I was tempted to post this on the Hotchkiss thread as it had attracted the attention of the experts, but decided to play the game and open a new thread.

My query is this. Could the 7.65 x 53mm bullets used in the M1903 (I think) rifles also be used in the Maxims used by the Turks in Gallipoli in 1915?

John

John;

I am not a weapons expert; I am assuming that by "M1903" you mean an export model of Mauser. Correct? I have read most of the available memoirs of German and Austrian officers and advisors, and one mentioned that the Turks were using 16 different models of infantry rifles. Additionally, the few Turkish MGs came from a variety of sources, but I think were mostly Maxims. I have read that in 1906 or 1908 the entire Turkish Army bought a total of 6 or 8 MGs, Maxims. (Were Maxims ever chambered for the 7.65 x 53 mm round?) Additionally, the Turkish Army lost a great deal of their equipment in the disasterous Balkan Wars. Germany was able to sneak some MGs to Turkey thru Romania before the Gallipoli attack by encasing them in concrete to form a block of concrete and labeling them concrete blocks intended for the construction of the Istanbul-Bagdad railroad. Additionally, the German naval MG teams formed by the crews of the Goeben and Breslau had a limited number of MGs which I assume they had in the armories aboard the war-ships, but they also were in short supply. At one time at Gallipoli a German naval MG detachment lost most of their guns in a British attack, but then in a counterattack the Turks captured 13 Vickers MGs and ammo and turned them over to the German sailors, who were extremely pleased to receive them and get back into action. I think that the Maxim MG 08 and the Vickers were really much the same weapon.

In short, the Turks were using a large variety of rifles, and there must have been some variety in their MGs as well.

So clearly there was quite a problem supplying a large variety of types of small arms ammunition for the Turkish forces, especially since the land route between Germany/Austria and Turkey was tightly constricted and then cut entirely for a good while. The entire complex story of the German/Turkish efforts to supply the Turks with ammo during this period, especially for their large variety of often very old artillery, is quite interesting. A German naval officer, a Captain Pieper, had been court-martialed and was about to be sent to fortress confinement, but was allowed to go to Turkey to assist in the defense of the Straits as an artillery expert. But some officers baulked at serving with a disgraced officer, and instead he was given the job to try to improve the Turkish production of artillery and small arms ammunition. With the assistance of over 1000 German workers and experts, they were able to manufacture a large amount of quite satisfactory small arms ammo, and also less satisfactory artillery ammo for all but the largest guns. These shells generally fired, but seemingly only infrequently exploded at the other end, and often was not very dangerous at the other end, even when they exploded, and German officers stated that they often were fired mostly for the morale of the Turkish infantry. At the end of the battle the Kaiser commuted Captain Pieper's fortress sentence for his exceptional service in Turkey.

The situation was so desperate that a number of extreme measures were taken or planned. Some artillery fuzes were flown in over Allied lines, but the Turks/Germans had few aircraft in the area. Some ammo was delivered in the rediculously small submarines of the day. Supposedly some shells were sent thru Romania in beer barrels. There was a plan for (later) Admiral Horthey, then a dashing Hungarian cruiser officer, to attempt to run the Allied blockade in his fast light cruiser with a load of ammo for the Turks. Zeppelin supply was studied but found impractical, perhaps because there were no airship hangers in Turkey to protect against windstorms.

When the Serbs were defeated in 1915 and the rail lines were partially restored The Austrians sent a battery each of 24 cm mortars and 15 cm heavy howitzers, and a quantity of reliable ammunition from Europe. The Germans were planning to send 20 batteries of artillery, 11 of them heavy batteries. Additionally several Turkish divisions were being trained as shock divisions. It was probably wise for the Allies to pull out, as I think that the campaign was about to take a bad turn for them.

I strayed a bit, but basically in the same vein, and I hope that it was interesting. Again I will recommend Klaus Wolf's excellent Gallipoli 1915 for fresh material on these interesting questions.

Bob Lembke

Bob - the Turks bought a reasonable number of 7.65mm MG09 Maxims from Deutsche Waffen und Muntionsfabriken. These had Arabic backsight graduations and a star and crescent mark. The MG09 was the export model. There has been some discussion (in this forum and elsewhere) as to whether any of these appeared at Gallipoli. A much smaller number of 7.9 mm MG08s were bought (possibly the number you quote) and more supplied by Germany during the War (2,000 in total) However the first delivery does not appear to have occurred before Jan 1916 (although some must have accompanied German troops to Gallipoli and possibly passed over to Turkish forces at some time).

Centurion;

I have read quite a bit about the pre-attack activity by the German Mission in Turkey in 1914 and 1915 and do not recall any mention of bringing in MGs, aside from those encased in concrete. Getting stuff thru the Romanians required both stealth and bribes, and the Germans complained that the famously corrupt Romanians showed their pro-Allied bias by requiring larger bribes for the same level of studied negligence than the Allies had to pay for the same level of "looking the other way". The only German combat units at Gallipoli were the German naval MG detachments, who totalled no more than a couple of hundred men at one time, and who seemingly got their MGs out of the armory of the Goeben (and the 13 captured Vickers handed over by the Turks that I mentioned above), and my father's volunteer Pionier=Kompgnie, which did have rifles, according to my father, but they were supplied in Turkey upon arrival. To get there my father had to turn in his uniform, buy civvies, and sneak thru the Balkans with false papers in small groups, bringing exactly no military kit. Everything that I have seen suggests that the Turks got very few new MGs during 1914 and 1915, but they did get a good deal of arms from early 1916 on. Col. Erickson's book has a table in the rear summing up the arms that they eventually got. For example, according to Pomiankowski, in 1916 they ordered 50 batteries of artillery from the Austrians, and actually got 20 of them and six small teams of artillery trainers.

Early in the war there was a small window when the Germans could get material thru openly, and probably soldiers in uniform, but that window rapidly closed. The story as to how the 24 cm mortars got there was quite dramatic, it was the first navigation down a section of the Danube in over a year, escorted by river monitors, met by cheering crowds and the King of Bulgaria, etc. The Serbs had really done a good job destroying the rails; it took months to restore rail connectivity.

Centurion; about 2 weeks ago I sent you a nutty PM actually aimed at someone else (I was having a "senior moment"), and then I was locked out of the Forum for about 10 days and could not retract it. Sorry!

Bob Lembke

Without getting into the argument about MGs at Gallipoli, the answer to the original question is that the 7.65 x 53mm ammunition used by the Turks in their Model 1903 Mausers (and also the M1890s) was the same cartridge as used in their MG09 Maxims that they had purchased from DWM in 1914.

Prior to that, the Turks had bought very small numbers of earlier model Maxims in .45 calibre. It was only after they had fought with the Germans and received a number of MG08 guns in 7.92 x 57mm that they gave thought to converting their whole armoury to this calibre. In 1922 they purchased 7.92 Mausers from Brno in Czechoslovakia and started converting their original Mausers and MGs to that calibre.

DWM supplied Maxim guns in 7.65mm calibre not only to Turkey, but also to Argentina (150 guns in 1898) and prior to this Maxim Nordenfelt had supplied 50 guns in that calibre. I am fortunate to have fired one of the DWM Argentine guns.

Regards
TonyE

Many thanks for those very helpful comments and observations.

The reason for posting this query is that I had found spent 7.65 x 53mm casings during a recent field trip to the Suvla sector at what I thought could well have been the position of one or more Maxims - i.e. the knoll NE of Hill 70 at 105 D8. It looks from the responses above that these casings could well have been either from Maxims or from 1903 Mausers. Presumably it would not be unusual for the more isolated MG positions to also be defended by say a section or platoon of infantrymen with rifles?

John

I don't think you will ever be able to tell whether those rounds were fired by rifles or Maxims. Unlike the Bren, the Maxim does not have a distinctive firing pin impression.

As a matter of interest, did the cases have Turkish headstamps (in arabic) or DWM ones?

Regards
TionyE

Many thanks Tony. They had Turkish headstamps in Arabic with date impression 1330 in the Muslim calendar which I think equates to roughly 1912 in the Gregorian calendar. Does that figure?

Regards
John

Indeed it is 1912.

If the Arabic headstamp is the segmented type with the Crescent and Star at 9 o'clock, the word at the top is "Mauser", the date is at 6 o'clock and the symbol at 3 o'clock is thought to be the manufacturing location. The Arabic equivalent of "Y", "M" and "A" are known.

Interestingly, the machinery that Turkey used to make her ammunition was supplied by Greenwood & Batley of Leeds around 1900.

Regards
TonyE

Everything is just as you describe, Tony. Many thanks for the additional information. Leeds - just shows what comes around, goes around!

John

For information on small arms used during this war see "Central Powers Small Arms of World War One" & "Allied Small Arms of World War One " bu John Walter.