M38 Carcano: Best Bolt Rifle of World War Two?
Italy
•
14m
During the 1920s, Italy was concerned about insufficient lethality with their 6.5x52mm cartridge, and began experimenting with larger bore diameters. By the late 1930s they settled on a new 7.35x51mm round, based closely on the existing 6.5mm cartridge case. They also planned to replace the original M91 rifles with a much more compact and more modern short rifle for the infantry. This design was adopted as the M38, and it featured side-mounted sling attachments, a folding bayonet more like a fighting knife than the old sword type, and did away entirely with the long-range adjustable sight, instead opting for a fixed 200m notch.
I submit that this configuration was the ideal one for World War Two, and Italy was the only nation to really adopt a reality-based rifle design. The use of rifles beyond 300m was almost unheard of during the war, and the fixed sight both reduced production overhead and also made the rifles more durable and soldier-proof. It retained the 6-round Mannlicher clip that was fast to load, and both the 7.35mm and 6.5mm cartridges were closer to intermediate cartridges than other contemporaries like the 8x57 and .30-06. The M38 is handy, inexpensive to make, and comfortable to shoot. I think it is a massively under-appreciated rifle.
Thanks to InterOrdnance / Royal Tiger Imports for providing this carbine from their Ethiopian imports for the video!
Up Next in Italy
-
Special Troops M91 Carcano Carbine an...
"Special Troops" does not mean Special Forces; it means all the various service branches that need neither a full length rifle nor a permanently attached bayonet. This included artillery, engineers, naval troops, and more. The Moschetto 91 TS was basically a carbine-length Carcano rifle, albeit w...
-
Pietro Venditti Copies the Volcanic R...
The Venditti pistols are copies of the Volcanic made in southern Italy in the mid to late 1870s - well after the rocket ball style of ammunition had become obsolete. Pietro Venditti’s first patent was in 1872 for a two-barreled rocket-ball-firing pistol. He followed that with an 1875 patent for a...
-
Vetterli-Ferracciu for the Italian Navy
The Italian military adopted the single-shot Vetterli rifle in 1870, and by 1882 the Italian Navy was looking for something with a bit more firepower. The proceeded to adopt the Vetterli-Bertoldo in 1882, a version of the Vetterli with a 9-round tubular magazine in the stock, under the barrel. In...
