[Reminds me of another old myth about the M98 Mauser rifle. Supposedly the little step in the ejector slot in the locking lug was an act of sabotage to make the gun dangerous to fire. Turns out it was another of Paul Mauser's safety features to help block or divert errant gases in case of a ruptured case.]
Max, are you referring to the milled slot or notch cut into the middle of the left hand locking lug? I was perplexed by your statement above and got out one of my 98k bolt assemblies and looked it over to see what you meant. I worked the action, and it does indeed look like a safety feature. If the operator did indeed have a ruptured case, it looks like this feature would divert some of the errant gases to the left and outward of the receiver. I guess when Paul Mauser added the third safety lug back by the bolt handle, he figured he could add this feature to one of the two forward lugs. To the casual observer, it might look like this feature would weaken the bolt apparatus. The Model 98 action also included the two larger gas vents in the bolt, and a gas shield back by the shooter’s face. IMHO, the Model 98 rifle has got to be the safest high-powered rifle design ever made. I don’t trust anything else. Every time I see someone shoot a Winchester rifle with the carriages loaded side by side next to each other, in that tube below the barrel, I cringe. Irrational, but it doesn’t look safe to me.
But yes, some rifles made for the Germans during WW2 were indeed sabotaged. Slave laborers at the concentration camps sabotaged the G43 action by not drilling the gas port hole all the way through the barrel. (Imagine that.) A sabotaged G43 would fire only one round and then cease to function. K98s made in Czechoslovakia had the front sights intentionally misaligned so the rifles fired to the left or right. I experienced this personally because the first K98 I bought was a dou 43 coded version. (Czech manufacturing code.) I always wondered what the bloody hell was wrong with it because I couldn’t hit anything with it. Then one night I was watching a program on the History Channel about the Israeli Army. As many of you know, the Israeli Army received large amounts of captured German small arms after WW2, included Czech rifles. And they had the same problem I had. An Israeli officer gets on the screen and goes, “The Czechs didn’t like the Germans very much, so they misaligned the sights on the rifles they made for them.” Those bastards! They ended up messing with my head too.
And as far as the Danes sabotaging Luger pistols, that’s probably hogwash. Of all the countries the Germans occupied during WW2, Denmark was far and away the most docile and meek. Embarrassingly so. After the war, the Danes felt bad about this, and had a lot to answer for also. So they probably made up a bunch of BS stories about them sabotaging officers pistols and other fake resistance claims to save face. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
|