Even for a person who has never even heard the concept of stripper clips? Add to that the fact that he doesn’t even have the stripper clip in the story. So he doesn’t even know that he’s missing anything. He’s got bullets and a pistol. He has no idea how to get those bullets into that pistol at all. Maybe he could manage to load one at a time into the chamber or som ething.
But this guy has no concept of clips, magazines (removable or otherwise), the slide, or any manner of autoloading theory whatsoever.
I dont think he could do it quickly enough to be of use in his current battle. Maybe he could figure it out latter… especially after he finds the missing piece (the clip). But he’s not going to waste time in a firefight learning new equipment.
Best thing to do is find someone who doesn’t have much experience with nonremovable magazines or stripper clips, and hand them such a rifle or pistol. Then give them bullets but no stripper clip and see how long it takes them to figure it out or even realize they’re missing a piece.
This shouldn’t be too hard to do. I’m guessing the OP has an old M1 or something around. And it shouldn’t be too hard to find some unknowledgable person.
Record their actions and time their progress and it should give you a reasonable expectation of what the hero in your story would have to go through.
There’s nothing there about either the presence or absence of stripper clips. Vintage C96 ammo that I have seen at gunshows and in photographs came pre-packed on stripper clips because, as has been noted, the stripper is necessary to hold the bolt open during the loading process. So there is no reason to expect that a box of ca. 1897 7.62 Mauser ammo would be packaged any other way.
Secondly, it’s been established that the hero is an officer in the army. Magazine fed and charger loaded smokeless weapons had been in military use for several years at the time the story is set. They were, in fact, very much the center of an arms race among the great powers of the time. I scarcely think he would be so ignorant as you describe. There is, BTW, part 1 of a 2 part article on this very topic in the latest issue of Shotgun News.
That’s a good point. It might be expected that the ammo is already loaded on stripper clips, and the protagonist might then be able to work out by experience and intuition how to load it, albeit with some delay in entering the fray.
Now I’m imagining the scene from Big Trouble in Little China where Jack Burton is fumbling around with his jammed Tec-9 and searching for his knife while Wang beats the crap out of five guys, and then Jack jumps back out, ready for battle just as Wang is dusting his hands off. It’s probably not the vibe the o.p. is going for, but it would be amusing nonetheless.
Also, it’s been about 15 years since I sold off my C96, but IIRC the bolt is held open by the magazine follower after the last shot. There is no external release, the only way to close the bolt is to reload the weapon or manually depress the follower. IOW, very much like what you see in the Mauser bolt action rifles that are loaded from stripper clips.
When you load the pistol from a clip, you press the cartridges down into the integral magazine. At this point, the clip still holds the bolt open. (this is why single-loading a broomie is such a pain in the ass…if you aren’t careful it will bite you) When you pull the clip out, the bolt closes and chambers a round. The pistol now is cocked, loaded and ready to fire simply by pressing the trigger. There is a manual safety that can be engaged if you aren’t ready to fire immediately…though I wouldn’t recommend carrying a broomie cocked and locked.
This thread is bringing back memories and making me wish I had never sold my “young Winston” piece.
Is there any way (other than disassembling the floorplate of the magazine and loading from the bottom) that you can carry a C96 loaded but out of battery? It appears that this isn’t possible, since removing the stripper clip causes the action to chamber a round from the magazine.
It’s an interesting design, but I’ll take a Browning Hi-Power or the Sig P210 for vintage single action pistols any day. Of course, those are several decades beyond the o.p.'s timeline.
You could load 9 from a stripper clip, or while using an empty clip to hold the bolt open, and then with a bit of fiddling, depress the cartridges and allow the bolt to close on an empty chamber. It’d be awkward, but you could do it.
Ah. I could have sworn I read that the hero would not get his hands on the clips until later in the story. Who knows where the hell I got that idea from. Also while rereading the thread, I see you made all these great points back at post 11.
Meh… don’t mind me, I’m in my own little world today.
No, Bear_Nenno, you were right and I was wrong. I went back and re-read the OP. Way down at the bottom he does say that the hero won’t get the clips until later.
So, based on my experience with the C96, I’d say he’d try to single load it from slide lock and quite likely have the bolt slam on his finger. Why the tribesman would have a box of loose cartridges, only the author knows.
Sorry.
I’m more than knowledgeable about old firearms- I collect, shoot, and write about them as a serious hobby- but I didn’t have a way of divorcing my personal knowledge of how to work a Mauser C96 from that of the main character, who’s never seen a semi-auto pistol before. (I don’t own a C96, but I’ve played around with enough of them to know how they work, btw.)
After taking on board some of the suggestions here, I’ve made a few changes- the dead tribesman now has a number of stripper clips full of ammunition on his person, and the main character applies his knowledge of charger clips used on Boer Mauser M95 rifles to load the pistol. What he forgets to do, however, is take his thumb out of the way of the slide, so when he pulls the stripper clip out, the slide slams home on this thumb.
Having got the Mauser working, he manages to get to the other side of the encampment, recover his knapsack (and revolver cartridges!), and then proceeds to dual-wield both the Webley and the Mauser before the attacking tribesmen are beaten off by the British soldiers.
And yes, he does jump through the air at one point whilst firing both guns.
If you’re planning on making the firearms-related bits realistic, all ammunition (even smokeless) at that time was corrosive. Firearms had to be cleaned promptly after use or the primer residue would corrode the bore in short order.
The broomie is a masterpiece of machining. The only screw in it is the one holding the grip panels on. It fits together like a Chinese puzzle with the parts holding each other together. Like a Chinese puzzle, it is easy to take apart and an absolute dirty, filthy, frustrating, may Paul Mauser rot in hell, son of a bitch to put back together unless you already know how. Your hero, being a good 19th century gun guy, will want to clean it. You may want to work in a comedic episode involving his frustration with reassembly or_if you want to deprive him of the weapon_have him give up on getting it back together and just get on with adventuring.
I’ve got a brief mention to the main character and others cleaning their guns after firing lest the barrel corrodes or (in the case of Black Powder weapons) foul and jam. I’m not going to get into ultra-detail there, it’s a just a scene-setting piece.
I like the tip about the Broomhandle being difficult to reassemble; there’s definitely a comic relief passage to be had about him spending a whole night putting the gun back together after disassembling it to clean, only to discover he’s still got a few bits left over… and spending the rest of the next morning taking it apart and putting it back together again properly.
He’ll be keeping the gun, though- finding ammo for it is going to be problematic, though.
