[ Spanish M43 Sniper ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to take a look
at the Spanish M43 Mauser sniper model.
And there's actually two sniper models of the M43,
there is the early version here and the later version here.
And there's a really substantial
change in quality between the two.
And there's also some interesting sort of mystery elements here with the early ones.
So, to go back to the beginning of this story a little bit.
The M43 is the Spanish Mauser made at the La Coruña Arsenal,
1943, in 8mm Mauser.
And it would serve as Spain's standard infantry rifle until the adoption of the CETME in 1958.
So, the ... early pattern of M43 snipers were made at some point in the mid-1950s,
it's unclear exactly when, but not a large number of them were made.
And they were made with a 4x power Zeiss scope,
which we'll take a closer look at in just a minute.
The later pattern were done about 10 years later, and clearly
the Spanish military had run out of money or motivation to make these things,
because the drop in quality from the early to the late is really impressive.
So, let's take a closer look at both of these.
Let's go ahead and start with the early one, which is the nice one.
This has a rather unusual mounting system for the scope.
And there's a little bit of mystery to the scope itself.
So just real quick though.
Standard rifle from the front. Rebuilt to take Spanish bayonets.
Here is our serial number, the original Spanish markings, calibre 7.92.
There are some Italian proofs here because this rifle went through Italy
once it came onto the commercial market. So those were not originally Spanish.
Now the scope has a Madrid marking and a serial number.
But it seems dubious that this is actually a Spanish made scope.
It's clearly either a Zeiss Zielvier, or a really good Spanish copy.
And if it's a copy, it's really weird that they used
the early ... style of elevation turret design from the Zeiss.
... Zeiss did make these scopes still in the 1950s,
but at that point they were making them with aluminium tubes and this is a steel tube.
What ... seems most likely is that this is ... originally a Zeiss scope, probably from the '20s,
that was in Spanish inventory that they scrubbed the markings off of,
and remarked with their own number and Madrid Arsenal marking.
It's theoretically possible that this is a scope that they purchased
from Zeiss with no markings on it at all at some point.
Could have been post-World War Two, could have been post-World War One.
Actually with the steel ... body it would be post World War One, sometime in the inter-war period.
It's really not exactly clear where the scopes specifically came from.
However, they are early Zeiss Zielvier scopes.
The original Zeiss markings would have been basically under this scope ring.
There's nothing there, we've moved the scope back and forth to check.
So ... the Spanish markings are further forward than the original ones would have been.
Now the way the mounting system works, and you can see the seam there,
we have basically half-circular bases that are attached to the front and back of the receiver.
So there's the rear mount, ... the front mount is dovetailed into the front of the receiver.
And the way you take these out is to loosen this thumb screw.
And then you actually push on it ...
to push that pin out.
Unscrew it some more.
Push it further forward. And ultimately you have to take ...
the thumb screw completely off. And then you can pull the pin out.
Notice that there is a little stop there, and the pin's cut out.
So once you have it all the way in, you can tighten this down and the pin won't rotate.
You can then lift the scope off of the bases.
Now I'm not going to take it all the way off because the front one
on this rifle is really tight and doesn't want to come out.
So we'll just stick to the rear one, you can see how that works.
It's really a fairly unusual, kind of odd system to use.
And then the bolt handle has been reasonably well bent.
And of course it has to be bent so that it will clear the rear bell of the scope.
There you have it, that is the early pattern of M43 sniper.
Not bad, a ... weirdly obsolete old scope,
a kind of weirdly complicated funky mounting system, but decent.
Now fast forward 10 years, and let's see what La Coruña is doing for M43 snipers in the '60s,
and it's pretty horrific.
We have the same base rifles here.
There's your serial number, there's your calibre marking, 7.92.
This one has Spanish proof marks, presumably from when
it was taken out of service and sold onto the commercial market.
And the base rifle itself is all the same.
We have the same dual bayonet lug here, typical of the Spanish M43.
Got your rear iron sights.
On this one the bolt has not only been not quite so professionally bent over,
but they also had to scallop it out so that it could fit around ...
the scope [bell] ... just barely.
... Like I don't know, maybe this scope was on a different rifle that didn't quite clear.
But paint has been scraped off by the bolt handle of a rifle at some point.
The stock has been rather crudely inletted for the bent bolt handle.
In fact I actually have two of these here that I can show you,
and on this other one the ... bolt was bent, but they didn't have to scallop it.
It's still crudely cut out there, but this one, the scope is mounted a little bit higher.
So there's definitely some non-uniformity to these late-pattern ones.
Now take a look at this front scope base, what they've done is
on the receiver they have welded a steel mounting block, and welded it not very well.
They have then screwed a shim plate to allow for rough elevation ... zeroing.
They've screwed that plate down onto this base.
And then, let's just take this off,
on top of that they have screwed an aluminium piece of Weaver rail.
The rear mount is pretty much the same thing except without the elevation shims.
They've welded a big steel lump onto the rear of the receiver.
I'm sure they re-heat treated the receivers after they did that welding.
And then there's your screwed-on aluminium Weaver base.
Check out that awesome welding job there.
Then to mount on top of all that we have a made in Japan commercial 10x32 Marine.
There is the actual scope marking: 10x32, nitrogen filled, Japanese commercial scope.
And this is from the time when Japan was making some pretty cheap optics,
not from the time when they were making really nice ones.
We've got really cheap aluminium, thumb-screw tightened, Weaver bases.
This is the sort of thing that you'd mount on a .22 typically,
not what you are putting on your "military grade" full power sniper rifles.
In fact we even have mismatching thumb screws on this particular one.
You can tell the scope's not the most resilient because it's already got a dent in it there,
in addition to all the paint being scraped off of it.
I think it really has to be the lowest quality scope
that I've ever seen put on an actual military pattern rifle.
One other modification they had to make on these that I should point out
is grinding the safety down. So they had to cut the safety at an angle
so that when it's in the safe position it will actually clear the rear scope bell.
Which it just barely does there.
That looks to me like someone's last minute,
"Oh crap, we also ought to do that, shouldn't we" kind of correction.
There you go. Unclear exactly how many of these were made in either early or late configuration.
But they saw service, they were used by the Spanish Legion, they were used by the Spanish army.
Actually a wide variety of users and places that they were sent by the Spanish.
These rifles would be replaced, as I said, by the CETME in 1958.
But the snipers would go on to continue to see service in various units,
all the way up until the 1980s, when they were finally taken out of service.
It's interesting that for all the really crude workmanship
on these late 10x32 Japanese-scoped versions,
they continued to see military service.
There are pictures of them being used in service, and they appear to have functioned reasonably well.
So colour me surprised, I wouldn't have expected that.
But then again I also wouldn't have expected
a military pattern sniper rifle to look quite that crude.
That's the sort of thing that you take one look at and think,
"Oh my god, someone let Bubba to work on this poor rifle with a grinder and a really bad welder."
But no, that is the official Spanish late-pattern M43 Mauser sniper.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching.