Why were bolt-actions that used a rotating bolt so much more popular than straight-pull bolt-action designs as service rifles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

by Cordite12

Pretty much everyone adopted a rifle with a rotating bolt when they switched to clip fed smokeless powder/propellant service rifles exept for Austria-Hungary with the Mannlicher rifle.

bjuandy

Cost. Straight-pull rifles required more precise and expensive machining in contrast to rotating bolts. This creates scalability problems when it comes to arming your soldiers and expanding production in war time. Meanwhile, the advantage gained from straight-pull is comparably small. Most nations found it advantageous to have a rifle that was easier and cheaper to make than a slightly better, more costly and complicated one.

Slampumpthejam

A quick point on nomenclature, what you're calling a "rotating bolt" is usually called a "turn bolt" design because "rotating bolt" refers to the locking mechanism. For example a very popular straight pull design the Steyr M95 locks using a tilting bolt mechanism. A rotating bolt would be like an Mauser or AR, the locking lugs of the bolt rotate into machined recesses to secure for firing.

Bodark43

Smokeless powder and higher pressures did not end the use of straight-pull rifles. The innovative Lee Navy used a high-velocity small-caliber cartridge that was quite ahead of its time.

But if you compare someone shooting a British SMLE in a "mad minute", and a Swiss Schmidt-Rubin in rapid-fire ( at about 1:58) you'll see there's really not much difference in how fast they can shoot. And the SMLE, as Slampumpthejam indicates, was cheaper to make.