Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island Auction
Company taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be
selling in their upcoming May of 2019 Premier Firearms Auction.
Now today what we have is a Yugoslav M52, or M53,
(depending, the sources vary on the designation) sniper rifle.
This is a Yugoslav Mauser M48A with a copy of a Soviet PU optic.
Now these were manufactured as kind of a trial run, and didn't actually go into full military service.
But they are a really interesting hybrid of a Mosin-Nagant sniper with a Mauser rifle.
So the origin of these goes back to 1947, when the Yugoslav government received
a bunch of 4,560 (I believe) 91/30 sniper rifles fitted with this style of PU optic with side mount.
Now these of course were in 7.62x54 rimmed. But the Yugoslav military, even at that time,
wasn't using that cartridge, they were using 8mm Mauser as their standard.
So these sniper rifles apparently just kind of sat by the wayside and didn't really get used.
Well, in 1952 the military decided that it wanted to experiment with a new sniper rifle design.
And that would use their standard Mauser rifle.
Now by this time the M48 Mauser had been superseded by the M48A,
which had a number of simplified and stamped parts for cheaper and easier construction,
and so what they did was they took these M48A rifles, (this happened at the Zastava plant),
they selected out ones of particularly good accuracy.
And apparently they did 4,612 of these. That number by the way comes from one Branko Bogdanovic,
who is the author of pretty much the only book in English out there on Yugoslavian and Serbian rifles.
And I believe he dug up ... some of the original paperwork at Zastava.
Which explains why we have such a specific number on this.
At any rate, they put aside that many rifles of reasonably good accuracy,
and then they pulled the mounts and the optics,
well, the scope mounts and the rails off of their Mosin-Nagant rifles
and modified these M48As by adding those scope mounts on.
So this, by the way, explains why Yugoslav re-issued M91/30s have shown up in the United States
as surplus, but they never have scopes on them.
Well, this is the reason why. All those scope mounts and rails ended up on Yugoslav M52 sniper rifles.
Now, the scopes themselves couldn't be interchanged because these are in 8mm Mauser,
the original Soviet rifles were in 7.62, and the ballistic cams don't match.
So the Yugoslav government set up
... the original scope production was in a town called Ljubljana.
And then eventually shortly thereafter, they got their scope workshop at Zrak, z-r-a-k, up and running.
And so they made copies called the ON 52, or in this case, ON 1952.
They made copies of the PU scope. This is a 4x power scope instead of the Soviet 3.5x.
And that's what they mounted to these ex-Soviet scope mounts.
So, they put together really kind of an interesting rifle.
Now, let me go ahead and show you some of the details up close.
For a comparisons sake here's the Yugoslav rifle, and up here we have a Mosin-Nagant that has been fitted with
a PU style of scope mount. So you can see how these are exactly the same type of mount.
Now the way this works is if you undo this big thumb screw, you can actually remove the scope itself.
This is typical on ... sniper rifles to this day to a large extent.
This allows you to transport the rifle, carry it around, without risking damage to the scope.
The scope stays in a pouch where it is protected.
So, this is zeroed by having two ... adjustment screws on the top and bottom,
and so for your gross elevation you can use those screws to set the exact angle of the scope mount.
This locks the whole thing into place, and then ... windage is just done within the scope body.
And is a function of making sure that this mount is parallel to the bore when it is installed.
So in order to mount these the rifle was modified, ... you can see the stock has been cut down there.
A couple of holes were drilled into the side of the receiver. And then you've got two blind pins, here and here,
and two big screws. And then these small screws are locking screws,
because as long as this is here, that screw can't rotate.
So, that's how the base was mounted into the rifle.
It's interesting to note that the serial number is actually obscured underneath this mount.
You have to remove it to see that.
... You can see the crest here from the original base rifle which was an M48A. ...
Now the documentation that I found on these rifles interestingly suggests that the Yugoslavs
got rid of this screw and ... once they had the thing zeroed they just welded the scope ... mount onto the base.
Now, this one obviously has not been welded in place.
I suspect that that article, that writing, was done based on a limited sample of a few
where they experimented with welding them into place.
But I don't have any hard data to back that up.
So, this is how the Soviet ones worked,
that would make sense to me that you would want to retain the ability to take the scope off.
Now the scope itself is slightly different from the Soviet version,
instead of being 3.5x power, it appears to actually be 4x power.
And then, so you can see right there, its maximum adjustment is 1,000 metres.
So it goes from 0 (and the actual stop pin is back here on this side, but)
goes from 0 up to 900 and then 1,000 metres,
where the Soviet scopes would go up to 1,300.
We also have a little bit of a difference in the style of the ... windage knob.
... If you look here we have relatively small demarcations from 0 out to 10.
The Yugoslav version here has much wider markings, still goes out to 10.
And I suspect that's 10 minutes of angle. But the markings look rather different.
The only information on the scope is ON 1952 BA, right there.
And I believe, judging from what I've been able to find documented,
I think there are a couple different versions of these scopes that were actually manufactured.
Because some of them are marked ON 52, some of them have this marking.
The rifle has a bent bolt handle, of course, so that you can cycle it without ... hitting the scope.
You would not be able to use stripper clips of course, I mean I guess you could if you took the scope off,
but this would actually just be used by loading cartridges one at a time.
The rest of the rifle here is standard Yugo M48A, sling swivel, rear sight,
cleaning rod, bayonet lug. The one last thing to point out is at least some these were
issued with a threaded muzzle, apparently for use with a suppressor.
Whether that ever actually happened or not, I don't know, but I have seen people with examples of
some of these that are threaded, and some that aren't.
Now it's a bit curious to me that they would make 4,600 of these
and not put them into actual service, that seems to be a lot for a trial.
And for sniper rifles, like that sounds to me like enough to fully equip
most militaries, you don't generally have that many sniper rifles issued.
So, ... I'm going to wager that it is possible that some of the documented history on
these may be mistaken. They may have actually been taken into service.
Or the expected production of 4,600 may not have all been reached.
I think there is room for error in some of these documents, this is a very poorly documented rifle in general.
So, best I can tell from the sources these weren't put into service, the Yugoslav military didn't have
a proper scoped sniper rifle until 1969 when they adopted a different version,
which we can cover in a separate video.
But, I think it's possible maybe that these were in issue and in use,
but that's not what the sources say.
At any rate, it is a very rare and quite interesting,
as I said, hybrid style of rifle with the western action and the eastern optic.
So if you'd like to have this one yourself, it is coming up for sale in May of 2019
here at the Rock Island Auction Company.
Take a look at their catalogue and you can check out this, and everything else that they have coming up.
Thanks for watching.
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