Thursday, September 04, 2008

K11 and K31 Swiss rifles

Swissrifles.com has a lot of information, history, use and handloading, on the K31 and other Swiss rifles. They’ve got a translation of the user manual for the K31 and K11(pdf file), tech info, takedown/reassembly, ammo types and id, “Do not do this with your rifle”* list and so forth. Including this chart on figuring lead on a moving target:


And this list of training objectives:


And here are the targets:
The 300 meter targets are 55cm high by 45 wide for the head/shoulders, 165 by 45 for the full-body. That works out to about 65” by 18” and 21.5” by 18”.

The story is that before WWII broke out, one of Hitler’s staff, Himmler I think, was on a state visit to Switzerland. Reviewing a unit drawn up for inspection, he asked his escort how many troops the Swiss could muster.
“About 500,000, sir.”
“What would you do if we invaded with one million troops?”
“Each of us would have to shoot twice, sir.”

If it’s not true, it ought to be


*The sad thing is you have to figure people actually did some of these things to cause them to be listed as a “Don’t do that with your rifle, dumbass!” list.

5 comments:

Mattexian said...

Ya might want to go and change where the link points to, from www.swissrifles.com to just swissrifles.com

Anonymous said...

You can bet your ass that there are people who did stupid sh*t with their rifles, hence the list. Much like the list of what not to vacuum up with your vacuum. For instance: Hair. Don't vacuum up hair while it is still attached to your head. Thank God for these lists, we would surely be lost without them.

Anonymous said...

Where is that list, anyway? I've been all over the site (I thought) but can't find that one.

Firehand said...

At the left, on the sidebar is a line 'Schmidt-Rubins & K31s; pointer on it opens up a drop-down with 'Manuals', which leads to K11 & K31 Manual.

I'd overlooked the thing in the past myself, somehow.

Anonymous said...

My favorites are "avoid damaging your rifle stock" which shows the boot with the claws stepping on the rifle, and "the butt is not a sledgehammer" which shows a rifle with a broken stock resting on what is probably a huge wooden stake. The picture of the soldier with two rifles slung over his shoulder together is also good.
Something damaged all those rifle butts. There are no beavers in Switzerland (at least not the dam-building kind).