- Not to be confused for the Bergmann Mars.
The Mars automatic pistol, also called the Webley-Mars or the Gabbett-Fairfax, is a British semi-automatic pistol.
History[]
The gun was designed in 1897 by Hugh Gabbett-Fairfax in response to the Borchardt C93 and Bergmann pistols. It was originally manufactured by Webley & Scott of Webley revolver fame, then by other other small manufacturers. Production was halted in 1907 after only about 80 were made. In 1900, Gabbett-Fairfax filed a design patent on the weapon. On October 8th, 1901, he received U.S. patent #684055.
Originally proposed to be a replacement for the Webley revolver, it was submitted for no less than eight weapons trials and demonstrations with the military, both the army and the Royal Navy. It was rejected every time due to unacceptably high recoil, ridiculous muzzle flash, mechanical complexity, spent casings ejecting backwards into the shooter's face, and the physical size of the weapon itself. Additionally, there were consistent problems with ammunition supply, with bad lots of ammunition containing underpowered or overpowered rounds, plus the brass not having been made right as to fracture.
The gun proved incredibly unpopular with those unfortunate enough to use it; the Captain in charge of testing the weapon at the Naval Gunnery School in 1902 observed, "No one who fired once with the pistol wished to shoot it again." Firing the Mars was described as "singularly unpleasant and alarming".
While Gabbett-Fairfax wanted the guns to be put into service, he did not listen to the complaints and fix the problems with the Mars, causing his company to go bankrupt.
Design Details[]
The Mars is a single-action pistol that works on a long recoil system, which some say is similar to a field artillery piece, with a rotating bolt. The earlier guns had three locking lugs on their bolts, while the later guns had four-lugged bolts. It had an interesting feeding system where a lifting mechanism pulled cartridges out of the magazine from the rear and then lifted them up to the breech face, where the bolt would then push it into the chamber and rotate to lock. The magazine features a hook to hold the topmost round in place for the feeding process. The hammer spring is used, with the hammer itself acting as a lever, to push the cartridge lifting mechanism up as part of the feeding process.
Whenever it fired, the whole front end would recoil back on a pair of springs underneath the barrel to cycle the weapon, pushing back on the slide and ejecting the spent casing rearwards.
One of the problems in the early production guns is that the immense recoil caused the cartridge lifting mechanism to oscillate up and down as it came back, and as it went forward, it would sometimes make the cartridge hit too high or too low in the back of the barrel, causing a malfunction. Sometimes, it would go straight into the chamber.
Gabbett-Fairfax devised a solution to this problem in the form of a disconnector, where as long as the user held down the trigger, the bolt would stay locked and open. The bolt would go forward when the trigger is released. The idea behind this is that any typical shooter would have enough delay in their trigger pull that by the time they released the trigger, the oscillation of the cartridge would be dampened to allow the weapon to feed more reliably.
All examples produced were handmade and hand-finished: no two are exactly alike in dimension (a fairly common occurrence prior to the era of mechanized factory production) and some have features others do not.
Ammunition[]
The Mars was chambered in four different calibers; 8.5mm Mars, 9mm Mars, .45 Mars Long Case, and .45 Mars Short Case. Two of these calibers had bottlenecked casings, though all of them had large powder charges, developing muzzle velocities more commonly associated with rifles. The pistols which fired the .45 caliber rounds were considered the most powerful pistols in the world at the time.
External links[]
- Video by Forgotten Weapons on YouTube
- Very Early Mars Pistol #4 by Forgotten Weapons on YouTube
- Mars automatic pistol at Top War
- Rock Island Auction Lot 1438: Mars Semi Automatic .360 Gabbet Fairfax
- Wikipedia article