[ Lebel Sniper (Model 1916) ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
James D. Julia Auction House up in Maine
taking a look at some of the guns they're going to be
selling in their upcoming spring of 2018 Firearms Auction.
And today we're looking at a very rare example here
of a French World War One sniper rifle.
Unlike the Germans and the British, the French never really developed a formal
major program for snipers during the First World War.
And really I think it's easy to say that was a substantial oversight on their part.
Sniper programs for the British and for the Germans, and for the Americans as well,
became a fairly important integral part of trench warfare.
And it's something that the French armed forces just really never adopted.
Now they did develop several different iterations of scoped rifles,
both Lebel rifles like this one, and also 1907/15 Berthier rifles.
I will point out however, the Berthier snipers after World War One
were all decommissioned back into standard infantry rifles.
So virtually none of them survived, even in museums today.
The Lebels are ... extremely rare, but a few do still turn up from time to time.
Now while there was no formal sniping school or system,
like I said, they did develop a few different versions of sniping rifles.
A program went into development in 1915, and what we have here is a Model of 1916 rifle and scope.
And with each different change they modified the scopes,
and they also had a couple of different iterations of mounting assemblies
for actually putting these things on rifles.
Unlike some of the other powers, the French sniper rifles were just totally stock Lebels
that had scope mounts and scopes added to them.
So as far as I can tell there wasn't even any real accuracy standard for the guns.
Although the Lebel was renowned as a quite accurate rifle to begin with,
so they may not have seen the need.
Scoped Lebel rifles like this were manufactured
(or assembled really, they mounted scopes and mounts on standard rifles),
by all three of the major French Arsenals, Saint-Étienne, Châtellerault and Tulle.
And they were issued out to units, albeit in fairly small numbers,
two per company or even two per battalion.
Now there was no overarching ... doctrine or strategy to go with these rifles,
and it was left up to the small unit commanders to decide how best to employ them.
And so for that reason the French ... never had a unified sniper program.
And it appears that a lot of these may even never have been used,
or certainly weren't put into any sort of dedicated, organised sniper use.
It's also worth pointing out that some of the French sharpshooters
did in fact just use iron sights, the Lebel was a particularly accurate rifle.
And the RSC 1917 semi-automatic rifles, when they came into the field,
were issued out to particularly skilled troops and would have been used,
... among other things, for sharpshooting with iron sights.
Anyway, as you can see here, and as with many other World War One sniper rifles,
the scope is offset to the left side of the action.
And that's because the bolt still rotates directly up in order to cycle,
so if the scope were directly over the bore, you wouldn't be able to cycle the rifle.
They never made any attempt to issue bent bolt handles to accommodate that.
The scope mount itself is kind of a cool one.
Again, as with most sniper rifles of World War One, the scope is detachable.
These were issued with carrying cases of a variety of different styles.
And someone who had this rifle would carry the scope separately detached
on their belt to protect it from the elements.
And in order to detach this, we're going to push this button in,
and then the whole thing rotates on this mounting peg.
So I can push that in, and then this lifts up,
it rotates all the way vertical, and the scope comes off.
You can see it has these two lugs on the mounting point
that match up with that receptacle.
So we can put it on like this, push it down a bit, and then it just rotates into place.
This catch is on a pretty hefty flat spring here.
And this actually makes for a very solid lock up.
There really is no wobble at all in the scope once it's mounted,
which is pretty cool, you can't say that for all of the World War One mounting designs.
Now the very first Lebel sniper mounting system was actually a plate on the side of the rifle
that was held in place by a screw up here, and by this screw down at the back.
The 1916 version improved that to this collar, which basically wraps
all the way around the action. You can see it's held in place by a screw there.
And then there is the front lug, which wraps around the bottom of the barrel,
comes up on this side and is also screwed into place.
That's a pretty stable mounting point.
They did however improve this again in 1917,
going to a rail that was actually attached by, I think, 5 flush-mounted
countersunk screws in the side of the receiver, and that was the last pattern.
They would improve the scope again in 1921, but the '21, and the '17 scope mounts are the same.
Speaking of the scope, it is a 3x power magnification optic.
It has a simple crosshair reticle.
It has a BDC on it here.
That allows you to set your elevation from 100 out to 800 metres.
We have a few markings on the back here, A.PX. Model of 1916, and a serial number, 67602.
These scopes were actually developed from Puteaux (that's APX),
the Puteaux Arsenal's scope for the 37mm infantry gun.
They pretty much had that in the works already,
and it was something they were able to adapt to a rifle.
There was some small use of commercial scopes by the French, including Winchester A5s,
but the military standard were the APX scopes, Model of 1915, '16, '17, and 1921 after the war.
There is also adjustable focus up here on the scope body.
Overall, the APX 1916 was pretty much on par
with the other scopes that were being used on sniper rifles during this time period.
Which is to say not great, but about as good as could be expected for the technology 100 years ago.
And as with so many original World War One scopes, this one's pretty cloudy today.
You'll notice that the mounting ring, which is permanently attached to the scope body,
is also numbered to match the scope itself.
Now this scope has a really cool provenance to it,
namely that it came home with an American servicemen after World War One.
These scopes are really rare to find anywhere, including the US.
And this one actually still has the newspaper that it was wrapped up in when it came home,
which is apparently a 1919 copy of Stars and Stripes.
Unfortunately, the rifle is not the original rifle that this scope was mounted on.
You can see the "N" marking here on the receiver and barrel,
which indicates that ... the chamber has been recut for balle 1932.
Which is something that, as the name implies, was done in the 1930s.
So this rifle was still in France in the '30s, and it came [into the US] later,
and someone has assembled an original scope onto it.
Now there's nothing mechanically different about this
than there would be with an original Lebel sniper.
As I said, the rifles that were used for the French sniping program were just
straight off the rack, randomly selected Lebels that had these scope mounts attached to them,
and were then issued out to the field.
You can see that is a very solid, nice lock up.
Very few of these of course survive to this day.
And it's really cool to have one, the scope in particular,
with the provenance going back to World War One and coming home with a US soldier.
That's how a lot of this sort of stuff ended up in the United States.
So, if you're interested in having this rifle yourself,
make sure to check the description text below.
You'll find a link there to James Julia's catalogue page on this rifle,
where you can find their pictures, their description, their value estimation.
And everything else you would need to place a bid
right through their website online and hopefully win it yourself.
Thanks for watching.