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The Mauser G43 Battle Rifle
The G43 rifle was the German counterpart of the Soviet SVT40. Similar in design to the K98, it used a full-power 8mm Mauser round and was issued primarily to snipers. The telescopic sight was standard. It has a cocking handle on the left, a strange feature. The Mauser version was actually referred to as the G41 (m) versus the G41 (w) made by Walther.
The Mauser G41 Gewehr 41
By 1940, it became apparent that some form of a semi-automatic rifle with a higher rate of fire than the existing bolt-action rifle's was needed to improve the infantry's combat efficiency. The army issued a specification to various manufacturers, and both Mauser and Walther submitted prototypes that were very similar. Both models used a mechanism known as the "Bang" system (after its Norwegian designer Soren H. Bang), due to a limitation being placed on the design that no holes should be drilled into the barrel. In this system, gases from the bullet were trapped near the muzzle in a ring-shaped cone, which in turn pulled on a long piston that opened the breech and re-loaded the gun. This is as opposed to another type of gas-actuated system in which the gasses push back on a piston to open the breach to the rear. Both also included 10-round magazines, using two of the "stripper clips" from the Karabiner 98k, firing the same German-standard 7.92 x 57 mm Mauser rounds.
The Mauser design, the G 41(M), failed miserably. Only 6,673 were produced before production was halted, and of these, 1,673 were returned as unusable.
The Walther version, the G 41(W), fared somewhat better, but again proved to be too prone to failure. The "Bang" system was too complicated and broke down frequently under the stress and wear of combat. The gun was also too heavy, notably due to the complex and heavy operating machinery located near the front, which pulled the nose down. Reloading the gun also proved difficult and time-consuming. Since it was the only self-loading rifle available to the German army, it had to be produced in numbers, but this too proved difficult as the gun was hard to mass-produce. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but 14,334 appears in a number of sources. This became the G43 Battle Rifle.
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