Kaiserliche Schutztruppen G98 - for the German Camel Corps
Bolt Action Rifles
•
8m 18s
Germany established their colony of German South West Africa (Deutsch-Südwestafrika, now Namibia) in 1884, as part of its late attempt to become a colonial power to rival the United Kingdom. The soldiers deployed to protect German interests t here were the Kaiserliche Schutztruppen, and they were few in number and armed with a variety of rifles. Most had Mauser 1871 Jager rifles, single shot black powder arms. The best off, however, were outfitted with new Mauser 98 rifles when the German military adopted the G98. A special batch was made for these colonial troops, with a few distinctive features - a bent bolt handle and sights calibrated down to 200m. And yes - they were used by troops mounted on camels!
When World War One broke out, the fighting in Namibia ended fairly quickly, with the German forces soundly defeated by South Africans under General Jan Smuts in the summer of 1915. Fighting in the other German colonies (especially German East Africa, now Tanzania) would last much longer.
A slight correct to the video: 10,000 of these rifles were actually in German South West Africa by 1908, but 8,000 of them were destroyed by the German forces prior to surrendering in 1915. The German armed force was small, but extra troops had been deployed to the area in response to the Herero Wars in 1904, and they left their rifles behind when they returned to Germany afterwards.
Up Next in Bolt Action Rifles
-
Gewehr 71/84: Germany's Transitional ...
In the ongoing arms race between France and Germany, the Mauser 71/84 was the first German repeating rifle. Paul Mauser began work on it in the late 1870s, patented the design in 1881, and it was adopted formally in 1884. Production began in 1885, with a total of 1,161,148 rifles being delivered ...
-
Germany's First Smokeless Carbines: t...
With the development of the smokeless Gewehr 88 “Commission Rifle”, the German Army finally made a serious effort to bring their cavalry units up to a modern standard. There had never been a carbine variant of the Mauser 71/84 produced, and even by the late 1880s many German cavalrymen were still...
-
Mystery Mauser - Haitian? Czechoslova...
This Mauser is one that I simply have not been able to definitively identify. It is marked “Haiti 1957” and “CZ 29 - 53”, serial numbered 10, and chambered for an 8mm cartridge (probably 8x57 Mauser). However, the rifles known to have been purchased by Haiti were FN model 24/30 short rifles in .3...
