Military Airguns in History

[Oleander Ardens]

I'am a regular shooter of airguns, train at least twice a week and simply like them a lot. As a kid my brother and I used it as our father to snipe birds and small mammals. I just discovered now that they were also used by some of the sharpshooters of my region, Tyrol in the 18th century and that Giradoni of Ampezzo invented a stunning beauty, capable of delivering 20 aimed shots in a minute deadly until 150 yards...

After this it was deemed wise to take back the airguns and issue them only to select, specially trained Tyrolean sharpshooter units. The last order given by the Emperor prior to his death was “to select the most promising and skilful soldiers to use these guns.” Because of extensive service work, and most importantly, the lack of Emperor Joseph’s interest and involvement, the airguns still had not been issued on December 16, 1792. However, the Tyrol Sharp Shooter Corps indicated “that these weapons were really accurate and effective” in the Turkish War and in 1790 against Prussia. (Contrary to many accounts, they never saw service against any of Napoleon's troops.) The air rifles were later supplied only with the wheeled and short hand pumps behind the lines – the idea being that captured airguns would not be very useful without the pumps!

From: http://www.beemans.net/images/Austrian%20airguns.htm

Great site that is!!!

[Oleander Ardens]

Amazing, amazing!! Go to www.beeman.net to look how it worked...

I will just sum up the facts of the Girandoni Windbix as a Tyrolean would have called it:

+ high accuracy due to consistent airpressure and rifled barrel
+ high rate of fire thanks to a gravity-fed magazine with 22 leaden musketballs with a diameter of 13mm and high-charged fast replacable air-reservoirs
+ deadly to around 150 meters
+ no smoke
+ moderate sound
+ lethality similar or better than modern 9mm

- expensive
- difficult to handle for the standard soldier
- prone to defects
- very different from the standard weapos


Cheers
OA

[Del Arroyo]

Crazy stuff, never heard of that before. You'd think they would have found some use for them with special troops, for ambushes and hit and run maybe.

[Julian the apostate]

i remember louis and clark brought a really powerful one with them

[Ibn Munqidh]

What idiot would use an airgun as a military weapon? US marine snipers are already complaining that their 5.56's are too light...

[Oleander Ardens]

Yeah, incredible stuff...

As I quoted their high price tag and the difficulty to support and to maintain them restricted them to the Tyrolean Sharpshooter Corps. They praised the weapon but it still got replaced by their standard sharpshooter rifle, a accurate Stutzen.

Cheers
OA

[Julian the apostate]

Marines have their special little overkill though
albiet i believe we had to refuse to sign the stockholm treaty to get it in use. yay 50. cal sniper rifles, 12.7 mm for the rest of yall