January 17th, 2023
7minute read
Gefreiter Hans Fleischer had been at war for two years now.
He could remember little else.
Fleischer had felt the exultant rush of Barbarossa before enduring the grinding defeats that followed.
The M1895 Nagant revolver served the soldiers of Russia in two World Wars, a revolution and many other conflicts. It is also one of the more unusual wheelguns to see widespread use.
With Operation Citadel he had hoped their fortunes might turn.
The Bolsheviks fought like animals, and they were dug in too deep.
Gefreiter Fleischer served with the most revered Panzergrenadier division in the Wehrmacht.
A Soviet officer leads troops against German soldiers in 1944. He is carrying the M1895 revolver. Image: Armor Plate Press
At this moment, however, the Grossdeustchland was spending itself on the Soviets simply breathtaking defenses.
The blood spilled this day could never be replaced.
Fleischer rounded the next corner and ran headlong into a clot of brown uniforms and indexed his storm gun.
This assault trooper is ready to take on the invaders. In addition to his SMG and grenades, he is armed with a Nagant revolver. Image: Courtesy of author
Then everything went black.
Fleischer awoke in a field hospital.
When finally he could think, he asked what had happened.
Soviet troops wearing the iconic Budyonny cap (the “Budenovka”) while charging across a field. The officer in the center carries the M1895 Nagant revolver. Image: NARA
They explained that he had been stitched up the left arm with a Russian burp gun.
They had done the best they could, but the arm was gone.
Hans Fleischers war was over.
The M1895 Nagant revolver killed untold numbers in the hands of the KGB and other Soviet security officers. Image: Armor Plate Press
Inside he found a bloodstained Russian pistol.
They explained that his comrades had taken the gun from the man who had shot him.
They made them promise it would not be stolen.
The M1895 Nagant revolver was a 19th-century design with some quirky mechanical attributes.
When he was able, he cleaned the gun as best he could and stowed it among his things.
Now-civilian Hans Fleischer recovered in time and began work in a plant building FW 190 fighter planes.
Fleischer supervised the line making landing gear actuators and was forever ahead of his quota.
Loading the M1895 Nagant revolver was accomplished by feeding one cartridge at a time via a pivoting gate on the side.
The captured Russian pistol resided in a wooden box in his closet at home.
Like all wars, this one did eventually end.
As fate would have it Hans Fleischers home fell in the American sector.
NKVD troops training with the M1895 Nagant during WWII. The NKVD was the secret police used by the Soviet Union for political repression, including forced labor camps and mass executions. Image: Courtesy of author
The Yankees enforced their own rules, but they were generally fair.
They did not vent their frustrations on the civilian population as did the Soviets.
Among those rules was a prohibition against private firearms ownership on penalty of death.
The M1895 Nagant’s telescoping ammo was delightfully weird. It was also greatly underpowered compared to modern revolvers.
They remained respectful and did not loot his personal things, but they were thorough.
Soon a young American Sergeant was studying the ugly Russian revolver.
His eyes met those of Hans Fleischer.
At seven meters fired from a simple rest, this ancient old revolver shot fairly straight. The best 4 out of 5 made a 2.5″ group.
Both men knew what this meant.
He figured there would be little good to come from executing a one-armed Kraut over such as this.
Origin Story
The M1895 Nagant revolver was a unique design.
A German SS trooper with a captured Nagant revolver tucked in his belt during the Russian campaign in early 1942. Image: NARA
Initial production began in Liege, Belgium.
However, the operation soon moved to the Tula Arsenal in Russia.
The Tula facility typically turned out around 20,000 copies per year.
Prior to 1918, the M1895 was produced in both officer and enlisted versions.
The officers model was both single and double action, while the enlisted version was single action only.
Technical Details
The M1895 Nagant revolver is a truly bizarre design.
Apparently, the Nagant brothers were deeply offended by the cylinder gap intrinsic to revolvers.
Never mind that countless hundreds of thousands of wheelguns that did just fine sporting this minuscule gap.
The Nagants were determined to engineer a solution.
The end result was a unique pistol firing a unique round.
The 7.62x38mm Rimmed cartridge sports a case that telescopes up and around the flat-faced bullet.
The case mouth is crimped slightly to secure the bullet in place.
This forward movement of the cylinder necessitated a ridiculously long firing pin mounted on the hammer.
The rest of the gun is fairly uninspired.
The double-action trigger pull is an atrocious 12 to 20 pounds or so.
The M1895 cylinder holds seven of these weird flat-nosed little rounds.
Once the gun is dry you could pivot the ejection pin back into place for storage.
M1895 Performance
Ruminations
This particular example has some garish splotchy finish loss.
If this gun could talk, I suspect it would tell a compelling tale.
Ammo for the M1895 is strange and expensive, but I burned a bit for this project.
Recoil is trivial, and the gun hits where its pointed.
This gun was a serendipitous auction find.
In addition to the finish issues, the big beak firing pin in the hammer was broken off.
In so doing he helped me resurrect a WWII-vintage Russian pistol whose original owner likely died clutching it.
Its indeed a weird old world sometimes.
