History
After gaining independence, the Polish Army was armed mainly with a mixture of Russian, Austrian and German rifles. French rifles also were brought to Poland by returning Blue Army soldiers. As a result, at the end of the Polish-Soviet War in 1921, the Polish army was armed with approximately 24 types of guns and 22 types of rifles, all firing different ammunition. Since such a combination of designs adversely affected training and logistics, work on one standard rifle was carried out starting in 1919. Initially, it was assumed that the Lebel would be adopted, but it was quickly rejected as an obsolete design. Later on, proposals for adoption as a standard rifle included the Mannlicher M1895 or Steyr M1912 Mauser. The situation changed when theTechnical overview
The wz.98a rifle is mechanically identical to the German Gewehr 98 rifle. It is a bolt-action repeating rifle, using a rotating bolt turned 90 degrees to lock or unlock. It has two locking lugs at the front of the bolt, with a safety lug at the rear. Ammunition was fed from a fixed double stack box magazine holding five rounds. The safety is mounted on the rear of the bolt assembly. The rifle was fitted with iron sights, a tapered front sight blade and a tangent-type rear sight with a V-shaped notch, graduated from 100 to 2000 meters in 100 meters increments. The rifle used the bayonets wz.22, wz.24, wz.25, wz.27, wz.28 or wz.29.Bibliography
* Zbigniew Nail, Piotr Zarzycki, the Polish construction arms, SIGMA NOT 1993. * Roman Matuszewski, Ireneusz J. Wojciechowski, TBiU no. 91 Mauser rifle wz. 1898, WMON 1983. * Instruction on infantry weapons, repeating rifle Mauser wz syst. 1898, Publisher Bookshop Military Min Spr. Prov 1928 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kb Wz. 98a Bolt-action rifles of Poland World War II infantry weapons of Poland 7.92×57mm Mauser rifles