The first detachable magazine rifle: the .45-70 Remington-Lee Navy 

"The US fell behind in military arms"...... huh? Isn't this rifle American? First of it's kind

@@joeblow8379 Yes. This was an advanced rifle for its time, but it was not the standard issue. The standard issue US Army rifle was the single shot .45-70 Springfield until the 1890s. US Army volunteers were still carrying it in the war with Spain in 1898. The US military didn't catch up to the rest of the world until around WWI.

@@joeblow8379 The USA played catch up until roughly 1920, those are facts.

Apparently the Spanish American War changed that, then prior to WW1, the US was busy modernizing. Of course they did have a machine gun fielded at the time to their credit.

@@TheLegitAlpha It took them a lot of time to go from frontier supply lines to full blown standardized factories, hence my "catch up" comment.

I’ve never played it. Don’t have time. But I’m getting deployed and will probably have a lot of down time when I’m bored to death, and might check it out. Isn’t it a few years old now?

@@papercartridges6705 Yeah but RDR2 still holds up with it's insane attention to detail. The beginning is pretty slow though.

5 years old but still looks great, it is a prequel to red dead redemption 1. The story is better if you don't know the plot of the older game because then you don't know who survives red dead 2.

If you like that kinda concept, you should check out the mini-series "Streets of Laredo". The plot kinda revolves around the use of a cutting edge weapon of the time (Schmidt Rubin) and it's revolutionary advantage.

It is so much fun. I wish I had more magazines. They are scarce and not cheap.

Well let’s not quite go all the way to say Go Navy….

yes... I apologize, I was caught up in the exuberance of the moment.

Once again the Navy proves its relative smarts over the Army by adopting modern repeating rifles long before the Army with its primitive and hilarious single shot trapdoor

@@chairzombie8378 Let's not get carried away giving swabbies credit for IQ points they ain't got.

Imagine if this had replaced the Trapdoor Springfield for the Spanish American war. Of course in that case we probably would have had a Lee action based smokeless powder rifle instead of the Krag. I feel that the decisions that were made with the Krag in US service really let that actions potential down, design a stripper clip system for it and at least give it back it's emergency 2nd lug if not a real 2nd lug that either the Danish or Norwegian krags were upgraded to.

​@robertlewis8295 I mean it probably wouldn't have changed much? The Spanish Mausers were using smokeless 7mm rounds the shot flatter and outranged the US troops that still had the .45-70 Blackpowder Trapdoor Springfields, the Krags fared better but still suffered from the lack of stripper clips. So if anything they could've exacerbated the issue of feeling outgunned if ALL the troops lacked more advanced smokeless cartridges.

​@@robertlewis8295Remember that the Lee Enfield wasn't that good of a rifle until 1905 with the SMLE. The best choice at the time would have been to adopt the 1893 or 1895 Mauser, in effect getting the 1903 Springfield 10 years early.

Navy and Marine raids with "advanced" weapons the army snubbed their nose at always will make me fucking giggle

Thank you very much!

Pretty much exactly how it went down!

And a reserve always ready to deal with a cavalry charge.

Semper Fi.

@@septembersurprise5178 respect to USMC serving and ex service personnel 🫡

Yep I am a Drachnifel fan already! Great channel.

You’re absolutely right and it’s a pity that we don’t know what good powder is today, we have to settle for what is available. But Swiss is very good, not quite as good as the best English powders historically, but close enough. I get velocities nearly matching historic measurements.

Mannlicher system wasn't good in any remotely dirty conditions due to the opening slot on the bottom of the mag (for the empty clip to fall through) making it easy for dirt and debris to accumulate inside it. The clip system also wasn't optimized for reusability since the clips automatically fell onto the ground once empty, and the magazine was impossible to load without a clip, which turned it into a very awkward to load single shot rifle. All of these issues didn't really exist in the remmington-lee. Which had a detachable magazine that you could just leave in the gun and single load/stripper clip load if you had no spare mags available. If you wanted to load and fire one round at a time (popular method back then) you could just drop a loose round on the top of the empty magazine's follower and close the bolt. Super simple and easy to use. Unlike the mannlicher system which required you to literally push the single loose round directly into the chamber because otherwise it would just fall into the clipless internal magazine and snag up. The action was also fully sealed which made it much more reliable in dirty conditions

@@Gameprojordan Indeed it had faults but was used by major armies for decades and changed eventually into a top ejector to avoid any dirt ingress. The clips were simple light pressings and disposable, albeit often reloaded in practice.

I use 50 gn 2f and filler (cream of wheat) make up the charge. Lee HB 405. Like you said a hoot to take to the range

Plus the Navy is smarter

Geez it was several years ago, probably one of the auction sites.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Why go for the Krag when you had this revolutionary weapon? Probably the high brass was way too conservative.

​@@nocturnalrecluse1216Military brass up until recently have always been slow to adopt new innovations. Mostly due to their understanding of combat doctrine.

Why does it make sense to ignore the M1 carbine. It was the most produced American rifle of WWII!

Two reasons, first it was not adopted as a mainline infantry rifle, the role the Lee was considered for. Second, because my grandfather hated them. They were great to carry, but according to him, lacking in lethality. @@hux2000

​@@hux2000 Because it wasn't a standard service rifle? It was designed for rear troops to use as a lightweight alternative to the Thompson SMG. This would've been around when .45-70 was the standard US government cartrige (before being replaced by the .30-40 Krag in 1892)

Not “ejected from the bottom” so much as “uncoupled from the rounds as you load it”. It seems to shimmy its way off the rims and fall out from the recoil of the first round or two

@@TenaciousTrilobite Thanks. This illustrates the differences between book learnin' and hands-on experience. When I saw a 6mm Lee rifle on the firing line, the owner/shooter only loaded loose cartridges, no clip. Another time a shooter/owner had a Krag and was upset that his rifle wasn't feeding from the magazine. I am a range safety officer at my county's public rifle range, but I suggested flipping the magazine cut-off because the US M1892 Krag had reversed the direction of the "off" position sometime during its decade of production and I didn't know which switch was which. Fixed the problem. The Lee had no magazine cut-off because loading a clip of five rounds was as rapid as loading one cartridge. The Krag and Springfield were designed to work as single-shot breechloading rifles with a magazine in reserve for rapid fire during "emergencies." Unfortunately, not all gun books are written by people who have actually handled the guns themselves--sometimes they haven't even read the operator's manuals used to train riflemen.

I’m not sure if the marines used this rifle. I would imagine they probably did, if shipboard, and the warship had been issued these rifles. As for smokeless powder, I would be a little hesitant since this isn’t really the strongest action, and the stock is made to handle gentle BP recoil but may not hold up well to sharper smokeless loads. It should handle a BP substitute though.

Yes, there is at least one photo of US Marines (not bluejackets) ashore in Hawaii with Remington-Lees in 1893

.43 Spanish was a popular chambering for commercial and export variants of the Remington-Lee. It’s possible that example is a Chinese contract example captured during the Boxer Rebellion

Not to give any hints to Bubbas… but take a .308 Ishapore Enfield, and machine it to accept M-14 magazines, and voila! Which I’m sure somebody has done.

​@@papercartridges6705 it indeed has been done.... saw one at a shoot in TX where a bloke had converted two ... one in 308 w/M14 mags and another 303 version that had been converted to take 1911 mags and shot 45acp.... .MrEric

Modern smokeless .45-70 loads are often quite a bit hotter than historical BP .45-70 loads

Well, not yet…. Maybe when I want to get into long range sniping.

Ah yes, the Bren sniping configuration. The ignorance, it burns.@@papercartridges6705

Nice reference @@papercartridges6705

​@@papercartridges6705 heyo

No, these rifles pre-date smokeless powder

Don’t worry, it is soft grass and these magazines are built like tanks.

Soft grass = Good ! I cringe when my M-95 Steyr en-bloc clips drop out of my rifle too. Some things are just hard to replace. Not really valuable but the gun is a single shot without them. Love your channel brother, most of my rifles are over 100 years old too. Believe it or not, I would take that Remington -Lee over any AR made today ! Far more interesting of a firearm. And a damn site more classy 😁

Yes, it was issued to bluejackets and Marines

The garand held 8 and was faster to load than this. Mags were expensive and heavy plus they didn’t want individual soldiers burning through their ammo (you can only carry so much 30’06). They almost did use detachable mags however the idea was scraped. The SKS was the same idea, an infantryman’s rifle for conscripts. The mosin it replaced had a fixed mag. Just another thing to lose. The Russians had the SVT with detachable mags however and that rifle was meant to be standard issue so I’m not sure. I’m guessing the SKS was simply a straight copy of the mosin M44 carbine concept: Fixed mag, integral bayonet, short carbine length. Something that can be given to EVERY soldier infantry or support, who wasn’t issued a sub machine gun or AK47. The Russians made the M44 carbine standard issue in late ww2 and the SKS replaced it in 1949.

The US marines were the only user of the Remington lee in the US military. They had a specialist role of using small party’s to raid shore installations so the fire power was justified plus being so few marines meant much less cost

@@DefunctYompelvert thank you for that information

It’s an old phonograph recording, I can’t remember which one exactly. But I used it to avoid copyright on the more recent recordings.

@@papercartridges6705 You own a phonograph?

Yes 70 grains was the service load. They needed to shoot many hundreds of yards, and stop a cavalryman on a horse. For shooting at 100 yards, I don’t need that much power and it is less stress on a 140 year old rifle.

My rifle is USN property marked. It is the Remington-Lee Navy 1885. You are correct that there was a later 6mm straight pull bolt Lee Navy as well.

@@papercartridges6705 My M1885 is USN marked too. My point is that the rifle never had "Navy" in its official name. It is the Remington-Lee rifle.

Adding "Navy" is still useful for differentiating the US Navy rifles from the slew of commercial and foreign contract 1885s. The Navy also adopted their own pattern of the earlier 1879 Remington-Lee.

A lot weaker, nowhere near as robust. But the 1903 is basically a large ring Mauser.