The Lebel Model 1886 rifle (French: Fusil Modèle 1886 dit "Fusil Lebel") also known as the "Fusil Mle 1886 M93", after a bolt modification was added in 1893, is an 8 mm bolt-action infantry rifle that entered service in the French Army in 1887. It is a repeating rifle that can hold eight rounds in its fore-stock tube magazine, one round in the elevator plus one round in the chamber; equaling a total of ten rounds held. The Lebel rifle has the distinction of being the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. The new propellant powder, "Poudre B," was nitrocellulose-based and had been invented in 1884 by French chemist Paul Vieille. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolas Lebel contributed a flat nosed 8 mm full metal jacket bullet ("Balle M," or "Balle Lebel"). Twelve years later, in 1898, a solid brass pointed (spitzer) and boat-tail bullet called "Balle D" was retained for all 8mm Lebel ammunition. Each case was protected against accidental percussion inside the tube magazine by a primer cover and by a circular groove around the primer cup which caught the tip of the following pointed bullet. Featuring an oversized bolt with front locking lugs and a massive receiver, the Lebel rifle was a durable design capable of long range performance. In spite of early obsolete features, such as its tube magazine and the shape of 8mm Lebel rimmed ammunition, the Lebel rifle remained the basic weapon of French infantry during World War I (1914–1918). Altogether, 3.45 million Lebel rifles were produced by the three French state factories between 1887 and 1916.

Operation, features, and accessories

In operation, the bolt is turned up to the vertical position until the two opposed front locking lugs are released from the receiver. At the end of the bolt's opening phase, a ramp on the receiver bridge forces the bolt to the rear thus providing leveraged extraction of the fired case. The rifle is fitted with a two-piece wood stock, and features a spring-loaded tubular magazine in the fore-end. Taking aim at intermediate distances is done with a ramp sight graduated between 400 and 800 meters. The ladder rear sight is adjustable from 850 to 2,400 meters. Flipping forward that ladder sight reveals the commonly used fixed combat sight up to 400 meters.

However, in January 1886, a new revanchist French war minister, General Georges Ernest Boulanger, cancelled these plans and requested the urgent application of these two technical breakthroughs to the design of a new infantry rifle. He appointed General Tramond in charge of the project, which had a one-year deadline.

Firstly the 11mm Gras cartridge case was necked-down into an 8mm case (similarly to how 8×60mmR Guedes was created by Portuguese a few years earlier, except that cartridge used black powder and therefore was longer), a transformation carried out by Gras and Lt. Colonel Desaleux, which necessitated a double taper handicapping French firearms design for decades to come. The repeating mechanism, derived from the French Mle 1884 Gras-Kropatschek repeating rifle, was implemented by Albert Close and Louis Verdin at the Chatellerault arsenal. The bolt's two opposed front locking lugs, inspired from the two rear locking lugs on the bolt of the earlier Swiss Vetterli rifle, were designed by Colonel Bonnet. The 8mm flat-nosed FMJ "Balle M" bullet was suggested by Tramond and designed by Lt. Colonel Nicolas Lebel after whom the rifle (and the caliber) are named. However, Lebel did not lead the team responsible for creating the new rifle. He amicably protested during his lifetime that Tramond and Gras were the two superior officers who jointly deserved that credit. Nevertheless, his name, which only designated the Balle M bullet as the "Balle Lebel," informally stuck to the entire weapon. Kropatschek rifle. The Mle 1884 and Mle 1885 Kropatschek rifles, still chambered for the 11mm Gras black-powder cartridge, were later adopted by the army as a transitional repeating firearm. The Mle 1885 had a two-piece stock and a massive steel receiver and closely resembles the Mle 1886 Lebel. and would require impossible speed; Boulanger would be sacked the same year for provoking a war with Germany. The Lebel rifle was manufactured by three government arsenals: Châtellerault, St-Etienne and Tulle, mostly during late 1880s and early 1890s. It featured a two-piece stock and a massive receiver designed to withstand the higher pressures developed by the new smokeless powder-based cartridges.

In 1893, an improved version of the M1886 Lebel was designated Fusil Mle 1886 M 93. Its most useful improvement was a modified bolt head which directed hot gases from ruptured cartridge cases away from the shooter's face. The firing pin and its rear knob had already been modified in 1887 while the stacking rod remained unchanged. was assembled in large numbers (about 50,000) at Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle (MAT), beginning in 1937. It used all of the Lebel's parts except for a newly-manufactured shorter barrel of carbine length. It used new sights based on that of the Berthier carbine and a shortened Lebel bayonet. The carbine's shortened tube magazine held only three rounds.

While advanced for its time, the Lebel rifle design was not without shortcomings. It became outdated much faster than any of the magazine-fed rifles of other European militaries which followed the French example during the late-1880s and 1890s. Where the service rifles of other countries could be quickly reloaded with stripper clips, bullets had to be loaded into the Lebel individually. The Lebel's tube magazine also greatly affected the rifle's balance when being fired.

Competitors and successors

Upon its introduction, the Lebel rifle proved vastly superior to the Mauser M71/84, the German Army's replacement of the Model 1871 Mauser. France finished its rearmament program with the Lebel in 1889, just 18 months after Germany had completed its rifle replacement program with 780,000 M71/84s. The new French rifle alarmed Bismarck. Tests at Spandau arsenal in the winter of 1887-1888 found that the Lebel could fire 43 rounds of smokeless powder ammunition per minute compared to just 26 of black-powder ammunition for the M71/84. The inferiority of the Mauser M71/84 and its 11mm black-powder ammunition was one reason why Bismarck opposed going to war with France that winter, despite being pressed by War Minister Waldersee (another reason was that the new French De Bange field artillery, now equipped with breech loaders after the lessons of the 1870 war, both outnumbered and outperformed the Krupp C64 field guns in their rate of fire).

The Mle 1886 rifle proved to be a sturdy and serviceable weapon, but one which became rapidly outdated by advances in military rifle and ammunition designs. As early as 1888, the German Army's Rifle Testing Commission had introduced in response a completely new turnbolt magazine rifle with a spring-loaded box magazine: the Gewehr 88 "commission" rifle. Above all else, it had been designed around the first-ever rimless military cartridge using the new smokeless powder ammunition: the Patrone 88 cartridge. The early Gewehr 88 was followed 10 years later by the successful Gewehr 98 which originally was chambered for the Patrone 88. Shortly after the 1903 pattern S Patrone cartridge evolved out of and replaced the Patrone 88. The adaption of existing Patrone 88 chambered fire arms to the S Patrone was fairly easy and quickly realized.

Outclassed by Germany's Mauser rifle, the French military decided in 1909 to replace the Lebel and its rimmed cartridge with more advanced designs. While the bolt-action Berthier rifle was first issued in 1907 as a stop-gap to arm colonial troops, the French defense ministry planned to leapfrog other military forces with an advanced semi-automatic infantry rifle. This new weapon was the Meunier rifle, also known as the Fusil A6, which chambered a more powerful 7×59mm rimless cartridge. It was adopted in 1912 after an extensive competitive process. However, its manufacture, which was to begin in 1913, was suspended because of the imminent risk of war with Germany. Instead, and during World War I, the French Army chose the easier and less expensive solution of adopting a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle which incorporated some Lebel parts: the Fusil Mle 1917 RSC, once again in 8mm Lebel caliber. It was manufactured in large numbers (85,000) during 1918 and issued to select soldiers in infantry regiments. However, the Mle 1917 RSC was criticized by infantrymen as being too heavy, too long, and too difficult to maintain in the trenches. Furthermore, it also needed a special five-round clip to operate. In the end, the aged M1886 Lebel and variants of the Berthier rifle remained in service until the Armistice of November 11, 1918 and beyond.

8mm Lebel cartridge

left|thumb|Balle D round featuring a boat-tailed spitzer bullet introduced in 1898

When it first appeared, the Lebel's 8×50R smokeless ammunition allied to its longer range and flatter trajectory brought a revolution in infantry armament. A soldier equipped with a Lebel could outrange troops carrying rifles chambered for black-powder, large-caliber lead-bullet ammunition. Using smokeless powder, he could remain virtually invisible to an enemy at longer ranges, yet locate the enemy at any range by the smoke from their rifles. He could also carry more cartridges for the same overall weight. Belgium or United States. perhaps resurrected from a shipment provided by the French in World War I to replace the rifles lost by Italy after the Caporetto defeat, or seized later, during Italian occupation of France. Other were seen in the hands of Soviet partisans. Likewise, in 1944 the German Wehrmacht had issued some captured M1886 Lebel rifles, given the German identification code Gewehr 301(f), to some of their occupation troops in France, but in limited numbers. In 1945, during the final months of the war, many Lebel rifles were issued to Volkssturm conscripts along with any other available weapons. Captured Viet Cong weapons during the Vietnam War included the Lebel rifle. Functional Lebel rifles have been found in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency after 2003.

  • Rifle of Force Publique
  • : Used by Yunnan Clique forces
  • : Some Ethiopian Lebels have been hand-shortened into 5-round carbines. Most likely were obtained after WW1 as surplus.
  • France
  • : issued to Volkssturm units.
  • : bought during the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War
  • : Supplied to the Italian Army in World War I after the Battle of Caporetto and issued to second-line units. About 9,000 were inventoried in 1942, and Italian firms produced new ammunition for them in the 1930s and 1940s.
  • : According to Morgan Shuster in *The Strangling of Persia* (1912), approximately 15,000 Lebel Model 1886 rifles—previously purchased by the Iranian government and stored in arsenals—were allocated to the Treasury Gendarmerie for its armament during his administration.
  • : Iraqi insurgents
  • : Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince
  • Second Polish Republic
  • Kingdom of Romania
  • : issued to Home Guard units after Dunkirk.
  • : used during WWI
  • : used by Vietnamese National Army and Viet Minh/Viet Cong

See also

  • Chauchat
  • List of infantry weapons of World War I
  • Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • An illustrated chapter in this volume reviews in depth the Lebel and Berthier rifles (and carbines).
  • This volume (in English) provides a detailed description of all the types of 8mm Lebel ammunition, including Balle M, Balle D (a.m.) and Balle N. The 7×59mm Meunier cartridge (for the semi-automatic A6 Meunier rifle) is also illustrated and described in detail.
  • This volume (in English) contains a highly detailed technical "Introduction" chapter describing the Lebel rifle and its ammunition. This volume primarily describes all French semi-automatic rifles since 1898, notably the Mle 1917 and Mle 1918 semi-automatic rifles, the Meunier (A6) rifle as well as the MAS 38-39 to MAS49 and 49/56 series.
  • This large illustrated volume (in French) contains the detailed technical history and production statistics for the Lebel rifle as well as detailed technical accounts on the Chassepot, Gras, Kropatschek and Berthier weapons and how they came to be designed and manufactured. This is regarded as the fundamental research volume on the subject. The author is a retired armament engineer who spent most of his career at Châtellerault and had full access to all the archives and the prototypes.
  • The author is justifiably critical of the Lebel's sights.
  • Contains an informative and detailed page dedicated to the Lebel rifle (by David Fortier).