The First Officially Adopted Semi-Auto Military Rifle
No matter what else you might think of the nation to the immediate south of the United States, it's likely that Mexico isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of “cutting-edge military hardware.” But in 1908, Mexico did achieve one significant first in that arena, becoming the first nation in the world to design, build, and officially adopt a semi-automatic rifle for general issue in the military.
That rifle was the Mondragón, and its history is as interesting as it is unexpected.
The Design
Manuel Mondragón was a general in the Mexican Army and a pretty fair gun designer. His first design for the Mexican government were straight-pull bolt actions, the M1893 and M1894 rifles. The M1893 was chambered in Mondragón’s proprietary 6.5x48mm cartridge, with some examples, marked at the M1894, made for the 5.2x68mm Rubin round. It had a unique safety, with three positions: Safe, Normal, and Rapid. With the safety set at Rapid, one could slam-fire the gun by rapidly cycling the bolt without the necessity of a trigger pull. It may well have been this idea of increasing the rate of fire that explains what happened next.
In 1904, Mondragón filed a Mexican patent application for a new design, a semi-automatic military rifle. The patent was granted in 1907, and in 1908, it was adopted by the Mexican Army as the Fusil Porfirio Díaz Sistema Mondragón Modelo 1908. The Mexican government contracted with the Swiss firm Swiss Industry Group, or SIG (which later became half of SIG-Sauer), to manufacture 4,000 Model 1908 rifles chambered in the 7x57mm Mauser round. That was also the standard round for the M1893 and M1895 Mauser rifles that Mexico was using at the time, and for the time, it was very effective, powerful, and flat-shooting. The design worked well enough; it was a gas-operated, rotating-bolt action using a gas piston arrangement that was, at that time, a new idea. The Mondragón did have one unusual feature, and that was a switch on the charging handle that would disconnect the gas system, turning the rifle into a straight-pull bolt action. The reasons for this aren’t clear.
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The rifles weren’t cheap. Each one cost Mexico 160 Swiss francs, which comes out to about $5,500 in 2026 dollars. But they did see service in two conflicts, making them the first semi-automatic rifle to not only be adopted by a national military but also the first used in combat.
The Guns
In 1910, Mexico was plunged into revolution. While it’s not clear how many Mondragón rifles saw combat, it’s a certainty that at least some did. Some are known to have fallen into the hands of Pancho Villa’s forces, and some remained in the hands of regular Mexican soldiers.
There was just one problem: The Mondragón wasn’t very reliable, and in the end, that caused Mexico to drop the contract at 1,000 rifles delivered.
The main contract for the Mexican Army was placed in 1908, for 4,000 rifles in 7mm Mauser. Some of these, in an effort to ingratiate President Diaz, were marked “Fusil Porfirio Diaz, Systema Mondragon, Model 1908”. The first 400 were delivered in 1911, and it was found (as had been warned by SIG officials) that the guns had very little tolerance for poor-quality ammunition. Much to SIG’s dismay, the Mexican government decided to cancel the order after only 1,000 had been delivered, leaving SIG with 3,000 finicky rifles not paid for.
The rifle proved fussy about ammo, as many early semi-automatic pieces were, and Mexico’s quality control, where the production of ammo was concerned, was, shall we say, indifferent. What the rugged bolt-action Mausers could digest with aplomb gave the Mondragón rifles heartburn and caused great annoyance and displeasure to their users when they jammed up in action. So, Mexico opted out; they still had their Mausers.
But that wasn’t the end of General Mondragón’s brainchild. Only a few years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Great War broke out. That conflict saw the first use of aircraft, at first used in reconnaissance. Inevitably, though, the air crews started shooting at one another, and before machine guns were mounted on their aircraft, they used pistols and rifles.
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SIG went to the German military and quietly mentioned that they had 3,000 SIG-built Mondragón semi-automatic rifles that Mexico didn’t want. The German air corps bought them, calling them the Flieger-Selbstlader-Karabiner 15 (Self-Loading Aircraft Carbine, Model 1915).
They were, again, less than satisfactory.
For this purpose, the guns were equipped with a 30-round snail drum-type magazine. Significant maintenance was required to keep the rifles operational, and accuracy was reportedly poor. They were subsequently replaced by the more accurate but even less reliable Mauser Selbstlader 1916.
That was the end of the combat use of the Mondragón rifle. One still sees them pop up on auction sites now and then, but this groundbreaking arm has mostly faded into the mists of history.
Why Not?The Mondragón rifle may well have just been a couple of decades ahead of its time. Around 30 years after General Mondragón convinced the Mexican government to buy his semi-auto, another rifle, another semi-auto, would be adopted by the United States, and that rifle would change the face of warfare. That is, of course, the famous M1 Garand, which none other than George Patton praised effusively as the greatest-ever implement of warfare.
The choice of SIG to manufacture the Mondragón rifles would indicate that quality control wasn’t an issue; then, as now, SIG built fine weaponry. In Mexico, the uncertainties of inconsistent ammo doomed the Mondragón, but in German service? Germany, one would think, would have as reliable and consistent ammunition as anywhere on the planet. The Mondragón was heavy by modern standards, at 9.2 pounds, but the M1 weighs in at 9.5 pounds.
One factor may have been complexity. Forgotten Weapons describes how the action of the Mondragón rifle works:
Upon firing, gas engages the gas piston below the barrel pushing it back and compressing the mainspring. Instead of being directly connected to the bolt, the gas piston ends with a stub which acts on the bolt handle (which can be disengaged to render the gun manually operated). The bolt handle has lugs which engage the helical cams in the bolt body, so when retracted by the shooter of the gas system, it rotates and unlocks the bolt. In an effort seal gasses out of the receiver, the gas piston is fitted with a series of split rings.
That seems complex, especially when compared to the almost brutally simple Mausers that both Mexico and Germany were using at the time. But it’s not that much more complex than the Garand.
Whatever the reason for the demise of the Mondragón rifle, it still holds that distinction of being the first semi-automatic rifle adopted for general issue by the military of not one, but two nations, as well as being the first semi-automatic rifle used in combat.
Not famous, but first. That’s not the worst legacy.
