Gewehr 98

The Gewehr 98 (abbreviated G98, Gew 98, or M98) is a bolt-action rifle made by Mauser for the German Empire as its service rifle from 1898 to 1935.

The Gewehr 98 action, using a 5-round stripper clip loaded with the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge, successfully combined and improved several bolt-action engineering concepts which were soon adopted by many other countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, and Japan. The Gewehr 98 replaced the earlier Gewehr 1888 as the main German service rifle. It first saw combat in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and was the main German infantry service rifle of World War I. The Gewehr 98 saw further military use by the Ottoman Empire and Nationalist Spain.

It was eventually replaced by the Karabiner 98k, a carbine version using the same design, for the Wehrmacht under Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945.

The Gewehr 98 was introduced into German military service in 1898, replacing the Gewehr 1888. The bolt-action design was the latest refinement of the 1895 design patented by Paul Mauser on 9 September 1895. Mauser was already selling the similar Mauser Model 1895 to many other countries and had supplied less advanced Mauser rifles to the German Army from 1871 to 1888. The 1888 replacement for the Mauser was an internal design from the army but failed through an impractical design. In the interim decade, Mauser rifles became recognized as the world standard, and the German Army became outclassed by a German-made product in the hands of others.

The German Gewehr-Prüfungskommission (G.P.K.) (rifle testing commission) adopted the Gewehr 98 on 5 April 1898. The action was derived from the experimental Gewehr 96 rifle. In 1901, the first troop issues of the Gewehr 98 rifles were made to the East Asian Expeditionary Force, the Imperial German Navy, and three premier Prussian army corps. The first combat use of the Gewehr 98 was during the Boxer Rebellion (1898–1901). In 1904, contracts were placed with Waffenfabrik Mauser for 290,000 rifles and Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) for 210,000 rifles. At the outbreak of WWI in 1914, the German Army had 2,273,080 Mauser 98-rifles of all types; an additional 7,000,000 were produced during the war.

The 8 mm M/88 cartridge which was introduced in 1888 and loaded with an 8.08 mm (.318 in) 14.6 g (226 gr) round-nose bullet was replaced on 3 April 1903, by the 7.92×57mm Mauser S Patrone (S ball cartridge) which was loaded with a new 8.20 mm (.323 in) 9.9 g (154 gr) spitzer bullet. The ammunition conversion was indicated by a small S stamped above the chamber and on the barrel at the back of the rear sight base. This was done since the 1888 pattern M/88 cartridge and 1903 S-bore pattern cartridge are two different non-interchangeable chamberings. Since the new IS bullet had a flatter trajectory the Lange Visier rear sight had to be changed with an "S"-adapted Lange Visier.

The Gewehr 98 or model 98 (M98) rifle is a manually operated, magazine-fed, controlled-feed bolt-action rifle, 1,250 mm (49 in) in length and 4.09 kg (9.0 lb) in weight. It has a 740 mm (29 in) long rifled barrel and carries 5 rounds of ammunition in an internal magazine. The Gewehr 98 has two sling swivels, open front sights, and a curved tangent-type rear sight, known as the Lange Visier.

The controlled-feed bolt-action of the Gewehr 98 is a distinct feature and is regarded as one of the major bolt-action system designs.