|
Around 1890, the world's armies dropped the big bore revolvers they had adopted as their first cartridge revolvers, they went to smaller bores. In Europe, various such revolvers were adopted by Switzerland, Sweden (also a Nagant but without the reciprocating cylinder), and others. The U.S. adopted the .38 caliber Colt in 1892, but went back to .45. Britain held on to the big bore .455 until the 1930's and after.
So Russia's Nagant was not at all unusual at the time. The reciprocating cylinder (not as complex as some writers have claimed) was one of those ideas that sounds good when the salesman briefs the generals, but was a solution in search of a problem. The Russians, with a country in turmoil and chronically cash poor, went to an automatic as soon as they could, but WWII forced them to bring the old revolver tooling out of storage, a Nagant being a whole lot better than pointing a finger and saying the Russian equivalent of "bang!"
Jim
|