8mm CARCANOS
The development of a Carcano around a 8mm cartridge started way before the German occupation of Italy on September 1943.
It actually "started" when Italy and Germany were still in bitter diplomatic terms (they will get closer only after the Second Ethiopian war, when France and the UK condemned Italian's invasion, applying commercial/economical sanctions to Italy).
In fact the first carcano developed for a 8mm round wasn't meant for the german 8x57JS, but for the brand new 8x59 Breda, adopted by the Italian army in 1935 for their HMG; and it wasn't a rifle meant to be put into service, but as a quick, cheap and effective way to test newly produced batches of cartridges.
FUCILE MOD. 91 CAL. 8 PER PROVE
BALISTICHE - F.A.R.E. TERNI
When in 1935 the Italian Army adopted the 8x59 Breda cartridge for their HMG (while still looking for a decent compromise for their rifles, that will become the 7.35x51), the Terni Arsenal was commissioned to produce and distribute to the various ammo factories a proper barrel to test the new batches of cartridges.
The Terni technicians, being used to facories testing their 6.5x52 ammo batches just by using a standard carcano, decided to keep the same concept for 8x59, with some small tweaks implemented in order to have the guns reliably shoot several hundred rounds before being refurbished, particularly:
- A "bull" 8x59 barrel, with a 63mm barrel shank matching the receiver's diameter, descending to 22mm after the shank and proceeding in a cone that ends in 17mm at the muzzle.
- A slightly wider, "sturdier" stock to better host the wider barrel shank and bull barrel
- Upward wider barrel bands to host the bull barrel
- Being mounted on rifle stands, these guns didn't really need sights, so they didn't have them.
- After some service time, many received some transversal lugs behind the receiver screws to improve stock resistance to prolonged 8x59 abuses
Several hundreds of these guns were produced in order to have every 8x59 supplier being able to test their batches in a simple, reliable and effective way.
As we said, these "balistic trial" guns were mounted on a fixed stand, pointed to the target at 200m and single loaded by inserting individual round into the Carcano bolt face and then inserting the "loaded" bolt in the gun, chambering the round.
Ammo factories technician in charge of the tests would take random bullets from a batch and shoot some of them in these guns, looking at the muzzle velocity (recorded by cronograph) and at the groupings on the target, at 200m.
This is why the bull barrel isn't really an issue but instead it's a desired feature, in order to shoot many rounds in sequence without being too worried about spreading bullets because of a heated barrel.
Production of these "rifles" continued well after the war, especially because 8x59 Breda was kept in production up until the 1960s.
EXPERIMENTAL SNIPER RIFLE IN 8MM CALIBER
"Guns Inspectorate proposed to study a cal. 8mm rifle, which has better balistic specs than those of the mod.91 rifle. This is in order to install a scope to a gun with adequate precision. Therefore it has been suggested to adapt the cal.8 rifles that Terni already build to measure [cal.8 bullet] speed, by mounting sights and by changing the specs of the loading port and of the magazine itself." [...] "The study about cal.8 rifles, on which to install scopes, will give us the first practical elements to confirm the replacement of cal. 6.5 with cal. 8. FARE Terni is working on a new cal. 8 rifle. It is not foreseeable when this prototype could be experimented with".
Letter to the Undersecretary of state for war, March 30th 1943 -
This letter indicates how there were plans to develope a purposed built sniper rifle in 8x59 Breda. Sadly, due to the development of the war in 1943, it never came to be. Fascinating concept tho!
GERMAN CONVERTED 8MM CARCANOS
When the Germans took over its former ally with Operation Achse in September 1943, they captured hundreds of thousands of Carcanos. Many of these guns with their ammo were shipped straight to Mainland Germany, while many others were distributed to the collaborationist forces of the Italian Social Republic.
The German headquarters in the last months of WW2 was planning to distribute carcanos (along with many other guns) to the Volkssturm militia, but they also started considering the hypotesis of converting many of these guns to 8x57JS to arm local forces in the Carinthia/Tyrol region.
This process was developed in parallel by two firms: Heinrich Krieghoff in Germany and F.N.A. in Italy.
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Of course the most famous WW2 production, for practical, easily detectable features and for popular interest in "German Technological Superiority" is the Krieghoff conversion.
KRIEGHOFF CONVERSIONS
​​In the last, desperate months of WW2, Germany had serious logistical issues to supply their guns to the frontlines.
They litterally had a major energetic/resources crisis, impeding even the most basics supply lines, incapacitating most of the trucks and trains, thus keeping most of the gun produced in their factories' warehouses.
In order to get around some of these issues and especially to arm a last line of defense in the Austrian alps, they started considering and studying a proper conversion of the many thousands of Carcanos stored in the various warehouses between Italy and Germany.
The first request from the Reichsminister für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion arrived to Krieghoff's offices in Eisfeld (TH) on December 22, 1944, asking them to start the conversion of Carcanos to 8x57. Krieghoff was holding around 30k carcanos, with other 40k ready to be shipped from Italy and another 50k getting gathered in Northern Italy.
Apparently both Krieghoff and other Italian firms (FNA is almost sure, but also Armaguerra claimed to have made some) received this request by the German High Comand. FNA and the others allegedly took some more time to get results, mostly because they were working around a way to get a working clip for the larger 8x57 case.
Krieghoff instead, easily solved the issue by putting a wooden block into the magazine, transforming the guns in single shot rifles.
These guns were converted both at the Krieghoff Factory of Kufstein in Carinthia and in its subsidiary set up in a former barrack in Vipiteno/Sterzing ("Gondar" barrack, allegedly today's "Menini-De Carolis" barrack) with the machineries took away from the Armaguerra production lines. The Sterzing Factory started conversions in March 1945.
The Krieghoff conversions consisted in:
- Drill and rifle the barrel and chamber to 8x57 standards
- Back of the receiver drilled to host the 8x57 round without issues
- Bolt head was slightly milled to ensure ease of chambering for the slightly larger 8x57 cartridge and rim.
Standard Carcano bolts will host 8x57 without much fuss, but to ensure reliable and constant feed, the milling is required.
- Putting a carved wood block in the magazine, transforming the gun into a single loader.
- Switching the front sights for the new cartridge. These are slightly shorter than regular carcano sights, and set for 200m. Mod.91/41 guns had their adjustable part of the rear sight removed, leaving only the 200m combat sight.
- Adding a transversal reinforcing lug behind the frontal receiver screw, in order to properly reinforce the original stock to withstand the higher stress imposed by 8x57.
- Test firing the gun, putting an eagle proofmark on the right side of the barrel shank after the test was completed
- Deface the former serial on the barrel shank
- Serialise the barrel and receiver with a new serial, on the left side (via metal stamp), and the bolt (via electric pencil)
- impress over the old "cal 6,5" marking on the rear sights the "7,9" of the new caliber, impressed also on the base of the barrel shank, right in front of the receiver
- Impress the Krieghoff factory proofmark, a HK in a circle
On January 12th 1945, the Chef der Heeresrüstung und Befehlshaber des Ersatzheeres, the German Chief of Army Armaments and Commander of the Reserve Army, requested Krieghoff to increase considerably the production, at least reaching 1000 guns converted each day, in order to have 25k guns ready for the whole month of January. Krieghoff of course wasn't in any way in the conditions to sustain such request, and managed to convert around 3100 guns within January.
Another request in the same document was for the first 35-40k guns to be converted as single shot, with the wooden block in the magazine, while a new magazine and loading system was prepared (Not before may tho).
About 15k Carcanos (from an original plan of about 250k) got converted by february/march 1945, when the whole project got ditched.
of these 15k collectors managed to track down the following numbers:
​about 5.5k Gewehr 210 (i), Fucile mod.91/41 (H1 to H 4600 and H7100 to H7850)
About 1k Gewehr 209(i)Fucile corto mod. 91/38 (H6100 to H7099)
About 1.5k Karabiner 408 (i), Moschetto mod. 91/38 (H8100 to H9750)
Several Moschettos also had a K prefix, but too few were discovered to make a practical estimate... for now!
"FERLACH" CONVERSIONS
In March 1945 the Ferlach Proofhouse prooftested 225 Carcanos converted to 8x57. We have no infos on who actually converted and presented them to the prooftest, but it was most likely a local gunsmith operation, supposedly to arm a local VS unit.
These guns (Mod. 41 Rifles and Mod.91/38 Cavalry carbines) are marked as any commercial gun would have been:
- On the left side, beside the og serial number, they bare the new caliber, 8/57, along with the exact weight of the bullet used for the prooftest, usually around 12.8grams, the average weight of a 196g 8x57 milspec round.
- On the right side, the barrel bears two proofmarks, the Eagle with J indicating a rechamber/repair/reproof mark, and an Eagle with N indicating a definitive Nitro prooftest. The latter, is also marked on the receiver, on the same right side.
The Ferlach proofhouse symbol is also impressed on this side, along with the date of the test, 3 45, March 1945.
- The receivers have been very slightly milled in order to accept the 8x57 round from the top, indicating that the gun wasn't designed as a single shot like the krieghoff productions but was designed to be a magazine-fed gun.
​- The front sight of these guns has been crudely raised to compensate the 8x57 trajectory
Magazine in all guns found looks untouched, mantaining the og Mannlicher-style loading system of Carcanos.
F.N.A. CONVERSIONS
As I stated in the previous paragraphs, when FNA received the order to look into a 8mm conversion (Via Heeresgruppe C and Waffenamt/Dienststelle Italien), they took it seriously, immediately looking for the best way to start a conversion. They followed most of the steps krieghoff undertook, since these are the most simple and obvious solutions, but they also started working on a specific clip for 8x57JS.
The plan was to give 15 converted clips with each gun, but production in the last months of WW2 wasn't really up to the task.
With the March 1945 report of the Waffenamt commission, it results that about 4.5k carcanos have been converted in Italy during February.
When the Infanterieschule Döberitz tested the FNA clip loaded gun along with the mod.91/41 with the mauser clip conversions, the FNA gun was considered definitively bad for mass production, since the converted clip was a huge pain to operate. Thus, FNA conversions were definitively halted.
The more than 4.5k guns allegedly produced by FNA and others weren't shipped anywhere and remained in their warehouses.
POST WW2 8MM CONVERSIONS
As we saw in the last paragraph, FNA after the war was in shambles, had basically no contracts, and was in dire need of new ways to scrape the bottom of the barrel to stay afloat. The occasion arose with the newly formed Arab nations in the first stages of decolonization. After the 1948 debacle of the first Arab-Israeli war, the Egyptian government decided to update its antiquated equipment and reform its army. While acquiring new semiautomatics from Belgium and Sweden, the army still needed a decent way to train its troops or equip second-line units.
With the likely intercession of the Italian Government (which left several thousand dead in the sands of Egypt, along with several thousand landmines), some Italian firms, most likely FNA and Franchi, converted thousands of carbines to 8mm. These firms converted approximately 35,000 guns, including about 10,000 Moschettos produced by Franchi and approximately 25,000 TS Moschettos produced by FNA.
These guns are easily recognizable because they have two reinforced lugs in the stock and a general lack of extra markings except for the serial number. Many of these guns have a big 'S' on the receiver or on top of the bolt handle to indicate their conversion to 8mm.
These ended up as trainers within a short time, and when Egypt united with Syria in 1958, becoming the United Arab Republic (UAR), these converted guns spread throughout the Arab world and its surroundings.