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The easier way to do so was to tape magazines together, side-by side, to make reloads as quick as possible. Since the capacity of a single box magazine is limited by practical considerations, some designers attempted to mate two or more magazines into single units. However, even with much lighter pistol ammunition typical box magazine capacity for submachine guns varies between 30 and 35 rounds, with few 40-round aberrations listed through the history.Ī bottom view on the dual, sliding magazine housing of the Mp40/I submachine gun Twin box magazines

Box magazines for smaller and lighter intermediate cartridges also rarely exceed 30-round capacity, with 45 rounds being practical limit.įor pistol-caliber weapons, most notably submachine guns, practical magazine capacities grew as high as 50 rounds (mostly for some derivatives of the Bergman-Schmeisser MP.28 such as British Lanchester Mk.1). Some 40-round box magazines were designed for certain interwar light machine guns, but found little acceptance. In practice, box magazines for machine guns firing rifle cartridges are usually limited in capacity to 30 rounds – basically the same average capacity of modern-day assault rifle magazines. Practical capacity of box magazine is limited by several factors, including magazine spring strenght, magazine body length (if too long it may hinder the handling of the gun itself) and reliability requirements (the longer the magazine, the higher the internal friction and chances of its body being bending, denting or otherwise taking damages from rough handling). Normally, box magazine holds cartridges side by side, in single or double (staggered) rows.

Top-mounted, detachable box magazines also were used on the first rapid-firing manually-operated weapons such as Gatling or Nordenfeld. Earlier forms of box magazines were used on manually operated rifles including classic designs such as the Mosin 1891 (fixed, single stack magazine), the Mauser 1898 (fixed, double stack magazine) and the Lee-Enfield (detachable, double stack magazine).

The box magazine is one of the oldest cartridge feeding systems in history. A British-made Lanchester Mk.1 submachine gun, with its overly long 50-round box magazine Box magazines