Les Jones

Guns > Weekly Gun Nuttery - the Martini-Henry Rifle

Here's a well-done site devoted to the Martini-Henry rifle, as well as the Martini-Enfield (a Martini-Henry re-barrelled by the British to fire .303). If you've ever seen the movie Zulu you've seen a depiction of the battle of Rorke's Drift, where 150 British soldiers with Martini-Henry rifles held out against 4000 Zulu.

The cartridge page shows the variations produced over the years, including an incendiary round for use against Zeppelins. Also interesting is that site's page on Khyber Pass Martinis - Martini copies that were hand-made on small forges in the Khyber Pass region of Afghanistan's Hindu Kush between the 1890s and 1940s.

The gun's Swiss inventor, Friedrich von Martini apparently had nothing to do with the gin and vermouth drink, but he was a car designer. (As a side note, when I visited Wikipedia to learn more about Mr. Martini, their featured article was the Kammerlader, "the first Norwegian breech loading rifle," which is an odd weapon.)

Other links

Tamara has an excellent post about the Swiss Gew. 1869 Vetterli, an unusual gun that represents a sort of transition from lever action to bolt action.

Gullyborg has the Carnival of Cordite. Work kept Jeff from doing a weekly check on the bias, but he notes that SF cops are against the proposed SF gun ban. San Francisco votes on the measure this Tuesday at the polls. It's no secret Frisco is one of the most liberal cities in the country, but in general gun control has been losing ground in the post-9/11 world. It'll be interesting to see how San Francisans vote.