The Tankgewehr M1918, also known as the Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr or simply the T-Gewehr, was a German anti-tank rifle produced towards the end of the First World War. It holds the distinction of being the first anti-tank rifle ever produced.
History[]
The T-Gewehr emerged as a late-war concept as German forces discovered British Mark IV tanks to be largely immune to the 7.92×57mm K bullet which Germany had developed as a stopgap anti-tank weapon. Mauser took inspiration from heavy rifles used for big-game hunting and developed a scaled-up bolt-action rifle designed to fire the powerful .525 TuF round. This cartridge was initially developed for a heavy Maxim variant, the MG 18 TuF, which was to function as a dual-purpose anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon, though it was plagued by production problems with only 50 examples produced by the war's end, not a single one of which was used in combat.
The rifles were produced at Mauser's Oberndorf am Neckar factory, with the first prototypes ready by January 1918; the weapon was produced from May 1918. 300 rifles were produced a day and a total of about 15,800 were made by the war's end.[1] Come the end of the war, the Versailles Treaty disallowed Germany from owning weapons of this type; as such, many were destroyed although some others were shipped to other countries where they saw service.[2]
Design Details[]
The rifle was built around a scaled-up Mauser bolt action, which was manually breech-loaded. It lacked any method of compensating for recoil: this, coupled to its powerful round and sheer weight, limited its use to supported positions. Like most anti-tank rifles, it was effectively impossible for a man of average strength and stature to shoulder-fire the weapon accurately. Iron sights were comprised of a front blade and a tangent rear sight, calibrated in 100-meter increments from 100 to 500 meters. A two-man crew manned the gun; a gunner and an ammunition bearer.
Variants[]
A small number of experimental M1918s were modified to incorporate a 5-round magazine, though this configuration was not mass-produced. It is unclear if the magazine was detachable or integral, though the latter is more likely given the weapon's origin as a scaled-up bolt-action rifle.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The T-Gewehr predates the German language's adoption of the word "Panzer" to refer to armored fighting vehicles, hence the use of the English word "tank."
References[]
- ↑ C. G. Sweeting (2004). Blood and Iron: The German Conquest of Sevastopol. Brassey's. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-57488-796-9.
- ↑ http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1/Germany/AT-guns/mauser-tankgewehr-m1918/