Semi

I knew, I guess, that other countries prepping for the coming WWII that was on their calendar (September 1939...  start fighting the next war... Hmmm, that's only 10 years away!) and wanted to upgrade their bolt action rifles.  Academically.  But I didn't know what the huge scale of it was.  

But Forgotten Weapons is reminding me. 

Yes, the USA was the only one to pull it off with the Garand.  But the French almost had something for WWI.  This was a new one to me.  AND using that Lebel 8mm cartridges.  Yikes

And there were Browning designs before that, and I guess he really planted the seed with practical offerings.  The Czechs were working hard.  The Germans came up with the Gewehr 43, but long before that Mauser was working on something in 1913.  The Rooskies had something 3 years before that with the SVT.  Nothing as widespread as the Garand, but none of them had the industrial capacity behind them.


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Then the Germans invented the Assault Rifle in the middle of the war and folks wanting semis became also-rans to folks wanting the new hotness of the Assault Rifle.

 But, instead of being unique, the Garand was one of many designs in a crowded field.  If they had only scheduled the war for a few years later, nigh everyone might have fielded battle rifles that fired semi-auto