So today we're going to take a look at the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 PU sniper model.
So the Russians actually developed their sniper program starting in the very early 1930s.
They took sniping, as a military standard capacity, a lot more seriously than many other countries.
Even what we'd think of as militarily intelligent and on the ball western countries.
Starting in 1931 they actually got some advice and a lot of help
from Germany, of all places, developing scopes.
Their early scopes, they had a variety of names in Russia,
we kind of conglomerate them all under the name PE.
And these were actually a copy of a German scope design made by Zeiss.
Like I said, they got some assistance manufacturing those, and that was the early scope.
Originally it was mounted up here on a big 6 screw mount, right on top of the chamber.
They were really nice guns, in fact some of those were favoured by
very effective Soviet snipers through World War Two.
But they manufactured those from 1931 through until about 1937.
In the mid to late '30s [the Russians] got a chance ... to actually test
the effectiveness of their sniping tactics and equipment during the Spanish Civil War.
One of the things they found was that the PE scope,
... it was a fixed 4x power scope, and it had an adjustable focus knob on it.
Well, that focus knob tended to be an inlet for humidity and dust.
And it would cause problems with the scopes, they just weren't all that durable.
So in '37 they revised the design to what we now call the PEM, or modernised PE.
And they got rid of that variable focus knob,
went to just a flat, fixed 4x power, much simpler scope.
... A few of them were mounted in the original over the chamber design.
And they also designed kind of a long ... almost curved side-mounted scope mount for the PEM.
Those are fairly rare scopes today.
What ultimately became the Soviet standard
for sniper rifles during World War Two is this, this is the PU.
Now this is ... obviously a simpler scope.
It's a 3.5x power, it has a fairly small field of view,
but very simple to make, and fairly durable.
These were originally made for the SVT-40,
the semi-auto rifle that the Soviets designed and fielded.
There was a lot of hope that that would ... be the new standard sniping rifle for the Soviet Army.
Unfortunately, the SVT-40s in practice
never really had the accuracy that they were hoping for with those scopes.
So what they did is they took this very simple,
cheap to mass-produce PU scope that they'd designed,
and they adapted it to the 91/30 with a side mount right here.
Now if we take a closer look at this, the mounting is very simple.
We have a screw, right here, that holds it in place.
Once the screw is out, the scope just lifts right out.
It has a recessed ball here at the front, that centres on this.
Then we have gross elevation screws right here.
So when I put it in, it goes in like that. The elevation screws hold it in place,
and this thumb screw locks it down.
Now the way that the gross windage was adjusted was actually done at the factory.
The original PU 91/30s were all factory zeroed.
Because in order to adjust the gross windage you have to either grind down these two surfaces,
or shim them if you need to get them further out.
So the original PUs were actually ... well zeroed, and it was all done at the factory.
This particular rifle is an aftermarket replica sniper.
You can tell that a couple of ways: for one thing the stock cutout is pretty crudely done here.
An original Russian one would have been much better workmanship.
We can also tell that because it's not zeroed for windage.
I had to adjust this quite a ways off to the left in order to get it on target at 100 yards.
The reproductions, none of that ... grinding or shimming has been done.
So it's up to you to adjust them with the scope adjustments.
An original PU sniper rifle would be very well zeroed from the factory.
A couple of other things that we can take a look at here that point out that this is a reproduction.
It's a 1940 dated rifle, the PU snipers, they started production in 1942.
So you'd never find an original one on a 1940 rifle.
This is also a Finnish captured rifle.
The ... Finns did capture some [sniper rifles], but it's not that common to find them.
Even though this is a reproduction, it gives us a pretty good feel for how the guns worked,
how the sight picture is, and how they are to shoot.
I'm not going to take a lot of time trying to shoot a real good group with this one
because it isn't actually a sniper rifle.
It didn't meet the original Russian spec for a PU sniper.
So shooting a group with it isn't really going to tell us anything about the originals.
And it has a pretty lousy trigger on it actually.
But it's fun to shoot, so I'm going to grab some more ammo.
I have a paper target out at 100 yards, and we're just plinking for fun today to see what we can get.
So the sniper scope does get in the way of the stripper clips,
so you do have to load these manually, a clip won't fit in there.
I'm not shooting any particular fancy ammo today, just surplus light ball.
You can see how the bent bolt handle here is necessary in order to clear the body of the scope.
A standard Mosin-Nagant bolt handle would hit that.
So here's a view of the scope reticle in the PU scope.
As you can see it's a pretty ... simple German post.
The way they designed it, the width of that middle sighting post, the vertical one,
equates to 20 centimetres at 100 metres range.
And the distance between the two horizontals equates to 70 [centimetres] at 100 metres range.
So that's how you do your range estimation.
Now you can see that this one is visibly offset to the left.
That's because the windage and elevation adjustments
actually adjust the reticle in the scope body.
And I had to move this one off to the left in order to zero it, because it wasn't zeroed at the factory.
Alright, so my first group of 5 shots was actually down here.
And it was a lot tighter group than I was expecting,
you can just barely see this one, it tagged the side of the paper.
I figured if I was able to shoot a group that good I ought to
adjust the point of aim and try and bring one into the target.
When I did that I got a group quite a bit larger, more like what I was really expecting to see.
I am of course not the world's greatest shot, the trigger on this rifle is pretty terrible,
and I'm using cheap surplus ammo.
Obviously it's occasionally capable of getting a really good group,
but I think this is more of what I was actually expecting.
Now just to reiterate, this is not an actual as issued Russian sniper,
it's a put together reproduction.
So I'll ... be more careful and try harder for a really good couple of groups
when I can get my hands on an authentic sniper.
This doesn't really tell us anything about the quality of the sniper rifle, but it was fun to do.
So as I'd said, the Russians issued over 275,000 of these rifles
... by the end of production at the end of World War Two.
They did continue making them in smaller numbers after the war.
Major production ended in 1948, they did make a few into the '50s, although not many.
One interesting thing, the Russians actually used female snipers as well as men.
And some of them had very, very successful careers as snipers.
The most successful Soviet female sniper had 192 kills to her name.
One of the best-known at the time, and still today, is a woman named Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
She shot 187 Germans, she was then wounded by mortar fire,
and actually got pulled off the line to do some PR type work.
She ended up touring the United States, she had an interview with President Roosevelt.
She was given a commemorative rifle by the Winchester Company.
And she actually had a Woody Guthrie song written about her.
Which today not a whole lot of people remember.
But that was back when Russia was our ally in the Great Patriotic War against Germany.
So my thought is, shooting this is kind of like what you would expect from a Russian sniper rifle.
It works, they're very durable, they're effective.
But they're not really all that comfortable or ergonomic, they could be a lot better.
One of the main issues that I have with it is just the height of the scope over the bore.
It's very hard to get a good cheek weld
simply because it's your chin in contact with the stock here.
The Russians never used an issue cheek pad or anything.
I suppose some of the snipers in the field may have done that, but it was never a standard design.
The scope doesn't have a very good field of view.
It's 3.5x power, which actually is about standard for World War Two,
but it's certainly lower power than we would consider probably ideal today.
These guns were capable of pretty good accuracy.
Having 1 or 1.5 minute of angle PU snipers is not that uncommon.
This one of course isn't, but this isn't an original sniper anyway,
it's a standard 91/30 made to look like a PU.
Well I'm going to do a little more shooting. I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
Tune back in to ForgottenWeapons.com for more World War Two sniper rifles.
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Da! Is great patriotic sniper rifle.
I think I'll leave the Russian accent to other people. Let's just do some shooting.