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The Mondragón rifle refers to one of two rifle designs developed by Mexican artillery officer
General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". O ...
Manuel Mondragón Manuel Mondragón (1859–1922) was a Mexican military officer who played a prominent role in the Mexican Revolution. He graduated from the Mexican Military Academy as an artillery officer in 1880. He designed the world’s first gas-operated se ...
. These designs include the straight-pull bolt-action M1893 and M1894 rifles, and Mexico's first self-loading rifle, the M1908 - the first of the designs to see combat use.


Straight-pull bolt-action rifles

Mondragón began working on his initial rifle design in 1891. During his stay in Belgium, he filed a patent application for which he had received a grant on March 23, 1892 (No. 98,947). Mondragón was granted a further Patent on April 20, 1892 from the French Patent Office (No. 221,035). He also filed for a Patent for his design with the United States Patent Office on February 8, 1893, which was granted on March 24, 1896 (No. 557,079). The rifle, referred to as model M1893, was of a straight-pull,
bolt-action Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed). Most bolt-actio ...
design, chambered in the 6.5x48mm cartridge (also developed by Mondragón), with a fixed magazine which held an 8-round en-bloc clip. The bolt was locked by two pairs of six small radially-arranged lugs (reminiscent of, e. g.,
AR-15 An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation ...
) locking in helical grooves in the receiver. The rifle operated with three settings: "A" (safe), "L" (normal operation), and "R" (rapid). The "automatic" fire setting allowed the rifle to fire a cartridge each time the bolt was manually cycled to closed position, in similar fashion to Winchester M1897 pump-action shotgun. The rifle could be equipped with a knife bayonet, measuring and , or a blade-type bayonet of length. At the time of the rifle's design, Mexico did not have any manufacturers capable of producing them to the required tolerances. Mondragón, with the backing of Diaz, subsequently entrusted the Swiss Industrial Company (''
Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft SIG Combibloc Group AG, originally founded as ''Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft'' (German for Swiss Industrial Company; in French, as ''Société Industrielle Suisse''; and, in Italian, as ''Societa Industriale Svizzera''), and later know ...
'') of Neuhausen, Switzerland with the production of the rifles. SIG received the first order for 50 rifles in 1893, and a second order for 200 rifles followed in 1894. The rifles from the second order were chambered in the 5.2 × 68mm round developed by Swiss colonel
Eduard Rubin Eduard Alexander Rubin (17 July 1846 – 6 July 1920) was a Swiss mechanical engineer who is most notable for having invented the full metal jacket bullet in 1882. His most famous cartridge was the 7.5×55mm Swiss which was the standard am ...
, and were referred to as the model M1894 (to differentiate them from the versions chambered in the 6.5mm cartridge).


Self-loading rifle

Mondragón continued his work, and on August 8, 1904 he filed a patent application (No. 219,989) for his new design for a self-loading rifle. The Patent (No. 853,715) was granted on May 14, 1907. The design was adopted by the Mexican Army in 1908 as the Fusil Porfirio Díaz Sistema Mondragón Modelo 1908. The same year, the Mexican government contracted with SIG for the production of 4,000 M1908 rifles, chambered in the
7×57mm Mauser The 7×57mm Mauser (designated as the 7 mm Mauser or 7×57mm by the SAAMI and 7 × 57 by the C.I.P.) is a first-generation smokeless powder rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It was developed by Paul Mauser of the Mauser company in ...
Mexican service cartridge. Due to the
Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
, by 1910 only 400 rifles had been delivered by SIG. The rifle's inability to cope with the poor quality of ammunition available at the time, along with the high unit cost of
SFr SFR (; ''Société française du radiotéléphone'', ) is a French telecommunications company. As of December 2015, it had 21.9 million customers in Metropolitan France for mobile services, and provided 6.35 million households with high-spee ...
160 per rifle, led to the cancellation of the order by the Mexican government. The Mondragón Modelo 1908 was a gas-operated rifle with a rotating bolt using a cylinder and piston arrangement, a design considered unusual at the time. The bolt and the locking lugs was very similar to the bolt-action rifle. A switch, located on the charging handle, would disengage the bolt from the gas system, allowing the firearm to effectively operate as a straight-pull bolt-action rifle. The Mondragón Modelo 1908 rifles were fitted with a bipod. In addition to the knife bayonet introduced with the previous rifles, Mondragón designed a spade bayonet for use with the Modelo 1908, for which he filed a patent application (No. 631,283) on June 6, 1911.


Use during World War I

In 1914 the
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
bought the remainder of the M1908 model rifles produced by SIG (as many as 4000 units, depending on the total SIG production for their Mexican contract). The Germans tried to modify the rifles to chamber the 7.9×57mm S-Patrone, the service cartridge of Germany until the end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
), but their attempts were unsuccessful. The rifles were tested by the German Army, but they proved highly susceptible to fouling caused by mud and dirt in the trenches, a common problem even with less complex designs such as the Canadian Ross Mk III straight-pull
bolt-action rifle Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed). Most bolt-actio ...
. The
Imperial German Flying Corps Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * Imperial, Texas ...
(Luftstreitkräfte) decided to adopt the rifle, where operating conditions lessened the chances of the action being fouled by mud, and issued two rifles to each aircraft's crew. The M1903 proved to be a significant improvement over the bolt-action Gewehr 98 rifles and
Parabellum-Pistole The Pistole Parabellum—or Parabellum-Pistole (Pistol Parabellum), commonly known as just Luger or Luger P08 is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The Luger was produced in several models and by several nations from 1898 ...
pistols usually issued to crews. The M1908 rifle was re-designated as the Fl.-S.-K. 15 (''Flieger-Selbstladekarabiner, Modell 1915'' - Aviator's Selfloading Carbine, Model 1915) and was issued with 30-round drum magazines. The drum magazine issued with the Fl.-S.-K. 15 was that designed and patented by
Friedrich Blum Friedrich may refer to: Names *Friedrich (surname), people with the surname ''Friedrich'' *Friedrich (given name), people with the given name ''Friedrich'' Other *Friedrich (board game), a board game about Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' ...
, with a later 32-round version of the drum magazine (''Trommelmagazin 08'') that had been designed for the 1913
Parabellum-Pistole The Pistole Parabellum—or Parabellum-Pistole (Pistol Parabellum), commonly known as just Luger or Luger P08 is a toggle-locked recoil-operated semi-automatic pistol. The Luger was produced in several models and by several nations from 1898 ...
(LP 08). The corps used the Mondragón rifle until a sufficient number of machine guns equipped with a
synchronization gear A synchronization gear (also known as a gun synchronizer or interrupter gear) was a device enabling a single-engine tractor configuration aircraft to fire its forward-firing armament through the arc of its spinning propeller without bullets str ...
became available, after which the M1908 was phased out of service and given to the navy. Very few of the Mondragón rifles survived the war, although almost all of the rifles were still in use by the
Imperial German Navy The Imperial German Navy or the Imperial Navy () was the navy of the German Empire, which existed between 1871 and 1919. It grew out of the small Prussian Navy (from 1867 the North German Federal Navy), which was mainly for coast defence. Wilhel ...
when the First World War ended. The usage of the Mondragón in the German Imperial Navy would involve destroyer crews and Seabattlions Pioneers being entirely issued Mondragón and pistol carbines In Switzerland, the Mondragón self-loading rifle was modified to use the 7.5×55mm Swiss cartridge, came equipped with a 12-round magazine and a ''Hülsenfangkorb'' (a device to collect the ejected cartridges). The Mondragón rifle was also briefly installed in the World War I era two-seater aircraft, the ''Häfeli DH'' and the ''Blériot'', however it was soon replaced by fully automatic weapons.


Additional notes

A few of the Mondragón rifles may have been used by Mexican soldiers during an ambush on Pancho Villa. Although some sources claim that the Mexican Army had used the rifle since 1911, two pictures from ''Crónica Ilustrada Revolución Mexicana, Volume 1'' on pages 100 and 159 and an article from Guns magazine suggest that the rifle was in service as early as 1910.


Rifle scheme and operating procedure

Mondragon patent from 1907: File:001 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:002 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:003 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:004 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:005 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:006 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:007 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:008 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:009 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:010 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:011 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:012 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:013 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:014 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:015 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:016 mondragon patent rifle.jpg, File:017 mondragon patent rifle.jpg,


See also

* Farquhar-Hill rifle * Mauser self-loading carbine * RSC M1917


References


External links


World GunsForgotten Weapons - M1894Forgotten Weapons - M1908M1908 Mondragon Semiauto Rifle at RIAgallery of Mondragon rifle and drum magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mondragon rifle Mexican Revolution Aircraft weapons Semi-automatic rifles Rifles of Mexico World War I German infantry weapons Straight-pull rifles Mexican inventions