Rifles that had magazine cutoff?

T

TruthTellers

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I knew a few years ago that the French Lebel rifle had a mag cutoff and I thought that was a pretty interesting feature in allowing a rifle to be fired while the magazine remained fully loaded. Then when watching a Krag-Jorganson video I saw that rifle also had a magazine cutoff.

Besides those two, what other manually operated rifles had a magazine cutoff? Was it ever really utilized to good effect? It seems after WW1 the concept lost steam.
 
Springfield 1903, 1903A, 1903A3. I don't know how practical the cutoff was, I understand the concept but it seems kinda useless to me.
 
I don't know about foreign rifles but the US Krag and 1903 Springfields had them. Like some other pre-WW I ideas after that war they fell out of favor, being an additional cost/complexity to the rifle will little real world usefulness.

The base idea was that soldiers would load single rounds and take aimed shots at individual enemy soldiers, while keeping the loaded magazine "in reserve" for when more fire volume was needed, such as when defending a position from assault.

Mind you, this came about in the era before machine guns were common and organic to infantry units at low level.

Like long range volley fire, the magazine cutoff was abandoned during and after WW I as not practical. Springfields during WWII still had the cutoff, but that was because it was part of the rifle and also functioned as the bolt release, so changing it wasn't worth the cost. IIRC, 1917 Enfields don't have one.

what was kept was the Mauser style magazine follower that locks the action open when empty.

the Springfield cutoff does override this feature when the magazine is "cutoff". Not of any use in action, but does allow the empty rifle's bolt to be worked in practice.
 
Remington Keene
Remington Lee
Winchester Hotchkiss

Actually--the majority of military repeaters before WWI had it. It was a "feature"
to keep soldiers from wasting ammunition.
 
Up to the Lee Enfield no1mk3, the British rifles had a magazine cut off. It was abandoned in later mk3s built during the war.
Seems like a lot of nations used them before WW1, then found they were of no tactical value.
 
Magazine cutoff

The magazine cutoff was devised to allow the normal procedure of single loading and have a full magazine in case of the need for defensive firepower. It proved rather impractical, with the 1903 and 1903A3 being the last military rifles so equipped.
 
I had a Styer scout (really miss that rifle). On that gun you could insert a full mag to the first notch and single load rounds into the ejection port without feeding rounds from the mag. Push the mag in all the way and it would then feed from the mag.

Pretty cool feature and accomplished just by making the mag with 2 detents. No complicated mechanism built into the rifle itself.
 
In the shotgun world Browning A5 had it, really useful if you were crossing a fence, cut off the magazine and open the action locking it back.
It would be nice on any semi-auto hunting rifle for the same reason although I've never seen any that had it.
 
Sharkbite said:
I had a Styer scout (really miss that rifle). On that gun you could insert a full mag to the first notch and single load rounds into the ejection port without feeding rounds from the mag. Push the mag in all the way and it would then feed from the mag.

Pretty cool feature and accomplished just by making the mag with 2 detents. No complicated mechanism built into the rifle itself.
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Cool and simple way to cut off a magazine, but those rifles cost a lot and lack the history that the rifles of the late 19th Century have.
 
use/useless

At the turn of the century when mag cutoffs were initially incorporated into repeating bolt rifles, the practice of volley fire as controlled by an officer (by example, the Zulu Wars were just 20-25 years prior) and rate of fire and expenditure of ammo was certainly a concern. Resupply was not a simple matter if abroad, horse/wagon still dominated transportation. Emphasis was on accuracy and not volume of fire.

Given those constraints, the mag cutoff was seen as a positive feature. WWI and the Maxim/Spandau/Vickers gun changed all that.
 
In the shotgun world Browning A5 had it, really useful if you were crossing a fence, cut off the magazine and open the action locking it back.
Click to expand...

The other, and more advertised feature of the A5's cutoff was the ability to easily change the round in the chamber.

If, for example, you had #6 in the mag and chamber and a shot came up where you wanted #2 shot, cut off the mag, open the bolt (ejecting the chambered round, slip in the new one and close the bolt. Something you could do in a few seconds, which other guns couldn't do.

As to the cutoff keeping troops from "wasting" ammo, and the difficulties of resupply, those were valid points, to a point. The same mindset resisted military repeaters for some time, the argument was if the troops had more than a single shot, they would waste ammo, and ammo cost money.

This mindset also kept ammo supplies under virtual and actual lock and key, only to be issued in the amount specified by regulation, and only under the direction of the responsible officer(s).

Some believe that adherence to this policy contributed to the British defeat at Isandlwana, while disregard for the "established procedure" of ammunition issuance contributed significantly to the successful defense of Rorke's Drift.

WWI and the Maxim gun's performance on the battlefield (on both sides) led the militaries of many nations to rethink their tactics, equipment and policies.
 
The other, and more advertised feature of the A5's cutoff was the ability to easily change the round in the chamber.
Click to expand...

My Benelli M1 allows this as well. Run the bolt, it ejects the chambered round and allows you drop one into the action without kicking one out of the mag tube. Handy for “select slug” drills.
 
44 AMP said:
The other, and more advertised feature of the A5's cutoff was the ability to easily change the round in the chamber.

If, for example, you had #6 in the mag and chamber and a shot came up where you wanted #2 shot, cut off the mag, open the bolt (ejecting the chambered round, slip in the new one and close the bolt. Something you could do in a few seconds, which other guns couldn't do.

As to the cutoff keeping troops from "wasting" ammo, and the difficulties of resupply, those were valid points, to a point. The same mindset resisted military repeaters for some time, the argument was if the troops had more than a single shot, they would waste ammo, and ammo cost money.

This mindset also kept ammo supplies under virtual and actual lock and key, only to be issued in the amount specified by regulation, and only under the direction of the responsible officer(s).

Some believe that adherence to this policy contributed to the British defeat at Isandlwana, while disregard for the "established procedure" of ammunition issuance contributed significantly to the successful defense of Rorke's Drift.

WWI and the Maxim gun's performance on the battlefield (on both sides) led the militaries of many nations to rethink their tactics, equipment and policies.
Click to expand...
The other issue with ammunition in the 19th Century cartridge rifles was that .45-70, .577/.450, and others were massive in size and weight. Transporting thousands of rounds of that ammunition over many miles on land was not easy. By WW1 near all nations were using .30 caliber smokeless ammo that weighed a lot less and motorized vehicles were commonplace.

So, I can see the reason repeating rifles that came after single shots like the Martini-Henry and Chassepot and Springfield had cutoffs, but by the 1910's the feature was dropped.
 
Pre-WWII rifles. And especially WWI and prior.
The majority had magazine cutoffs.
Some did carry into WWII and beyond, though.

A notable exception is the G98/K98 family. None of them had magazine cutoffs.

At the turn of the century when mag cutoffs were initially incorporated into repeating bolt rifles...
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Many rifles had magazine cutoffs prior to 1900.
The 1891 Mosin Nagant, for example, is a bit odd, as it does *not* have a magazine cutoff. But you know what does? ... The 1886 Lebel action that it was based on.

The Kropatschek 1878 also had a magazine cutoff.
The Gewehr 71/84 had a magazine cutoff. (Which was derived from a design first trialed in 1874.)
The (Danish) 1886 Krag had a magazine cutoff.
And the list goes on, and on.
1880 isn't really "turn of the century" to me.

And, keep in mind that those model numbers are adoption years, or year of first production. Most designs were patented and/or in trials 3-10 years earlier.
 
By WW1 near all nations were using .30 caliber smokeless ammo that weighed a lot less and motorized vehicles were commonplace.
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I don't know if I'd call motor vehicles "commonplace" in WWI. Even in WWII, the majority of European armies transport was horsedrawn. Even some artillery was still horsedrawn, at the end of the war.

The US was the closest to a fully mechanized Army in WWII, overseas. And we had to resort to horses and particularly mules in several campaigns where we were fighting in places motor vehicles just could not go.
 
44 AMP said:
I don't know if I'd call motor vehicles "commonplace" in WWI. Even in WWII, the majority of European armies transport was horsedrawn. Even some artillery was still horsedrawn, at the end of the war.

The US was the closest to a fully mechanized Army in WWII, overseas. And we had to resort to horses and particularly mules in several campaigns where we were fighting in places motor vehicles just could not go.
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Yeah, but it's not like once the ships with the ammo got into port that it was horsedrawn from boat to battlefield. Not too mention that a soldier could carry more .30-06 vs .45-70 on his person.
 
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