The Gewehr 41 (W) (G41) was a semi-automatic rifle developed by Germany during World War II. Two different versions of this weapon were made; the elusive Mauser design and the mass-produced Walther design. It was designed to improve the infantry’s combat efficiency by having a higher rate of fire than existing bolt-action rifles. This rifle used a gas-operated mechanism known as the Bang system, which captured propellant gases at the muzzle and used them to operate a piston that opened the breech and re-loaded the gun. However, the system proved extremely unreliable and complex, causing numerous malfunctions in combat conditions, and increasing its price. The G43 had a fixed 10-round magazine that was loaded using two stripper clips from the Karabiner 98k rifle, using the same 7.92×57mm Mauser rounds. Because of its unnecessary weight, the aforementioned reliability problems, high cost and clunkiness, it was not well-liked. Following the war, the Deutsches Heer made an attempt to sell all of these rifles to whoever would buy them, finding some desperate semi-automatic rifle buyers in Australia.