[ WW1 German G98 Sniper ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the James Julia
Auction House, I'm taking a look at some of the guns
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
March of 2016 auction.
And there's one here that
I've actually seen earlier here,
and I was interested in it, but I just didn't have a chance to do a video on it before.
And now I do, and I'm kind of excited about that.
This is a World War One Gewehr 98 sniper.
These actually are, ... as you might expect, rather scarce.
The Germans in World War One had a ... sniping program, like just about everybody did.
They did it fairly well.
What's interesting is German sniper equipment wasn't produced right at the factory.
They took existing rifles, and then basically had
... commercial gunsmiths add scopes and mounts to them.
So you'd get a wide variety of different scopes and mounts,
and the details can all be kind of different.
... On the one hand that makes them interesting, and adds a lot of variety to the area.
On the other hand that can make them difficult to authenticate
as being genuine guns versus reproductions.
This one I think is pretty undoubtedly a genuine gun.
It's got quite a lot of patina to it, and has definitely been there and done that.
Now the German forces used a mixture of scopes, like I said,
both 3x power and 4x power scopes, and they used a couple of different reticles.
The traditional German post reticle,
... we're most familiar with it as simply a single vertical post with a point on it.
But you'll also find these sometimes with a pair of horizontal stadia,
or in the case of this one, a horizontal stadia and a vertical line as well,
with a pointer coming up from the bottom.
So it's a 3x power scope. These use the standard 8x57 8mm Mauser cartridge
that all the other German infantry rifles used.
There is a BDC, or bullet drop compensator, on the scope so you can dial it out to 1,000 metres.
And ... it's kind of cool, the way that it works in this,
and a lot of other early - especially European - scopes,
is when you adjust the elevation on the scope
you can actually watch the reticle moving up and down inside the scope.
Compared to modern scopes [that] move the entire thing, you don't actually see the reticle move.
The reticle stays centred in your field of view.
On these the reticle actually moves, so that's kind of cool to see.
One of the other neat things about this scope,
(and by the way, this is an Otto Bock scope),
as I said you'll find a lot of different brands and manufacturers of scopes.
These were used commercially as well at the time, they pressed them into military service.
This particular one has a feature to it that is not actually a good thing in a military sense,
but I find it really interesting to actually look at,
and that is at the outside of the field of view it actually fish-eyes.
A modern scope, if you picked up something of brand new manufacture
and looked at it and it did that, you'd reject it immediately out of hand.
You don't actually want that, but I think it's a real interesting look at
what optics technology was a hundred years ago.
And it really just gives this scope that sort of vintage old feel to it.
As you pan across looking at things you can see the edges fish-eyeing out.
So anyway, I'm probably a little too excited about that particular feature.
This rifle, like I said, has definitely been there and done that, it's a bit rough.
But that's cool, I think that gives it some character.
It does have a mismatched bolt.
The scope is numbered to a rifle, but it doesn't appear to be this rifle.
However, I think that this is all authentic parts, so.
And a sling of course.
Interesting, you see how the sling is connected to the trigger guard,
and then the ... rear barrel band,
and then it actually hooks onto this little hook up at the front.
If you have a Gewehr 98 without a sling you may wonder, "What's this hook for?"
Well, that allows you to tighten the sling up when you're not using it
to keep it from flopping around and getting in the way.
So the rear mount here is actually offset to the side.
That makes it a little bit easier to access the action for loading cartridges.
You obviously can't fit a stripper clip in here, you would load it one round at a time.
And then the front mount has a channel hollowed out in it,
so that you can actually get a sight picture on your iron sights
should you want to or need to while using the scope.
So by today's standards these aren't immensely great scopes, this is 100 year old technology.
But I think it's really interesting
to see examples of what these guys were
actually using in the trenches 100 years ago.
So if you would like to own this one yourself, of course it is coming up for sale here.
I think it's a really cool example. ...
The German World War One stuff ...
for some reason isn't nearly as sought after as the German World War Two material.
So if you're into sniper rifles, you know what?
This may be a deal you didn't think you might be able to get.
But if you take a look at the description text below,
you'll find a link to the James Julia catalogue page on this particular rifle.
You can take a look at their high-res pictures, and their description.
And if it's something you think you ought to add to your own collection,
you can place a bid right there online.
Thanks for watching.