Military Equipment of Mexico - Naval Ships of Mexico, Weapons of Mexico, Mondragn Rifle, Oaxaca Class Patrol Vessel, Allende Class Frigate (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Naval Ships of Mexico, Weapons of Mexico, Mondragn Rifle, Oaxaca Class Patrol Vessel, Allende Class Frigate, Trejo Pistol, Saint Chaumond-Mondragn, Holzinger Class Patrol Vessel, Uribe Class Patrol Vessel, Azteca Class Patrol Vessel, Sierra Class Corvette, Durango Class Patrol Vessel, Arm Durango, Corvette Zaragoza, Arm Sonora, Mendoza Rm2, Obregn Pistol, Arm Romero, Bdmx. Excerpt: The Mondragn was the world's first semi-automatic rifle, and was designed by Mexican general Manuel Mondragn. He began work in 1882 and patented the weapon in 1887. It was gas-operated with a cylinder and piston arrangement, now very familiar but unusual at the time, and rotating bolt, locked by lugs in helical grooves in the receiver; it was also possible to operate it as a simple straight-pull bolt action. The caliber was 7 mm (.284 in) Mauser with an 8-round box magazine; a trial LMG version had a 20-round box and provision for a bipod, like the BAR; the Mexican Army also used a 100-round drum magazine for a light machine gun variant produced in 1910. ==Features and uses== For this reason the Mexican army used an improved light machine gun variant of the Mondragn up until 1943 when it was replaced with the Mendoza M-1943 general purpose infantry machine gun. Because of the Mexican Revolution, few facilities in Mexico were able to mass-produce it and those that could were not able to shut down their assembly plants for the required retooling time needed to initiate production of the new rifles. Mondragn attempted to interest a U.S. firm, without success as they thought that semi-automatic rifles were not practical and could not be produced in the numbers that Mexico wanted . He then turned to Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft (SIG), of Neuhausen am ... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=12776713