the mannlicher carcano

[Bob Prudhomme]

"Mr. Lutz. This was a single cartridge being inserted into the chamber and firing into a cotton waste recovery box...backing away from the box, a foot or two, and pointing the muzzle into the box and then firing into it, in order to recover the projectile.
Mr. Edgar. But you weren't firing with clip -- using the clip, were you?
Mr. Lutz. No sir; I did not.
Mr. Edgar. Did anyone on the panel fire with the clip in?
Mr. Lutz. I do not believe so; no, sir.
Mr. Edgar. What was the reason for that?
Mr. Lutz. There were no particular markings that we were able to identify as having come from the clip, nor were we checking for time firing or sequential firing in any way in that respect."

Lutz is lying through his teeth. The 6.5mm Carcano has a Mauser bolt. It employs a feeding system to the camber known as "controlled feed". When the bolt picks up a cartridge from the clip, the base of the cartridge moves upward and into the extractor claw on the face of the bolt. This is the only way you can chamber a cartridge on the Carcano, unless you remove the bolt from the rifle and insert the cartridge into the extractor claw manually. If you insert the cartridge into the chamber by hand and try to close the bolt behind it, the base of the cartridge will meet the extractor claw and the bolt will not close.

This explains why so many Carcanos are seen for sale with broken extractor claws, as people who do not own clips inevitably try loading cartridges one at a time and end up breaking their extractor claw.



Extractor claw (2) seen in diagram above of dismantled Carcano.




Extractor claw on face of bolt of Mauser 98 rifle.

[Drew Phipps]

How does the extractor claw come to retract down (?) and away (?) from the face of the bolt so that the bullet can come to rest flush with the face of the bolt?

[Bob Prudhomme]

The extractor claw remains stationary as the cartridge is being picked up by the bolt. When the cartridge is first contacted by the bolt, as the bolt moves forward, it is pushed along by the bottom part of the face of the bolt. The extractor claw does not extend down far enough to cover the bottom part of the face of the bolt. As the cartridge is pushed along, it begins to ride up along a ramp onto its way into the chamber, slowly elevating it. Eventually, the rear of the cartridge rides up onto this ramp, and the base of the cartridge is lifted into the space between the face of the bolt and the extractor claw. The claw fits neatly into the groove in the base of the cartridge.

It doesn't always work this nicely, though, especially on shorter cartridges such as the .308. I had a .308 deer rifle made by the Midland Gun Co. of Birmingham, England that had a Mauser type action. If I was even slightly too aggressive when chambering a cartridge (usually about the time I was trying to take a bead on a large buck), the cartridge would jump ahead just enough to get ahead of the extractor claw, without me knowing. With the cartridge in the chamber, I would try to close the bolt behind it, to no avail. I imagine if I pushed hard enough, I could eventually force the extractor claw over the base of the cartridge, but I believe I stood a better chance of snapping the claw off. This is how I know Lutz and his panel were full of crap.

I usually pushed the cartridge in so far that I couldn't even shake the cartridge out of the chamber. I finally resorted to keeping a cleaning rod in my pickup, just so I had something to push the cartridge out of the chamber with.

I eventually lost this rifle in a house fire, but I wasn't exactly heart broken.

[Bob Prudhomme]

Mauser K98 about to chamber cartridge

This photo shows it a bit more clearly. As can be seen, the extractor claw is only on the side of the bolt. As the cartridge moves forward and comes upward, the base (below the groove on the cartridge) comes up and fits neatly between bolt face and claw.

[Drew Phipps]

Thanks for the extra explanation, I understand it now. Could you just lay the round into the "about to" position shown in the picture with the bolt fully retracted, and then slide the bolt forward from there to properly use the claw?

[Bob Prudhomme]

Thanks for the extra explanation, I understand it now. Could you just lay the round into the "about to" position shown in the picture with the bolt fully retracted, and then slide the bolt forward from there to properly use the claw?

Well, you could but, in the case of the Carcano, it would have to be in the clip to do so. Without the clip, the Carcano magazine is just a big gaping hole, and there would be nothing to support the cartridge.

The rifle in the photo is a German K98 Mauser and it has a magazine that is all part of the rifle, with no clip required.

Toward the end of the Second World War, a number of Carcanos were converted to single shot rifles in Germany that would fire the 7.92 mm Mauser cartridge. To overcome the lack of a clip, a wooden block was fashioned that would fit into the magazine of the Carcano. On top of this block, in a specially carved groove, one cartridge was laid and it was possible to chamber the cartridge this way.

[Albert Doyle]

Most likely, the reason Oswald was framed with a Carcano is because it was intended as a Cuban gun to be distributed to Cuba by CIA. The gun was determined early when CIA still intended to send it to Cuba. The Cuban situation probably changed and the Carcano plan was dropped but the framing was already underway so they stuck with it. They had an isolated Italian gun supply they could manipulate with special ammunition that was under CIA control.


If Oswald was framed with the Carcano on the night of the assassination this framing had two phases. The first is the isolation of the framing rifle from the warehouse early on. The second phase is the FBI forging of the paper trail as recently described on the Education Forum.