Post by grenadierwerner on Aug 17, 2013 10:59:20 GMT -8
"The Mondragón was a Mexican battle rifle and the world's first automatic rifle. It was designed by Mexican general Manuel Mondragón and was the first fully automatic firearm able to be operated by a single rifleman.
Mondragón began his 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 7mm (.284 in) Mauser and the rifle was available with either an 8-round or 20-round box magazine, or a 100-round drum magazine (for variants produced after 1910).
Mondragón 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 Rheinfall, who agreed to manufacture the rifle. In 1901, the first rifles were shipped to Mexico and issued to the army as the Fusil Mondragón Modelo 1900 with an 8 round magazine.
The Model 1908 has an internal 8 round magazine fed by stripper clips. The Mondragon was never manufactured outside of the SIG factory in Switzerland. Only around 4000 rifles were made and only a few hundred made it to Mexico.
With World War I, Germany bought the remainder of SIG's stock that had not been sent to Mexico (which was about 3,000 of the 5,000 rifles), issuing them to the infantry, where they proved highly susceptible to mud and dirt in the trenches (a problem familiar even to less complex bolt action rifles such as the Ross). Instead, realizing their potential as portable yet powerful automatic weapons, they were withdrawn by the German high command and reissued to aircraft crews as the Flieger-Selbstlade-Karabiner Mondragon, Modell 1915 (Pilot's Selfloading Carbine Model 1915), until enough numbers of machine guns were available. Many of the Mondragon rifles were used with a 30-round helical magazine, known as Trommelmagazin für F.-S.-K.. This helical magazine was patented by Friedrich Blum; the units were tougher than expected. The 32-round drum magazine used by the Artillerie-Modell Pistole 08 (and later by the MP18) was a direct descendant. Few of the German versions with the helical magazine survive. Other Mondragon rifles appear to have been used by the navy"
Taken from the following Wikipedia article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_rifle
Only 20,000 of them were ever built and the vast majority of them were later /converted into the later type model. We only know of at least 10 of these in original configuration in the world and I have one now.