Winchester rifle

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The Winchester rifle has become synonymous with the word "repeating rifle" (multishot rifle) which was manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and was commonly used in the United States during the latter half of the 19th century. The gun is colloquially known as "the gun that won the West" for its immense popularity at that time, as well as its use in fictional Westerns.

1 Characteristics
2 Predecessors
3 Development
4 Trivia
5 Pop culture references
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Characteristics

The original Winchester rifle was famous for its rugged construction and lever-action mechanism that allowed the rifleman to fire a number of shots before having to reload: hence the term, "repeating rifle."

The first model, the Model 1866, was nicknamed Yellow Boy because of its brass receiver. The Model 1873 was Winchester's next design. The 73 was much more popular than the 66 because of the iron (and later steel) frame which allowed it to take the newly designed and more potent centerfire .44 WCF (Winchester Center Fire, also known as .44-40) cartridge. The 1873 is often called The Gun That Won The West.

The 1866 was only available in the rimfire .44 Henry. The 73 was available in .44 WCF (.44-40), .38 WCF (.38-40), and .32 WCF (.32-20), most of which were also available in Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson, Merwin & Hulbert, and other revolvers. Having a common centerfire cartridge in both revolvers and rifles allowed the owner to carry two firearms, but only one type of ammunition. The original 73 was never offered in the military standard .45 Colt cartridge; only modern reproductions are offered in that caliber. There was a limited number of 1873 Winchesters manufactured in .22 rimfire caliber, which lacked the loading gate on the right side of the receiver.

Winchester continued to dominate the American rifle market for decades with the introduction of Models 1876, 1886, 1892, 1894, and 1895 (which featured a box magazine, rather than the tubular magazine found on the previous models). The '76 was a heavier-framed rifle than the '66 or '73, and was the first to be chambered for full-powered centerfire rifle cartridges, as opposed to rimfire cartridges or handgun-sized centerfire rounds. It was introduced to celebrate the American Centennial, and earned a reputation as a durable and powerful hunting rifle. The Canadian Mounties also used the '76 as a standard long arm for many years. Theodore Roosevelt used an engraved, pistol-gripped half-magazine '76 during his early hunting expeditions in the West and praised it.

The Browning-designed Model 1886 continued the trend towards chambering heavier rounds, and was even stronger than the toggle-link '76. In many respects the '86 was a true American express rifle. The '86 could be chambered in the more powerful black powder cartridges of the day, including the .45-70 Government. Chambering a rifle for the .45-70 had been a goal of Winchester for some time.

Winchester returned to its roots with the Model 1892, which, like the first leverguns, was primarily chambered for lower-pressure, smaller, handgun rounds. The Model '92, however, incorporates a much stronger action than the leverguns of the 1860s and 1870s. 1,004,675 '92s were made, and although Winchester phased them out in the 1930's, they are still being made under the Puma label by the Brazilian arms maker, Rossi. In its modern form using superior materials, the 92's action is strong enough to chamber ultra-high pressure handgun rounds, such as the .357 and .44 Magnums, up to the mighty .454 Casull.

The 1892 was designed as a replacement for the 1873 by John Moses Browning. Browning went on to dominate the Winchester design team during the revolutionary period of the 1880s to the early 1900s, when smokeless powder forced all arms makers to go rethink every aspect of their firearms. Thanks to Browning's genius, Winchester was able to stay on top of the market during this explosive period. The company was the first to develop a rifle and cartridge for the new powder, the Winchester Model 1894. Though delays prevented the .30-30 or .30 WCF round from appearing on the shelves until 1895, it remained the first commercially available smokeless powder round for the North American consumer market. Though initially it was too expensive for most shooters, the '94 ultimately became Winchester's most popular rifle of all time, selling millions across North America.

In 1885 Winchester entered the Single Shot market with their model 1885 rifle, a rifle that had been designed by John Moses Browning in 1878. The Winchester Single Shot, known to most shooters as the low-wall, and the hi-wall, but officially marketed by Winchester as the Single Shot rifle, was produced to satisfy the demands of the growing sport of MATCH SHOOTING, which opened at Creedmoor, New York, on June 21, 1872. Target shooting, MATCH SHOOTING as it was referred to, was as popular from about 1871 until about 1917, as golf in the US is popular today. The Winchester company, which had built it's reputation on repeating firearms, had in 1885, challenged the single shot giants of Sharps, Remington, Stevens, Maynard, Ballard, among others. Winchester not only entered the competition, they excelled at it, as MAJ. Ned H. Roberts (1866-1948-inventer of the .257 Roberts) would state later, "...the most reliable, strongest, and altogether best single shot rifle ever produced." [7] There was a lot of truth to that, as Winchester produced their Single Shot from 1885 to 1920, with nearly 140,000 units. More importantly, the model 1885 had been built with the strongest falling block action known at that time, strong enough for the Winchester company to use the 1885 action to test all of their new ammunition with. To satisfy the needs of the shooting and hunting public, the model 1885 single shot had been produced in more calibers than any other winchester rifle. In 2005, after a break of 85 years, the Winchester Company reproduced a "Limited Series" of their Winchester Single shot rifles, in both 19th and 20th century calibers. The 21st century Winchester Single Shot rifles are built with the latest technology and modern steels, enabling them to fire modern cartridges. Original 1885 single shots, should be inspected by a competent gunsmith before firing modern high pressure loads or in some cases smokeless powder.

While earlier rifles and shotguns actually "won the West," the majority of lever action rifles seen in classic Hollywood Westerns are Winchester '92 carbines chambered in .44-40 and .38-40 (to utilize the "5-in-1" blank cartridge), which John Wayne famously carried around through dozens of films set in periods from the 1830s to the 1880s. Winchester rifles remained the most popular in the US through WWI and the interwar period. However, European advances in the development of bolt action rifles threw a long shadow. These new rifles could chamber pointed "Spitzer" bullets, which no lever action with a tube magazine could. They could also cope with more pressure, and consequently chamber more potent rounds and shoot flatter than a lever rifle. On top of this, bolt actions as developed by Mauser and other European concerns had front locking lugs which stabilized the cartridge head very well, and allowed for phenomenal accuracy.

In response to the increasing competition from these bolt-action rifles, Winchester introduced the Model 70 in 1936. This was not Winchester's first bolt rifle, but it was by far their most successful. It was based on a modified Mauser Gewehr 98 design, but with modifications and popular North American chamberings which made it more appealing to American hunters than European imports or sporterized military rifles.

After the company was bought out by the Olin-Matheson Chemical Corporation in 1963, Winchester saw a management change which led to an extensive and extremely controversial redesign of their firearms in 1964. This is regarded by many as the year the "real" Winchester ceased to be, and consequently "pre '64" rifles command higher prices than those made afterwards. Winchester itself went on to have a troubled future as competition from both the US and abroad began to decrease its sales. In the 1970s, the company was split into parts and sold off. The name "Winchester" remained with the ammunition making side of the company, and this branch at least continues to be profitable. The arms making side and New Haven facilities went to U.S. Repeating Arms, which struggled to keep the company going under a variety of owners and management teams. It finally announced plans to close the New Haven facility, the producers of the model 1894, in 2006.

[edit] Predecessors

The idea of a repeating rifle had been the subject of many inventions since the use of firearms began, but few of these had proven to be practical, mainly because the modern cartridge, which made repeating arms practical, had not yet been developed.

Repeating revolvers were popular in the mid 19th century. One of these revolving pistols, the Colt, was very successful, and a rifle version was produced, but it was not widely popular. The more successful Spencer rifles and carbines of the American Civil War were a notable step forward, but were not completely satisfactory in various respects.

The ancestor of the Winchester rifles was the Volcanic rifle of Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson. It was originally manufactured by the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, which was later reorganized into the New Haven Arms Company, its largest stockholder being Oliver Winchester.

The Volcanic rifle used a form of "caseless" ammunition and had only limited success. Wesson had also designed an early form of rimfire cartridge which was subsequently perfected by Benjamin Tyler Henry. Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company and was used in considerable numbers by certain Union Army units in the Civil War.

[edit] Development

After the war, Oliver Winchester continued to exercise control of the company, renaming it the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and had the basic design of the Henry rifle completely modified and improved to become the first Winchester rifle, the Model 1866, which fired centerfire cartridges and had an improved magazine and, for the first time, a wooden forearm.

From 1883, John Browning worked in partnership with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and designed a series of repeating rifles and shotguns, most notably the Winchester Model 1887 and Model 1897 shotguns and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892, Model 1894 and Model 1895 rifles, all of which are still in production today.

[edit] Trivia

Sarah L. Winchester, the heiress to the empire that manufactured the rifle, was told that the Winchester family was cursed and haunted by ghosts who were killed by Winchester rifles. She moved to San Jose, California, and built the Winchester Mystery House, a large and complex mansion supposedly designed to ward off these spirits.
Lord Lovat, an eccentric scottish WW2 Commando, took his personal Winchester rifle ashore at Sword Beach on D-Day and continued to carry it throughout the Normandy campaign.

[edit] Pop culture references

A sawed-off 1892 Winchester Rifle is Zoe's (Firefly) weapon of choice. Creator Joss Whedon calls this his "favorite gun of all times".
Steve McQueen's character, Josh Randall, in the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive also used the 1892 rifle, nick-named the "Mare's Leg."
The Winchester Rifle is the rifle used by Shaun in the film Shaun of the Dead to defend the Winchester Pub from a zombie invasion.
The sound effect for Indiana Jones' revolver is actually a Winchester Rifle being fired.
Father Grigori in the popular game Half-Life 2 uses a Winchester Rifle to kill off the zombies that have infested his town.
In Shaun of The Dead there is a pub known as 'The Winchester' that has an actual Winchester hanging over the bar. The name of the pub is most likely in relation to the weapons usage in many zombie movies.
Woody Strode used a sawed off Winchester similar to Steve McQueen's rifle from the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive
The character Vincent Valentine in the video game Final Fantasy VII has the option of wielding a Winchester rifle.
One of the Medical Mechanica robots in FLCL wields a Winchester M1892 lever-action rifle.
In the movie Babel, two boys test the range of a .270 Winchester M70 rifle in the Moroccan desert, setting in motion the events of the film.
The opening minutes of the movie The Last Samurai feature a drunken Captain Algren (played by Tom Cruise) demonstrating the rifle for the Winchester company.
The journey of a Model 1873, and the fate of its successive owners, is the focal point of the 1950 James Stewart movie Winchester '73.