FYI Lewis and Clark used air rifles while traveling through the west. The Native Americans were scared/intrigued whenever they showed off the rifles. It's amazing such technology existed hundreds of years ago.
It might "only" produce around 70 ft/lb, but at sub 100 yards, that is quite enough to go clean through a human head, remember, back in the day a good rifleman could fire and reload his musket, at best, in dry conditions, 3 times a minute, for maybe a dozen shots before he had to field clean his gun......if you managed to get half a dozen soldiers, out to the battlefield flank armed with these...and the capability of 40 aimed shots per minute, with a 120 round capability...each....no matter what the weather....that was a devastating firepower to bring to bear especially at closer ranges. The units were issued with a horsedrawn charging station with the hand pumps just used for topping off partially discharged cylinders in lulls in the action. An idea before it's time though in material terms, the rifles themselves were reliable enough if the leather seals were kept oiled, but all the pumps an paraphanelia also needed maintenance a bit beyond the common soldier, I'm surprised more weren't used navally, they would have made an excellent boarding gun in a situation where you commonly had a lot of time on your hands prior to any hand to hand combat, and when it came it tended to be face to face
Good point about boarding guns. Still, military minds then were quite stubborn and traditional. Also I'd like to see that horse drawn charging station, because, 1500 pumps? Sheesh.
Prussians got it down to 4 rounds a minute...That small difference along with Superior drill,and discipline helped Prussia(a secondary power) hold off the 3 great powers of europe(France,Austria, and Russia) along with Sweden, Saxony, and other various pro Austrian german states, for 7 years
Also...these Air rifles only worked well for Jeagars,light infantry, snipers and skirmishers because after your out of reseviours, your done...so it's out of the question for Line infantry who need to provide sustained fire...also these air rifles were atrociously overly complicated and unreliable, expensive and mass producability was out of the question
@@Perktube1 Fin stabilized discarding sabots (the modern tank rounds for killing tanks) were invented in the medieval era. Handgonnes, a small cannon mounted on a stick, could not propel round shot at high enough speeds to punch through the armor of knights, so someone in central Europe got the idea to take crossbow bolts, put metal fetching on them, then wrap them in a leather cylinder that would fall off once the bolt left the barrel of the handgonne. Made it so that handgonners could punch through knight armor with ease. Really is scary shit how some old ideas become new again.
@@gravygraves5112 I second that. I remember reading about Richard Gatling and how he continued to experiment with his rotary guns (which was weirdly enough based on an agricultural invention) in the years after the Civil War. Even during the War, it was possible for a well-trained crew to achieve rates of fire close to 1000 rounds per minutes. If I remember correctly, sometime around the 1890's he got a hold of an electric motor and was able to get the rate of fire of his rotary gun close to 3000 rounds per minute. Fast forward a hundred years later and here we are still using his design.
Of all the "forgotten weapons" you have brought to this venue, I find this one to be the most fascinating one so far. 270 years ago! The cleverness and the ingenuity are absolutely thrilling. Thank you so much!
Napoleon hated these weapons. He used to think the soldiers using this rifle were cowards because they could shoot accurately from long distances without letting the enemy even know where the shot came from (remember, no gigantic smoke clouds with this rifle). Plus these rifles werent meant to caress the enemy, it could take him out of the fight and even kill him (I mean, 100 to 200 ft lbs of energy, thats some lethal power right there). Bonaparte also stated that his army would immediately shoot captured Austrian soldiers carrying this air gun. I believe this says a lot about how lethal this rifle was. The flintlock muzzle loading muskets of that time were just inaccurate to say the least (100 average soldiers of that time with flintlocks made around 5 hits on a man sized target at 100 meters). A single experienced soldier with an air rifle would hit the same target at the same distance with just 1 or 2 tries. Besides, if you dont knock down your enemy with the first shot, you have 19 more shots to try again. I believe that air gun was worth something (a true sniper rifle if you will). Accurate, powerful enough and 20 round capacity... I dont know about you, but, at least for that time, I think these details certainly made up for its already known shortcomings. Sadly, for several circumstances, it didnt make much difference on Napoleonic wars, and thats why very few people know about the Windbüchse troops. But, this innovative rifle definitely had the potential to change the outcome of most battles and even force countries to change their warfare tactics.
gewerh44 "The flintlock muzzle loading rifles of that time were just inaccurate to say the least" I think you meant to say "muskets." Flintlock rifles were/are quite accurate.
Maynard Krebs Thanks, I didnt notice that. Youre right. I meant muskets. Most armies used mainly these smooth bore firearms for their line infantry. Innaccurate soldiers if they shoot alone, one of the reasons for the necessity to shoot all together at the same time to maximize damage on the enemy line.
gewerh44 I remember one contemporary observer saying something to the effect that a man was indeed unfortunate who was struck by a musket ball at 100 yards. :)
gewerh44 I don't believe that about the muskets. I remember seeing some Australian re-enactors testing the accuracy of the Brown Bess at 90m on an area taget of 2x6m (about the size of the front rank of a French marching column). of 20 shots fired, 18 hit. On a smaller round target about 2x man size, 8 shots hit out of 10 (though they were resting the musket on some hay bales for that). Accuracy's not great, but the 5% hit rate thing is an exaggeration. The biggest problem with muskets was the slow rate of fire, especially as formations tended to be quite dense, accuracy was not such a great issue anyway. Rate of fire was key.
Infantry line standing up, as they would normally fight, used to hit an average of 5 hits out of 100 soldiers on a man sized target at 100 meters. I didnt invent that. I did read that and a lot of other interesting stuff on a Napoleonic wars infantry tactics website. Most info there was taken from books, letters, manuals from that era. Plus I should have said this sad accuracy data belongs to regular soldiers on the heat of battle, not the Black Watch or the Foot Guards, nor re enactors shooting from rested position.
This is by far the best video I've seen showing off a Girardoni air rifle. I've been enamored with them as I'm primarily an airgun buff myself and enjoy firearms on the side, but concrete info beyond cursory descriptions in books isn't easy to find. I learned more from this video than I ever knew before. The reproduction air canister butt stock is simply amazing. Its been weathered and aged so perfectly to match the rifles condition I would never have known it was modern and not original to the rifle. Thanks so much for sharing this.
There are modern big bore airguns that can surpass the performance of the Girandoni rifles. Look up airguns made by Dennis Quackenbush for some examples.
pcblah Someone hand made a small number of these a decade or so ago. I saw one at a gun show. I think price was $3500. Trivia: Austrian soldiers would charge reservoirs in cool early morning. When sun heated them up some would reportedly burst from resultant excess pressure of warmed air.
This is a truly incredible piece of engineering. To think they made these without alot of the modern machining techniques that would later be available in the 19th century is mind-boggling.
@@jimstenlund6017 So, in a way, it's kind of an idea that came a little too soon for its own good. Half a century later and this thing would've have been a a real beast
I'm endlessly fascinated by the existence of these guns. They almost seems like an artifact of time travel. Great video that gives a very in-depth and intimate understanding of these elusive relics. I love the mannerisms of this guy too, I feel like I could listen to him talk about guns for hours.
Great presentation! I always wondered how the Girardoni operated. I couldn't get my brain wrapped around how one could have developed a high pressure big bore air-gun given the technology of the era. It's simplicity & innovation is amazing! Truly out of the box thinking. If Girardoni were alive today, given the technology we currently have, he would probably be the most innovative firearms maker. His 236 year old air rifle has more features than most modern versions.
During the Napoleonic Wars, French troops were under orders to summarily execute any captured Austrian soldier caught with one of these. The French considered it to be a terror weapon, largely because it produced no smoke, so the shooter could remain hidden.
I can certianly see the advantage for trained troops operating in an insurgency role. Maintenence is the only really issue. Would be great for skirmishing against superior forces. Cavalry would also be a concern for light, skirmishing troops, but that isn't an issue with the rifle. Against occupying troops, this would be incredibly frustrating and dangerous, so I can see why the order could be given.
@@netpackrat Congratulations my friend! It just took you 19 words to appear as an ignorant, an idiot and a crappy comedian for making this old rotten overused joke. Bravo!
I used to live in the impression that there were no repeating guns until the invention of the metal cartridge but I have been surprised to learn that there have been many different desings since the 17th century. Just makes one wonder why they weren't adopted more widely as they have clear advantages, were they too unreliable in battlefield conditions or just too expensive for a private to carry?
Forgotten Weapons also some of the designs were unpractical, destroying the purpose of a repeating chamber. A few models were also too heavy or rendered useless from battlefield conditions.
+Zdem0Z The Austrian army used it with a few of their forces. However, these were really expensive to make. For the same cost it was far easier to make well over a dozen muskets to arm a larger amount of troops.
+Zdem0Z In addition to other issues of practicality such as complexity, cost, training, and probably maintenance, reliability, logistics, and fragility, what I never see people mention is that it isn't nearly as powerful as firearms typically used in warfare, then or now. Its projectiles have enough momentum and energy to penetrate flesh and kill, to be sure, but only minimally so by some estimates, including the one given here--comparable in some ways to anything from a .22 Short to a .38 Special, depending on which estimate you believe. I sure wouldn't want to get shot with one, and I realize that sometimes too much is made of the power of guns, but the difference in effectiveness I'm talking about here is pretty big and might have been a significant factor. The Girardoni air rifle is a fascinating piece of technology for that era and the fact that it was adopted for military use shows how compelling its advantages were, but ultimately there were probably several reasons militaries chose to stick with firearms, despite how primitive they were at the time. It wasn't just because they were hidebound, either, because the army that tried them ended up phasing them out eventually.
+BRAVO THREE NINE SIX EIGHT My understanding is that for example the Brown Bess musket of the period achieved a muzzle velocity of about 800-1000 fps (depending on who you ask) with a 0.69 caliber ball weighing approximately 500 grains (I don't have any data for the Augustin rifled musket used by the Austrians at the time)--that's a projectile weighing over 3X more traveling at 2X the velocity, which means it has over 6X the momentum and over 12X (actually over 13X) the kinetic energy of a projectile shot from the Girardoni. Here are a few online sources, for what they're worth: allthingsliberty.com/2013/07/the-inaccuracy-of-muskets/ www.rifleshootermag.com/rifles/featured_rifles_bess_092407/ books.google.com/books?id=G6tHHK32bLIC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=brown+bess+fps&source=bl&ots=fZv5xVOlsF&sig=rGzmwqgdNc6PDH4JccRcyieY8PU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG18bp0aTJAhWJPCYKHet8CMIQ6AEIZzAJ#v=onepage&q=brown%20bess%20fps&f=false I think you're right about the Girardoni being ahead of its time in terms of manufacturing and materials technology. Leather seals at such pressures were probably neither durable nor reliable enough to make these air rifles more practical than firearms over time, even before the advent of metallic cartridges and repeating firearms. It's still a marvel, though, and I'm not trying to take anything away from it--this is just to understand why it didn't supersede firearms when the latter were still so crude, since the reasons aren't always obvious. I'm no expert, either, but I think we can all appreciate how the real world and pragmatic, hard use can give different results than when using something under ideal conditions. And my point here is that in addition it probably wasn't as effective per shot, either--still effective, but a clear notch below the firearms of its time, and this, too, was a product of practicality (or rather the lack thereof).
I've read that historians think that it was Girandoni air rifles that Lewis and Clark carried on their expedition across the continent in 1803-1805. Supposedly they had at least two. An interesting sidenote is that every time they encountered an indian tribe they gave a shooting demonstration. Now the Indians had or had seen, muskets, but it is speculated that the fast firing Girandoni's may be the reason that the expedition never had any major difficulty with any tribe and never lost an expedition member to violence. Seems the awesome fire output made the Indians leary of a confrontation, figuring that the entire expedition must be armed with the same rifle...although they weren't.
This air gun model was used in the case to stop the Oregon magazine ban on measure 114, thanks for posting this 8 years prior, quite the piece of history!
The totally insane part is that modifying this for semi and full auto would be simpler than the gun as it is. yes you need power to reload, an gas port might work optional an small extra air chamber who is filled on firing and then load an new round and cock it. You would need an spring in the magazine. the most complex part would probably be to make sure you get an bullet in the breach before it returns, you might have to redesign it. Would it still work well with an carbine length barrel? Would think so on short ranges, Larger air tank and magazine and you have an real and portable machine gun. Yes it would be as powerful as an rather weak machine pistol but it would be 150 year until you got something as good.
@PWS354 I believe the majority of the Austrian army carried these from 1780 to 1788. Sice Austria was one of the 3 or 4 dominant armies in Europe at the time, that was no small army!
@@davidjones8942 No. That was not produced in such large numbers. Across the lifespan of the system, only 1500+ were made. The biggest difference on the battlefield in terms of scale was the repeating speed. With only 100 pieces of those within a few minutes, you could lay down 1-2k of the enemy soldiers.
I'm a total fan of Air Power! This weapon is art in motion. Incredible. The craftsmanship is moving. Beautifully crafted. Simple. And even the gravity fed 'magazine' was well placed and so SIMPLE Im truly in awe! Thanks for sharing this. GB
Wow, this rifle is incredible! I never realized there were a weapon as advanced as this during the Napoleonic wars, no doubt it would've been really expensive though.
This is AMAZING. The thought and engineering that went into this weapon, considering the technology of the time period, is phenomenal. That, in my humble opinion, would have been a Formidable weapon to face in battle, considering what was available to militaries from the same period. This I'm sure was a "game changer"...
I have heard about these and seen many pictures, but I have never seen a working one before. I am really surprised these were not more popular back then. They have an insane fire-rate compared to most other weapons of the time. I am also surprised someone does not remake these or a similar weapon. With modern manufacturing, we should be able to make an even better version of this rifle. I at least would want one, and I do not think I am alone.
And it might work well for an ambush, too, but it requires intensive training and hand picked soldiers with the necessary aptitude for maintaining a delicate system, especially before they invented the air pressure gauge.
@ihatetacos theresa6616 - Thank you for you kind remarks. Re: "...wouldnt you think obvious that they would have invented a gauge earlier ?" No, I wouldn't think that. They invented the air rifle long before the air pressure gauge. The way in which they pumped up these old air rifles, is much like they do today, by counting the number of pumps. The compressed air tanks on these rifles were rather big, and could be damaged by over pumping. In modern day air compressors, air tanks come with an air pressure gauges. These old rifles had a rather large air tank on them to hold enough pressure to be repeaters. The large air tanks on these repeaters, and the leather seals they used in the system could be damaged by too high of air pressure. So, over pumping this rifle would put it out of service. The problem is that in a combat situation, counting the number of pumps is problematic, and it would be better to have an air pressure gauge, which didn't happen for at least 2 reasons. No. 1 - The air pressure gauge had not yet been invented, so the answer to your question "...wouldn't you think obvious...", is "No". No. 2 - By the time they invented air pressure gauges, the steel and seals on air rifles had improved. And they do not, as far as I know, make repeating air rifles, probably because they don't want a large air tank and the necessary air gauge if they did have a large air tank. Also, you'll understand that no military ever adopted an air rifle for the reason that they were delicate and could be easily damaged by over inflating, and it is a slow process to pump up an air rifle, and noisy. Also, these early air rifles had a rather large air tank to provide enough pressure to be a repeater. Today, the air rifles that use the pump system are single shot rifles, and you have to pump it up for each shot. Air storage is done in much thicker steel, and so the seals would blow out before the compression storage tube would. In modern air rifles, the storage of compressed air is done in a robust steel tube.
@@mu99ins They wouldn't necessarily have to have invented gauges - a springloaded overpressure valve might have been enough. Admittedly a tight enough fit, consistent preloading and the inclusion into the design without creating another point of failure would have been challenging. I mean some of these issues could have been lessened by adding the valves to the pump, not the pressure tank itself. Fewer valves needed in total, no problems with long-term leakage.
I have been around firearms all my life (longer than I care to remember) and I first heard about this utterly amazing air rifle a couple of years ago. Very very impressive. Thanks for including it in a video. Take care. Doug
I wonder how they sealed the air tank and what did they use inside the pump to compress the air? The only thing I can think of is leather. This rifle was ahead of its time. Very cool!
Forgotten Weapons I thought the tank was sealed using horn for the valve? There's a takedown somewhere on the net and it showed a brass coil spring driving a horn plug, reason being that horn was the only maleable but pressure resistant product they could find that would create sufficient seal without blowing out. I'll have to check out the article! Thanks for posting this!
leather has been a part of several 'high tech' developments, such as this and in the amasing Atmospheric railways in England, they ran minus locomotives, the power being produced by steam powered vacuum pumps every few miles, the carriages were pulled along by being linked to a chain attached to a 'bullet which was forced along an open topped tube, speeds were well in excess of sixty mph, it was a complex system but worked suprisingly well, but ailed due to the greased leather flaps which closed the atmospheric tubes being very tasty... rats ate them... leather very environmental :D
www.beemans.net/Austrian%20airguns.htm Pretty impressive for 1780 !!! ... 750psi via a hand pump is amazing .. and the riveted and brazed air tank, yikes .. every rifle must have shipped with brass balls, lol !!
@@KrustyKlown Well, if you heat the entire pressure cylinder without the valve up to brazing temps and dunk it into molten brass, it's quite airtight when new. Not so much after 200 years, though! The valve seals are leather, so wear out pretty quickly, but that's an easy repair. The lockwork inside is very complex, which is the major downside to the Girandoni design. Modern precharged pneumatic airguns can get .45ACP performance, 200gr slugs at ~750fps, nothing to sneer at!
that thing is amazingly cool, I recently learned about Lewis and Clark carrying one and was amazed. Fantastic design and production, especially for the era
I don't mean to be "that guy" but can we please show a little respect for the indigenous peoples of north America? They weren't indians, and to refer to them as such is downright offensive and insensitive. The proper terminology for them is "ingins"
I never cease to marvel at Girardoni. If this gun didn't actually exist, I'd think it was a figment of some steampunk author's imagination. In the context of the second half of the 18th century, it's absolutely, absolutely astonishing. The repeating mechanism itself is a work of genius.
I believe that I have read that they had filling stations on wheels that was served by two men, like horse-drawn fire pumps, so that the hand pump was if they could not restock air from the supply lines. but realy good video and a really interesting weapon.
Those cars with big pump also carried already filled air tanks in the first place. Since one such tank lasted for 30 consistent powerful (125 y kill range) shots, the big pump started to work only when air tanks went off and the battle was still on.
Wow I've seen them behind a glass screen in Leeds military museum England. Never know how they operated ! Your very informative thanks for sharing. That was really interesting!
Heard a lot of the Girardoni over the years and even seen pictures.. Thanks for making this video. The Lewis and Clarke expedition in particular is very interesting with respect of Taming the natives with demonstrations.
Thank you SO much for taking your time to describe the mechanisms and taking it apart. I'm doing research on old air guns and it's hard to find material. This is a blessing, thank you
I just heard about this gun on an episode of the podcast Cabinet of Curiosities. It has a great history, and it was wonderful to be able to see a video of it in action and have it explained. Thank you!
Hate to burst your bubble, this holds 21/22 rounds at most (depending on either caliber or (more likely) sources), and most high capacity mags being targeted hold 30+ rounds. That said, 10 rounds are what these laws aim to regulate capacity to, and I agree that it’s stupid. Probably another thing this would shoot down are suppressor bans, since this is shooting a subsonic projectile that’s still plenty lethal with no supersonic ‘bang’ of gunpowder, meaning it’s probably just as quiet, if not quieter, than most integrally suppressed weapons.
Thank you so much for showing us all. I recently almost inherited/purchased a local airgun shop near Philadelphia operated by a local legend who passed. As a kid I was fascinated by the fact Lewis and Clark had an air rifle on their famous journey across the continent.
In the book Aundaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose about the Lewis and Clark expedition there's an account of a woman getting shot in the head from this rifle from an accidental discharge and living. It only caused some minor wound and a little bleeding. It was not a point blank shot and there's no way of knowing if it was from a full air chamber or not. I highly recommend anyone read that book.
I read that excerpt from the book, the shot just grazed her which is why she lived, but it took a good bit of skin with it, nothing life threatening though.
What a great demonstration, of something like it, that most of us would never known to of existed, with it's amazing engineering and such fine craftsmanship, truly admirable for a airgun of its time.
+Artyom Zaytsev probly something like whomp noise. similar to shooting a large hole in a propane tank or some other pressurized tank.... and no they light very easier before you ask.
+Artyom Zaytsev From what I have heard they were made of rolled pieces of iron sheet layered together to make almost a composite. So yeah, great shrapnel. Like he said in the video, the original canisters are simply too dangerous. Even the factory rejected a large number after initial testing.
And here I thought pumping my old daisy air rifle 10 times was a pain, 1500 strokes to get up to pressure. I can see why it didn't last more than 10 years, very cool rare rifle. Thanks for posting another great video.
does any company make reproductions of these guns? i would love to buy one and actually be able to fire it if given the chance. so yeah anyone know any reproduction models or websites i could go to?
+MKRocker94 In service each Jager company would be supplied by carriages which carried hundreds of cylinders and came equipped with mechanical pumps for refilling depleted ones. These would be run forward to the firing line by men detailed for this purpose, who would then take empty ones back to be refilled. The manual pump was more for "topping up" partially emptied cylinders during breaks in the fighting.
Another major thing about this weapon is that you could reload and fire it lying down. It was just too revolutionary for its time, and the higher officers couldn't get their heads around it. It would take the rifled muskets, the ACW, machine guns and WW1, to change their minds.
While institutional inertia was no doubt a contributing factor (and often is for many military arms procurement decisions), there were viable logistical reasons to not make this rifle standard-issue.
@@SaftonYT Like money but that is short term thinking the benefits of winning wars land and resources at lower cost would have paid for them a million times over.
@@Barskor1 It wouldn't have won any wars. Logistics and economics win wars. The air rifles were very expensive, hard to maintain, complicated to use, and broke easily. You could have hundreds of sturdy, simple and reliable muskets for the same price. It is exactly the same situation as with the Panther and Tiger tanks in WWII: they were very good machines, but the allies had 10x more tanks which were cheaper and more efficient.
I remember reading a British airgun book in the sixties, the author had one of these, and set up a target in front of his garden shed. After firing a few shots in his garden (!!), he went to examine the target, and found that the projectiles had gone through his shed door, and turned his heavy macintosh hanging up on the other side into a lace item. The rear wall was full of holes, and upon checking at the back of the shed, he found that his bicycle frame was battered out of shape.
I'd say the thing was robust if it survived the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Probably too expensive, and generals have a hard time allowing changes to their tactical doctrine. (At this time the bayonet charge was what broke formations, and I noticed the lack of a bayonet lug.) Amazing the Austrians were forward-thinking enough to even try it. Even during the Civil War when technology allowed for the full equipping of the Union Army with repeaters the US Ordinance Department was too slow to accept any idea or push in that direction. The old farts in charge hated change and also assumed soldiers would waste ammunition if they knew they didn't have to reload. (They were also notoriously tight as bark on a tree and it took Lincoln's personal intervention a few times to over-ride them.)
it seems that as usual, generals and supply sources have always been guilty of fighting the last war, over and over. But we know now that wars are constantly evolving and with the level of communication which our confrontation adversaries also have a battle field tactic can change in an almost fluid way.
I've got a modern .357 air rifle with a modern two stage hand pump, and it takes about the same amount of strokes to get up to pressure. I'm usually puffing and sweating by the time I get done charging the damn thing, though my gun charges to 3000 psi instead of 800 so there is a bit more force involved, though I'm not sure of that since those old pumps were only single stage. Either way you are correct, it's a hell of a workout. I bought a 300 bar carbon fiber tank and a Yong Heng air compressor after only a few manual tank charges, screw that noise lol. I can refill my gun in about 10 seconds around thirty times with the air tank now heh. You'd get strong in a hurry if you had to pump these things regularly and that's a fact, it takes over half your weight to push the pump down near the end of the fill, you really feel it in your abs, arms, shoulders and thighs.
Thanks Ian. It's nice to see the heritage of my sport and the predecessor of modern air powered rifles like my Rapid HM1000X. I am always amazed and awestruck at the innovative designs of yesteryear.
This completely destroys the 'high capacity magazine' arguments and the arguments that the founders didn't know about high capacity repeating firearms and only single shot muskets.
Thus is truly innovative design and engineering for its day, I actually checked the date of the clip to see of it was April 1st as it seemed so unbelievable!
Forgotten Weapons Oh, crap, sorry. Also, wow, that's not exactly what I was expecting. Sure it's powered by air and not gunpowder, but still... that's basically half the velocity of 9mm while using a similarly heavy bullet. How would someone manage to reach 100m? Let alone 'sniper' distances. It's got speed going for it, that's for sure, and I'm not doubting its potential lethality... but as far as accuracy goes... Rifled or not, it's REALLY hard to imagine such a slow-moving bullet managing any kind of distance. What would it be going at 200m, 200 ft/s? lol
NormanMatchem From a "sniper" standpoint, muzzle flash and report factor in just as much as distance. A well-concealed soldier armed with one of these would be much harder to spot when you're expecting a flash and a cloud of smoke, I would think. Forgotten Weapons ... thoughts?
n1ztb None the less, there were rifled muskets by 1780. Not in widespread use mind you, but they were around. Those would be FAR more effective at 'sniping'. As I said, 153gr at about 400 ft/s is tremendously weak. You'd have a hard time even reaching 100m, which means it'd probably be not much more accurate than your average smoothbore musket. Meaning it probably shouldn't even be in the same room as the words 'snipe' or 'sniper'.
That's incredible tech for the time. I'm glad you said the air reservoir was a reproduction. I'd hate to attempt to use the original. But, 1500 pumps will make your arms wobbly. Better have a backup pistol while you're pumping this for 30-45 minutes or whatever.
What an interesting video! Perfectly presented! I knew something of the history of these weapons but you have brought it all to life. Amazing that machining technologies of that era were up to the job of mass producing a workable weapon.
Then Napoleon would have executed them all because to the French the use of air rifle was a war crime. Those captured with one were treated as assassins.
I don't think Napoleon would have won against the Austrian Army if they were all armed with these rifles because of the rate of fire that they would put out.
He would have. Austria could only have fielded a minuscule army, as these weapons were very expensive and difficult to use, make, maintain and repair. Napoleon's army would have been some 200 times bigger than Austrias army, and wielding this weapon doesn't make one bulletproof. Besides, loading this guns pressure tank requires bulky and fragile equipment that an army consisting of only these soldiers couldn't possibly have carried with them.
I like how the ignorant gun control freaks always say "the second amendment only protects the right to keep and bear single shot muskets because when the second amendment was written that's all they had." Nope! They also had a repeating rifle with a 22 round magazine!
JonasFeyhart I am perfectly happy with a bank robber using this gun, while he's getting his bike pump out and taking 20mins to reload the bloody thing the cops can come and arrest him. It's so obvious that there a difference between this and a AK-47 so don't be silly. Also, I very much doubt that your ordinary minuteman could have afforded one of these. So I highly doubt Washington was planning to fend off British invasions with these guns (something that doesn't much these day either).
Fa Kenews Its funny that after creating these armed miltias to prevent overeaching governments they then used these miltias to put down rebellions. But anyway, what are you saying? The goverments should allow people to own an age of sail Frigate? Or that school shooters are going to attack school with frigates? They would have get a couple of hundred sailors to crew it and only attack coastal schools. But yes there were grenades and cannons in the 18th century whats your point? Does that change the that its possible to amend the constuition? Out of date laws get repeales all the time. You changed the one about having slaves and the founding fathers wouldn't have liked that. I suppose if all else fails use that 2nd amendment for its purpose and rebell against the government if they try and take your guns.
Any self-proclaimed "militia" that tried to take on the US armed forces in _any_ capacity would be swiftly transformed into a bloody smear on the ground. Numbers, training, and support weapons like mortars do more for a unit's fighting ability than anything ArmaLite (or any other company in the business of self-loading rifles) could ever produce--thus rendering the Second Amendment's stated purpose utterly redundant in the modern world. The Constitution is a legal document, not a piece of religious scripture. It was made to be amended as circumstances change. At any rate, gun control advocates are pushing for restriction of _self-loaders_ , not repeaters. You don't see many school shooters with Mosin-Nagants or Krag-Jørgensens these days.
Jonathan Hughes And all service men would just fall in line like sheep dogs that lack any autonomy. There will be defectors. Not to mention the PR nightmare it will be when they bomb their own civilians. The entire countries moral was destroyed after Vietnam because of that and they were just coming off of a WW2 victory that allowed them to be the number 1 super power in the world. Those were people all the way across the world and you think that effect wouldn't be multiplied tenfold when it's being done to their own citizens? You also have to consider that farm land and energy would be in complete control of the rebels. Cities are mostly just consumers and they'll fall when they can't get food and oil. The toppling of just one of those cities would be a logistics nightmare. Then there's the fact that there's a lot of countries that could benefit from a rebellion in the US to disrupt it's power. Russia for one. They'd establish a proxy war in the US and provide weapons and help organize militias. You're absolutely ignorant if you think a rebellion wouldn't at least cripple the US greatly which is more than enough deterrent to keep them from infringing on our rights. They said the same shit about the British and look what happened. They were spread too thin and a bunch of farmers managed to run them off. Same situation currently. What makes the US so powerful is the fact that it's core is so safe and that any external conflict would have to be almost entirely done by sea which isn't great. An internal conflict is much different. The citizens control all the resources of the country. And the asshole that said something along the lines of "your minutemen couldn't afford such a rifle at the time" well no shit but it shows that the FF knew that weapons innovation was a thing and that there would be improvement. They themselves were also fanboys of such rifles and wanted to implement them into the army but simply couldn't afford it. It's a completely moronic stance to think that they only wanted the citizens to have muskets and nothing more even tho they allowed them to carry the most powerful weapons known to man at the time.
I first heard about these while reading of the Lewis and Clarke expeditions. They took a few of these air rifles with them. Indians were extremely impressed with how fast they could shoot,
Very informative video with a real Girardoni. These were so far ahead of their time. Seals are often the weak point in modern pre-charged air guns, so I can imagine leather seals would require maintenance and replacement. I would buy a reproduction Girardoni.
EXTREMELY interesting. I never knew air rifles existed so early. I especially would have never imagined them being used militarily. I want to marry this channel.
Thanks for posting this . . to properly use a devalued term, it is Amazing! I also enjoy listening to you on The Gun Nation podcast. You really bring a whole new perspective to the subject. I also enjoy your use of detail and commentary, you are one bright guy and keep this material crisp and entertaining. It is great work you do keeping history alive.
Fantastic, thank you for this video. I saw the Lewis and Clark video on this weapon done, I think, by the NRA, and have been curious about it ever since. I am an avid air gun shooter, and would really like to see a video of you or someone shooting this gun. Thanks again. Just wow.
Beautiful airgun. Very excellent explanation of the intricacies of use. Thanks!! BTW, haven’t finished video and not sure if you mentioned, but same weapon Lewis & Clark brought on their expedition and hunted and fascinated the native Americans with its usage. Amazing technology... even for today.
Thank you,sir,for an outstanding explanation of a real forgotten weapon.That rifle demonstrated amazing technology that did indeed exist so long ago.Too bad they were mostly destroyed; I wonder why they were not sold off as surplus.
FYI Lewis and Clark used air rifles while traveling through the west. The Native Americans were scared/intrigued whenever they showed off the rifles. It's amazing such technology existed hundreds of years ago.
In fact, Lewis and Clark used this specific model of airgun.
+Forgotten Weapons I saw it on display at the Bass Pro gun museum in Springfield, MO a few years ago.
With technology that advanced during that time, that would be like someone today showing off their one of a kind plasma rifle
They took only one sample, according to their journals.
@@toddlofton8307 and had to do field repair to boot
Man ian got old quick
+Skullminersgaming lol.
And he loss his majestic beard.
Gun Jesus will rise again.
Is this Gun Jesus' father?
Does that make him Gun God?
It was all that pumping.
It might "only" produce around 70 ft/lb, but at sub 100 yards, that is quite enough to go clean through a human head, remember, back in the day a good rifleman could fire and reload his musket, at best, in dry conditions, 3 times a minute, for maybe a dozen shots before he had to field clean his gun......if you managed to get half a dozen soldiers, out to the battlefield flank armed with these...and the capability of 40 aimed shots per minute, with a 120 round capability...each....no matter what the weather....that was a devastating firepower to bring to bear especially at closer ranges.
The units were issued with a horsedrawn charging station with the hand pumps just used for topping off partially discharged cylinders in lulls in the action.
An idea before it's time though in material terms, the rifles themselves were reliable enough if the leather seals were kept oiled, but all the pumps an paraphanelia also needed maintenance a bit beyond the common soldier, I'm surprised more weren't used navally, they would have made an excellent boarding gun in a situation where you commonly had a lot of time on your hands prior to any hand to hand combat, and when it came it tended to be face to face
Good point about boarding guns. Still, military minds then were quite stubborn and traditional. Also I'd like to see that horse drawn charging station, because, 1500 pumps? Sheesh.
Prussians got it down to 4 rounds a minute...That small difference along with Superior drill,and discipline helped Prussia(a secondary power) hold off the 3 great powers of europe(France,Austria, and Russia) along with Sweden, Saxony, and other various pro Austrian german states, for 7 years
Also...these Air rifles only worked well for Jeagars,light infantry, snipers and skirmishers because after your out of reseviours, your done...so it's out of the question for Line infantry who need to provide sustained fire...also these air rifles were atrociously overly complicated and unreliable, expensive and mass producability was out of the question
The point of the weapon was to kill, not disable
in the uk you can only have up to 12 ft lbs without a licence , and they don't come easy !
That thing's in damn good shape for being 230 years old
Parks Parks
This one is a replica unfortunately.
Odysseus Only the air reservoir is, the rest is original as it says in the title.
Parks Parks I'm 240 Years Old And I'm In Better Shape
Parks Parks He's only in his sixties - give the guy a break.
Ian Macfarlane I chuckled at that one.
It seems very advanced for the 1700's. Thanks for sharing.
Indeed. I wonder how old many of our 'new' ideas really are.
@@Perktube1 Fin stabilized discarding sabots (the modern tank rounds for killing tanks) were invented in the medieval era. Handgonnes, a small cannon mounted on a stick, could not propel round shot at high enough speeds to punch through the armor of knights, so someone in central Europe got the idea to take crossbow bolts, put metal fetching on them, then wrap them in a leather cylinder that would fall off once the bolt left the barrel of the handgonne. Made it so that handgonners could punch through knight armor with ease. Really is scary shit how some old ideas become new again.
Fine example of how when Democrats say that they only had muskets when the 2nd amendment was written, that they're full of shit.
nah were just retarded willfully
@@gravygraves5112 I second that. I remember reading about Richard Gatling and how he continued to experiment with his rotary guns (which was weirdly enough based on an agricultural invention) in the years after the Civil War. Even during the War, it was possible for a well-trained crew to achieve rates of fire close to 1000 rounds per minutes. If I remember correctly, sometime around the 1890's he got a hold of an electric motor and was able to get the rate of fire of his rotary gun close to 3000 rounds per minute. Fast forward a hundred years later and here we are still using his design.
"Let's look at how the Austrians pumped these up"
With the the help of Hanz and Franz, of course.
@Matrox One you missed the Saturday night live reference
You know why their here.
@@linkmasterspitz which one?
Shrapnel82 Comment of the decade right here
Shrapnel82
Of all the "forgotten weapons" you have brought to this venue, I find this one to be the most fascinating one so far. 270 years ago! The cleverness and the ingenuity are absolutely thrilling. Thank you so much!
Napoleon hated these weapons. He used to think the soldiers using this rifle were cowards because they could shoot accurately from long distances without letting the enemy even know where the shot came from (remember, no gigantic smoke clouds with this rifle). Plus these rifles werent meant to caress the enemy, it could take him out of the fight and even kill him (I mean, 100 to 200 ft lbs of energy, thats some lethal power right there).
Bonaparte also stated that his army would immediately shoot captured Austrian soldiers carrying this air gun. I believe this says a lot about how lethal this rifle was.
The flintlock muzzle loading muskets of that time were just inaccurate to say the least (100 average soldiers of that time with flintlocks made around 5 hits on a man sized target at 100 meters). A single experienced soldier with an air rifle would hit the same target at the same distance with just 1 or 2 tries. Besides, if you dont knock down your enemy with the first shot, you have 19 more shots to try again. I believe that air gun was worth something (a true sniper rifle if you will). Accurate, powerful enough and 20 round capacity... I dont know about you, but, at least for that time, I think these details certainly made up for its already known shortcomings.
Sadly, for several circumstances, it didnt make much difference on Napoleonic wars, and thats why very few people know about the Windbüchse troops. But, this innovative rifle definitely had the potential to change the outcome of most battles and even force countries to change their warfare tactics.
gewerh44 "The flintlock muzzle loading rifles of that time were just inaccurate to say the least" I think you meant to say "muskets." Flintlock rifles were/are quite accurate.
Maynard Krebs
Thanks, I didnt notice that.
Youre right.
I meant muskets.
Most armies used mainly these smooth bore firearms for their line infantry. Innaccurate soldiers if they shoot alone, one of the reasons for the necessity to shoot all together at the same time to maximize damage on the enemy line.
gewerh44 I remember one contemporary observer saying something to the effect that a man was indeed unfortunate who was struck by a musket ball at 100 yards. :)
gewerh44 I don't believe that about the muskets. I remember seeing some Australian re-enactors testing the accuracy of the Brown Bess at 90m on an area taget of 2x6m (about the size of the front rank of a French marching column). of 20 shots fired, 18 hit. On a smaller round target about 2x man size, 8 shots hit out of 10 (though they were resting the musket on some hay bales for that). Accuracy's not great, but the 5% hit rate thing is an exaggeration. The biggest problem with muskets was the slow rate of fire, especially as formations tended to be quite dense, accuracy was not such a great issue anyway. Rate of fire was key.
Infantry line standing up, as they would normally fight, used to hit an average of 5 hits out of 100 soldiers on a man sized target at 100 meters.
I didnt invent that. I did read that and a lot of other interesting stuff on a Napoleonic wars infantry tactics website. Most info there was taken from books, letters, manuals from that era.
Plus I should have said this sad accuracy data belongs to regular soldiers on the heat of battle, not the Black Watch or the Foot Guards, nor re enactors shooting from rested position.
A beautiful piece of quality and history. It’s a privilege to be able to see a video of this. Thank you and the owner for sharing.
So cool I had no idea air guns existed that early. He did a good job presenting.
This is by far the best video I've seen showing off a Girardoni air rifle. I've been enamored with them as I'm primarily an airgun buff myself and enjoy firearms on the side, but concrete info beyond cursory descriptions in books isn't easy to find. I learned more from this video than I ever knew before. The reproduction air canister butt stock is simply amazing. Its been weathered and aged so perfectly to match the rifles condition I would never have known it was modern and not original to the rifle. Thanks so much for sharing this.
They should make modern re-pros of this...
There are modern big bore airguns that can surpass the performance of the Girandoni rifles. Look up airguns made by Dennis Quackenbush for some examples.
StoneSlinger But I would still like to have a working replica of this rifle, mostly for collecting purposes.
pcblah Someone hand made a small number of these a decade or so ago. I saw one at a gun show. I think price was $3500.
Trivia: Austrian soldiers would charge reservoirs in cool early morning. When sun heated them up some would reportedly burst from resultant excess pressure of warmed air.
diasirea Holy crap... (at the price and the explosions)
"The rich, they're not like you or I, old sport," Jay Gatsby.
This is a truly incredible piece of engineering. To think they made these without alot of the modern machining techniques that would later be available in the 19th century is mind-boggling.
hockeywarrior I think that was part of the problem, the degree of craftsmanship needed to properly build one of these is so high.
@@jimstenlund6017 So, in a way, it's kind of an idea that came a little too soon for its own good. Half a century later and this thing would've have been a a real beast
I'm endlessly fascinated by the existence of these guns. They almost seems like an artifact of time travel.
Great video that gives a very in-depth and intimate understanding of these elusive relics.
I love the mannerisms of this guy too, I feel like I could listen to him talk about guns for hours.
Great presentation! I always wondered how the Girardoni operated. I couldn't get my brain wrapped around how one could have developed a high pressure big bore air-gun given the technology of the era. It's simplicity & innovation is amazing! Truly out of the box thinking. If Girardoni were alive today, given the technology we currently have, he would probably be the most innovative firearms maker. His 236 year old air rifle has more features than most modern versions.
During the Napoleonic Wars, French troops were under orders to summarily execute any captured Austrian soldier caught with one of these. The French considered it to be a terror weapon, largely because it produced no smoke, so the shooter could remain hidden.
+Clyde Wary Wow, never knew that. The more you know..
I can certianly see the advantage for trained troops operating in an insurgency role. Maintenence is the only really issue. Would be great for skirmishing against superior forces. Cavalry would also be a concern for light, skirmishing troops, but that isn't an issue with the rifle. Against occupying troops, this would be incredibly frustrating and dangerous, so I can see why the order could be given.
I think it was because the confused French troops became angry at not finding any enemy to surrender to.
@@netpackrat Congratulations my friend! It just took you 19 words to appear as an ignorant, an idiot and a crappy comedian for making this old rotten overused joke. Bravo!
@@drenek1 go eat a baguette Muhammad
I used to live in the impression that there were no repeating guns until the invention of the metal cartridge but I have been surprised to learn that there have been many different desings since the 17th century. Just makes one wonder why they weren't adopted more widely as they have clear advantages, were they too unreliable in battlefield conditions or just too expensive for a private to carry?
Zdem0Z Complexity and cost were certainly factors, as was convincing military officers to adopt radically new technology.
Forgotten Weapons also some of the designs were unpractical, destroying the purpose of a repeating chamber. A few models were also too heavy or rendered useless from battlefield conditions.
+Zdem0Z The Austrian army used it with a few of their forces. However, these were really expensive to make. For the same cost it was far easier to make well over a dozen muskets to arm a larger amount of troops.
+Zdem0Z In addition to other issues of practicality such as complexity, cost, training, and probably maintenance, reliability, logistics, and fragility, what I never see people mention is that it isn't nearly as powerful as firearms typically used in warfare, then or now. Its projectiles have enough momentum and energy to penetrate flesh and kill, to be sure, but only minimally so by some estimates, including the one given here--comparable in some ways to anything from a .22 Short to a .38 Special, depending on which estimate you believe.
I sure wouldn't want to get shot with one, and I realize that sometimes too much is made of the power of guns, but the difference in effectiveness I'm talking about here is pretty big and might have been a significant factor. The Girardoni air rifle is a fascinating piece of technology for that era and the fact that it was adopted for military use shows how compelling its advantages were, but ultimately there were probably several reasons militaries chose to stick with firearms, despite how primitive they were at the time. It wasn't just because they were hidebound, either, because the army that tried them ended up phasing them out eventually.
+BRAVO THREE NINE SIX EIGHT My understanding is that for example the Brown Bess musket of the period achieved a muzzle velocity of about 800-1000 fps (depending on who you ask) with a 0.69 caliber ball weighing approximately 500 grains (I don't have any data for the Augustin rifled musket used by the Austrians at the time)--that's a projectile weighing over 3X more traveling at 2X the velocity, which means it has over 6X the momentum and over 12X (actually over 13X) the kinetic energy of a projectile shot from the Girardoni.
Here are a few online sources, for what they're worth:
allthingsliberty.com/2013/07/the-inaccuracy-of-muskets/
www.rifleshootermag.com/rifles/featured_rifles_bess_092407/
books.google.com/books?id=G6tHHK32bLIC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=brown+bess+fps&source=bl&ots=fZv5xVOlsF&sig=rGzmwqgdNc6PDH4JccRcyieY8PU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG18bp0aTJAhWJPCYKHet8CMIQ6AEIZzAJ#v=onepage&q=brown%20bess%20fps&f=false
I think you're right about the Girardoni being ahead of its time in terms of manufacturing and materials technology. Leather seals at such pressures were probably neither durable nor reliable enough to make these air rifles more practical than firearms over time, even before the advent of metallic cartridges and repeating firearms. It's still a marvel, though, and I'm not trying to take anything away from it--this is just to understand why it didn't supersede firearms when the latter were still so crude, since the reasons aren't always obvious. I'm no expert, either, but I think we can all appreciate how the real world and pragmatic, hard use can give different results than when using something under ideal conditions. And my point here is that in addition it probably wasn't as effective per shot, either--still effective, but a clear notch below the firearms of its time, and this, too, was a product of practicality (or rather the lack thereof).
I've read that historians think that it was Girandoni air rifles that Lewis and Clark carried on their expedition across the continent in 1803-1805. Supposedly they had at least two. An interesting sidenote is that every time they encountered an indian tribe they gave a shooting demonstration. Now the Indians had or had seen, muskets, but it is speculated that the fast firing Girandoni's may be the reason that the expedition never had any major difficulty with any tribe and never lost an expedition member to violence. Seems the awesome fire output made the Indians leary of a confrontation, figuring that the entire expedition must be armed with the same rifle...although they weren't.
So a good guy win a gun kept potential threats at bay simply by having it. Love it.
This air gun model was used in the case to stop the Oregon magazine ban on measure 114, thanks for posting this 8 years prior, quite the piece of history!
So this was used to demonstrate that when the 2nd Amendment was passed, people already knew of "HiGh CaPaCiTy AsSaUlT wEaPoNs" and actively used them?
This remains, years later, one of my favorite videos on the net,
Imagine the army innovative enough to employ these air rifles specifically during rainy weather when the other side's powder would be wet!
The totally insane part is that modifying this for semi and full auto would be simpler than the gun as it is.
yes you need power to reload, an gas port might work optional an small extra air chamber who is filled on firing and then load an new round and cock it.
You would need an spring in the magazine.
the most complex part would probably be to make sure you get an bullet in the breach before it returns, you might have to redesign it.
Would it still work well with an carbine length barrel? Would think so on short ranges,
Larger air tank and magazine and you have an real and portable machine gun.
Yes it would be as powerful as an rather weak machine pistol but it would be 150 year until you got something as good.
@PWS354 I believe the majority of the Austrian army carried these from 1780 to 1788. Sice Austria was one of the 3 or 4 dominant armies in Europe at the time, that was no small army!
@@davidjones8942 No. That was not produced in such large numbers. Across the lifespan of the system, only 1500+ were made. The biggest difference on the battlefield in terms of scale was the repeating speed. With only 100 pieces of those within a few minutes, you could lay down 1-2k of the enemy soldiers.
@@davidjones8942 from what I have read they carried it (in small numbers) upto 1815.
I'm a total fan of Air Power! This weapon is art in motion.
Incredible.
The craftsmanship is moving. Beautifully crafted. Simple.
And even the gravity fed 'magazine' was well placed and so SIMPLE
Im truly in awe!
Thanks for sharing this.
GB
Amazing craftsmanship on that rifle! I would have loved to see it fire, especially through a chronograph!
What a beautiful piece of workmanship and ingenuity.
Wow, this rifle is incredible! I never realized there were a weapon as advanced as this during the Napoleonic wars, no doubt it would've been really expensive though.
only around 1500 were made.
it was used as a sniper rifle up to 120 yards.. amazing back then since scopes werent invented yet
This is AMAZING. The thought and engineering that went into this weapon, considering the technology of the time period, is phenomenal. That, in my humble opinion, would have been a Formidable weapon to face in battle, considering what was available to militaries from the same period. This I'm sure was a "game changer"...
I have heard about these and seen many pictures, but I have never seen a working one before. I am really surprised these were not more popular back then. They have an insane fire-rate compared to most other weapons of the time. I am also surprised someone does not remake these or a similar weapon. With modern manufacturing, we should be able to make an even better version of this rifle. I at least would want one, and I do not think I am alone.
Not only more rounds down range but also no smoke after you fire so clear fire
Very, very cool. A handful of Austrian marksmen placed at the right spot, I'd image could decimate an enemy line.
And it might work well for an ambush, too, but it requires intensive training and hand picked soldiers with the necessary aptitude for maintaining a delicate system, especially before they invented the air pressure gauge.
@ihatetacos theresa6616 - Thank you for you kind remarks.
Re: "...wouldnt you think obvious that they would have invented a gauge earlier ?"
No, I wouldn't think that. They invented the air rifle long before the air pressure gauge. The way in which they
pumped up these old air rifles, is much like they do today, by counting the number of pumps. The compressed air tanks
on these rifles were rather big, and could be damaged by over pumping. In modern day air compressors, air tanks come
with an air pressure gauges. These old rifles had a rather large air tank on them to hold enough pressure to be repeaters.
The large air tanks on these repeaters, and the leather seals they used in the system could be damaged by too high
of air pressure. So, over pumping this rifle would put it out of service. The problem is that in a combat situation,
counting the number of pumps is problematic, and it would be better to have an air pressure gauge, which didn't happen
for at least 2 reasons.
No. 1 - The air pressure gauge had not yet been invented, so the answer to your question "...wouldn't you think obvious...",
is "No".
No. 2 - By the time they invented air pressure gauges, the steel and seals on air rifles had improved. And they
do not, as far as I know, make repeating air rifles, probably because they don't want a large air tank and the
necessary air gauge if they did have a large air tank. Also, you'll understand that no military ever adopted an
air rifle for the reason that they were delicate and could be easily damaged by over inflating, and it is a slow
process to pump up an air rifle, and noisy. Also, these early air rifles had a rather large air tank to provide
enough pressure to be a repeater. Today, the air rifles that use the pump system are single shot rifles, and you
have to pump it up for each shot. Air storage is done in much thicker steel, and so the seals would blow out before
the compression storage tube would. In modern air rifles, the storage of compressed air is done in a robust steel tube.
@@mu99ins They wouldn't necessarily have to have invented gauges - a springloaded overpressure valve might have been enough. Admittedly a tight enough fit, consistent preloading and the inclusion into the design without creating another point of failure would have been challenging. I mean some of these issues could have been lessened by adding the valves to the pump, not the pressure tank itself. Fewer valves needed in total, no problems with long-term leakage.
I have been around firearms all my life (longer than I care to remember) and I first heard about this utterly amazing air rifle a couple of years ago. Very very impressive. Thanks for including it in a video. Take care. Doug
I wonder how they sealed the air tank and what did they use inside the pump to compress the air? The only thing I can think of is leather. This rifle was ahead of its time. Very cool!
Yep, leather seals. The article I linked to in the description has some excellent photos of the internal components.
Forgotten Weapons I thought the tank was sealed using horn for the valve? There's a takedown somewhere on the net and it showed a brass coil spring driving a horn plug, reason being that horn was the only maleable but pressure resistant product they could find that would create sufficient seal without blowing out. I'll have to check out the article! Thanks for posting this!
leather has been a part of several 'high tech' developments, such as this and in the amasing Atmospheric railways in England, they ran minus locomotives, the power being produced by steam powered vacuum pumps every few miles, the carriages were pulled along by being linked to a chain attached to a 'bullet which was forced along an open topped tube, speeds were well in excess of sixty mph, it was a complex system but worked suprisingly well, but ailed due to the greased leather flaps which closed the atmospheric tubes being very tasty... rats ate them... leather very environmental :D
www.beemans.net/Austrian%20airguns.htm
Pretty impressive for 1780 !!! ... 750psi via a hand pump is amazing .. and the riveted and brazed air tank, yikes .. every rifle must have shipped with brass balls, lol !!
@@KrustyKlown Well, if you heat the entire pressure cylinder without the valve up to brazing temps and dunk it into molten brass, it's quite airtight when new. Not so much after 200 years, though! The valve seals are leather, so wear out pretty quickly, but that's an easy repair. The lockwork inside is very complex, which is the major downside to the Girandoni design.
Modern precharged pneumatic airguns can get .45ACP performance, 200gr slugs at ~750fps, nothing to sneer at!
that thing is amazingly cool, I recently learned about Lewis and Clark carrying one and was amazed. Fantastic design and production, especially for the era
+SavageShooter93 Makes sence, only thing needed is lead to melt, since gunpowder is no longer an issue, saves weight on the expedition.
Damn, i'm living about 200+ years after this rifle were made and it's still amaze me like the Indians when they saw this rifle.
I don't mean to be "that guy" but can we please show a little respect for the indigenous peoples of north America? They weren't indians, and to refer to them as such is downright offensive and insensitive. The proper terminology for them is "ingins"
I never cease to marvel at Girardoni. If this gun didn't actually exist, I'd think it was a figment of some steampunk author's imagination. In the context of the second half of the 18th century, it's absolutely, absolutely astonishing. The repeating mechanism itself is a work of genius.
I believe that I have read that they had filling stations on wheels that was served by two men, like horse-drawn fire pumps, so that the hand pump was if they could not restock air from the supply lines.
but realy good video and a really interesting weapon.
Those cars with big pump also carried already filled air tanks in the first place. Since one such tank lasted for 30 consistent powerful (125 y kill range) shots, the big pump started to work only when air tanks went off and the battle was still on.
What about muzzle velocity???
Wow I've seen them behind a glass screen in Leeds military museum England. Never know how they operated !
Your very informative thanks for sharing. That was really interesting!
Heard a lot of the Girardoni over the years and even seen pictures.. Thanks for making this video.
The Lewis and Clarke expedition in particular is very interesting with respect of Taming the natives with demonstrations.
What an awesome device. Made before the 2ndA was ratified and was used by Lewis and Clark.
Thank you SO much for taking your time to describe the mechanisms and taking it apart. I'm doing research on old air guns and it's hard to find material. This is a blessing, thank you
Quelle ingéniosité ! Une belle preuve du talent de nos anciens !
I just heard about this gun on an episode of the podcast Cabinet of Curiosities. It has a great history, and it was wonderful to be able to see a video of it in action and have it explained. Thank you!
Well there went their arguments against large capacity magazines!
Hate to burst your bubble, this holds 21/22 rounds at most (depending on either caliber or (more likely) sources), and most high capacity mags being targeted hold 30+ rounds.
That said, 10 rounds are what these laws aim to regulate capacity to, and I agree that it’s stupid.
Probably another thing this would shoot down are suppressor bans, since this is shooting a subsonic projectile that’s still plenty lethal with no supersonic ‘bang’ of gunpowder, meaning it’s probably just as quiet, if not quieter, than most integrally suppressed weapons.
Thank you so much for showing us all. I recently almost inherited/purchased a local airgun shop near Philadelphia operated by a local legend who passed. As a kid I was fascinated by the fact Lewis and Clark had an air rifle on their famous journey across the continent.
In the book Aundaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose about the Lewis and Clark expedition there's an account of a woman getting shot in the head from this rifle from an accidental discharge and living. It only caused some minor wound and a little bleeding. It was not a point blank shot and there's no way of knowing if it was from a full air chamber or not. I highly recommend anyone read that book.
How was it in service for 10 years then? And used by snipers?
I read that excerpt from the book, the shot just grazed her which is why she lived, but it took a good bit of skin with it, nothing life threatening though.
What a great demonstration, of something like it, that most of us would never known to of existed, with it's amazing engineering and such fine craftsmanship, truly admirable for a airgun of its time.
I'd hate to imagine what happened to a Austrian lineman and his fellows if a ball went through those extra butt stocks in their kit.
HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssss.... Or just BOOM with bits of whatever those things are made of
+Artyom Zaytsev probly something like whomp noise. similar to shooting a large hole in a propane tank or some other pressurized tank.... and no they light very easier before you ask.
+Artyom Zaytsev From what I have heard they were made of rolled pieces of iron sheet layered together to make almost a composite. So yeah, great shrapnel. Like he said in the video, the original canisters are simply too dangerous. Even the factory rejected a large number after initial testing.
"Fredrick! Stop farting!"
"Damn it Francis! I'm not farting!"
Ever see a powder horn get hit?
And here I thought pumping my old daisy air rifle 10 times was a pain, 1500 strokes to get up to pressure. I can see why it didn't last more than 10 years, very cool rare rifle. Thanks for posting another great video.
does any company make reproductions of these guns? i would love to buy one and actually be able to fire it if given the chance. so yeah anyone know any reproduction models or websites i could go to?
There are a few handmade reproductions made, but nothing available for commercial sale.
Forgotten Weapons
oh ok. thank you.
+Forgotten Weapons That's a crying shame
You're better off just buying a modern air rifle.
Maybe he just wants the experience of an old fashioned air gun, and isn't concerned with which is better.
Such a beauty, and so ingenious! Sure it wasn't easy or cheap to manufacture. Excellent presentation, thank you so much!
As of 6/11/2014 there is one dislike for this video......Dianne Feinstein must of watched this!
Must be 40 Feinsteins out there.
Amazing video with a wonderfull narrating explanation about the specs, well done
1500 fucking strokes
+MKRocker94 20 fucking minutes
+MKRocker94 In service each Jager company would be supplied by carriages which carried hundreds of cylinders and came equipped with mechanical pumps for refilling depleted ones. These would be run forward to the firing line by men detailed for this purpose, who would then take empty ones back to be refilled. The manual pump was more for "topping up" partially emptied cylinders during breaks in the fighting.
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+MKRocker94 Sounds like a regular night with the ol' bottle of lube for me
+JamesPolymer How did the mechanical pumps work, given that it was the 1780's?
That is fascinating!!! I love firearms but this is the coolest rifle I’ve ever seen! Never heard of it before now!
Would love one or a shootable reproduction/replica. These must have been capable guns considering what lewis did with his.
This still outperforms many modern big bore air guns in many ways.
Barskor1 It definitely does, especially the number of shots per charge.
Another major thing about this weapon is that you could reload and fire it lying down. It was just too revolutionary for its time, and the higher officers couldn't get their heads around it. It would take the rifled muskets, the ACW, machine guns and WW1, to change their minds.
Patrick S
Over 100 years to change those medal racks' minds to how awesome this monster is.
While institutional inertia was no doubt a contributing factor (and often is for many military arms procurement decisions), there were viable logistical reasons to not make this rifle standard-issue.
@@SaftonYT Like money but that is short term thinking the benefits of winning wars land and resources at lower cost would have paid for them a million times over.
@@Barskor1 Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the various issues the gun had in terms of logistics would have broken the proverbial bank.
@@Barskor1 It wouldn't have won any wars. Logistics and economics win wars. The air rifles were very expensive, hard to maintain, complicated to use, and broke easily. You could have hundreds of sturdy, simple and reliable muskets for the same price.
It is exactly the same situation as with the Panther and Tiger tanks in WWII: they were very good machines, but the allies had 10x more tanks which were cheaper and more efficient.
I remember reading a British airgun book in the sixties, the author had one of these, and set up a target in front of his garden shed. After firing a few shots in his garden (!!), he went to examine the target, and found that the projectiles had gone through his shed door, and turned his heavy macintosh hanging up on the other side into a lace item. The rear wall was full of holes, and upon checking at the back of the shed, he found that his bicycle frame was battered out of shape.
pressurized air canister? had know idea there was such a thing in the 1700s so cool
A nice clean and orderly description of this interesting pneumatic device.
One take no disasters.
I'd say the thing was robust if it survived the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Probably too expensive, and generals have a hard time allowing changes to their tactical doctrine. (At this time the bayonet charge was what broke formations, and I noticed the lack of a bayonet lug.) Amazing the Austrians were forward-thinking enough to even try it.
Even during the Civil War when technology allowed for the full equipping of the Union Army with repeaters the US Ordinance Department was too slow to accept any idea or push in that direction. The old farts in charge hated change and also assumed soldiers would waste ammunition if they knew they didn't have to reload. (They were also notoriously tight as bark on a tree and it took Lincoln's personal intervention a few times to over-ride them.)
Dion Morse
it seems that as usual, generals and supply sources have always been guilty of fighting the last war, over and over. But we know now that wars are constantly evolving and with the level of communication which our confrontation adversaries also have a battle field tactic can change in an almost fluid way.
I thank you for this information and for the owner/collector for letting us learn about it. Thanks to both!
no need for Pilates ,,, 1500 strokes per reservoir :P
I know I'd sure as hell get a workout! XD
gee guys, it's only 20 min.
with the pumps we got now I would say at least less then half that
I've got a modern .357 air rifle with a modern two stage hand pump, and it takes about the same amount of strokes to get up to pressure. I'm usually puffing and sweating by the time I get done charging the damn thing, though my gun charges to 3000 psi instead of 800 so there is a bit more force involved, though I'm not sure of that since those old pumps were only single stage. Either way you are correct, it's a hell of a workout. I bought a 300 bar carbon fiber tank and a Yong Heng air compressor after only a few manual tank charges, screw that noise lol. I can refill my gun in about 10 seconds around thirty times with the air tank now heh. You'd get strong in a hurry if you had to pump these things regularly and that's a fact, it takes over half your weight to push the pump down near the end of the fill, you really feel it in your abs, arms, shoulders and thighs.
Fighting trim baby!
Thanks Ian. It's nice to see the heritage of my sport and the predecessor of modern air powered rifles like my Rapid HM1000X. I am always amazed and awestruck at the innovative designs of yesteryear.
If only they made reproductions of these
Most informative. Thank you for your efforts to bring this to the public . I love the history of this rifle.
This completely destroys the 'high capacity magazine' arguments and the arguments that the founders didn't know about high capacity repeating firearms and only single shot muskets.
Thank you Ian! This was awesome.
I always learn something from you videos, and I hope you never stop producing them.
Take care
So even in 1780 they had "scarry" "high capacity" magazines! WOW!
The Democratic party didn't exist back then so it was ok
Thanks for sharing an amazing piece of history!
This guy makes me think Bob Ross of gun mechanics.
Thus is truly innovative design and engineering for its day, I actually checked the date of the clip to see of it was April 1st as it seemed so unbelievable!
How lethal were these things?
Potentially quite lethal, especially considering the medical technology of the time.
NormanMatchem
As I wrote in the video description, 153gr at about 400 fps.
Forgotten Weapons Oh, crap, sorry. Also, wow, that's not exactly what I was expecting. Sure it's powered by air and not gunpowder, but still... that's basically half the velocity of 9mm while using a similarly heavy bullet. How would someone manage to reach 100m? Let alone 'sniper' distances. It's got speed going for it, that's for sure, and I'm not doubting its potential lethality... but as far as accuracy goes... Rifled or not, it's REALLY hard to imagine such a slow-moving bullet managing any kind of distance. What would it be going at 200m, 200 ft/s? lol
NormanMatchem From a "sniper" standpoint, muzzle flash and report factor in just as much as distance. A well-concealed soldier armed with one of these would be much harder to spot when you're expecting a flash and a cloud of smoke, I would think.
Forgotten Weapons ... thoughts?
n1ztb None the less, there were rifled muskets by 1780. Not in widespread use mind you, but they were around. Those would be FAR more effective at 'sniping'. As I said, 153gr at about 400 ft/s is tremendously weak. You'd have a hard time even reaching 100m, which means it'd probably be not much more accurate than your average smoothbore musket. Meaning it probably shouldn't even be in the same room as the words 'snipe' or 'sniper'.
That's incredible tech for the time. I'm glad you said the air reservoir was a reproduction. I'd hate to attempt to use the original. But, 1500 pumps will make your arms wobbly. Better have a backup pistol while you're pumping this for 30-45 minutes or whatever.
1500 in 20 minutes? Maybe if 5 guys took turns.
What an interesting video! Perfectly presented! I knew something of the history of these weapons but you have brought it all to life. Amazing that machining technologies of that era were up to the job of mass producing a workable weapon.
Imagine if the hole Austrian Army was armed with these rifles instead of muskets.
Then Napoleon would have executed them all because to the French the use of air rifle was a war crime.
Those captured with one were treated as assassins.
I don't think Napoleon would have won against the Austrian Army if they were all armed with these rifles because of the rate of fire that they would put out.
He would have. Austria could only have fielded a minuscule army, as these weapons were very expensive and difficult to use, make, maintain and repair. Napoleon's army would have been some 200 times bigger than Austrias army, and wielding this weapon doesn't make one bulletproof. Besides, loading this guns pressure tank requires bulky and fragile equipment that an army consisting of only these soldiers couldn't possibly have carried with them.
Absolutely ingenious design! Air weapons are way underrated.
I like how the ignorant gun control freaks always say "the second amendment only protects the right to keep and bear single shot muskets because when the second amendment was written that's all they had." Nope! They also had a repeating rifle with a 22 round magazine!
But he's right, it negates that argument completely.
JonasFeyhart I am perfectly happy with a bank robber using this gun, while he's getting his bike pump out and taking 20mins to reload the bloody thing the cops can come and arrest him.
It's so obvious that there a difference between this and a AK-47 so don't be silly.
Also, I very much doubt that your ordinary minuteman could have afforded one of these. So I highly doubt Washington was planning to fend off British invasions with these guns (something that doesn't much these day either).
Fa Kenews Its funny that after creating these armed miltias to prevent overeaching governments they then used these miltias to put down rebellions.
But anyway, what are you saying? The goverments should allow people to own an age of sail Frigate? Or that school shooters are going to attack school with frigates? They would have get a couple of hundred sailors to crew it and only attack coastal schools.
But yes there were grenades and cannons in the 18th century whats your point? Does that change the that its possible to amend the constuition? Out of date laws get repeales all the time. You changed the one about having slaves and the founding fathers wouldn't have liked that.
I suppose if all else fails use that 2nd amendment for its purpose and rebell against the government if they try and take your guns.
Any self-proclaimed "militia" that tried to take on the US armed forces in _any_ capacity would be swiftly transformed into a bloody smear on the ground. Numbers, training, and support weapons like mortars do more for a unit's fighting ability than anything ArmaLite (or any other company in the business of self-loading rifles) could ever produce--thus rendering the Second Amendment's stated purpose utterly redundant in the modern world.
The Constitution is a legal document, not a piece of religious scripture. It was made to be amended as circumstances change.
At any rate, gun control advocates are pushing for restriction of _self-loaders_ , not repeaters. You don't see many school shooters with Mosin-Nagants or Krag-Jørgensens these days.
Jonathan Hughes
And all service men would just fall in line like sheep dogs that lack any autonomy. There will be defectors. Not to mention the PR nightmare it will be when they bomb their own civilians. The entire countries moral was destroyed after Vietnam because of that and they were just coming off of a WW2 victory that allowed them to be the number 1 super power in the world. Those were people all the way across the world and you think that effect wouldn't be multiplied tenfold when it's being done to their own citizens? You also have to consider that farm land and energy would be in complete control of the rebels. Cities are mostly just consumers and they'll fall when they can't get food and oil. The toppling of just one of those cities would be a logistics nightmare.
Then there's the fact that there's a lot of countries that could benefit from a rebellion in the US to disrupt it's power. Russia for one. They'd establish a proxy war in the US and provide weapons and help organize militias.
You're absolutely ignorant if you think a rebellion wouldn't at least cripple the US greatly which is more than enough deterrent to keep them from infringing on our rights.
They said the same shit about the British and look what happened. They were spread too thin and a bunch of farmers managed to run them off. Same situation currently. What makes the US so powerful is the fact that it's core is so safe and that any external conflict would have to be almost entirely done by sea which isn't great. An internal conflict is much different. The citizens control all the resources of the country.
And the asshole that said something along the lines of "your minutemen couldn't afford such a rifle at the time" well no shit but it shows that the FF knew that weapons innovation was a thing and that there would be improvement. They themselves were also fanboys of such rifles and wanted to implement them into the army but simply couldn't afford it.
It's a completely moronic stance to think that they only wanted the citizens to have muskets and nothing more even tho they allowed them to carry the most powerful weapons known to man at the time.
wow, thank you... amazing air rifle! So complete. Very impressive. 850 psi 12 grain ball... stunning!
This gun would be banned in Commiefornia for having an "assault magazine".
Except it's not classified as a firearm.
I first heard about these while reading of the Lewis and Clarke expeditions. They took a few of these air rifles with them.
Indians were extremely impressed with how fast they could shoot,
That is damn ingenious engineering for the time.
So wonderful that this rifle survived at all and to have one with the accessories is amazing.
Very informative video with a real Girardoni. These were so far ahead of their time. Seals are often the weak point in modern pre-charged air guns, so I can imagine leather seals would require maintenance and replacement. I would buy a reproduction Girardoni.
Superb presentation, wonderful engineering/gunsmithing.
EXTREMELY interesting. I never knew air rifles existed so early. I especially would have never imagined them being used militarily.
I want to marry this channel.
gorgeous and brilliant, thank you for the walk through.
Dude that’s ridiculously similar to how a paintball gun works, really makes you think about just how old the technology is.
Things were so well made back then.
Thanks for posting this . . to properly use a devalued term, it is Amazing! I also enjoy listening to you on The Gun Nation podcast. You really bring a whole new perspective to the subject. I also enjoy your use of detail and commentary, you are one bright guy and keep this material crisp and entertaining. It is great work you do keeping history alive.
What a beautiful rifle. Thank you very much for presenting it!
Imagine the explosion if an enemy bullet hit that 800psi reservoir...
The world's first pre charge air rifle and there's me thinking i had something special 40years ago. You learn something new every day
This is absolutely the most incredible thing I've ever seen!!
Fantastic, thank you for this video. I saw the Lewis and Clark video on this weapon done, I think, by the NRA, and have been curious about it ever since. I am an avid air gun shooter, and would really like to see a video of you or someone shooting this gun. Thanks again. Just wow.
Beautiful airgun. Very excellent explanation of the intricacies of use. Thanks!!
BTW, haven’t finished video and not sure if you mentioned, but same weapon Lewis & Clark brought on their expedition and hunted and fascinated the native Americans with its usage. Amazing technology... even for today.
It is neat that the Austrians saw the potential for this and actually fielded it. That almost never happens with wonder weapons like this.
*That's an **_incredibly_** interesting mechanism - especially for the period!*
Thank you,sir,for an outstanding explanation of a real forgotten weapon.That rifle demonstrated amazing technology that did indeed exist so long ago.Too bad they were mostly destroyed; I wonder why they were not sold off as surplus.