[ Remington M1903A4 at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I think we're out here at Kasserine Pass today,
or maybe just the Arizona shooting range in the summer, but it's kind of toasty.
And what we're going to be shooting is the Springfield 1903A4.
We took a look at this rifle just fairly recently.
We talked about where it came from, how it was developed, why it was in use.
... Well if you didn't see that, go back and check it out.
The short version is this was America's primary sniper rifle in the Second World War.
Complete with its massive 2.75x power scope
and its scope mounting base made for kids rifles, the Redfield JR.
Nothing is going to inspire more confidence than that in a military sniper rifle.
So we're going to see how it actually performs for me today.
I've got two targets out here, I have a Texas star,
so we'll see if I have any hope of knocking plates off once they get spinning,
and I've got a mini-Mozambique at about 125 yards.
If I hit the head portion of that it'll fall down, if I hit the chest centre it'll reset the head.
So we're going to have a good time with this, I hope.
Let's give it a whirl.
First off, ammo is supplied on either stripper clips, or en bloc clips.
And you can't use either of them directly with this rifle, because ... got a scope in the way.
Now I can take the scope off, but then I lose much of my zero.
And you only do that when you are like transporting the rifle.
So what we are going to do here is just manually
pop the rounds off the stripper clip ... into the action.
Five round magazine, standard, like a 1903.
There we go.
And I'm even left-handed like the famous
... Let's see if I can hit that target.
I hit it, but not the very centre.
There we go ... not too shabby.
See if I can get the head and knock that down.
Oh yeah! This is not as bad as I was expecting it to be.
A little awkward to run left-handed.
Off to the side of the head.
Well, this is a cool opportunity also for you to be part of the channel, to help support the channel,
because I have teamed up with a veteran owned (not World War Two veteran owned),
but a veteran-owned small business called getenteredtowin.com.
And we're going to give one of you guys a chance to win this specific rifle.
So the way this works is you go to the link in the description text below,
buy some war bonds, or sorry not war bonds,
one of our cool limited edition collectibles based on the 03A4 sniper rifle.
And with your purchase you not only get a cool collectible,
you also get a chance to win this specific rifle, so it's a pretty awesome deal.
This is going to be a pretty fun rifle ... for someone.
So if you're interested in it, if you'd like to have one of these yourself,
check out that link in the description text below: go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons.
Couple of thoughts here. First off, the eye relief is nice.
I didn't have to adjust my head forward or backward at all, it just kind of worked.
So that's always a fun happening, because it doesn't always work that way.
Magnification is good enough at this range, which is not particularly far.
Ah, this scant C stock, not great.
Like, it's a little bit better than a standard straight-wrist stock.
The interesting thing here is these snipers were supposed to be the 1903A1 pattern,
which had a ... "full" semi-pistol grip stock.
The problem was there were a tremendous number, like hundreds of thousands,
of existing stock blanks for straight-wristed 1903s that were already in storage
when they got around to making these guys in World War Two.
And it didn't really make sense to manufacture a bunch of new stocks when you already had some.
So what they did is they took those stock blanks,
and they cut as much of a pistol grip as they could with them.
But it was still a blank that wasn't intended to have a pistol grip, so you didn't get the whole thing,
you got what is referred to in the collector's circles as a "scant Type C".
Type C was the full grip, this is a scant C, it has got a little bit of a pistol grip.
And it helps, but it's not as good as it could be.
There goes that head.
Doing pretty well there, if I may say so myself.
Now if Jordan puts the camera on the target you'll proceed to probably see me miss, but let's try it.
Hey, hey, there we go.
Reset the head and ...
Henry over at 9-Hole can probably make this look super easy,
but I'm really happy with that performance.
We didn't have much of a sniper program for the US Army during World War Two.
The Marine Corps had a sniper program, they were running true 03A1s
with 8x power (actually 7.8x power) Unertl scopes that are pretty funky looking.
Kind of old-fashioned, but so are the Marines.
And those scopes worked, the Marines were pretty happy with them.
The Army gets the mass production ... 03A4s.
These were sort of a controversial rifle at the time,
there were a lot of guys who didn't really like them that much.
Partly because of the limited magnification,
the scope was the second choice of scopes for the Army.
I went over that a bit when we talked about the overall history of the rifle.
But these things were OK in Europe, you get them into the Pacific,
they ... tended to have trouble with fogging, in some cases literally filling up with water.
There were some armourers who talked about getting in these M73 scopes for repair
and having to like pour the water out of them.
Yeah, that'll give people a bad impression.
And frankly in the Pacific there weren't a lot of battlefields where
a scoped sniper rifle was all that useful.
There were a few of them, but many of the islands were just too small,
too tightly packed with jungle for something like this to be all that useful.
Alright, shall we try that Texas Star?
I've only got 5 rounds, I'm not going to be reloading this very quickly.
So let's see if I can maybe get 5 hits with 5 rounds as a proper sniper should.
Aha, a bonus! I hit one and two fell off.
Did I do it again? I did it again. [Short stroked the bolt. ...]
Of course now they've stopped moving.
There we go.
Alright, get some more ammo. I can't end this with plates still on there.
Be nice if I could use a full stripper clip here.
Ah, that's better.
I hit the stand.
So essentially once they stop moving I'm able to make hits,
but when they are swinging around it's not so good.
Alright guys well don't forget I have teamed up with veteran-owned small business
called go.getenteredtowin.com to give away this 1903A4 sniper rifle to one of you guys.
So if you'd like to help support the channel, check out that link in the description text below.
It is go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons.
Pick up one of our cool 03A4-styled custom collectibles,
and with it you'll get a chance to win this very 03A4.
So again it's ... the link in the description text below:
go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons.
Hit it up today, good luck, one of you is going to get a really cool rifle.
No bipods on these, 2.75x power scope, this is sniper rifle hard mode World War Two.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.