from The Searchers. Every European American character in this scene, except for one, is using a Winchester Model 1892. The movie, however, is set vaguely after the Civil War, in what seems to be the 1870s. In actual history, the Comanches were defeated and on reservations by 1875, interestingly placing their defeat one year before the most famous battle on the Northern Plains, Little Big Horn, which occurred in 1876.
The Models 1892 and 1894 were the product of. . .yes you guessed it, the inventive mind of John Browning. His first "Winchester" design had been a single shot rifle designed along with this brother Matthew Sandifer Browning.
Browning is, without question, the most prolific and greatest small arms designer of all time. Starting in the single shot era and working into the automatic weapons era, his arms designs were singularly great.
Browning was born in Ogden, Utah Territory, in 1855 to Johnathan Browning and Elizabeth Carline Clark. He was one of nineteen children to his father, but not as many to his mother, as his father was a Mormon immigrant to Ogden at at a time when Mormons still practiced polygamy. His father was a gun smith and the young Browning worked in his shop. In 1878 he introduced what would later be known as the "High Wall" single shot rifle which he marketed in a firm started with his brother that was shortly known as the Browning Arms Company. The High Wall was a revolutionary design at a time at which the Sharps was regarded as the pinnacle of single action large bore rifles and it was soon noticed by Winchester which purchased the manufacturing rights to the rifle in 1885.
Patent drawings for the High Wall, arguably the greatest of the single shot rifles or at least a contender for the title. High Walls remained in Winchester production well into the 20th Century and have been revived as a product line by the Browning Arms Company many times since then. A small caliber version, the Low Wall, is also a legendary design.
This, we would note, is counter to one of the myths surrounding the Browning Arms Company, even though the founding story is well known. It is sometimes said that it never manufactured its own arms. It did. It just didn't do so for very long. There actually are Ogden Utah made High Walls, although not many. But those early rifles are Browning made arms, sold to hunters in the West in large calibers.
Advertisement for the Browning Brothers firm in the September 12, 1885 Uinta Chieftain. There's a widespread myth that Browning did not manufacture arms until after World War Two. This is simply incorrect. They did very early on, and then ceased doing so for a long period of time after John Browning's designs took off. The firm itself, or a version of it, continued to exist however.
The second myth here is that Matthew Sandifer Browning dropped out of the picture at this point. He didn't. He did play a reduced and soon no role in designing firearms, but he remained in the company and was a significant businessman within it. And that company would play a unique role in firearms design, with John Browning as its chief designer. Matthew Browning, on the other hand, was the principal businessman in the firm. They both would live, it should be noted, for almost the exact same number of years, dying within a year of each other.
Soon after that Browning designed the High Wall he turned to other designs, with the Winchester Model 1886 being the next significant design. Winchester had built its reputation on repeating arms, having taken over the original Henry repeating rifle line, but it had never been able to make a repeating rifle that fired a large cartridge. Browning changed that, and when he did, the lever action became a much more serious rifle than it had been before.
After this a series of successful Browning arms followed of all types. Significant for our story here, Winchester produced his Model 1887 lever action repeating shotgun starting in that year, introducing the concept of an effective repeating shotgun, which we'll discuss, maybe, later. That would yield ten years later to the Model 1897 pump shotgun which would remain a Winchester mainstay from that year until 1912, when it introduced the non Browning Model 1912 as its premier shotgun. Nonetheless Model 1897s would remain in use and, as we've already seen, they became the US's official shotgun seeing use in World War One, World War Two and even as late as the Vietnam War.
Starting in the 1890s the Browning Arms Company began to branch out from their association with Winchester. At first this was not due to any displeasure with the arrangement, but rather because Winchester did not always take up Browning designs. Before that day came, however, Browning had altered his Model 1886 lever action to produce the Winchester Model 1892 lever action followed by the 1894.
Deer hunter in the Adirondacks carrying a Winchester 94.
The 1894 was unique as it was the first Winchester lever action to be designed for the new bottle necked cartridges that were coming into use. The product of revolutionary cartridge design in Europe that saw high velocity smokeless powder cartridges the new Winchester cartridge that was designed took black powder at first as smokeless powder was a closely guarded secret in Europe that an American manufacturer had not been able to secure until the Dupont company introduced it in the U.S. Winchester jumped the gun a bit by introducing a cartridge that would clearly accept smokeless powder before there was smokeless powder to use in the cartridge, but that development caught up so quickly with the design that its forgotten that it was ever manufactured in that form. That new cartridge would be the .30-30.
Regarded as a hot revolutionary cartridge in that day the .30-30 took American game fields by storm. The cartridge was so dominant that the introduction of the slightly faster .30-40 by the U.S Army for its new bolt action Krag rifle had no real impact on its popularity and the Army cartridge did not supplant it. The Navy's 6mm Lee had no impact on it at all. And the vast majority of .30-30s were Winchester Model 1894s.
Elk hunter in Wyoming armed with an improbable arm for today, a Winchester Model 1894.
Now it wouldn't be true to say that everyone was armed in the game fields with a 1894. For one thing, Browning, before his association with Winchester ended, designed one final lever action, the Model 1895. After the 1895 Browning not only no longer contracted with Winchester, which wasn't taking all of his designs by that point, but he never again designed a lever action. There was frankly really no reason to improve on the designs as the 1895 was the logical final expression of them.
The 95 was specifically designed to take large cartridges including the new military cartridges that were coming on line. The ".30 U.S. Army" version took the .30-40 Krag and shortly after that, after the Army abandoned the Krag rifle following the Spanish American War, the 95 would be introduced in .30-06. That fact alone demonstrates the popularity of lever actions with Americans as the .30-06 in the M1903 Springfield was one of the stoutest military cartridges in the world at the time of its introduction and it was clearly designed to contemplate bolt action rifles, which as we will see were rapidly becoming the hunting arm of choice in Europe and elsewhere.
In addition to the Winchester offerings Marlin offered lever actions that were similar and had their own following. And very serious riflemen continued to use single shots. Browning's High Wall remained in production for serious marksmen for decades and Remington was a serious contender in that field with its Rolling Block rifle. All of these arms continued in use past World War One as common North American hunting arms.
Remington, lacking a repeating rifle, even if had a really good single shot, was the net to turn to Browning with a rifle we've already seen here, which was introduced to compete with the lever action. That was the John Browning designed Model 8, a semi automatic. Semi automatics offered many of the same advantages to sportsmen that lever actions did in that they were rapidly reloading and had compact flat actions, suitable for scabbards when horses remained very common in many typical hunting conditions. The Remington 8 achieved a following but it wasn't able to supplant the 94. Nor was the Winchester Model 1907. Both rifles fired light cartridges by today's standards, even if Remington advertised their rifle as "Big enough for the biggest game", thereby hoping to draw hunters who might otherwise feel that they needed to go for a Winchester Model 95 or perhaps a large single shot.
What was lacking in the American game fields a century ago, however, were two things. One of those things was bolt action rifles.
Now, bolt action rifles existed. And there were a few hunters out there using them. But contrary to fin de siecle Westerns like Joe Kidd (set in the early 1900s) or Big Jake (set in 1909), a person was pretty unlikely to run into anyone with a bolt action rifle even if they were a pretty advanced shooter. Some were around, however.
Actually, quite a few were around, but they were mostly in Europe.
Prolific German firearms designer Peter Paul Mauser, who can be credited with perfecting the bolt action rifle.
By the time we're discussing, the 1910s, Peter Paul Mauser had introduced his final bolt action design, the 1898 and was no longer working on new bolt actions just as John Browning was no longer working on lever actions. The prolific German designer had in fact perfected the bolt action after a rapid series of improvements on them after he first worked on a bolt action which featured the new bottle necked cartridges.
That first rifle wasn't really his design, purely, but the product of a commission to which he contributed, the 1888. That G88 was adopted by a military arm by Germany but Peter Paul Mauser went in on the 1890s to introduce a series of designs that rapidly made it obsolete. New designs came out in 1892, 1894, 1895, 1896 and finally in 1898.
The 1898 design was so advanced that its never been supplanted as a bolt action design, and it rapidly went into commercial production as a hunting rifle. Indeed, that was true of the 1895 version which saw widespread global use as a military rifle but which was also produced in a hunting variant in the Mauser stable of cartridges. 1895s, 1896s and 1898s were well established as hunting rifles by the time World War One broke out and had become the standard by which other rifles were judged by that time in Europe. They were also already seeing use around the globe, particularly in European colonies in Africa.
The globe trotting firearms inventor James Paris Lee, whose life and inventions would take him around the world. He was born in Scotland, came to Canada as a child, moved to the US, and then back to Great Britain. His most famous design served the British Empire for well over half a century and no doubt remains in some use somewhere today. It never took off as a hunting rifle, however.
Bolt actions were introduced to the United States by a series of famous rifle designers but none of them took off as sporting rifles for a variety of reasons. The U.S. Navy, for example, seriously experimented with an early version of the Lee design which would later be adopted by the British. The Navy version was in the US .45-70 black powder cartridge but the same basic design would achieve fame in .303 in British service. Remington also introduced an early .45-70 that was experimented with by the Army, giving the Army the chance to contemplate keeping the .45-70 in a repeating rifle. The new cartridges made that an unwise decision and the Army instead adopted a rifle designed by a Norwegian designer, the Krag. That same design would be adopted in different, no compatible, versions by the Danes and the Norwegians (and kept in production, in the Norwegian example, as late as World War Two by the Germans once they occupied Norway). At the same time, the Navy adopted a "straight pull" rifle, a version of the bolt action featuring a cam that turns the bolt rather than turning it manually, in 6mm. That choice of cartridge reflected a race towards smaller and smaller calibers that would then repeat it self after World War Two.*
Ole Herman Johannes Krag, one of the two men who invented the Krag Jorgensen rifle design. It was the second of his designs to be adopted by his native country as a service rifle, the earlier one being a single shot rifle.
Erik Jorgensen, a gunsmith who worked with Krag on the rile that bears their collective names.
The Krag rifle and carbine and the Navy Lee were not successful weapons. The Lee proved too slow to reload and the .30-40 compared poorly against the Spanish 7x57. The 6mm Navy cartridge proved too anemic. Given that, even though most of the examples had been produced in 1898, the Army adopted a new cartridge in a new Mauser based rifle in 1903. When Mauser introduced the Spitzer pointed bullet after that, the Army had the cartridge redesigned and it became the legendary .30-06, one of the two most used American big game cartridges of all time (the other being the .30-30).
Americans first started using bolt actions for hunting with surplus Krags, which started to be sold surplus after quantities of M1903 Springfield rifles had been produced in sufficient quantities. But other than those surplus rifles, very few bolt actions were in sporting use prior to World War One except among target shooters. Target shooters did purchase them directly from the government, along with a small number of sportsmen, but in the case of the former it was because they had to have them to compete in certain classes of competitive shooting. Oddly, the bolt action did not take off in North America at this time.
The M1903 Springfield Rifle. The 03 Springfield would become the inspiration for the Winchester Model 54, which actually wasn't as good as the 03, and in turn the Model 70, which achieved legendary status with Americans. The 03 itself would go on to be a widely used sporting rifle both in "sporterizations" of military files and in the form of actions bought by Griffin & Howe and used directly for sporting rifle manufacture. At least one hunting variant was made directly for Theodore Roosevelt and, given the era, it's probable that a handful of other such rifles were made. The full service rifle could be ordered in conventional or target variants from Springfield Armory by civilians.
It did take off elsewhere, as noted, and even before World War One all kinds of new and very fast cartridges were being introduce by European manufacturers. Holland and Holland, for example, introduced fast and large cartridges in 98s that it offered. The Rigby company did the same. In North America a designer called Ross attempted to do the same with a custom designed rifle and cartridge, which achieved some following, and which was purchased by his native country, Canada, as a military rifle, but even at that bolt actions retained a very small following in the U.S. and Canada. Arguably the country in which they were most widespread in civilian hands in North America was Mexico, but that was due to the Mexican Revolution.
The other thing that was missing in the American game fields (remember, I said two things were missing) were scopes.
Scopes had come into use as early as the American Civil War but early optics were awkward and not all that great. By the early 20th Century, however, this had begun to change, again in Europe, and more particularly in Germany. By the teens good hunting scopes were being made by German manufacturers.
Once scopes are considered bolt actions have an advantage over lever actions that can't be denied. But scopes were extremely expensive and very rare. It's no wonder that they didn't take off.
And then came World War One.
World War One trained millions of American men in shooting bolt actions. By the end of the war, men from all over the globe were undeniably familiar with them and their virtues, accuracy and good modern cartridges being two of those virtues. When they came home, some of them came home with bolt actions rifles as well, those rifles being fine German 98s.
Additionally, Remington and Winchester had been fully engaged, along with the government arsenals, in making bolt actions, those being principally M1917 Enfields, another Mauser variant. Winchester went right back to its civilian line following the war, but Remington was nearly bankrupted by the sudden cancellation of rifle contracts and was left with thousands of 1917 actions on hand. Turning necessity into a virtue, it adopted those actions to a new civilian sporting rifle, the Remington Model 30.
Early Remington advertisement for their new Model 30. Note how they leaned heavily on the association of the Model 30 with bolt actions of the recently concluded Great War, including noting that the Model 30 was chambered in the ".30 caliber Springfield 1906 cartridge" and that "Any cartridge listed for use in the U.S. Army Rifle, whether service, target, or sporting, will function satisfactorily in this arm".
Introduced first in 1921, the Model 30 was a rifle that was instantly familiar to servicemen and it essentially advertised itself. This changed the playing field for hunting rifles instantly as Remington finally had a repeating rifle of a type that Winchester didn't. Winchester responded in kind by modifying the M1903 Springfield design to introduce the Model 54, a rifle that couldn't help but recall the M1903 that those who had not carried the M1917 were familiar with.
Early Model 54 advertisement which interestingly shows this rifle outfitted, right from the start, with a precision Lyman No. 48 sight. At first precision sights such as this were more popular with American hunters than scopes were. Winchester was already advertising a wide range of cartridges for the Model 54 and noting its suitability for any place in North America.
Everything soon began to change. Bolt actions became increasingly the rifle of western hunters. In 1936 Winchester improved the Model 54 and introduced the legendary Model 70, which became the American standard for decades. Mauser 98s entered the American hunting scene, but oddly often as reconditioned prize rifles from World War One rather than as the very fine bolt actions they actually were. Indeed, the 98 was better than any of the American commercial offerings, but its commonality as a prize rifle detracted from it being viewed that way. One military rifle, however, that achieved legendary status following the Great War and which was used by Griffin & How for its commercial offerings was the M1903 Springfield.
In the same period Redfield and Lyman, manufacturers of sights, took advantage of the new more accurate rifles to introduce highly accurate receiver sights. Unertl introduced high quality powerful scopes in 1934. Lyman then introduced the smaller, and cheaper, Lyman Alaskan scope in 1938. Optics had arrived.
This essentially takes us to the modern era, omitting the very modern era of post Vietnam War era rifles and the impact of the AR15. While there were other developments, unless I wanted to do a directly post World War Two edition of this post, I'm not going to go into them as the post would become too lengthy and dull. Suffice it to say, the Winchester Model 1894 actually remains in production, as does the Model 95, but the bolt action, equipped with a scope, is the dominant big game hunting rifle today. The AR, however, which I've discussed elsewhere, as certainly made an appearance, however. But this takes us through an evolution that's significant. Like the evolution of everything, it didn't happen instantly, but it's significant for the stories we've been telling here.
*And which is now rebounding in the other direction as the Army has reintroduced the use of the 7.62 NATO from the depths which it had declined, introduced a 6.5 cartridges for its special forces, and just announced that it intended to go to a 6.8 cartridge, about .280 caliber, shortly.
1. On this day in 1918, General Erich Ludendorff resigned, and the direction of the war, if not already apparent, became very plain.
Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Ludendorff.
Ludendorff was the Quartermaster General of the German Army during most of World War One. The title of that position was deceptive even at the time, and has nothing to do with provisioning of soldiers as the name would seemingly imply. Rather, along with Paul von Hidenburg, he was the leader of hte German Army. His resignation was effectively a dismissal, and it expressed his falling out of favor by insisting that the German Army fight on.
During the war Ludendorff had come into immense power within not only the Army but the government as well. He rose to prominence starting with the assault on Liege where, while he was an observer, he ended up in command when the senior German officer was killed. Thereafter, he was assigned to the East, together with Paul Von Hindenburg, who was an elderly officer called back into service from retirement. The two of them worked closely together although Hindenburg proved to have the more solid tactical mind.
While in the East Ludendorff began to display traits that would later play out during World War One to the German's ultimate detriment. During the 1915-16 winter he headquartered in the Baltics and operated to start colonizing the conquered area with German settlers with the aim of Germanizing it, given the East a taste of what German policy was to be in 1939-1945. He anticipated the expulsion of Slavic populations in some of the conquered territory the Germans were advancing into and envisioned a future war against the United Kingdom and United States. In short, his vision of Germany in the East very matched the one that was to be attempted some twenty five years later.
Following setbacks in 1916, Ludendorff was elevated to higher command and became Quartermaster General in the thought that the existing Army leadership was failing. His first acts concerned the Romanian entry into the war, but his leadership may have been relatively inconsequential in dealing with that, or at least the local commander, August von Mackensen felt that they were. During the same period Hindeburg was elevated to commander of the German Army overall, but he was subordinate to Ludendorff. By 1916-17, his military role combined with his administrative role, given that the German government was subordinate to the civil service and the Army, such that he weilded immence power and was widely seen as a near dictator.
In 1917 Ludendorff was complicit in the German navy's desire to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in spite of the clear knowledge that it would bring the United States into the war. He was brash and powerful enough to walk out of a meeting in which Kaiser Wilhelm II required his commanders to consider the views of German chemist Walther Nernst who was regarded by the Kaiser as an expert on the United States and opposed the move. He was one of the German generals who opposed the German Reichstag when it passed a resolution for peace without annexations in the Spring of 1917.
Ludendorff was directly complicit in Germany's 1918 failures as he was one of the German figures who insisted on forcing huge territorial concession on Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which resulted in the necessity of Germany keeping 1,000,000 troops in the East, some of them engaged in wars that followed the Russian surrender, when they were clearly immediately needed in the West, something that should have been plain to all.
Ludendorff collapsed mentally when German fortunes turned in the summer of 1918. As a result he temporarily stepped away from his office but returned after a month's rest. On September 29, 1918, he had come to the realization that the war was lost and he and Hindenburg told the Kaiser that he must accept an Armistice with the Allies. The new chancellor approached President Wilson with a diplomatic note but the resulting terms were unacceptable to the German leadership at first as they required that Germany become a democratic state, thereby essentially demanding the complete capitulation of the German government and the formation of a new one prior to the commencement of negotiations.
This prompted Ludendorff and Hindenburg to send a telegram to German commanders that the fighting must continue. While the German rank and file troops had not cracked, this was simply too much to expect of the German people and their army and when the contents of the telegram were leaked to the press, it caused a domestic uproar in Germany.
Prince Maximilian of Baden, the chancellor, soon approached the Kaiser and indicated that if Lundendorff was not removed he and his cabinet would resign. He and Hindenburg were called in and both offered to resign. Hindenburg's resignation was refused but Ludendorff's was accepted. Ludendorff immediately snubbed Hindenburg by refusing to ride back to headquarters with him, claiming later Hindenburg had always treated him "shabbily".
He'd go on, of course, to be figure in far right wing movements in post war Germany and a co-conspirator with Hitler. Indeed, he was a significant right wing figure whose views anticipated the Nazis in some ways before their rise, and even had back into World War One. In 1920 he was part of the Kapp Putsch that attempted to overthrow the government. He was later part of the Beer Hall Putsch attempted by Hitler in 1923 and was amazingly acquitted in a trial in 1924, a sign of how weak the German republican government really was. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1924 as well a part of a coalition of far right political movements that included the Nazis.
By that time he was descending into what we'd now recognize as a slow onset of dementia and his behavior became increasingly erratic. He divorced his wife Margarethe, whom he had married in 1910 at age 45. Showing the degree to which the Army was the exception to the rule, she divorced her first husband to marry him in an age in which divorce was disapproved of, and both families approved (she was the daughter of wealthy industrialist). As he descended into madness he married Mathilde von Kemnitz who held radical religious views and he became a pagan and started worshiping Woton. In this period he came to a radical hatred of Jews and Catholics. He came to hold Hitler and Hindenburg in contempt and he refused a surprise personal attempt to promote him to Field Marshall in 1935. He died in 1937.
2. Americans take Gradnpre
3. Canadian Thanksgiving was held in Denain.
4. William George Barker, Victoria Cross
5. The HMT Calceolaria struck a mine and sunk, as did the Cuban cargo ship Chaparra. The German U-boat U-78 was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS G2 in the Skagerrak, going down with all 40 hands.
making it the oldest such object found in North America and pushing human settlement of North America back earlier, once again, than previously believed.
In noting that this was a found item, I have to wonder how many such ancient, ancient items have been picked up here and there in North America and simply found their way into drawers, were they were subsequently lost or perhaps remain?
1. The last engagement between the British and the Ottomans during World War One occurred at Haritan when the British Indian 5th Cavalry Division charged the Ottoman Yildriim Group.
This can be a bit deceptive, however, as the British would continue to fight the Turks post war on the fringes of the Turkish world for the next several years. This is one of many examples of the end of World War One not being the end of a regional war.
2. The Mid European Union released the Declaration of Common Aims for Europe's new sovereign nations from Philadelphia's Independence Hall.
The SMS Kaiser Wilhelm II from which the German High Seas Fleet would receive its final order to set sail during World War One. She would survive the war to be decommissioned in 1920.
1. The German Navy, in a flight of truly wackiness, orders the German High Seas Fleet, now supported by returning submarines, to deploy in a few days against the British fleet for the long awaited giant naval showdown. The act, coming after the German fleet had remained in port for years, only served to spark German sailors, largely drawn from the Socialist German working class, and radicalized after years in port, into rebellion which would flower in several days.
It is difficult not to view the Order of October 24, as it has come to be known, as both insubordinate and completely unhinged. Moreover, it came about in no small part as the German Navy, save for its submarine fleet, had basically sat the war out but was now upset on how it was going to clearly end in a German defeat.
The entire effort of Germany to build a high seas fleet capable of rivaling the British was a dubious effort from the onset, but the Germans under Kaiser Wilhelm II had attempted it. Building a navy is a difficult prospect of any nation and traditionally only nations taht have a strong seafaring culture have managed it. The Germans did not have a high seas history to speak of and geographically any sane German surface navy was always going to be principally a Baltic entity. None the less, starting in the 19th Century, the Germans had engaged in a dreadnaught building war with the British.
When the moment for the Germany navy came during World War One the German Navy largely flunked it, save for its U-boat campaign which was both brilliant and ruthless. The surface navy, however, the Battle of Jutland notwithstanding, largely did nothing. The huge expensive entity remained mostly bottled up, predictably, in port, with its officers largley fearful of committing it in a decisive engagement as any such effort stood to most likely cause its expensive loss. In their defense, such a loss would have exposed northern German to the potential ravages of the Royal Navy, so their reluctance to commit it was not completely unhinged.
With the Germans acquiescing to Woodrow Wilson's October 5 demand that they cease unrestricted submarine warfare it became plane to those in the military and the upper echelons of government that Germany was indeed defeated and that coming to terms with the Allies was now a matter of weeks. Surprisingly, the upper command elements of the Army, which was well aware of the situation Germany was in, took the matter much better than the navy did. The Navy objected to the loss of its U-boat campaign and its commander, Admiral Carl Friedrich Heinrich Reinhard Scheer ordered the commander of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral Franz Ritter von Hipper, to prepare an order sending the High Seas Fleet with the released submarines into action in the English Channel, but anticipating that the British would meat the fleet first off of the Dutch coast. Von Hipper issued his order on this day, which read:
Commander of the High Seas Fleet
Op. 269/A I
SMS KAISER WILHELM II, 24.10.1918
VERY SECRET
O. MATTER
O.-COMMAND No.19.
A. Information about the enemy
It is to be supposed that most of the enemy forces are in Scottish east
coast ports, with detachments in the Tyne, the Humber and the Channel.
B. Intentions
The enemy will be brought to battle under conditions favorable for us.
For this purpose, the concentrated High Seas forceswill advance by night into the Hoofden,
and attack combat forces and mercantile traffic on the Flanders coast
and in the Thames estuary. This strike should induce the enemy to
advance immediately with detachments of his fleettoward the line Hoofden/German Bight.
Our intention is to engage these detachments on the evening of Day II of
the operation, or to have them attacked by torpedo-boats during the
night of Day II or III. In support of the main task the approach routes
of the enemy from east Scottish ports to the sea area of Terschelling will be infested by mines and occupied by submarines.
C. Execution
i) Departure from the German Bight by day, out of sight of the Dutch coast;
ii) Route through the Hoofden so that the attack on the Flanders Coast and the Thames Estuary takes place at dawn on Day II;
iii) The Attack:
a) against the Flanders coast by the commander of the 2nd Torpedo-Boat Flotilla with Graudenz, Karlsruhe, Nürnberg and the 2nd Torpedo-Boat Flotilla.
b) against the Thames estuary by the 2nd Scouting Group with Königsberg, Köln, Dresden, Pillau and the 2nd Torpedo-Boat Half-Flotilla
Covering of a) by the fleet and b) by the C-in-C of the Scouting Forces;
iv) Return so as to reach the combat area favorable to us, near Terschelling, one or two hours before nightfall on Day II.
v) Protection of the return (Day II) by part of the 8th Flotilla
vi) Mine laying by the leader of 4th Scouting Group with 4th Scouting Group (supported by minelayers by Arkonaand Möwe) and the 8th Flotilla, on the approaches of the enemy, in accord with plan No. I.
vii) Disposition of submarines on the enemy routes in accord with plan No. III
viii) Attack by torpedo-boats during the night of Day II to III, in case
an encounter has already taken place, from near the Terschelling Light
Vessel towards the Firth of Forth,
in accordance with the orders of the commander of torpedo-boats. On
the meeting of the torpedo-boats with the fleet in the morning of Day
III, see the following order;
ix) Entrance into the German Bight by departure route or by routes 420, 500 or 750, depending on the situation;
x) Air reconnaissance: if possible.
This effort would have been risky at any point during the war, but its taking place in October 1918 was simply delusional. Indeed, it's doubtful that it could have taken place at any point after mid 1917. By the fall of 1918 German sailors, largely drawn from the German Socialist working class, were becoming heavily radicalized and mutinous. Indeed, mutinies had occurred in 1917. The years of being idle in port had contributed to massive discontent among them and the morale necessary to conduct such an operation had evaporated at some point mid war.
Moreover, even assuming that the loss of loyalty of the sailors could have been overcome, which it could not, this attack would have made very little sense as a solo effort so late in the war. If it had been undertaken in the Spring of 1918 in conjunction with the 1918 German Spring Offensive it would have at least have taken place in context with what was going on in the war. Even if it had been effective in October 1918 it would have had little long term impact with the German army now steadily in a fighting retreat.
Indeed, thinking that a navy that had been idle in port for years was capable of taking on a navy that had been on the high seas for years was itself delusional. And by this point in the war the Royal Navy was augmented on the North Atlantic with the American Navy, which was a major surface navy in its own right.
In any event, as will be seen, the High Seas Fleet never sailed. It's enlisted men wouldn't allow it to.
2. The Italians commence an assault on Austro Hungarian positions at Vittorio Veneto on a massive level, firing 2,500,000 artillery shells over seven days and sending up 400 aircrfat to oppose 470 or so Austro Hungarian ones.
Victorious Italian troops, October 1918.
Fifty-seven divisions were committed to the assault, including three British divisions, two French division, one Bohemian division and an American regiment. The Austro Hungarian Empire started the battle with sixty one divisions but Austro Hungaria would come apart during the battle, which would go on to the Austrian surrender on November 3, by which time all of the empires constituent parts had declared independence or withdrawn from the empire. It was the concluding battle for Austro Hungaria of the war.
U.S. troops of the 332nd Infantry at Grave di Papadopoli, October 31, 1918. We do not usually think of Americans fighting in Italy during World War One, but they did in small numbers.
3. The Allies continued to advance in France.
American troops waiting to go into action at Fismes. Note how heavily laden these troops are laden, more for marching than for fighting.
The final flight of the fastest airplane ever built, the rocket propelled X-15, took place on this day, with the plane achieving Mach 5.38.
The North American X-15.
The plane was piloted by NASA pilot William Dana. NASA's logo can be seen on the side of the plane's fuselage in the photograph above. The plane achieved altitudes of 50 miles high in some flights, qualifying the pilots of those flights for astronaut wings as the flights technically achieved space flight.
