[ US World War 2 Springfield Sniper Rifles ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons com.
I'm Ian, and I am here today at the James Julia
Auction House taking a look at a bunch of cool guns
that they are going to be selling in their
October of 2016 upcoming Firearms Auction.
Specifically, what we are taking a look at today
are US bolt-action sniper rifles from World War Two.
So these are specifically 1903 Springfields
as they were used by the US
during the Second World War.
As you can see, I have three versions here.
This front one is specifically a Marine Corps rifle,
which is actually a 1903A1 Springfield.
The early version, very similar to what
the Marine Corps was using in World War One.
And then the second rifle, the middle one here,
is a 1903A3 Springfield rifle adapted for a small scope,
which then changes the designation to 1903A4.
This in fact has the distinction of being the only mass-produced US sniper rifle.
They made almost 30,000 of these in less than two years.
And then the last one here is another 1903A4 Springfield sniper,
except in this case it has been upgraded after World War Two,
(probably just after) with a slightly later version of scope.
So the US has two different services, of course,
the Marine Corps and the Army, that are involved in sniping.
And when ... the US got involved [in World War Two],
all of a sudden sniping went from being something nobody bothered to ever think about to,
"Oh boy, we really need to take care of this."
And the two services were really positioned to react differently.
The Marine Corps, historically, has been a much smaller branch of the service,
and always ... had second priority in getting equipment.
And this led to the Marine Corps basically never throwing away anything ever.
Which is why they were still using 1903A1 rifles.
In World War One they'd used this exact same ... model of rifle,
and they had fitted a Winchester A5 scope to it.
In fact we have a previous video on the World War One US sniper rifles,
and you can see examples of that rifle.
Now what they were using in World War Two they called the Model of 1941.
And these were adopted in 1942, they went into production,
as much as these were actually mass-produced.
About 1,750 of these scopes were actually delivered to the Marine Corps during World War Two,
so that's the limit on the number of rifles they could have assembled with them.
And basically it's the same rifle as the World War One gun,
but they took off the A5 and they put on this scope, which is an 8x power Unertl.
And did very well with it.
We'll touch on ... a few of the details of this rifle and scope in a moment.
Now while that was going on, the US Ordnance Department in general
was looking at the same thing and thinking, "Wow, we need a sniping rifle of some sort."
The Army, being first in line for new gear
and not nearly as paranoid about keeping everything at the end of World War One,
they'd basically thrown away all the sniper stuff over the 1920s, and '30s.
By the time World War Two rolls around there isn't a sniping program,
the thing basically has to be built from the ground up.
Which is kind of what most countries do in between wars,
as they get rid of all that gear and all that expertise.
I guess figuring they'll not need it again.
And then the next war breaks out and, "Oh, wow, panic time. We need to figure
that stuff out, maybe we shouldn't have thrown it away."
Anyway, the US Army took the more modern, the current issue, version of the Springfield,
which was the 1903A3,
(... the main visual difference you'll find is it has a
peep sight on the back of the receiver instead of a leaf sight up on the front).
So they took that and they're like, "Well, we'll put a scope on it."
And they decide to use the Weaver Model 330C scope, which is a little 2.75x power,
very small, compact.
A reasonably good scope, if perhaps underpowered.
They decided to use that, they didn't bother putting any iron sights on the gun at all,
really as a production expediency.
Normally the sights would have been right in the way of the scope mount,
and the scope was the important part.
And if they wanted to put iron sights on, it would have required redesigning the receiver
and making a bunch of extra changes. And rather than do that they just said,
"Forget it, it's a sniping rifle, we don't care about the iron sights.
You wouldn't be able to see them any way through the scope, so just leave them off."
So it's interesting that these actually have cutouts for front sights on the barrels,
but no front sights were ever issued.
So we'll take a look at the details of those in a minute as well.
And then of course in 1944 they formally adopted the M1C, a semi-automatic sniper rifle.
And when they did that, they decided to cut off production of the Springfield snipers.
They figured, "Semi-autos are better than bolt-action.
So we're good, we'll stop producing these. We had 28,375 of these produced during the war."
I guess they probably didn't realise at the time that it would take
like a year and a half before the M1C was actually being issued.
So ... basically sniper rifle production just ended in the middle of 1944.
And at that point there were enough of the rifles around
that it didn't negatively impact the rest of the war effort, there were plenty to do the job.
And ... these 1903A4s would go on in service through the Korean War,
complemented by semi-automatic M1 Garands, the M1C and the M1D.
And as the scopes were damaged, or lost, or just needed to be replaced,
there was an alternative that was accepted as a backup scope, and that was the Lyman M84.
This is ... the scope that would be used on the M1D.
And ... with a slightly different set of rings you could mount that on the same mount on the 1903A4.
So we have an example of that, a refitted post-world War Two 03-A4.
With that in mind, let's go ahead and go back and take a closer look
at some of the details on each of these rifles.
Alright, let's start with this 1941 Marine Corps sniper.
The scope on this thing is an enormous piece of equipment, it is a full 24 inches long.
It is 8x power, that was the standard magnification used by the Marine Corps.
And it's got some pretty notable features on it, big obvious adjustment knobs there.
These adjustment ... brackets were made out of a single piece of
anodised aluminium, which is pretty impressive.
And really you can see this is kind of a fragile looking scope,
and that was a concern for military procurement and study boards.
They always brought that up.
But I'll tell you what, they just worked.
... Servicemen kept using these in the field, and they just kept running.
The guys who were proficient with these scopes were also proficient in taking care of them,
and they knew better than to do things like bang the rifle around on rocks and such.
Now, ... getting to some of the fragility of these scopes,
they were actually free floated in their mounting rings.
So when you fired, the scope would tend to slide forward,
or rather the scope would stay in place and the rifle would recoil backwards.
So in between shots you would actually grab the scope, and pull it back and reset it.
And that buffered the recoil impact on the scope, which helped to prolong their service life.
If we look at the barrel of this rifle, we'll see that it is a March of 1939 production gun,
which is pretty typical for the Marine Corps 1941 snipers.
They were late production Springfield rifles, you'll find them '38, '39 typical years.
You can see that the front handguard here has been scalloped out so that the rings
can slide backwards to be removed.
That was also done on the A5 sniper rifles back in World War One,
which is ... basically the same ... rifle as this, just with a different scope.
You can see here that the mounts were put on standard 1903A1 rifles.
So the serial number is visible on this side,
but the arsenal marking is pretty much completely hidden under the scope base.
It's neat to notice that the bolt has been electro-pencilled with the rifle's serial number.
Can just see most of it under there.
This was done so that when the guys were in groups cleaning rifles,
you could ... clean all the bolts together,
but it was really easy to identify which bolt belonged to which rifle.
Obviously for a precision rifle like this, it's important to not swap bolts
with random other rifles, and so you'll see that on a lot of them.
Now some detail about the scopes.
You can see the markings back here, John Unertl, USMC Sniper, and a serial number on the scope.
And then this 8 is indicative of an 8x power magnification.
They were all marked that way. In actuality it's more like 7.8x magnification, but close enough.
Now the early scopes actually had quarter minute adjustment clicks.
This is a slightly later one that has half minute adjustments.
But you have these nice big, easily grippable turrets
with very solid, and very audible clicks.
That again is indicative of something designed or used by serious precision target shooters.
If you look at the Army scopes for example, which we will in just a moment,
those things have much smaller knobs, and they're not as precise,
and they're not as ... audible to turn them.
Of course there are downsides to having a high magnification,
and that is typically a small field of view.
And sure enough, the field of view on these ... 7.8x power Unertls was about 11 feet at 100 yards,
which is about 40% of what you would get with one of the low-power scopes from an 03-A4, or an M1C, or M1D.
So the Marine Corps Unertls used a fine crosshair reticle,
which I'm not having an easy time getting in focus there.
... You can get the idea there, 8x power, the camera is really fighting.
However it's a simple crosshair reticle, nothing special, no graduations, no extra lines.
Because you're supposed to use those knobs, and know your dope,
and set that crosshair to be exactly where you need it for each shot.
Production of these Marine Corps 1941 pattern rifles began in late 1942, maybe January of 1943.
And continued right up until the end of the war, with a total of probably about 1,750 being made.
So this was small-scale production, rifles converted by the Marine Corps,
A5 rifles refitted with these Unertl scopes.
As opposed to the 1903A4, which was in fact a true mass-production factory-made rifle.
So let's go ahead and take a look at one of those.
Let's start by pointing out that
the 1903A4 rifle is the proper designation for a scoped sniper rifle like this.
However these were built on 03-A3 receivers, and they are all marked 1903A3.
That does not mean that it's a fake rifle built on the wrong style of receiver,
that's how they're supposed to be.
You'll notice that the receiver markings are down here on the side of the receiver.
The serial number is printed in smaller font here on the other side.
This is done because if they used the original large font,
it wouldn't fit in this space where it would be visible with the scope mount there.
And same thing for this, if they'd printed that in the same location as a typical 03-A3 rifle,
most of it would be hidden under the scope mount so you wouldn't be able to see it.
Remington was the ... only manufacturer of these.
And they did select these guns for accuracy, although they didn't do it by firing test.
They actually did it by carefully gauging the barrels,
and taking the barrels that were the closest to exact spec and building those into snipers.
So again, a total of little over 28,000 of them.
Pretty substantial, this was a ... full-on manufacturing process.
So this is actually a Redfield JR scope base that was selected for use.
A commercial scope base that the military ordered a whole bunch of.
And the gross windage on the scopes was set with these two screws.
You would loosen one and tighten the other, and move this whole scope side to side
until you are pretty close. And then you had use of
elevation and windage adjustment to move the reticle and exactly zero the rifle.
Now this has quarter-minute adjustment clicks,
but they are really fine, you can probably just barely hear those.
It would be really easy to lose count of those things.
And in fact general policy in the manual was to pick a zero distance, 200 or 250 or maybe 300 yards,
zero the rifle for that, and then ignore these knobs, leave them alone.
And just holdover when you're shooting closer or further away.
... It's interesting, ... that's the opposite school of view from what the Marine Corps was doing
with really big, really precise, adjustment knobs.
The Marine Corps was set up like a competitive marksmanship system
where you'd get exact dope for every shot.
Where the 03-A4 here for the Army (which the Marine Corps did also use)
but this was set up to a different school of thought of more designated marksmen.
Give a guy the ability to make a little bit more precise hit,
see his target a little bit better than everyone who had iron sights.
The ... semi-pistol grip style of stock was used on almost all of these,
that's a C Type stock, that's what they called that.
So if we look at the front of the barrel, we can see this is a July of 1943 barrel.
That "RA" is Remington Arsenal, or Armoury, or Arms.
And you can see that it has the cutouts for a front sight.
But of course, since there's no rear iron sight,
there's no reason to bother putting on a front iron sight.
Since these barrels were pulled from general inventory in the first place,
they were all manufactured like standard barrels, so they all have those cutouts.
So the scope in use here was designated the M73B1,
it's the military version of the Weaver 330C.
The reticle it came with was a fine crosshair.
See right there, no graduations or anything, just a point.
And now our last example, which is another 1903A4.
The rifle is exactly the same as the one we just saw.
It's got a serial number written here.
It has Remington Model of 1903A3 printed there on the other side of the receiver.
The difference is that it has this M84 scope on it.
So these were adopted as a substitute standard in the 1950s.
In fact the M81, M82, and M84 scopes were all
approved as acceptable replacements for the A4 rifles.
That M84 there is a 2.2x power scope.
It was adopted to replace the Lyman Alaskans, which were the 81 and the 82.
That has a 27 foot field of view at 100 yards, it has 1 minute of angle clicks,
and in total about 40,000 of these were made.
So this was the standard scope on the M1D, which would come later.
That would be the same time period as when this rifle
would have been ... rebuilt at the armoury,
and outfitted with this slightly larger (although slightly lower powered) scope.
If we take a look here you can see that instead of having exposed adjustment knobs,
or ones that are covered by threaded caps,
these have these little just friction-locked cover plates.
Really actually kind of cool, you can't lose those because they are pinned right onto the scope.
So the reticle in the M84 scope is this horizontal line with a vertical post.
(Sorry about it being a little fuzzy, it's tricky to focus the camera through scopes.)
... That was pretty close to the standard reticle in the M82,
which the Army had previously really liked.
That scope had just a vertical post, this one added a horizontal line, and there you go.
Obviously there are no iron sights on this rifle.
So if your scope is defective,
you send it back and get it fixed by the base armourer or the unit armourer.
Thank you for watching guys. I hope you enjoyed the video.
It's really cool to get to see all of these in the same place.
It really lets you compare and contrast, and
get a better overall picture for what sniping was with bolt-action rifles in World War Two.
Now of course these are the standard-issue items.
In World War Two, and in Korea as well, and in Vietnam even more so,
there was a fairly wide use of non-standard rifles, personal rifles, that was something.
You could carry personal weapons to a certain extent in World War Two and Korea,
much more so than might be acceptable or recognised today.
So there were things like Winchester Model 70s that were used as well.
But ... these three give a pretty good overview of the official issue military snipers at that point.
If you'd like to own any of the three of them,
of course they are all coming up for sale here at James Julia.
Take a look at the description text below,
and you'll find links to the catalogue pages for all three of these guns.
Where you can see Julia's more detailed pictures and descriptions.
And you can place bids right there over the phone,
or come here to the auction in person and participate live.
Thanks for watching.