Mondragon Rifle

The Mondragon rifle is a family of firearms designed by Mexican general Manuel Mondragon, encompassing earlier straight-pull bolt-action models of 1893 and 1894 and the self-loading M1908, Mexico's first self-loading rifle and the first such rifle of any nation to see combat. Mondragon began the design in 1891 and held several patents on it by 1907; the Mexican Army adopted the M1908 in 1908 as the Fusil Porfirio Diaz Sistema Mondragon Modelo 1908, and it was carried in action during the Mexican Revolution from around 1910. During the First World War, Germany bought the remaining M1908 stock from the Swiss manufacturer SIG; the German Army found the rifle unreliable in trench conditions, but the Imperial German Flying Corps issued it to aircrew as the Fl.-S.-K. 15, two rifles with thirty-round drum magazines per crew, until synchronization gear allowed forward-firing machine guns instead.