Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
Cody Firearms Museum, part of the
Centre of the West in Cody, Wyoming.
And we're taking a look at one of the really interesting
prototype Winchester rifles in their firearms collection.
This is a Winchester Model D,
which is kind of a pretty boring name.
This is a rifle that came really close to actually being in military service
in World War One, but not quite.
And it's the result of Winchester's sporting rifle development program.
So ultimately, if you follow this all the way through its successors,
you end up at the Winchester Model 70.
One of the most successful and iconic bolt-action rifles of all time.
Work on this thing, ... development of this thing began basically in 1914.
And it was done by a guy named T.C. Johnson,
who was in charge of Winchester's development at the time.
He had originally been the assistant for William Mason.
When Mason passed away, Johnson took over his position.
And Winchester wanted to market a bolt-action, full-size, modern sporting rifle.
So Johnson put together this design in 1914, and it's largely Mauser based.
And his original gun was called the Model A.
The most notable difference from the rifle we're looking at here, the D,
the Model A had its rear sight up here, like a 1903 Springfield.
The Model A ... the plans were completed in early/mid 1914.
It was developed as both a military and a sporting rifle.
Once World War One broke out
Winchester realised, "Hey, you know, maybe there's a military market for this thing."
So what they basically did was threw on some military hardware,
... full handguard, bayonet lug, that sort of stuff.
Now, they almost immediately updated it to the Model B,
a little lighter, a little simpler to manufacture.
And the Model B is ready like late 1914.
Well, that's right about the time that Winchester gets a contract
to manufacture Model 1914 rifles for the British.
So to do this they're going to have to set up a production line, and set up tooling.
And all of the design department, all of T.C. Johnson's time, is basically sidetracked into,
"We need to make this contract for the British work."
So he takes about a full year in getting the Pattern 14 rifles set up for production at Winchester.
A process with a lot of speed bumps in it, but ultimately quite successful.
By the time he's able to get back to this rifle it's 1916.
And he's taken some of the lessons from the Pattern 14,
and adapts them to his design, and updates it to the Model C.
The most substantial change being they lengthen the receiver,
and add a rear aperture sight to it.
This gives it a really nice long sight radius. It's practically speaking,
in my opinion at least, a much better system, more accurate,
more user-friendly than the forward-mounted open notch sights
of ... most of the military rifles at the time.
At any rate, 1916, plans for the Model C are sent to company management for approval.
And they come back saying, "Yeah, that looks pretty good, we should make it.
But we should also consider making like the economy version of it,
a little simpler, cheaper to make, for foreign exports.
Because, hey, there's this big war going on
and we still think there's a potential to sell a bunch of guns to somebody."
So the Model D is the result.
This is the economised version of T.C. Johnson's Mauser-based sporting rifle.
So let's take a look up close, and I'll show you some of the specific features on it.
Then we'll come back, and talk about what happened to them.
So if we look at this up close it looks actually very similar
to the Pattern 1914 rifles or Model 1917 rifles that are much more familiar to us today.
We have a rear aperture sight here.
You'll notice however, that the range markings
are really kind of a different style, different pattern, than on the 1917.
We have a 1,600 metre (I suspect it's metre), aperture up here.
And then you have your range slider down here with its aperture as well, that goes up to 1,500.
This of course is used by lifting the whole thing up like so.
And then, of course, you have your standard battle sight down here.
Both this and the 1914, 1917 rifles are cock on close actions, like so.
One of the most readily distinctive features of the Model D here, however,
is that it has a flag safety like a Mauser.
Where the Enfield-based rifles have a thumb safety lever on the receiver, so.
So the only marking, other than a couple of serial numbers, on this rifle
is this guy right on the receiver bridge, 6.5mm.
This one is in 6.5 Portuguese calibre.
The hardware out at the muzzle end looks of course,
once again, very reminiscent of the Model 1914 or 1917.
Standard bayonet lug. There is a full shroud over the front sight,
which is just a nice square blade inside there.
You have a flush fitting 5 round magazine in here,
take 5 rounds of basically any military cartridge, that was the idea.
And that's pretty much everything that there is to this.
The design itself is a hybrid of Mauser and P14, sort of.
Or hybrid of the earlier T.C. Johnson sporting rifles.
It has a lot of very familiar elements to it,
and that's because those are the elements that work best.
There are known good, proven ways to
design and manufacture a bolt-action, full-size cartridge rifle.
So like I said, Winchester really didn't have a specific cartridge in mind.
They intentionally designed this to fit basically anything that was in service,
so that they could easily adapt and sell it to anybody.
Kind of like the Maxim gun in that way.
Ultimately they would produce a handful of prototypes of the rifle in 6.5 Portuguese.
There's some other documentation with Winchester, they had interest from Portugal
in Winchester 1895 lever action rifles in 6.5 Portuguese.
And this was probably kind of hanging onto the same sort of process.
So they did a couple in 6.5 Portuguese, including this one.
They made a couple in 7mm Mauser, they made at least one in .30-06,
"Hey, maybe the US government's interested, or someone else wants to use that calibre."
They made one in .303 British, and they made ... a couple in 7.62x54 rimmed Russian.
And Russia turned out to be the most promising potential contract for these rifles.
So in February of 1917 they made 500 of them in 7.62 Russian.
They had sent some sales reps over to Russia with some samples,
and they got a pretty good response on it.
... This legitimately is a fantastic rifle, it's efficient, it's everything that the Model of 1917 rifle is
except it's a little lighter, and, "Hey, if we can sell these to the Russians - awesome."
So they send over 500, the Russians like them, and figure,
"It's looking like they're going to send these rifles into field trials,
and maybe actually buy a lot of them."
Well, the plan to send them into field trials takes form in like October of 1917.
Some other stuff happens in October of 1917, namely the Russian Revolution.
And the change in government kills any potential for Winchester marketing these rifles in Russia,
they just don't have the time and bandwidth to deal with testing a new rifle.
Much more important stuff going on for them.
So that's basically the end of the Model D.
The rifle was a little bit too late to be seriously considered for US military adoption.
It was too close to the actual wartime usage to be adopting a brand new rifle.
Now you may look at this and say,
"Hey, didn't the US actually have Winchester make them a brand new rifle in 1917?"
Yes, they did. The Model of 1917 rifle was Winchester adapting the British P14
that they'd made just a couple of years earlier, adapting it to .30-06,
selling it to the US government.
However, if you look at it from sort of a bureaucratic marketing perspective,
they're able to go to the US government and say,
"Look, we just made hundreds of thousands of these rifles.
We've got a production line set up, the tooling's done, we know it works.
It's been tested, the British like the rifles.
All we're going to do is just modify that to your cartridge, .30-06, and we can make those."
That's a different proposition than, "Hey, we have this brand new rifle.
And the Russians think it might be OK, you should buy some."
You see the difference in the potential appeal there.
So ... Winchester ended up manufacturing 1917s for the US military.
The Model D? Well, the Model D ended up evolving.
There was a Model E, there was, I believe, also a Model F.
And then it would turn into the Models 51, 54, and ultimately the Winchester Model 70.
Growing from the same base position as this guy.
So, pretty cool to get a chance to take a look at this.
While they made 500 of them for Russia, I believe most of those are long gone.
There are a number of examples of these, pretty much all the surviving examples of them
are in the collection of the Cody Firearms Museum here.
So I specifically chose this 6.5 one to show you,
but they have a bunch of others in different calibres, which is pretty neat.
So a big thanks to the museum here for giving me the chance to come in,
do this filming, show the rifle to you.
They have actually just as I'm filming this (I'm going to date myself here),
they have just reopened the main public firearms museum.
They have even more guns on display now,
and it is truly, I think I can fairly say, the best firearms museum in the United States.
So if you're going through Cody, visiting Yellowstone, or otherwise in the area
absolutely take the time to stop in and check it out.
Thanks for watching.