Vetterli Rifle

Origins

Friedrich Vetterli was a Swiss gunsmith who worked at the Neuhausen arms factory of the SIG company. His rifle was adopted by Switzerland in 1869. The Swiss version was a repeater, with a tube magazine under the barrel holding about a dozen rimfire cartridges, and it was one of the first repeating rifles issued to a whole army. The newly united kingdom of Italy needed a modern rifle to replace its muzzle-loaders and converted guns, and in 1870 it adopted a simplified version of Vetterli's bolt. The Italian Fucile Mod. 1870 was a single-shot rifle without the Swiss magazine, firing a 10.35 mm centerfire cartridge loaded with black powder. Italian officials probably chose the single-shot form partly to save money and partly because many officers of the time feared that magazine rifles would encourage soldiers to waste ammunition. It was made at the state arsenals of Turin, Brescia, Terni and Torre Annunziata, and carbine and musketoon versions followed for cavalry, engineers and the carabinieri.

Design & Construction

The Italian Vetterli had a turning bolt that locked by lugs at the rear against the receiver, and a separate bolt head that did not rotate. Opening the bolt extracted the empty case, and closing it cocked the striker. The brass cartridge sealed the breech, so there was no need for the rubber rings and needles of earlier breech-loaders. The rifle was long and fairly heavy and took a sword bayonet. By the 1880s, magazine rifles were being adopted across Europe. Italy could not afford a completely new weapon at once, so in 1887 it approved a conversion designed by Captain Giuseppe Vitali. A box magazine was fitted in front of the trigger guard and loaded from a packet of four cartridges. The converted rifle was the M1870/87, generally called the Vetterli-Vitali. Most Italian infantry rifles were converted.

Combat Use

Italian troops used the Vetterli in the colonial campaigns in Eritrea, including the defeat at Dogali in January 1887. During the First Italo-Ethiopian War of 1895 and 1896, the Vetterli-Vitali was the standard rifle of the Italian infantry and of the Eritrean askari who fought alongside them; the new M1891 Carcano had not yet been widely issued. At the Battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896, Italian brigades armed with it were overwhelmed by a much larger Ethiopian army, most of whose riflemen carried imported weapons such as the Remington Rolling Block and the French Gras. The Ethiopians took thousands of Vetterlis from the battlefield. Like every rifle at Adwa it fired black powder, and the smoke of volley fire quickly revealed the Italian firing lines. Italian soldiers also used the rifle in the Boxer campaign of 1900 and the war in Libya in 1911 and 1912, alongside the Carcano.

Legacy

The M1891 Carcano replaced the Vetterli in front-line units in the 1890s, but Italy kept large stocks. During the First World War many Vetterli-Vitali rifles were converted to fire the 6.5 mm Carcano cartridge and issued to territorial, second-line and training units, and some were sent to Russia. After the war many surplus Vetterlis were sold to civilians and converted into sporting rifles and shotguns. Captured and surplus Vetterlis stayed in use in Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa well into the twentieth century. The rifle is covered with other Italian Arms & Weapons of the period.