Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we are here today
taking a look at a Parker-Hale M85.
This is the rifle that in Britain's 1985 sniper rifle trials
almost won out, almost knocked the Accuracy International
PM, Precision Marksman's rifle, out of the spot of being adopted as the new British sniper rifle.
But it didn't quite, and I think we can see why. If you haven't seen the video on the AI,
what became the L96A1, you should definitely take a look at that. It's linked at the end of this video.
But what you really had going on in this trial was a competition between Parker-Hale with
an old technology, a traditional style of rifle, a receiver and barrel bedded into a traditional stock,
compared to what Accuracy International had to offer, which was this brand new idea of a chassis-based rifle.
And that chassis offered a lot of advantages, kind of in the
logistical back-end for the military that this rifle didn't.
The Parker-Hale shot every bit as well as Accuracy International,
but it didn't have some of that new technology that ultimately made the difference in the testing.
So, let's go ahead and take a look at exactly what this rifle does have to offer.
Because it is a fantastically nice-shooting rifle.
At its core the M85 is basically a Mauser. You can see ... the very distinctive Mauser extractor here,
and this is a Mauser two lug rotating bolt.
Fit that back into the receiver there.
It is detachable magazine fed as it would have to be for the trial.
And Parker-Hale actually went ahead and opted to use M14 magazines, which is a rather interesting choice.
So I believe this is a 5 rounder, it would have had 10 rounders for the sniper competition.
We have a safety selector switch back here, two positions: safe and fire. Very simple.
And a pretty darn nice trigger to it. A two-stage trigger.
There we go, just a tiny bit of creep. Between this and the L96, the L96 is just a tiny bit better.
You see the same sort of thing when you open the bolt.
The bolt kind of rattles around out here when it's open.
That's not a functional problem, that doesn't really make a difference.
But that's the sort of thing that just if you don't have that ... the other rifle's just a little bit nicer.
And the Accuracy International rifle doesn't do that.
The stock on this is ... an American McMillan manufactured stock.
It was available in I think four or five different colours and camouflage patterns like this one.
We have an adjustable hand stop and sling swivel.
The bipod on the end here ... fits on
this plug, so there you go.
Actually very reminiscent of the Bren bipod, which I guess would make sense.
Squeeze that together and it comes down.
And you have a bipod that has a nice little bit of tilt, pivot. Nice little bit of flexibility to it.
Parker-Hale developed a nice set of backup iron sights for the rifle, which was necessary for the competition.
So there's our elevation adjustable and windage adjustable front sight.
And then the rear sight is really cleverly machined into the receiver and hidden underneath the scope.
So if I remove the scope, loosen that up,
pull that off. This is just a front and rear dovetail.
Notice the big open cutout here, which is to fit the rear sight.
This is an aperture rear sight.
Lifts up like so to use, and you've got your elevation adjustment, click adjustable, right there.
And that can be set out to 700 metres.
The rifle's markings are also there underneath the scope. P-H, Parker-Hale, Model 85.
7.62x51mm, made in England, naturally.
And at the back end, as you would expect from McMillan you have a nice thick pistol grip.
You have an adjustable buttstock so you can change the length of pull by adding or removing these spacers.
Parker-Hale offered a variety of different scopes with the rifle when they were sold commercially after the trials.
This particular one has the exact same Schmidt & Bender 6x42
that was trialled on what became Accuracy International's L96.
... Actually I suppose it's not identical, this one is black, which is how Parker-Hale sold them.
The L96 was adopted with a green painted scope to match the green rifle.
That is a fixed 6x power by 42mm.
Most commonly when you find these rifles they've been outfitted with a Kahles ZF 84 scope.
There was also a Swarovski optic and a Pecar optic that were offered, lots of different choices.
There's no reason Parker-Hale would have to specify and only offer one.
For those of you who haven't seen the video on the L96, I will point out that
... both your windage and elevation on this are adjustable in one minute of angle clicks.
So the yellow numbers on the bottom of our elevation turret here are minutes of angle.
The white numbers on the top are a bullet drop compensator, so you ... can set it to the basic
BDC number, 500 there. Or you can actually adjust it one click at a time, and that goes out to I believe 1,000.
Yep, up to 1,000. You have 42 minutes of elevation adjustment in the scope.
And then you have the exact same sort of system for windage.
On the front of the receiver on the left here we have the serial number.
This one's 347, that "F" suffix is a little bit unusual and interesting.
Apparently, according to the guys at Parker-Hale, that stands for "field".
Like presumably as opposed to military or competition or something else, except this was the only model of the rifle.
So I guess they felt they had to put in something for a suffix to make it sound a little more sophisticated.
The whole development of this rifle was really pretty quick.
This was put together in a matter of just a couple of months.
And so you get some elements like that that were kind of,
"Well, we need to do something and that'll work, good enough, move on to the next thing."
Overall, the product is really pretty impressive for the restricted time frame that Parker-Hale had to put it together.
Like I said, it is a really excellent shooting rifle.
Anyway, the serial number is also going to be on the bolt handle.
And they are all hand ... electro-pencilled on the bolt handle like this one.
Ultimately about 800 of these were manufactured.
So despite not winning the trial, Parker-Hale actually did reasonably well with it.
Now that wouldn't be well enough to save Parker-Hale from bankruptcy and dissolution, but
the ... L96 trial resulted in a contract for just over 1,100 guns. Parker-Hale made 800 of these.
That's almost as many as they would have done had they won the contest.
While it wasn't the British military that was buying these,
actually ... various elements of the British military did end up buying these rifles.
The SAS bought some of them out of its own private funding.
Second Para bought some of them, some of the other British military units bought them.
And then a lot of police forces bought them as well.
Actually the Falklands Defence Force after the Falklands War bought some of the Parker-Hale M85s.
This particular one came by way of the Welsh Constabulary police force.
And there were a number of other both police and foreign buyers of the rifle, so.
Not a bad rifle by any means, just not quite up to the standard of Accuracy International.
... If you're interested in this particular rifle, or any of the other rifles that the British
have used in their history of sniping over the last 100 years,
I would highly recommend checking out Steve Houghton's book, "The British Sniper, a Century of Evolution".
That is my source for the information you've seen here today, and it covers this,
as well as everything from the 1915 Enfields through the very present-day L115A3 .338 Lapua Magnum sniper.
So there's a link in the description below where you can get yourself a copy of the book.
Thanks to Steve for providing access to this rifle to bring to you guys.
And thanks for watching.
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