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The Gewehr 98 is a German bolt action rifle from 1898 that is renowned worldwide for its smooth action. It was made by Paul Mauser in around 1895, being adopted in 1898 and it has continued service in many places around the world to this day.
History[]
After the French invented smokeless gunpowder and introduced the Lebel 1886, the other worldwide powers scrambled to get an smokeless repeating rifle of their own, the Germans had the Gewehr 1888 when the Lebel 1886 was adopted by the French. Paul Mauser was already working on a new rifle, the 1895 Model after his other successful designs all over Europe. He presented two rifles to the German commissions office: one that more closely resembled the previous Gewehr 1888 model, with a jacketed barrel which was adopted as the Gewehr 1888/97 and another one that was made for a prototype 6mm round that was proving to be more modern and effective than the older model. After a bit of tuning the new 6mm rifle was converted to use the 7.92x57mm Patrone 88. It was adopted later in 1898 as the Gewehr 1898 with the catridge later changed to the Spitzer 8mm round.
Design Details[]
The Gewehr 98 is a two-lug frontal locking, bolt action rifle that has a number of additional security features on it, like undercut gas escape holes on the bolt body itself and a third locking lug that prevents the gun from catastrophically failing in case the other 2 lugs fail to lock the gun properly.
Ammunition[]
The Gewehr 98 used in its infancy the M/88 Patrone ball ammunition that was later changed to Spitzer when the German Empire adopted it.