How They Put a 25-Round Magazine from an MG13 into a Bolt-Action Dreyse Rifle

Описание: The Western Front, 1916. Trench warfare has created desperate need for increased firepower, and German weapons designers are exploring every possible modification that might give their troops an edge. One experimental program attempts to transform the bolt-action Dreyse rifle into a weapon with sustained fire capability by fitting it with a 25-round detachable box magazine similar to those used on light machine guns. The concept: quadruple ammunition capacity without the weight of machine guns.

The engineering challenges are immense. The Dreyse rifle was designed with a five-round internal magazine loaded by stripper clips. Converting it to accept a 25-round detachable magazine requires extensive modifications to the stock and receiver. The resulting magazine extends eight to ten inches below the rifle, adding two pounds of weight, interfering with prone firing positions, and catching on trench walls during movement. Loading the magazine requires two to three minutes of careful work pressing cartridges against spring tension.

The modified rifles worked—technically. They fed cartridges and fired. But they were awkward, heavy, prone to jamming in trench mud, and still fundamentally limited by requiring manual bolt operation between shots. While an extended magazine provided 25 rounds before reloading, the bolt-action mechanism meant those 25 rounds were fired at perhaps twenty rounds per minute versus the 500+ rounds per minute of actual machine guns. The tactical niche was too narrow, the compromises too severe, the timing too late—by the time these experiments concluded, the MP18 submachine gun and improved light machine guns offered better solutions.

From muddy trenches where soldiers tested prototypes to ordnance workshops where rifles were modified to storage facilities where failed experiments were archived—this is the complete history of an attempt to transform nineteenth-century rifles into twentieth-century weapons through magazine modification alone. When they put a 25-round magazine into a bolt-action Dreyse rifle, they proved that capacity alone cannot overcome fundamental mechanical limitations.

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The extended-magazine Dreyse: proof that adapting weapons to roles they were never designed for rarely succeeds, no matter how desperate the need.