Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at an absolutely beautiful World War Two sniper rifle.
This is a British Number 4 Mark I (T) sniper rifle.
The (T) designates it as a telescopic rifle, you'll see that
nomenclature in their earlier sniper rifles from 1918 as well.
Now this particular one is of course built on the
Number 4 Mark I rifle, that should be pretty obvious.
What's interesting, just to begin with, is the British knew
that they were going to want a sniper rifle built on this
platform before they had even actually put the Number 4 Mark I rifle into production.
So the first batch of these sniper rifles were actually built on
what were basically the leftover field trials rifles from the Number 4 adoption program.
These rifles were still sitting around at Enfield, and in 1940
when they decided to start doing the testing to make this a formal sniper rifle,
they just went and grabbed those rifles and built them up in this configuration. And to this day
you can actually still occasionally and theoretically (they are out there, but they're very scarce),
you can still find original trials Number 4 rifles built into snipers like this.
One of the cool things about the British military's habit of continuously reusing and updating guns
is that sometimes you get something that's in a modern configuration,
but you can trace directly back to something really interestingly old.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
... When these ... actually went into production, they were not built as sniper rifles straight from the factory.
What they did instead was they took Number 4 Mark I rifles out of regular stock,
guns that had shown particularly good accuracy. And those guns were then sent to Holland & Holland,
the famous British gun makers, where they were configured like this.
So scope mounting blocks were installed, the stock was fitted with this cheek riser,
and everything was set up this way.
So there are a number of modifications and markings to these guns that ... were put on during that conversion process.
And I have to say ... this is a fairly easy style of rifle to try and make a fake of,
to make counterfeits or reproductions, depending on how you want to term them.
And finding one that is in pristine, original, undeniable, correct pattern is actually fairly difficult.
Because again, a lot of these went through retrofit and rebuild, and so they may have changed form over the decades.
This particular one is, as far as I can tell, perfect.
By the way, this rifle came from the collection of Allan Cors, if you're interested in its provenance.
That definitely gives it some sway in the collecting community. He had really good taste in firearms,
and it should not be surprising that he would have an absolutely immaculate Number 4 Mark I (T).
Anyway, let's go ahead and take a look at how you can authenticate these,
and what they actually did to make these rifles.
And then we'll come back and talk about how they were used, and what they're actually capable of.
Let's start by looking at what they did mechanically, and then we'll look at the markings and the authentication.
So of course, we have a telescopic sight mounted on here.
It was the Number 32 scope. The scope interestingly was actually originally designed for use on the Bren gun.
Never actually was applied to the Bren gun, but they had that scope around
and they decided it would make a dandy sniper rifle scope.
So it's 3x power magnification, it has a 9 degree field of view.
This particular one, as you can see, is a Mark 3.
However, when they started they were using the Mark 1 version of the scope, that was of course in February of '42.
They introduced a Mark 2 in April of 1943, and then this, the Mark 3, was introduced in October of 1944.
Unlike many other ... military sniper rifles of World War One and World War Two,
this does have both windage and elevation adjustments built into the actual reticle,
built into the scope. So you're not adjusting the base at all.
These are two minute of angle clicks for both elevation and windage.
And the scope is centred on the bore line. So again, unlike many other sniper rifles,
it does not have an offset scope. That does mean you can't use stripper clips to load it.
However, you can take the magazine out and load the magazine manually because it is a detachable mag,
or you can just load the rifle one round at a time.
I think the issue of requiring stripper clips in a sniper rifle in a World War One or World War Two context
is not really particularly important. And obviously the British agreed.
In order to actually put the scope on the rifle, two base pads were mounted by Holland & Holland here and here.
And the scope is actually attached by two hand tightened screws, so we can go ahead and take this off.
These came with a scope case, so you could protect the scope when you weren't actually out using it.
There we go, so that's the scope and its mount.
And then these two pads, mounting points, were added to the receiver of the rifle.
You'll notice the battle sight on the iron sights has been ground off. That's to allow clearance for the optic to come back here.
And a cheek ... riser was added so that when you stick your face on the rifle
your face is actually lifted high enough to get a nice clean picture through the scope.
This is something that is weirdly absent on a lot of other World War One and World War Two military sniper rifles.
I'm not sure why people didn't do it, but it really makes a big difference in shootability.
So kudos to the British for actually doing that.
And then one other kind of less important modification was the addition of this specialty sling swivel.
This is intended for use with a special shooting sling, and that was added specifically to the sniper rifles.
Receiver socket here, we've got a whole bunch of information there.
So, we have 1944, which is the production date. We have (it's a little hard to see on this one), but it says
M47C right up here. And that is the manufacturer's code for BSA who actually produced the rifle.
We have a serial number R35125 there, and then perhaps most important for us right now is this TR.
That is a stamp that was added before the guns were converted to be sniper rifles, and that stamp indicates
that this rifle shows good enough accuracy to be considered for conversion into a sniper.
So you should find that on all sniper conversions.
Holland & Holland, as part of their conversion process, added the cheek pads and then refitted the stocks to the guns.
And they added a marking here on the bottom of the stock.
That is S51, so that should also be visible on the guns.
And then when the whole process was finished and the rifle was approved and good to go out the door ready for service,
an inspector stamp was added just here next to the ejector screw and that's a T.
So that's another marking that should be on any legitimate, authentic Number 4 sniper.
With any sniper rifle with a detachable scope, you're obviously going to want some way to
make sure that you don't get the scopes mixed up. Because of course these bases and scopes are
zeroed to specific guns and you don't want to lose that if there's a way not to.
So, you'll find these all numbered in a specific way.
The base is marked with the serial number of the rifle, so this is the same number that we just saw on the ... receiver socket.
And then the rings are also numbered. So the bottom half of the ring is actually an integral part of the base.
So we know this is already connected to our rifle serial number.
And then the two rings will have sequential numbers. That seems to be a weird way to do it,
but I suppose it keeps the rear one and the front one specific and separated.
So in this case we have A34 and A35, but those numbers will be different on every rifle,
and they don't have any particular bearing to anything else. What's important here is that they match.
So you have A34 on the top part of the ring matching A34 on the bottom, and the same with 35.
Then there's also a backup system. The scope has its own serial number, every one of them is different of course.
So 24571.
They went ahead and marked that on the top of the stock of the rifle, so 24571.
That's not matching the rifle's serial number, and it's easy to make the assumption that it should be
and think that this would be a mismatched stock. But no, that's the scope's serial number.
Down here you have the rifle's serial number, and they're not the same.
For comparison's sake we have here a Mark 1, a Mark 2 and a Mark 3 scope.
And so you can see a few things changed on the outside.
The really visible difference is when they went from 2 to 3 the adjustment boxes kind of changed a bit.
But beyond that, there's not a lot of external difference between any of these.
Mostly what they were doing is refining the scopes internally to make them more durable,
as well as also being less expensive to produce, but primarily to make them more durable.
One thing I do want to correct. I think I said earlier they were 2 minute of angle clicks.
That was actually on the Mark 1, it has a 2 minute of angle windage adjustment.
On the Marks 2 & 3 they did change that to 1 minute of angle for the adjustments.
And then the elevation is not in minutes at all, ... it's a bullet drop compensator.
So it's a range adjustment with 50 yard increments, from 0 out to 1,000 yards.
I also want to point out a couple changes that were made on this one, or updates to it.
This blue painted B is for blooming. And that was a modification,
... it's not exactly clear what the change was technically,
but it was done to improve light transmission in the scopes for low-light conditions.
And then this is also marked with a red painted W, which means that
the scope was also treated after production to make it more waterproof.
That was one of the problems with these is they tended to have problems with moisture getting into them and fogging them.
And so the British made an effort ... during and after the war to improve the waterproof qualities of these scopes,
because they would go on to use them for quite some time after the war.
Go ahead and put the scope back on now. Note that the front mount is just a ... threaded hole.
The rear mount has this sort of three-sided, trapezoidal block,
and what that does is pull the scope in and centre it exactly so that it returns to zero every time.
Also notice that instead of lock washers these scope mounting screws actually have little springs,
flat wire springs, in there to prevent them from coming loose, so.
... This is one of those things that you don't need to over- tighten, like put it on, you get it nice and ... finger tight.
But ... you do not want to go out there and like get a set of vice grips and try and crank these all the way down.
It's not gonna help anything, it will in fact hurt things.
So finger tight is fine, the scope's zeroed, it'll return to zero, you're good to go.
Specific numbers are a little bit hard to nail down, but production of these was somewhere between
about 23,000 and about 26,000 during World War Two.
So a lot of them would go on in British service long after the war.
In fact the L42A1 snipers that were eventually built in 7.62 NATO were all actually converted from these guns.
So they would have ... a long life in the British Army in many forms.
Really, this is overall a fantastic sniper rifle of World War Two.
Perhaps the only real downside to it is its weight, these come in at 11 pounds eight ounces, that's 5.3 kilos.
So they are a bit of a hefty rifle, that scope is big and heavy, the mount has a lot of metal in it.
But I think there are a lot of guys who were perfectly happy to carry the weight
because of the reliability and the accuracy and just the overall
shootability of these rifles compared to a lot of their contemporaries.
So these were officially introduced in February of 1942. And they were actually, in theory, deployed to the North African campaign.
However, the fighting in North Africa didn't really lend itself to sniper rifle usage,
and they really didn't see any practical application until the invasion of Italy in 1943.
And that's when you would see them actually really put into use and and utilised.
... Production would continue until the end of the war,
and this would remain the standard British sniper rifle for quite some time after the war
Ultimately replaced by the L42A1, which by the way we have a video coming up on,
so stay tuned if you're interested in the progression of British sniper rifles, we'll cover that one as well.
And as far as ... what these rifles were actually required to be able to do, so like what's the performance of this?
... I think that's a question that ... maybe the answer is going to be something that a lot of people probably won't expect.
We're living in an era today where a one minute of angle rifle,
you know, something that can shoot a one inch group, a one inch circle, at 100 yards,
is kind of taken as the default base. Like if you can't do one minute of angle, well,
you suck and your rifle sucks and your scope sucks and you should just throw it all away and start over.
That's not the actual standard in 1942.
These rifles had to be able to put 7 out of 7 shots into a 5 inch circle at 200 yards,
So that's a 2.5 minute of angle requirement.
And then they also had to be able to put 6 out of 7 rounds into a 10 inch circle at 400 yards.
Which is, ... if you look at the trigonometry, that's the exact same size dispersion.
That's still 2.5 minute of angle, but you're allowed to have one flyer that's outside that group at 400. So,
these are not one minute of angle rifles, they weren't intended to be. The scope graduations aren't even one minute graduations.
You can only adjust this thing 2 inches at a time, you know, 2 inches per increment at 100 yards.
The standard of accuracy in World War Two was substantially lower than we would consider today,
and I think a lot lower than people realised was considered acceptable back then, so.
That being said, these are still magnificent rifles, they're really nice rifles.
And, well, any serious sniper rifle collector really ought to have one.
If you would like to see more information on this particular one,
if you'd like to see detailed pictures of exactly what a proper Number 4 Mark 1 (T) ought to look like, as well as
the description of this rifle and its value estimate from Rock Island, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to ForgottenWeapons.com, where you can then move on to Rock Island's catalogue page on this specific guy.
It is actually being sold with a number of accessories including the original transit case, scope case,
some extra stuff that I didn't bring up onto camera.
So check out the catalogue to see all of those cool accessories that go with it.
Thanks for watching.
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