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
taking a look at some of the guns, like this one,
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
October of 2016 Firearms Auction.
And today this is an interesting rifle.
It looks like kind of an old civilian target rifle, except it's not.
What we have here is a really good example of kind of
the birth of the true sniper rifle in United States military service.
Let me explain.
There's always been, and I often have found myself in a position to need to
distinguish between, a sniper and a designated marksman.
Now typically, historically, in a military context an optically sighted rifle went to a designated marksman.
This is someone who's a better shot than most of the other guys around them,
and they're given a rifle that allows them to make more precise hits.
However, they're integrated into a squad.
Especially in some other, not necessarily US military, but for example
in the Japanese military, and also in the Russian, the sniper, the designated marksman,
is seen as kind of one element of a squad of a variety of weapons.
So you have the standard rifleman, but then you have mortars,
and you have bazookas, and you have light machine guns, and you have a sniper.
And all of these things are, to a unit commander,
these are tools that can be applied in different ways to the best effect.
And the sniper is someone who can hit small targets at longer distance,
or rather a designated marksman is.
Now in today's school of thought, when people today think about "sniper",
they usually get this view of a two man team, a sniper and a spotter, and they're going to be in ghillie suits,
and they camouflage themselves to the Nth degree, and they're going to crawl out into
enemy territory for days at a time to get one special high value target somewhere.
And that's kind of a different role than a guy who is supporting a squad.
So just like a light machine gun can be employed, say, to deny access to a specific area.
The enemy can't get in and take that area because there's a light machine gun that can fire into it.
You could use a sniper for the same thing, or a designated marksman.
He can shoot anyone who gets into that area in a way that a rifleman couldn't.
Well, this is a rifle that dates from the late 1950s, mid to late 1950s,
this was manufactured in 1956 according to the serial number.
It's a Winchester Model 70 in .30-06, and it is fitted with a 14x power Unertl ... Marine Corps sniper scope.
And this rifle actually came out of the estate of a Marine Corps Colonel who was Captain of the rifle team at Camp Pendleton.
So that was a dude who knew shooting and knew riflery.
So this is indicative of a change in United States Marine Corps precision rifles.
In World War Two the Marine Corps had used what they called the Model of 1941 sniper rifle,
which was a 1903 Springfield with basically the same scope, except in 8x power magnification.
And that was a good precise scope, a little fragile, a little delicate, you take care of it well
and it's a great scope for a precision shot.
Someone who really knows the fundamentals of long range marksmanship.
However, at the end of World War Two the Marine Corps formally adopted the M1C as their sniper rifle
because the Army had as well, and it was kind of the new technology.
The M1C is ... way back on the other side of the spectrum in the designated marksman's role.
Instead of an 8x power scope, it had a 2.2x power scope.
It was not necessarily all that accurate. Not necessarily any more accurate than a standard rack M1,
as opposed to these older, very precise, 1903 Springfields.
And it was designed more for firepower than for precision.
And this caused a ripple effect I think through the Marine Corps, where a lot of the hardcore
competition shooting, Camp Perry, competitive, National Match sort of guys,
who had this very strong belief in the marksmanship role in the United States Marine Corps,
they wanted a precision rifle. And in fact in 1951,
at the behest of some of these people, the Marine Corps actually evaluated
the Winchester Model 70 with an 8x power Unertl scope.
And they determined that the Model 70 was too fragile, which ... it's kind of a nonsensical complaint.
Primarily, their issue was that this was a non-standard rifle.
And ... the hierarchy in the Marine Corps they decided that the M1C was just fine,
they didn't need a specialised other sniper rifle, and that was that.
However, a lot of the hardcore shooters in the Marine Corps,
the precision rifle guys, the competitive guys, didn't really accept that decision.
Because I think to them the M1C was a giant pile of junk, and they wanted a real rifle instead.
And so in Korea and in Vietnam a lot of personal weapons, well, relatively speaking a lot,
a lot of the really good snipers brought their own personal rifles to the war.
And they'd be chambered in .30-06, but they'd be guns like this one
that were really set up as precision rifles instead of designated marksman's rifles.
And this is kind of a vague difference, hopefully I've sort of effectively elaborated on what the distinction is between the two.
But this is truly a precision rifle, this one has a 14x power scope.
One of the complaints that the Marine Corps had in '51 when they evaluated this
was that even at 8x power, the field of view was small enough that you really had to have a spotter.
And it's interesting that they used that term, they actually said, "Required the use of a spotter to help find targets."
And that's kind of a defining feature of what we would think of today in the sniper/spotter two man team.
Well, you bump this thing up from 8x to 14x power and this little teeny lens back here,
and you are definitely going to need a spotter to assist you.
However, what you're getting into are lower volume of fire, but much longer effective range.
And this would eventually develop into the M40,
and the first official Marine Corps bolt action sniper rifle after World War Two.
So having the provenance that this one does, coming from
the Captain of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps shooting team,
really kind of says, "OK, this is what those guys were interested in and using."
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at this.
The scope is so ludicrously long that I can barely get the whole thing into the field of view here.
But the rifle is a Winchester Model 70, it's a heavy barrel.
There were a couple of different grades of barrel that Winchester used:
standard, the heavy barrel, and also a target or bull barrel.
And they also offered these in a couple of different stocks, this is a sporter stock.
And it's interesting that this pattern of rifle was kind of originally put together
by a guy named General Van Orden, who was a huge proponent of sniping and precision riflery.
And he wanted to design a rifle of this configuration that would be legal to use in the National Matches.
So in order to do that it had to meet specific weight requirements
(which by the way have changed for the National Matches since this was done).
And he was able to determine that a Winchester Model 70 with the heavy barrel
and a sporter stock and a scope like this would meet those weight requirements.
So he kind of formed the prototype of this rifle,
which would then go on to be used by a lot of Marine Corps precision shooters.
So .30-06 calibre, of course it uses standard government-issue ammunition.
You could also hand load for it should you want to, and I'm sure a lot of these guys did.
Now as we've seen in some previous scopes, for example the A5 World War One issue scope,
we have external adjustments here. And by the way on the Unertls, on these guys,
this is all anodised aluminium, kind of odd, they didn't make this out of steel.
This was a special Marine Corps thing, and they made that out of aluminium for them.
However, all external adjustments to the scope. And the scope is actually free-floating
... (there we go) in its mount. This one's a little tight and sticky.
But on the A5 sniper rifles back in World War One, when you fired, the scope would slide forward.
And that's done to protect it, to buffer it from the impact of recoil,
so you don't damage what is otherwise a relatively fragile scope.
On these later guns they actually added this spring to them, which would push the scope back into position for you.
As I said, this one's a little tight and sluggish.
On the early guns you actually had to manually pull the scope back up to its stop
to get it back in position for each shot. This one, it does it for you.
And that's why you'll see these springs on the Marine Corps scopes.
You can see the markings there, J. Unertl, USMC - Sniper, and a serial number.
And then this 14 indicates the magnification of the scope, and it's actually set by this rear piece.
And it's easy enough to change the magnification on these, you just swap out this piece.
So you'll find these down to 8x power and up to 20x power.
You can see here on the rifle we have basically standard commercial Winchester markings.
Calibre .30 Government 06.
So in every way, this is basically a civilian target rifle that was being used for a military application.
Which is kind of in a nutshell the genesis of what we think of today with modern sniping.
So the scope covers on these are actually threaded caps, front and rear.
Threaded into the body of the scope itself. So smooth, very secure, ... those aren't going to get bumped off.
Although you do run the risk of losing them once you remove them.
And then the reticle for these is a very fine crosshair.
Got big target adjustment knobs here, ... as I said, all external ... adjustment of the scope.
So you have these knobs on the top and the right,
and then you have one diagonal spring-loaded plunger on the bottom which is going to push in resistance.
So as you screw these down or up, ... you're literally pushing the whole tube of the scope inside this frame.
No iron sights on these rifles at all, because really the whole point was long range precision.
And if your scope isn't working you're not going to be able to make those shots with iron sights alone anyway.
So no ... reason to bother putting them on the rifle.
Thank you for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
It's really cool to get to take a look at a rifle like this and actually know that it does have the provenance.
That this really was something from the late 1950s in the Marine Corps.
It really lets us see this cool view into the evolution of sniping with the Marine Corps,
and the US military at large. ...
And of course, the rifle's coming up for sale.
So if you would like to have this really cool piece of military sniping history,
take a look at the description text below the video.
You'll find a link there to the James Julia catalogue page on this rifle,
you can see their documentation, their pictures, their description.
And if you're interested in the gun place a bid online, or over the phone,
or come up here to the auction and participate live.
Thanks for watching.
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