Hi guys. Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum. I am here today at the Rock Island Auction
Company, where we are taking a look at a British World War One
sniper rifle. This a Lee-Enfield with a scope on it,
and there isn't a designation for it really, because the British
actually didn't have a formal standardised,
like, pattern recognized, sniper rifle until 1918.
So, they didn't go into World War One with any sort of
optically sighted infantry rifle. I mean, sniping really is
quite unsportsmanlike, and not the sort of thing that
the British Army of 1914 was likely to be doing.
So the British were actually kind of a bit taken by surprise
when the Germans started bringing out a lot of scoped rifles.
The British started suffering this rash of head injuries...
It took them a little while to figure out exactly what
was going on. But it turns out it was snipers.
Now, the number of casualties they were taking from this wasn't really that big in the grand scheme of things,
you know, compared to the just unimaginable numbers of men who were being vapourised by artillery
and laid out by machine guns, the occasional sniper rifle casualty, numbers wise, not that big a deal.
However it was a serious impediment to moral and to movement.
Just the idea that there might be a sniper out there, or when you knew there was a sniper out there,
it got a lot harder to move around the trenches.
So this was something that had to be combatted.
And so the British started a program of developing and issuing their own sniper rifles to counter the threat.
At the very beginning, this took the form of basically whatever they could scrounge from the civilian market.
A lot of hunting rifles, Mausers, Mannlichers, you know, commercially available stuff.
However in 1915 the British Army, or the British government, started issuing contracts for actual
SMLE rifles with optics on them. Now they would issue these contracts to, like,
nine different companies to convert rifles to sniper configuration.
They would use a wide variety of scopes, basically anything they were able to get their hands on.
The most common ones were the ones made by Aldis Brothers, the [Periscopic] Prism Company
(and that's what we have here), and also Winchester.
In fact they used Winchester A5 and Winchester B4 scopes on a bunch of these rifles.
So, like I said, there was no formal designation, this was: "get some scopes, we'll give you some rifles,
and mount the scopes on the rifles, and send them over and we'll put them to good use".
So there was a variety of configurations, of magnifications, the most typical was a 3x or 4x power scope.
Early in the war there were a lot of offset scopes, which allows you to continue to use the stripper clip guide
in the rifle, as well as the original iron sights, and keeps the scope a little bit lower.
But of course everything is a trade-off, and this is a lot less suited to really good accurate marksmanship.
It's much better to have the scope centred over the bore.
This also potentially brings up some issues shooting through small loopholes, like,
you can't have a loophole just wide enough for the rifle muzzle, it's got to be
about twice as big so that you can actually see through the loophole with the scope as well.
Or else you end up with that classic bore offset problem of modern rifles like ARs, where your optic
is higher than your muzzle and so you end up occasionally accidentally shooting barricades or barriers
because you can see over the top and you don't think about the fact that the barrel is below.
Well, the same thing can happen with an offset scope. ... I can see through this loophole,
you fire a shot and realise that you just shot the steel plate 6 inches in front of the muzzle,
because the muzzle wasn't actually sticking through the loophole.
Anyway, I am starting to digress a bit.
Let me go ahead and show you exactly what this scope and mount are like,
because this will give you some definite appreciation for modern optics.
The rifle itself here is a completely standard Number 1 Mk 3* Lee-Enfield.
... These were chosen for accuracy, but they were not
specifically made for scope use, for sniper conversion.
Just standard off the rack guns.
This particular one is an Enfield 1917 production, so SHTLE 3*, Short Lee-Enfield [Mark] three star.
The scope is, I believe, a 3x power. It is remarkably clear for today, which is really nice.
It does have a serial number and a patent date on it. 'V 1796' and a patent there,
1915 was the date of the patent on the scope.
The mounting bracket is really pretty simple, it's a female dovetail that has been screwed,
with no less than five screws, onto the side of the receiver.
And the surface underneath, the joint there between the mount and the receiver, is also soldered in place.
You can see here where those screw holes were drilled into the inside of the receiver.
And then it has a spring loaded catch, right here, which allows the scope to be removed.
This particular one is shimmed in place, presumably for accuracy, and so I don't wanna actually take it off.
But you can see how that was done, it just a little chequered pad.
Being able to remove the scope is a pretty common thing in World War One (and much later even).
Scopes were relatively fragile and rifles were generally treated fairly roughly, and so if you weren't
actually using the scope, you'd take it off the gun, put it in a protective case and ... take better care of it.
We do have a few actual controls here at the front end of the scope,
which is more than you sometimes get on early military snipers.
This is actually a focal adjustment, which is kind of cool, little bit unique, little distinct from what we get in todays optics.
This is your bullet drop compensator, so that's your elevation adjustment.
You would use that both for zeroing for elevation and also for compensating for range.
On the front here is just a little set screw, used to lock it down. When we loosen that we can then rotate this guy.
You'll see it's marked from 1 through 6, that's in hundreds of metres,
and what this does is actually move your reticle up and down.
So ... it doesn't adjust the whole scope, it just moves the reticle in your field of view.
So you set it to wherever you want it, you can then just finger tighten that down,
which prevents this from moving.
Then these two adjustments are actually your windage adjustments.
You are not using those to compensate for actual wind for a given shot.
You are using those to zero the scope and that is it. So, you shim up the mount to make sure it is nice and tight
and then I believe this is a thing where you loosen one and tighten the other.
You are shifting the whole mechanism inside the scope tube back and forth.
So really ... we are spoiled today by having simple click adjustable windage knobs.
So there is your reticle. You have a post in the centre and then a horizontal cross hair.
If I adjust the elevation, you can see that sliding up and down.
And then ... I don't know if I can do this ...
but we'll give it a try .. if I adjust the focus
Yup, there you go.
You can see that go out of focus. This is a little complicated
because the camera's focus is fighting with the scope's.
But, you get the idea there.
In total, during World War One the British military would issue out about 10,000 scoped sniper rifles,
both SMLEs like this one, and also Pattern 1914 rifles. The Pattern 1914
with a [Periscopic] Prism Company centre mounted scope, would, by 1918,
prove to be the best all around package for a British sniper rifle.
And that would be formally adopted as the standard in 1918 and that's was what was used after the war.
But during the war, a whole mish-mash of stuff. About 50% of what was issued out during the war,
4830 rifles, were [Periscopic] Prism Company scopes mounted on guns in various ways.
So, what you see here is really the most common ... the closest thing there was to a standard British sniper rifle during the war.
Most of these were scrapped out after the war. In 1921 they were declared obsolete
in favour of that P14 centre mounted scope pattern.
And at that point, any of these that were still with units were to be turned in and replaced with P14 rifles.
The Army requirement dropped from 10,000 to about 3,000 to equip the peacetime army.
So, like with all World War One original sniper rifles, these are pretty scarce.
So, we've taken a look at some of the others.
I have previous videos on, in fact, one of those 1918 pattern guns.
Definitely check that out if you are interested in this sort of thing.
Also have a video on one of the World War One German Gewehr 98 snipers,
as well as some American World War One snipers.
So a bunch of other stuff you can take a look at if you are interested.
If you collect sniper rifles, or British rifles, or Enfields
and you would like to have this one in your own collection,
take a look at the description text below the video,
you'll find there a link to ForgottenWeapons
and from there you can click over to Rock Island's catalogue page on this rifle,
take a look at their description, their high res pictures, their price estimate, all that sort of good stuff.
Thanks for watching.