Werndl M1867 Cavalry Carbine

About the Werndl M1867 Cavalry Carbine

The Werndl M1867 Cavalry Carbine is the short, light mounted-troop version of Josef Werndl's single-shot breech-loading black-powder service arm, adopted by the Austro-Hungarian army in 1867. Like the infantry rifle it uses the distinctive rotating drum ('crane') breechblock thrown open by a thumb lever and fired by an external hammer, but it has a 566mm barrel, no barrel bands, a compact walnut stock and a ladder sight graduated to 600 Schritt, firing the shorter, reduced-charge 11mm M.67 carbine cartridge. It armed dragoon, hussar and uhlan regiments until the 1877 conversion program and the arrival of Fruwirth and Mannlicher repeaters.

Werndl marked his carbine receivers 'WERNDL' on the earliest guns, but after his firm reorganised as the Österreichische Waffenfabriks-Gesellschaft in 1869 the stamp changed to 'OEWG' — the same Steyr works that would go on to build the Mannlicher rifles that replaced it.

Werndl M1867 Cavalry Carbine specifications

Roughly 11,000 M1867 Werndl carbines of all sub-patterns (cavalry carbine and Extra-Korps short rifle) were produced 1867–1874; the cavalry carbine is distinguished from the near-identical Extra-Korps pattern by its lower sling swivel mounted ahead of the trigger guard rather than on the buttstock. Many were later reworked in the 1877 program.