After World War Two the Swiss needed a new self-loading military rifle to replace their K-31 bolt actions. Two major design tracks followed; one being a roller-delayed system based on the G3 at SIG and the other being a derivative of the German FG-42 at Waffenfabrik Bern. Bern, under the direction of Adolph Furrer, had been experimenting with intermediate cartridges since the 1920s, and they used this as a basis to develop an improved FG-42 using an intermediate cartridge (7.5x38mm). The program began in 1951 and went through about a half dozen major iterations until it ultimately lost to the SIG program (which produced the Stgw-57).
Today we are looking at one of the first steps in the Bern program, the WF-51. The most substantial change form the FG42 design here is the use of a tilting bolt instead of a rotating bolt like the Germans used. It is a beautifully manufactured firearm, and a real pleasure to take a look at…
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this rifle! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/national-firearms-centre/
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
“(…)roller-delayed system based on the G3 at SIG(…)SIG program (which produced the Stgw-57).(…)”
How they were able to introduce own rifle in 1957 based at G3 which appeared in 1959?
“(…)intermediate cartridge (7.5x38mm)(…)”
https://naboje.org/node/13406 and https://municion.org/producto/75-x-38-mm-swiss-xpl-vgp47/ shows photos of specimens, including PERFORANTE (which I presume is armour-piercing), but do not provide any performance figures, like bullet weight and muzzle velocity. Are any data regarding said cartridge known?
G3 was an outgrowth of the CETME program, which itself was a follow-on to the Stg45 project. You could safely describe nearly all roller-delay systems as a part of a coherent whole, particularly when you look at the continuity of design features.
Given the nature of the StG57, I think you can draw a line through it back to the StG45. It’s really not what most would term a “sturmgewehr”, given the full-house cartridge it chambers, but I’d also submit that Switzerland has some rather significant differences in combat terrain than found in Central Europe. Where the Germans felt that they needed something in between a rifle and a submachinegun for close-in work, the Swiss felt that what they needed for Alpine combat was something more in between a rifle and an LMG… Thus, the StG57 and its rather amazing capabilities in regard to long-range fires and close-in grenade launching. The damn thing is more an anti-tank LMG, coupled with all the varied and sundry grenades provided for it.
The Swiss looked at WWII and took some very different lessons from it than everyone else. The StG57 reflects that fact. Were those lessons wrong, for the times? Well, given that we’ll never know due to the fact that they were never tested in actual war, I can’t say one way or another.
I will say, however, that the StG57 is a weapon that was consciously and specifically designed for Swiss tactical and operational plans, and that nearly all of its features reflect that fact. Unlike, say, the US M-14 program… I still don’t know, after decades of reading on the issue, what the hell they were thinking with that one. It was like someone looked at the various deficiencies of the US small arms suite in WWII and said “Yes, we’ll have more of that…”, and then doubled-down on the individual rifleman stupid. Hell, triple- or quadrupled-down. I’m actually sort of amazed that Vietnam served as enough of a wake-up call to get the less-flawed M16 into the system, but it looks like the gravel-belly dumbasses have finally triumphed again, with NGSW. Which, I’m fairly sure, is going to prove to be a total loser as an individual weapon…
I never used an M14 in combat but I have fired over 1000 rounds thru one, at least half in full auto, and it functioned great. I liked it, way better than a FAL or G3, which I have also used but also not in a combat zone. The rifles I had on deployments were fine too though, but My M16 did suffer a cracked upper at one point, and my M4 need a firing pin replacement. Maybe the perfect gun hasn’t been created yet?
Great as always Ian, thank you!
I’d wager that you were never forced to carry the M-14 in actual combat… Every one of the guys I know who did get issued one in Iraq were back at their arms rooms demanding an M16 for actual carry and daily use, while relegating the M14 to “truck gun” for special situations, which often did not arise.
I kept an ear out for those guys with actual combat experience with the M14 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interestingly enough, by the time most of them had their second tours under their belts, they were very much “not fans” of the system: Too hard to maintain accuracy on, too many little problems with maintenance, and a lack of support for the system. The M110 was their preferred go-to 7.62 rifle, if they could get one.
I’m not a fan of the whole class of 7.62mm NATO individual weapons, and I think they missed a huge bet with the .280 British, while also managing to bias the support weapon cartridge in the direction of “too light” while trying to satisfy the needs of the individual weapon. Until someone cooks up a way to get both classes of performance out of the same cartridge, I do not see a way past the dual-caliber solution down in the squad; you simply cannot perform both roles very well with the same cartridge; the compromises will kick you in the ass, every time. The illusory “one cartridge to rule them all” ain’t happening any time soon, if ever…
The M14 was an unfortunate result of a failure to really comprehend the basic nature of modern warfare, as well as a crass monument to the vanity of the Springfield Arsenal system. It never should have been adopted, and with its profoundly short service life, we can easily see that. The “desire path” of what the soldier actually needs did not run through the M14, and we know that from two very different wars. Just like we know that the M16A2 was not what people wanted or needed, based on the cooption of the M4 from “support troops carbine” to “basic infantry weapon”…
I’ll lay anyone very long odds that even if the NGSW manages to make its way to general issue, the actual combat soldier will still wind up carrying an M4, even if they have to tear them out of the hands of the support branches. I do not see the NGSW program succeeding, and I’ll bet another thing: It’ll be the first casualty of the coming budget cuts after the financial crash we have coming due. The basic premise it was procured on was false in all regards. Ain’t nobody fighting in Ukraine right now begging for a bigger and more powerful individual weapon; they’re all doing just fine with their current suite of small arms, which is dual-caliber to the core.
I doubt we’ll ever square that circle, to make one cartridge do two very different jobs.
Having watched and digested the video at this point, a couple of observations:
One, I think we have to give credit to Furrer for not trying to jimmy in a toggle-lock here, but if you squint a little, that tilting bolt looks a little bit like one, so that might have made him happy.
Second, I still do not like or trust the semi-auto mode of the FG42 that carries through this design. I think I know why the Swiss rejected this design, which is likely due to that fractional mass shift taking place when firing semi-auto, due to the nature of the beast. If you’re an LMG gunner who only occasionally finds the need to shoot semi-auto, it’s fine. If you’re a rifleman expected to mostly fire semi-auto and hit things at range, then that bolt slamming forward into “locked” and then firing is going to be inimical to actually achieving accuracy. I don’t have enough trigger time on any of these weapons, but the experiences I’ve had on the M60 dealing with misfires and what-not lead me to suspect that any really experienced Swiss soldier would have looked at that internal motion of the bolt and said “No… Just… No.”
One thing I’ve also wondered about is the ergonomics of the whole side-mount magazine thing. Standard designs, like the M16, it’s really easy to get the rifle around to a firing position from a back-carry position; with that mag well position, for a right-hander…? WTF? How would that even work?
Individual weapon necessities almost preclude anything other than what we’re terming a “conventional design”, these days, and there are actual reasons that that design is termed “conventional”: Everyone winds up going back to it. It just works. Mostly. In most use-cases…
I’ve always suspected that side-mounted magazines were a thing for the same reason that the U.S. Army rejected lever-action rifles after 1865. Namely, the idea of firing prone.
It has to be admitted that a lever gun is more difficult to operate from the prone position, as opposed to a bolt-action or etc.
And a long, downward-pointing magazine on a self-loading or other rifle tends to act like a monopod unless you dig out a “pit” for it. Or unless you follow the instructions in the M1/M2/M3 Carbine Manual as to where you put your elbows when firing from the prone position.
Monopods proved to be largely useless during WW2. As seen with the Japanese Arisaka Type 99 sharpshooter variant, they tended to cause vertical stringing of the group while not offering any real improvement in stability.
Probably the best way to get out of the whole tangled mess was represented by first the Evans repeating rifle and then the various Calico LWS designs a century later. An Archimedean screw magazine in the stock feeding up and forward. The similar magazine under the forend of the Russian Bizon carbine has the drawback of occupying the space normally ceded to a grenade launcher.
It could be said that the side-mounted magazine, also seen on the Johnson M1941 LMG, as well as the 1970s TRW Low Maintenance Rifle in 5.56 x 45mm, is the least-worst compromise.
clear ether
eon
I suspect that as long as we’re forced into the current cartridge format, the box magazine will remain preeminent. The complications are just too damn much with anything else.
The question I have is whether or not you could adapt a Dardick Tround format over to caseless, and make that work with a helical magazine like the Calico or Bizon. Something like that might be both mechanically reliable and capable of putting into a grip-forward configuration using electronic ignition, or something…
Materials technology ain’t nowhere near the place it would need to be, in order to make such a thing work with the chamber seals and what-not.
Although, the thought does occur to me that maybe we need to think outside the box, a bit: What about a low-pressure sort of affair that used some sort of magnetohydrodynamic process to produce the burst of electrical energy needed for a railgun? Something that wouldn’t require all the high-pressure materials being perfect for sealing the breech?
Dunno. Someone, somewhere, will figure an alternative out, and then we’ll see some change. Until then, expect more of the same-old, same-old.
Although, I really do wish someone would sit down and lay out what the hell a rationally-designed individual weapon cartridge ought to be doing, within the current technological envelope, and design something to match, followed by procurement of a rationally-designed weapon using current best-practices.
Guaran-damn-tee you it wouldn’t be NGSW.
As nearly as I’ve been able to determine, the very first “bottleneck” cartridge case was the 56/.46 Spencer rimfire in 1866.
Christopher Spencer came up with it in an attempt to compete with the .44 Henry round in the post- Civil War sporting rifle market. Power-wise, it was in the same ballpark as the later .44-40 WCF.
It didn’t sell, of course, and Spencer sold out to Oliver Winchester. Then got interested in “business machines” and, well, you know the rest.
Bottlenecked cartridges became fairly common during the transition from “black powder” Express big-game rounds to “Nitro” smokeless-powder Express rounds. As well as military rounds loaded either way, while still in the .45 caliber and up bore range, and still launching blunt-nosed lead bullets.
When the first smokeless-powder, “small-bore” (8mm or less) high-velocity military cartridge showed up in the mid-to-late 1880s, the box magazine became popular because tube magazines and spire-pointed bullets don’t get along with each other.
Ironically, a box magazine with a spring-driven follower, feeding in horizontally from the left side, was one of the things in Rollin White’s infamous “bored-through cylinder” patent, but since he didn’t bother to make it part of the claim, he never got anything out of it. And a decade later, James Paris Lee did.
As the old saying about patents goes, “You can describe your elephant, and even illustrate your elephant, but if you do not claim your elephant it is not your elephant“.
cheers
eon
“(…)irst “bottleneck” cartridge case was the 56/.46 Spencer rimfire in 1866.(…)”
According to https://municion.org/producto/104-x-38-r-swiss-vetterli-rf-m-1866-67-78-90/ 10,4 x 38 R Swiss Vetterli RF was adopted in 1866. Therefore further research is required to unveil exact dates in order to resolve which is actually earlier.
“(…)ergonomics of the whole side-mount magazine thing.”
Magazine sticking to left was not something unheard of in military fire-arms at that time, as this was implemented in sub-machine gun like S1-100 https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/switzerland-submachine-guns/steyr-solothurn-s1-100-eng/ or Lanchester http://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/great-britain-submachine-guns/lanchester-mk-1-eng/ though Swiss military used earlier W+F Lmg.Pist 41/44 http://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/switzerland-submachine-guns/wf-lmg-pist-4144-eng/ which has magazine sticking to right (i.e. opposite side than WF-51)
In the SMG class, I don’t think the side magazine is all that much of a detriment; you can work around it because of the shorter length of the receiver and barrel. You edge into rifle-caliber weapons, which are longer and heavier in all respects, and you start having problems.
I’m trying to imagine making most of my drills with the M16 family work, should someone have decided to stick the magazine out the side of the damn thing, and I’m just not seeing it happen. The SAW with the magazine in it was unwieldly enough that you almost never saw them backslung in that mode.
I’m thinking that a lot of folks just don’t “get” the problems with weapons handling, and that’s one reason that the idjit class keeps trying the bullpup format. So long as you’ve got cartridges and magazines, I think the conventional layout is the way to go, simply because of how clean and simple it is. Yes, you do get constraints on how low you can go in the prone, but the sad fact is that really doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things… A guy behind an M16 is going to have his helmet up just as far as the guy with an FG42, and the real issue isn’t necessarily “how low you can go”, but what you have to do to get a line of site on your targets. That very often means getting up out of the prone, and finding something you can pretend provides cover and concealment… Which is more often a state of mind, more than a reality.
It’s like a lot of things… Prone is a fantasy build-up, just like “One shot, one kill”. The reality is that it’s way more important to observe and identify the enemy, and a lot harder than just taking shots at someone presenting themselves to you like ducks in a shooting gallery.
I’m telling you right now, if you were to put me in charge of marksmanship training? I’d have a heavy emphasis on target acquisition and ID, and there’d be none of this “Shoot from the prone” or “Shoot from a rest” BS included. I’d include shots you’d have to wing, off on the oblique, with no way to reach absent some really major contortions. Why? Because that’s what actually happens in combat. You go trying to set up the perfect shot, you’re going to miss 99% of the presentations that the enemy makes to you. It’s kinda like skeet shooting; you have to be capable of “just doing it”.
I’m really not all that impressed by a lot of the marksmanship training I’ve seen, over the years. It is all far too much of a set-piece sort of thing, with exquisite little firing positions shooting down easily predictable shooting lanes against targets you can literally time with a stopwatch. To do it right, you’d really want to have something like an outdoor shoothouse setup, with a lane grader that walked you down a scenario lane that changed every time so that it was different, and that precisely none of the targets were either predictable or achievable from a standard shooting position.
That’s combat. Training guys even on pop-up targets the way the Army does it is just… Silly. I mean, if you know the course of fire, and have it memorized? You know exactly how long you have to take a shot; nothing is randomized. Which it absolutely should be, in both directions. One ought to also include “do not shoot” targets, in order to get people used to the idea that not everything needs killing on the modern battlefield. You have no idea how many likely civilian casualties stem from surprised young men who’re keyed up, scared, and under fire for the first time. And, who’ve been badly set up by the training program because there’s no such thing as a civilian “don’t shoot” target on the qual range…
No credit needed for Furrer – I am pretty sure he had retired by the time this rifle was developed and wasn’t involved with it at all…
One gimmick – ‘scuse me, refinement – I’ve wondered about: make open bolt operation independent of fire mode, i.e., user optional. Yes, this would add some complexity to the controls, but not enough (I hope) to spoil the advantage of being able to switch to o.b. only when it’s really necessary to avoid cookoffs.
Bern is pronounced “BAIRN” auf English.
I always wonder how in the hack they got these sorts of rifles.
you’d think this would be something the Swiss would be like no..we’ll be keeping this for OUR museum…
https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/W%2BF_Bern_StG.51 does claim that c. 200…350 examples of W+F Bern StG.51 were made. Unless they intentionally destroy these after trials they ended with few hundreds, so while production was tiny compared to mass produced fire-arms of Cold War era, it is still not situation of single example exists in world.
There were a lot of them made, and ever since the disbandment of W+F Bern in 1993 and SIG’s armaments division in 2000, a lot of Swiss prototypes found their way onto the commercial market.
The Royal Armouries have also engaged in several large trades with other museums who already have duplicates of rare prototypes like this.
The United States nearly had this in the John C. Garand first prototype entrant for Springfield Arsenal in the “light rifle” contest that led to the U.S. carbine, caliber .31 M1 won by Winchester.
The first Springfield entrant used a modified Lewis gun system of gas operation like this and the FG42. Instead of a tipping bolt, the Springfield carbine prototype–made up of just something like 34 parts if I recollect and am not mistaken?–used a rotating bolt like the FG42, but with rear-mounted locking lugs on the actual bolt. The magazine was a top-feeding device, canted over to a 45-degree angle to the right, strongly reminiscent of, and almost certainly a “design quote” of the Pedersen device, aka. U.S. pistol, cal. .30 model of 1918. For that reason, the front sight was on the left side of the muzzle, and the rear aperture sight was placed offset to the left. South-paws would probably have had to learn to shoot the thing from the right shoulder. Among the defects noted during the trials was that it ejected empty cartridges down and to the left, such that they could strike the firer’s support wrist or arm, or even go down a shirt sleeve. Some evaluators didn’t care, but others did, and forced a bottom feed that was less successful. Some of the other problems may have stemmed from the same bolt movement and trigger issues noted up-post by @Kirk, in that the sear operates on a combined bolt-carrier and gas piston under tension from the magazine spring.
Ordnance, in meeting Big Army’s request for a shorter, handier shoulder weapon than a service rifle that a person could use much more effectively than a pistol or revolver opted for the old Winchester .32 SL cartridge turned into the .30 M1 carbine cartridge. The 110-gr. round-nosed bullet for the M1 carbine/ 7.62x33mm rather resembles those of Adolf Furrer’s pre-WWII 7.65x27mm and 7.65x35mm cartridges, no?
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/bern-prototype-carbine-intermediate-cartridges-in-the-1920s/
Fire mode selector looks genious in its own way. If I got it correctly, the pin of selector lever does nothing to the sear assembly, its spring loaded detent does all the work. If you look closely to sear assembly, it is tapered on both front and rear sides, while cylindrical pin of safety lever goes into hole of separate T-shaped part. In single fire position springloaded pin pushing front of sear with disconector in, and when rotated to full auto it would rock sear in other direction, moving disconector to left side and out of bolt’s path.