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The earliest use of a similar term, known to this author, is dated back to the 1918-1920 timeframe, when noted US small arms designer Isaac Lewis designed a series of experimental automatic rifles which he called “Assault phase rifles”. These rifles fired standard US Army issue rifle ammunition of the period, the .30 M1906 (.30-06, 7.62x63mm), and were in direct competition with John Browning’sM1918 BAR automatic rifle. Both Lewis and Browning automatic rifles were designed to same concept of “Walking fire”, originated by the French in around 1915, and first implemented in the ill-fatedCSRG M1915 “Chauchat” machine rifle. This concept called for a man-portable automatic weapon with its primary use being to provide suppressive supporting fire for infantry during assaults on entrenched enemy positions. In fact, this concept called for THE “Assault” rifle, but its early implementations, such as CSRG M1915 and BAR M1918 mentioned before, or the RussianFedorov M1916, had some inherent flaws.

The major source of problems with these “first generation” “assault” rifles was its rifle ammunition. Designed during the late 19thand early 20thcentury, it was quite powerful, with a long range, necessary for suppressive long range volley fire; a standard and widespread infantry practice until the mass adoption of machine guns during WW1. This “extra power” resulted in significant recoil, as well as a noticeable weight of the ammunition and of the rifles that fired it, increasing manufacturing and logistic costs and making such automatic rifles harder to use in combat.

The most logical solution to this problem was to reduce the power of rifle ammunition to the level necessary for most (but not all) typical combat scenarios. Traditional rifle cartridges of the era had a “lethal range” well in excess of two kilometers; however, under combat conditions no one (well, almost no one, but more on this later) can expect an average soldier to be able to hit a man-sized target at ranges longer than 300-500 meters. Furthermore, decreasing the power of rifle ammunition has several benefits.These include: savings on raw materials, powder, logistic costs per round; increased combat load (in number of rounds carried) per soldier; decreased weight, size and cost of rifles; decreased recoil, which is conductive to increased accuracy; and a few others.

This concept was supported by practical experience gained during the Great War with the French-issued US-made Winchester M1907 self-loading rifles. These handy carbines were initially bought from the USA by the French army to arm aircraft observers, but machine guns soon replaced rifles in this role. On the other hand, compact and handy carbines that fired a good “stopper” cartridge (.351 WSL, also known as 9x35SR, with round-nosed bullets) were excellent weapons for close combat on battlefield.Fitted with extended magazines (15- or 20-round capacity), bayonet mount, and, in some cases, converted to fire in full-auto, these little rifles became progenitors of the modern “assault rifle” concept, which is, in basic terms, an automatic carbine firing reduced-power ammunition. This reduced-power ammunition is also known as intermediate power ammunition (or simply “intermediate cartridges”), as it is less powerful than standard military rifle ammo but more powerful than typical handgun ammo.

As early as 1918, several countries began to work along the lines of this “reduced power” concept, including France and the USA. The French attempt was the Ribeyrolles M1918 automatic carbine which fired specially designed 8x35SR ammo, based on the .351WSL cartridge but modified to accept standard 8mm Lebel pointed military bullets. The American attempt, known as the Winchester-Burton machine rifle, also used a cartridge based on the .351WSL. This purpose-designed round was called .345WMR (Winchester Machine Rifle), and used a pointed bullet of approximately 9mm caliber.During the early 1920s, Switzerland and Italy joined the club of “intermediate power” developers, producing their own cartridges and automatic or semi-automatic weapons to fire them. By mid-1930s several other countries (e.g. Denmark and Germany) attempted to develop their own versions of intermediate power cartridges and automatic weapons to fire them, but none was ever adopted.

Despite all these reasons not to adopt reduced power automatic rifles, military experts and industry engineers kept working on the new concept. Among these were the Germans, who took the intermediate cartridge route in 1935. By 1940 the Department of Armaments, German Army (Heereswaffenamt, or HWaA in short), had settled on the 7.92x33 intermediate power rifle cartridge, developed by the Polte company.From the performance point of view, the nominal caliber of 7.9mm was inferior to the originally proposed 7mm caliber, but 7.9mm was chosen for its manufacturing benefits, as new barrels, cases and bullets could be made on existing machinery, originally used to produce barrels and ammunition for standard infantry 7.92x57 Mauser cartridge.