Even the all new 7.35mm M38 short rifle was to rely on hand-me-downs. Carbines were made by simply cutting long rifles' barrels from 31' to 17' with complete disregard to what cutting off the tightest part of the progressive twist rifling would do to the carbines' accuracy. In WWI, they solved the M91 rifle shortage with a bizarre adaptation of obselete 10.35mm rifles to 6.5mm calibre. It is interesting to see how they solved these problems. That being said, let us continue.Īs I was able to show in my last post, the Italians seemed to have a knack for getting themselves into bad supply situations. I am going to try to answer these questions but I would like it understood that a lot of what I am going to say is assumption and, without access to vast stocks of M91/38 short rifles, impossible to prove. Production of the 6.5mm M91/38 short rifle (Oswald's alleged rifle) did not start until 1940, and ended at the end of 1940! What happened? Can anyone find another military rifle with such a short production history? What was so wrong with the 6.5mm M91/38 (the very rifle that Oswald supposedly assassinated JFK with) that it was replaced after only ONE YEAR of production?

This may all be a bit hard to follow but think of it this way: the new M38 short rifle in 7.35mm calibre was produced from 1938 to 1940. The M91/41 was slightly shorter than the M91 long rifle with a 27' barrel as opposed to the M91's 31' barrel (the M91/38 short rifle had a 22' barrel). Coincidentally, Italy introduced a new long rifle in 1941, the M91/41, and this was the only rifle, aside from carbine versions of the M91/38, produced until the end of the war. Production records for all four Italian small arms factories show that no M91/38 short rifles were made after 1940, except for a handful made at the Turin factory in the early months of 1941.

The 6.5mm M91/38 short rifle was only produced in 1940. Now, here is something very interesting that happened in 1941. They had ample stores of 6.5mm cartridges although it was old ammunition by this time. As we saw before, poor planning for war and resulting shortages of 7.35mm cartridges forced them to abandon the 7.35mm cartridge in 1940 and to fit their new short rifles with the old 6.5mm cartridge, re-designating the M38 as the M91/38. This was a progressive move, as the short rifle was far easier to carry and manage than the long rifle and the new cartridge had ballistic properties giving it far more killing power than the 6.5mm cartridge. They were replacing their 6.5mm M91 long rifles with the 7.35mm M38 short rifle. The Italians had brought out an all new rifle with an all new cartridge.

Carcano serial number lookup