[American-Made Mosin Nagants ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company taking a look at some of the guns
that they have coming up for sale
in the February of 2017 Regional Auction.
And today we're taking a look
at a pair of Mosin-Nagant rifles.
Now, you may be wondering what on earth could be
possibly interesting about
a pair of Mosin-Nagant rifles.
Well, these are American Mosin-Nagant rifles.
So while I'm sure some folks are aware that there is such a thing,
I think it's about time that we did a video on a pair of these,
and really explore some of the history of the American Mosin-Nagant.
So we'll start with the Mosin-Nagant in Russia.
It was of course adopted in 1891.
And when the rifle was adopted the Russian arsenal system set out
with a bunch of orders for machine tools to get their three major arsenals up and running
and producing rifles, but it took a little longer than planned.
So they actually initially ordered 503,000 Mosin-Nagants
manufactured by the Châtellerault Arsenal in France.
Those were delivered in the 1890s.
So that was the very beginning of what would kind of be a trend with Russian Mosin production.
Now ... in total by World War One the Russians had 3.8 million Mosin-Nagants produced.
Which sounds like a whole lot, ... but in fact really it was nowhere near sufficient.
Once World War One really got going, they reassessed how many rifles they were going to need,
and came to the conclusion that for a war of three to four years in duration,
they would actually need 17 million rifles.
And they never did meet this demand, the Russians ... were chronically short of small arms.
So one of the problems is before the war,
when the Russian military had gone through and done some studying
to try and figure out how many rifles they wanted to stockpile,
they figured out the total number of troops.
OK, and they came up with that many rifles and put them aside.
And that was about ... four million.
And the problem was they didn't take into account wastage or loss of rifles.
The fact that if you're training guys every year with rifles, you're going to break them,
they're going to wear out, they're going to need service.
And they didn't take into account needing to replace those.
So that's the first way in which this stockpile simply wasn't sufficient.
More importantly, they didn't take into account wastage in combat.
And this became an immediately extremely serious issue when World War One started,
and they pretty much immediately started losing about 200,000 rifles per month
to just destruction on the battlefield, and capture, and loss.
You can't fight a war and not have to replace equipment,
and that's a lot of equipment to replace, 200,000 some rifles per month.
Now the plan was that the arsenals would of course produce guns as necessary,
but the arsenals had been at pretty darn low production in the years leading up to the war.
1913 was the highest production status for the arsenal system in Russia,
and that was a measly 13% of its theoretical capability.
And you can't just go from 13% to 100% overnight.
A lot of the tooling and such required for full production was kind of quasi-mothballed.
It had to be pulled out of storage, set back up,
and this wasn't something that could be done immediately.
Unfortunately the rifles were being destroyed immediately.
And by October of 1914 the Russian military was 870,000 rifles short
of what it needed just for daily operations right then.
These problems were exacerbated by a couple of factors.
For one thing the Russian Minister of War, Sukhomlinov,
just flat-out refused to believe reports from the front about rifle shortages.
Yeah, that's not going to help things.
It's hard to solve the problem if you don't acknowledge that there is a problem.
On top of that, the Russian military had no repair depots.
So of course if they're losing 200,000 rifles a month,
you can imagine how many damaged rifles there are going to be.
And in theory with the right facilities you could be repairing those rifles,
or even if you had no parts, you could strip them all down
and ... cannibalise some guns to fix others.
The problem was in the hopes of saving some money and making the system more efficient,
the Russian military plan had been to have the repairs done at the main arsenals.
Well of course, now the arsenals are scrambling to do as much brand new production
as they possibly can, and they have no spare capacity left over to repair guns.
So that doesn't help things.
All this led to a decision in 1915 that the Russian government was willing to buy
any rifle that it could get, which it could get ammunition for.
So obviously their preference would be 7.62x54 rimmed, the standard cartridge they already used,
but they were willing to consider anything else.
If you could get them ammo for it, they'd be willing to look at buying the guns.
Now they sent out Purchasing Commission officers around the world
to look for anyone who could manufacture arms for them.
And the United States was really a prime opportunity.
Here's this up-and-coming industrial powerhouse that's neutral in the war,
and willing to hypothetically make guns for anyone.
And not preoccupied with making guns for itself.
It's hard to buy rifles from France or Britain during ... World War One because
they're busy making as many rifles as they possibly can for their own use,
there's no capacity left over. The United States is different.
And interestingly, the Russian government actually already had some industrial ties
to the companies that would be involved here, through the railroad system.
So the Westinghouse Company had been in the supply chain. ...
Well, in fact Westinghouse had patented a train air-braking system that was
kind of revolutionary and very helpful in Russia.
It had been adopted throughout the Russian railway system.
And that gave them this connection to Westinghouse,
which they would exploit for arms manufacture.
And Remington was connected through a little bit more obscure path,
but Remington was also already
kind of only like two connections removed from the Russian government.
So they've got some good opportunities here to
get rifles produced in the United States, and they were able to.
In 1915 a number of major contracts were signed for Mosin-Nagant production
by the Westinghouse Company and by the Remington Company.
So the Remington Company had already got some contracts to make Berthier rifles for the French.
They'd started production on a massive new factory,
and they actually ended up signing three contracts in 1915 before the factory was actually done.
The factory wasn't even complete until November.
But in January, they signed a contract for production of a million rifles,
followed in June by another contract for 200,000.
And a third contract in September of 1915 for 300,000 more Mosin-Nagant rifles.
So 1.5 million rifles total contracted with Remington.
The Westinghouse Company actually at this point didn't have any experience in arms manufacture.
So they were looking at getting in on this action.
They ended up buying the J. Stevens Arms Company, lock, stock and barrel so to speak.
And that gave them some infrastructure to start working with.
They also actually bought the A.H. Fox Company.
Now Fox is best known for high-end sporting shotguns,
and the Fox Company had got into the war munitions business
with a contract to make Mausers for the Serbian government.
Unfortunately, the Serbian government didn't last very long,
and when Belgrade fell it left A.H. Fox kind of stranded.
They had expended a lot of money to get started in this contract,
but the Serbian government was no longer able to actually pay them.
So Westinghouse bought up A.H. Fox as well,
and used ... their facilities to start making Mosin-Nagant parts.
Now Westinghouse actually sold its rifles through J.P. Morgan.
J.P. Morgan was acting as a purchasing agent for the Russian government in that case.
And they had two major contracts in 1915.
Actually it was sort of one, it was a contract for a million rifles,
plus an additional option for 800,000 more.
And in August of 1915 that additional option was exercised,
so Westinghouse was contracted with another 1.8 million.
So we're looking at a total here of 3.2 million rifles
contracted by the Russians in the United States in 1915.
Now the big question is: how is this production actually going to work out?
Those of us who have already lived past 1917
might recall that in 1917 there's going to be a big revolution in Russia,
and the Imperial government is going to fall. And that's probably not going to be a good thing
for these companies that are massively capitalising to make rifles for the Imperial government.
Well as it turned out it actually worked fairly well.
Remington was able to ship and produce about 513,000 rifles
for the Imperial government by November of 1917, by the time the Revolution happened.
Of course after the Revolution the new Communist government
was not so interested in receiving rifles or paying for them.
Actually I'm sure they'd have been happy to receive them, but they weren't going to go pay for them.
So this left Remington in a bit of a lurch.
They ended up selling just under 80,000 rifles to the United States government.
Those were guns that were basically in house, finished, but hadn't been paid for,
and hadn't shipped as of the Russian Revolution.
So the US government stepped in and bailed out Remington to the tune of about 80,000 rifles.
And then actually an additional 260,000 or so were sold ... through the Russian Embassy.
So basically to the White Russian forces, who were still being recognised by the US government.
So they were able to operate out of US embassies,
and they bought another couple of hundred thousand rifles from Remington.
So Westinghouse was able to complete just over a million,
like 1.08 million, of these rifles by December of 1917.
Shipped them out for J.P. Morgan, got paid, that was good.
They were also bailed out by the US government to the tune of about 200,000 more rifles
that had been ... partly manufactured at that point.
Now interestingly the terms of that bailout
were that the US government paid for the costs of the rifle,
but they did not allow Westinghouse any profit margin on them.
But it at least allowed Westinghouse to recoup their investment in that.
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at these two,
we have a Remington and a Westinghouse here to take a look at.
I'll show you the markings, and some of the details that make them distinctive.
We're going to start with the Remington rifle here,
because this is just really a fantastic example of a Remington Mosin-Nagant.
It is a matching gun, and unlike the vast majority
it is actually not Finnish property marked, or modified by the Finns.
So looking at this one we can see what one of these rifles actually looked like
when it came out of the Remington factory ready for being shipped to Russia.
So as with pretty much all Mosin-Nagants,
the relevant markings are going to be on the barrel shank here.
At the top we have a Russian Imperial Eagle.
The marking for Remington Armoury, and that's how Remington chose to stamp their name.
And then these rifles are actually dated the year that they were manufactured.
So this one was 1917, you'll also find 1916 examples.
And this is serial number 521,000 and change.
Now the Russians also put on a Russian Eagle crest on the receiver,
which Westinghouse didn't, we'll get to that in a moment.
You will find some other very small letter stamps on a bunch of the parts,
and those indicate exactly where various parts were manufactured.
Remington and Westinghouse both had a number of subcontractors involved in their production.
So for the detailed collector, those markings are relevant.
We have the rear sight here which is marked 400 out to 1,200 arshins.
This was a Russian unit of measure equal to approximately 0.75 of a metre.
You can think of it as basically an average soldier's pace.
That was the unit of measurement used until Russia adopted the metric system in, I believe, 1924.
It's a little bit light, but it's rare to find this at all,
this rifle actually even still has a visible Russian Eagle cartouche in the stock, that's really cool.
And lastly, again really cool, just showing you some of the history of this particular rifle,
just in front of the magazine well here we have a US flaming bomb property stamp.
So this is a rifle that was produced,
it was finished, it had the Russian markings in the stock and all,
but was never actually shipped to Russia.
... This was one of the rifles that was bought out
to help support Remington after the Russian Revolution.
The second rifle we have here isn't quite as gorgeous of an example,
but it is a very nice Westinghouse.
This one has been slightly modified by the Finns, we'll take a look at those in a minute.
But let's start with the receiver markings.
Westinghouse markings in general are a little bit lighter struck than the Remington ones,
and kind of a totally different style here.
We do still have the Russian Imperial Eagle at the top.
Then we have New England Westinghouse Company,
and there are a couple of different styles of that marking.
Then this is marked 1915, and then a Russian letter indicating the year.
The Westinghouse guns were all marked with the contract date, not the actual date of manufacture.
So no matter when it was made, every Westinghouse rifle will be marked 1915.
And then of course the serial number, this one is also [about] 550,000.
Remington and Westinghouse serial numbers are independent,
so they both start at 1 and go up.
Now you'll see here that "SA" in a box, that is a Finnish Army property mark.
Although what's interesting about this rifle is it hasn't had
really any of the other typical Finnish modifications.
The Finns typically remarked the rear sight,
they'd like cut out these numbers, crosshatch them out,
and replace them with metric markings on the other side.
But that hasn't been done to this rifle,
and nor have some of the other Finnish changes
like changes to the sling swivels or that sort of thing.
It looks like the Finns did put on a replacement renumbered bolt,
which is something that they would do.
If the bolt was damaged, they'd replace it, and they would re-stamp it to match the original serial number.
The stock however, is the original American stock.
I know you can just barely see any of that, but that's in fact the Russian Eagle cartouche in the stock.
A little bit more worn than on the Remington example we have.
So with all of these Mosin-Nagants floating around there's some question as to what happened to them?
Well the majority of course got to Russia, they were used by the Russians.
And then they ... kind of had this diaspora,
like all of the other Russian arms at the end of World War One.
So some of them were retained by Russia,
and then sent to places like Spain as aid in the Spanish Civil War.
So you'll find Spanish Civil War rifles,
not many in this case, but some of them ended up in Spain.
A substantial number of them ended up in Finland,
captured by the Finns after 1917 when Finland gained its independence.
And then Finland bought a whole bunch, ... well [about] 170,000 Mosin-Nagants
from other countries that had acquired them during the war.
And presumably some of those were American guns as well that filtered into Finland that way.
And the Finns would then retrofit and rebuild them.
And so ... by a long shot the most common American Mosin-Nagants to find today,
at least here in the US, are those retrofitted and marked as Finnish property.
And then the ones that the US government had got, they didn't really have anything good to do with.
It's not like they purchased these Mosin-Nagants because they really wanted Mosin-Nagant rifles,
they'd purchased them to help support these two American companies.
So they tried a couple of different things.
They did use them as training rifles, because anything will work for that.
They did also send them to Eastern Russia.
The US ... was part of an expedition to Archangel ... just after World War One,
and the thought was that if they sent rifles in a standard Russian calibre
logistics would be a lot simpler for that expedition.
So Mosin-Nagants went up there.
But by and large they kind of sat in storage and didn't go anywhere.
In the 1920s they were ultimately mostly surplused,
largely to the Francis Bannerman Company,
and Bannerman ... sold them in a variety of configurations.
So you get them in standard military config.
Bannerman sporterised some of them by cutting down the stocks.
Bannerman also re-chambered some of them to .30-06 to make them more appealing to the US market.
I actually have a separate video on a .30-06 Bannerman Sporter,
if you're interested take a look at that.
Kind of a scary rifle, the way they did that re-chambering is a little bit iffy.
But ultimately, when they were sold as surplus, they were sold at about 10 cents on the dollar.
So, you'll find them today here in the US largely Finnish marked,
that's where most of them came from.
And as you saw, ... our Westinghouse here is Finn marked.
The Remington is one of these ... rather rare examples in original configuration, all matching,
and with a US property mark on it.
So it was actually a military property rifle here in the US.
At any rate, if you would like to have these they are actually part of the same
lot for sale here at Rock Island, along with a couple of other guns.
If you take a look at the description text below,
you'll find a link to Rock Island's catalogue page on them.
Where you can check out Rock Island's pictures, descriptions,
the pictures and descriptions of the other guns in the same lot,
and the price estimate for the whole batch.
If you're interested in buying them, well, you can place a bid right there on the catalogue page online.
Thanks for watching.