Footnote 1. His son, William Teillard, was the author
of
Ravens in A Morning Sky,
the first notable Draka
novel, as well as other works, and his granddaughter
Cynthia Teillard played an instrumental part in the
campaign forewomen's suffrage.
on the permeable cartridge of the T-1; also, repeated
attempts to design a workable repeating rifle had
broken down on the fragility of the T-1's ammunition. A
drawn-brass cartridge was perfected in 1847, and the
opportunity was taken to further reduce the caliber of
the weapon. The feed mechanism was a steel box
beneath the bolt, holding eight rounds and with a
Z-shaped spring attached to a riser plate beneath the
ammunition. Moving forward, the bolt "stripped" a
round out of the lips of the magazine and chambered it.
After firing, the bolt was turned, grasping the cartridge
with a wedge-shaped extractor on the bolt face and
withdrawn. As the bolt withdrew, so did the empty
cartridge case, striking a milled "shoulder" and being
flung out of the rifle. With the bolt left back, the
magazine was exposed and could be reloaded, initially
with individual rounds and later with clips of four
rounds in a beveled zinc strip holder.
Performance was as follows:
T-2 Rifle
Caliber: .40
Weight: 9.5 lb.
Range: 1000 yards effective, 1800 maximum
Rate of Fire: 10-12 rounds per minute
Feed System: Fixed box, 8 rounds
Operation: Turn-bolt
With the T-2, the black-powder rifle had reached its
ultimate refinement. The disposable cartridge helped
to reduce the heating problems endemic to earlier
models, and also removed fouling from the chamber of
the rifle; it was also virtually unaffected by water. The
only remaining serious problems were those inherent
in the black-powder propellant: fouling of the barrel,
requiring frequent cleaning (difficult in the heat of
battle), and the large output of smoke, which disclosed
the firer's position and could blanket an entire
battlefield.
The T-2 proved its worth in the final conquest of the
interior of Africa, and in the two major overseas
expeditions of the 1850s, the Crimean War and the
Indian Mutiny. In the first, Draka infantry equipped
with T-2's repeatedly savaged far larger Russian forces
armed with a mixture of muzzle-loading and single-shot
breech-loading rifles. In India, the prompt intervention
of 20,000 Draka troops saved the British position.
(These conflicts also taught the Draka valuable tactical
lessons, particularly concerning the necessity for
dispersed formations and the obsolescence of cavalry
shock action.)
Machine-Guns: The Gatling Gun
Richard Gatling (born 1818, Maney's Neck, North
Carolina; died 1905, Archona, Archona Province) was a
Southern-born inventor. His first career was in the field
of agricultural machinery (his seed-drills were
ingenious and widely used). His second began in the
late 1840s, when he developed the first version of the
ten-barreled crank-operated machine-gun that later
made his name famous. Gatling failed to interest the
American government in his invention, and went to
London in the spring of 1850 to test the European
waters. He found little interest, but happened to meet
(in a City chop-house) a junior member of the staff of
the unofficial Draka embassy, Marius de Witt, who had
worked in the Naysmith Machine Tool Combine's
design section in Diskarapur.
De Witt interested his superiors in Gatling's designs,
and he was encouraged to move to Diskarapur. There,
in cooperation with engineers from the Naysmith and
Ferrous Metals Combines, he quickly perfected his
designs. The new metallic cartridge proved ideal for
this use, and a reliable weapon with a rate of fire in
excess of 600 rounds per minute was quickly produced.
General issue to the Draka armed forces began in 1855,
and Gatling guns were used with devastating effect in
the Indian Mutiny.
The T-2 in the American Civil War
The next major test of the T-2 came, oddly enough, in
the American Civil War. While relations with the US
had always been rather chilly, many Draka had family
ties with the Southern states; in addition there were
ideological links, strengthened in the 1830-1860 period
as both the South and the proto-Domination became
conscious of their isolation in an increasingly bourgeois
world. Accordingly, when the war broke out, Draka
sympathy was overwhelmingly pro-Confederate. Direct
intervention was impossible; the Domination was still
formally part of the British Empire, and had only
recently acquired "Dominion" status, with full control
of the Executive branch of government. Furthermore,
the Draka had no navy to speak of; however, they did
have shipyards capable of turning out very modern
steel-hulled steamships. Draka yards built
commerce-raiders for the Confederate government, and
Draka and miscellaneous European volunteers and
mercenaries manned them. Draka blockade runners
funneled huge amounts of aid into the Confederate
ports.
The American armed forces had started the war with
the Hall-Springfield rifle, a percussion-cap, single-shot
breechloader with a lever action sealed by a
Teillard-style brass obturator. Cheap, simple, rugged
and easy to maintain, this was an excellent weapon of
its type, and both sides used it as the predominant
infantry arm. The Confederacy also received substantial
numbers of T-2's, enough to arm all its cavalry and
many of its elite infantry formations (e.g., the Stonewall
Brigade). These— together with the thousands of
Gatling guns and hundreds of Meercat armored steam
warcars, cast-steel artillery pieces from the forges of
Diskarapur, tinned food from the Cape, and cloth from
the mills of Alexandria—were instrumental in
prolonging the Confederacy's doomed struggle against
the superior numbers and industrial resources of the
North. Not until 1866 did Richmond fall, and the North
lost more than 700,000 dead in the process.
Smokeless Powder and the T-3/T-4
Mining had always been an important part of the
Draka economy, and when the Swede Alfred Huskqvist
(b. 1820, Uppsala, d. 1890, Kenia province) (2)
perfected his method of stabilizing nitroglycerin by
absorption, it was quickly adapted as the main
explosive in the Domination's mines. Dynamite (as the
new compound was called) exploded far too readily to
be used as a propellant, but proved to be very suitable
as a bursting-charge in shells. After settling in the
Domination, Huskqvist developed a mixture of
nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose that could be extruded
into various shapes, and which gave a much more
controlled "burn" than black powder. The new
compound was patented in 1872, and known variously
as "cordite" (from the string-shaped pieces initially
used), 'white powder' (from its color) and, usually,
"smokeless" powder. The War Directorate immediately
noted the superiority of the new propellant (less
fouling to build up in the chamber and barrel, no smoke
to give away the rifleman's position, higher velocity,
and flatter trajectory). The first attempt at use was the
T-3, in which double-base smokeless powder was
substituted for the original 250-grain load of
compressed black powder.
Footnote 2. Huskqvist settled on a coffee plantation
in Kenia province, and the Huskqvist family have
remained as Landholders on the estate ever since.
Huskqvist's daughter, Karen Huskqvist, was the author
of the noted
Into Africa
.
Performance was as follows:
T-3 Rifle
Ciliber: .40
Weight: 9.8 lb.
Range: 1500 yards effective, 2200 maximum
Rate of Fire: 10-12 rounds per minute
Feed System: Fixed box, 8 rounds
Operation: Turn-bolt
However, there were serious problems, and the T-3
was withdrawn from service within four years. Recoil
was excessive, and the velocity so high that the bullet
tended to melt in the barrel, lining it with smears of
lead. The rifling also tended to "strip" the exterior of
the bullet.
Design studies were undertaken, and the
opportunity used to redesign the service rifle from the
ground up. A smaller-caliber weapon was used, since it
was obvious that the higher velocity reduced the need
for a large bullet to achieve severe wounds. The shape
of the bullet was redesigned (a "boat-tail" to reduce
drag), the round itself was made of lead swagged into a
jacket of harder alloy (except for the nose, left bare to
expand inside the target), and the feed mechanism was
altered to a detachable clip with 10 rounds, which made
reloading easier under battle conditions.
T-4 Rifle
Calibre: 7.5 mm x 60 mm
Weight: 9 lb.
Range: 2000 yards effective, 2500 maximum
Rate of Fire: 10-12 rounds per minute
Feed System: Detachable box, 10 rounds
Operation: Turn-bolt
The T-4 was the weapon used by the Draka armed
forces during the Anglo-Russian War of 1879-1882, and
proved to be a war-winner; simple, light, rugged, and
very hard-hitting. Widely copied in Europe (e.g., the
German Mausers of 1888 and 1898), it remained
standard issue until 1906.
Automatic and Self-Loading Weapons
While the Gatling gave excellent service, it was
inevitably large, bulky, and heavy, and usually mounted
on a modified field-gun carriage or steel tripod. In
vehicle mounts with an exterior power source its very
high rate of fire and reliability made it nearly ideal, but
for infantry service it had severe limitations.
After the adoption of smokeless powder, the Draka
Gatlings were modified to fire the new round, but it was
obvious that new possibilities were opened by the new
propellant—especially by its reduced waste residue and
the more efficient "long push" that its slower burn gave
as compared to black powder.
The first application was in a heavier weapon, a 25
mm automatic cannon designed for armored-vehicle
use and as an antiairship defense. Developed by
Charles Manson of the Army Technical Section in
1882-86, it used a form of blowback operation,
combined with advanced primer ignition. The
breechblock was flanked by two metal arms, themselves
attached to a strong coil spring in a sheath around the
lower barrel of the weapon. When released, the block
was pulled forward by the spring, stripping a shell out
of the metal-link feed belt and firing it slightly before
reaching the full-forward position. The recoil force thus
had to stop the forward intertia of the breech, then
move it backward against the mass of the breechblock,
the two flanking arms, and the force of the coil spring.
While efficient, the mechanism was not directly
transferable to small arms. It did inspire a good deal of
experimentation, and in 1890 Dr. Alexandra Tolgren, of
the Shahnapur Technological Institute, made the first
serious application of the gas-delayed blowback
principle which was to be the foundation of Draka
small-arms design for two generations.
The Tolgren automatic pistol used a rimless
modification of the standard 10 x 15 mm
smokeless-powder pistol round adopted in 1881. The
feed device was a 12-round staggered box clip in the
grip. Operation was as follows: the bolt, which was
machined to wrap around the barrel on three sides, ran
forward, chambered a round and fired when the trigger
was pulled. Above the barrel was a short cylinder, the
rear end of which was sealed. A gas port was drilled
through to the barrel, and a piston-head and rod were
inserted in the tube forward of the port. The operating
rod ran forward through a further, slotted portion of
the tube which contained a coil-spring, and at the
forward end was fastened to two steel pins that ran in
grooves back along the outside of the gas tube and
attached to the bolt.
At rest, the spring held the breech sealed. When
fired, the recoil of the weapon began to blow the bolt
backward, against the force of the coil spring and the
inertia of the bolt and operating rods. These alone
would not have sufficed to keep the breech sealed, but
as the bullet fired, high-pressure gas filled the tube
above the barrel and prevented the piston-head from
recoiling. Once the bullet had left the muzzle, the
pressure in the cylinder dropped and the piston
traveled backwards, forcing the remaining gas into the
barrel. The bolt recoiled, then moved forward again as
the coil spring expanded, stripping another round from
the clip and repeating the cycle.