Although the Ruby pistol became a procurement nightmare, it nevertheless armed French troops and scores of others throughout World War I and beyond. Posted on 05/08/2017 5:31:49 AM PDT by w1n1
Although the Ruby pistol became a procurement nightmare, it nevertheless armed French troops and scores of others throughout World War I and beyond.
The "Ruby" pistol is the result of France's desperate need for arms in the early days of the Great War. By 1915, much of the French industrial heartland was under German control, and what remained under allied control was producing critically needed material such as rifles, machine guns, and artillery. As the conflict grew beyond even the most pessimistic expectations, the sheer volume of troops sent into battle literally exhausted the meager stores of small arms. To meet this rising demand for pistols for the trenches, the French contracted with the Spanish firm of Gabilondo y Urresti-Eibar for their Ruby semiauto pistol.
The Ruby made use of a prewar design largely copied (without license) from the Browning Model 1903. Among the changes are the deletion of the grip safety and a relocation of the manual safety closer to the trigger guard. The resulting Ruby is a direct blowback pistol chambered in 7.65 (.32 ACP). The pistol features an internal hammer and a frame-mounted safety that goes down for “FIRE.” The original magazine capacity was nine rounds.
The original contract called for the firm to produce 10,000 pistols a month, but the insatiable French demand for handguns saw the production numbers increased in stages until the incredible target of 50,000 pistols a month was set. Read the rest of the Ruby pistol story here.
Yeah, they needed something to throw down as they ran from the enemy.
You wouldn't expect them to drop their cheese or wine, would you?
.32 seems awfully light for combat?
The Browning look is immediate...
What that old joke? “Never fired and only dropped once”. lol
France suffered 5.5 million military casualties in WWI and each of them was smarter than you.
Indeed. Between 1793-1815 and 1914-1945 France lost forever its best genetic stock. It explains the poor quality of the surviving Y chromosomes and the utter decline in French culture.
+1.
In fact, +5.5 Million.
The French fought like tigers in WW1. They were bled white. The horror of Verdun is the key to understanding much that we (rightly) despise in the modern French character.
Too bad they melted them all down to make little flowery
knick-knacks.
Well, the influx from Muslim-majority countries should be enough to breed out what passes these days for Y-chromosomes in France.
I fought with and trained French troops...even THEY made jokes about "collaboration".
Touchy, aren't you?
Go have a cup of coffee.
Smart enough to copy something that worked? Unlike the Webley automatic revolver that didn’t do so well in the dirt, mud, and water of the trenches?
French population in 1914 = 40 million
Dead combatants in WWI = 1.39 million
Wounded 4.5 million
A very high price.
Valiant fighters.
the difference between having something to fight with and nothing, I will take the .32 over nothing,
The vast majority of dead and wounded in WWI were men.
So of the 13,000,000 men in France eligible to fight, about 1/4 were directly killed or wounded during the war. Over half the men in France directly served on the front.
The Germans and the British didn't fare much better but the French manhood were indeed bled white.
Smaller caliber pistols worked extremely well for French infiltrators, sappers, and `tunnel rats’. And at point blank range a .32 caliber gun jammed into an enemy’s midsection was deadly effective.
French soldiers died by the hundreds of thousands in WWI.
....32 seems awfully light for combat...
The Skorpion SMG is chambered in .32.
I have an old Browning Belgique .32 (actually says “Belgique” vs. “Belgium”) that my Dad gave my wife about 25 years ago. Little bit loose but fine for a bedside insurance plan.
That’s childish, not humor.
The United States outsourced 1911 production prior to WWII with some interesting results. The Singer Sewing Machine company made around 500 of them - nice collector's pieces today if you can find one - and the Union Switch and Signal Company produced about 55,000, and Remington Rand (the typewriter company) about 875,000. Production at the latter was halted on several occasions when the production models' "interchangeable" parts weren't, which seems to be an issue with multiple manufacturers that the Ruby had in abundance.
I have only this to say about service in WWI: be glad it wasn't you.
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