Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to take a look at a pair
of Canadian Ross Mark III sniper rifles. These are, well,
I was gonna say these are one of the scarcer snipers
of World War One, which is true, although it
maybe doesn't highlight the fact that all World War One
sniping rifles are pretty darn rare these days.
Now, the rationale for this is of course the Canadian forces
went over into Europe for World War One initially with Ross,
primarily Ross Mark III rifles. They're straight-pull rifles,
really interesting, I have several other videos on the Ross in general.
If you're interested, check those out.
But, there were issues with the Ross, and by the fall of 1916 the Ross had been formally
retired from the field and replaced with the Number 1 Mark III* Lee-Enfield.
However, the Canadians never got rid of the Ross as a sniping rifle, for a couple reasons.
First off, it was an excellent sniping rifle. The problems that the Mark III Ross had as an infantry rifle
were really kind of unrelated to its service as a sniper. And it was a very accurate rifle,
long barrel, good lock-up system, had issues in dirt and mud, it had issues with rapid fire,
it had issues with poor quality ammunition. None of those things really applied to snipers.
So on top of that, once the sniping programs really kind of began, which was 1915 for the British Empire,
there was a rush to get sniping equipment. There hadn't been a sniper program in the British military before this.
They didn't have optically scoped rifles and they needed them.
And while the British were trying to track down every scope that they could get their hands on for their own rifles,
they were very unlikely to be just handing that material over to mere colonial Canadian troops.
So the Canadians went about putting together their own snipers. Now they did this with the American Warner & Swasey,
it is a Warner & Swasey Musket Sight it's called. It's a 5x power magnification scope.
It's prismatic, you'll notice you look in here and you look out up here.
So there's a prism inside that redirects your light.
This is frankly a terrible scope. I had problems with fogging, it wasn't well sealed, it's offset to the side.
It's just not a really good scope, but it was the scope that was available, and frankly,
it's also the scope that was used by the United States as its primary sniping rifle scope at this point.
So the Canadians bought 500 of these scopes. They got them delivered in two separate batches.
They put together a batch of rifles in 1915, they put together another big batch of rifles in 1917.
Approximately 250 in each. It does look like they put together a few in 1916, but not in any substantial quantity.
So what we have here is actually a 1915 rifle and a 1917 rifle. So let's take a look at them.
Let's start with our 1915 gun here.
Now, mechanically, these are all the same. The 1915 and the 1917 batches ... don't differ in any way.
There are a few manufacturing changes that exist on Ross rifles between these two time periods,
but the scope conversion, the sniper conversion was was not done differently.
Now there is a mounting block right up here. We can take this scope off so you can see that.
They numbered the scopes and the scope mounts. So this is number 246,
this would be one of the very last of the 1915 batch, screwed into the receiver there.
There wasn't any special selection of rifles, they just took a batch of 250
off the production line at the Ross factory and mounted these scopes on them.
And then, interestingly, they didn't send them all overseas.
... As of 1915 they were issuing these rifles only two per battalion, and they actually ended up making more than they really needed.
And a bunch of these rifles actually stayed in Canada, almost certainly including this one.
You'll notice that this looks like a pretty nice condition rifle.
You'll see this on the 1917 gun as well. Everything's in pretty darn good shape,
more so than you would expect for a rifle that went over into World War One
and saw combat use, as the sniper rifles almost certainly would have.
Well, the fact of the matter is a lot of the rifles went over, a lot of the rifles stayed in Canada.
And they were actually retained in Canada all the way up until at least 1942,
because these were used for sniper training in the early years of World War Two in Canada.
Now if we take a look at the markings on the rifle. Everything on a Ross is marked on the buttstock here.
We have our government property roundel. This is a Mark III gun. Our serial number is 240 FK.
They did ... 1000 gun serial prefixes, so the very first ones were A1 through 999.
After they finished the whole alphabet they went through and then did AA, AB, AC etc.
And they got up to quite a lot of them, this is FK. And this rifle was manufactured in 1915.
And then up here it is marked with the scope number, as most of them are. This is number 246.
That's the same number that you saw marked on the scope rail.
Now we don't know exactly when this was marked, because as you'll see on the 1917 gun, it doesn't have that marking.
Now the scope on this is number 325, neither of these two rifles has a matching scope.
I don't know if any of ... the existing ones do.
These rifles before they were ultimately sold off were broken apart.
So the scopes were separated and you don't generally find them with matching scopes.
There are a couple ways to tell the differences between this sort of Warner & Swasey
and the ones that were used on American rifles and machine guns.
First off is the serial number, numbers between 1 and 500 like this are Canadian.
These are all model of 1913. There was a second pattern of 1916 that was also used by the Americans.
In order to actually adjust this you have a windage knob here. You have an elevation knob here.
(Zoom in on that a little bit.)
So there's your marker, this is currently set to 200 yards. And what you do is ... loosen this, and then you can adjust this dial.
And that is going to cant the scope quite significantly by the time you get up to the higher numbers.
But the Canadian ones, being calibrated for .303 British calibre, go out to 2,400 yards.
The American ones in ... .30-06 have a longer maximum range on them, I think it's
3,000 or 3,500 or 3,600? I don't remember exactly now.
But, 2,400 yards, plus a serial number of 1 to 500,
plus no data plate on the top tells you it's a Canadian issue Warner & Swasey scope.
Originally there was a data plate up here with range information,
and those plates were removed because of course the scopes were recalibrated for .303.
You can still see the four little holes (which don't appear to have been sealed in any way) on the top.
Alright, now for comparison's sake here is our 1917 rifle. All the same sort of data, except this is number 974 LL,
and it does not have a scope number stamped in it.
So this rifle is another rifle that stayed in Canada and didn't actually go to Europe during World War One.
It's still a legitimate Canadian issue Ross sniper rifle,
it's just one of the ones that stayed in Canada and was used for training.
The scope however is a little bit different. It's a little hard to read there, but this is scope number 120.
And like all the Ross snipers, this scope was also issued with a scope carrying case.
This is a standard Warner & Swasey Model of 1913 carry case.
What's cool about this is all the information about the gun is stamped on the case.
This is actually a really cool piece of information for Ross collectors and historians,
because the scope cases survive much more frequently than the rifles do.
Because this is a piece of personal property that could be easily brought back by a sniper as a souvenir,
where the rifles couldn't necessarily.
So there's something like 30 of these scope cases that are well documented.
And those give us a good idea of the serial numbers that are used for the rifles.
So what we have here is this is scope number 120, which is what was on the scope, rifle number 236 FK 1915.
So FK is the same serial number prefix that was on our 1915 rifle. It's not the same rifle
but it sure is close. This was 240 FK, scope number 120 was 236 FK.
And in addition the soldier who had this
... just scribed his serial number in the side of the scope case, and "A Company".
Well, this is a piece of data that you can look up.
And when the owner of this rifle, and scope number 120,
looked up that number he found that it belonged to one Patrick Augustine Bates,
who had joined the 78th battalion, Winnipeg Grenadiers.
... Served through the war, and his unit,
we don't know specifically him, ... not on direct evidence, but his unit was at Vimy Ridge in 1917.
So there's a very high likelihood that this particular scope, and Mr. Bates (I don't know what his rank was),
were at Vimy Ridge in really kind of what is ... one of the foundational events of Canadian military history.
So that is a very cool historical connection.
It is, of course, extremely rare to find original Ross sniper rifles from World War One.
So a big thanks to the collector who gave me the opportunity to take a look
at these two and bring them to you. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.