Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons.com I'm in Ian McCollum and today. Thanks to viewer Wyatt
We have a really cool and unusual rifle to take a look at now this rifle was originally made in 1911
But the story of what it is today really dates to the mid 1930s and at this point
turkey had a
really
just this whole smorgasbord of different sorts of rifles and they decided to put in place an upgrade program to
Basically make all their rifles the same give them all the same
Configuration now most of what they had were a couple different iterations of Mausers, so
This upgrade program was largely to do things like make sure all the sights were the same,have them all calibrated to the same ammunition
Make sure that sling swivels were all in the same place
So they could have the same manual of arms and handling procedures for all their rifles
However, not everything was a Mauser. They had for example a bunch of Gewehr 88 not technically a Mauser
But they updated those to the same sort of configuration as the Mausers. For example you will find those with
Disassembly discs in the butt stocks. You don't necessarily really need that to disassemble a Gewehr 88 bolt
the weirdest example of what went through this upgrade program, however are these and
Thousand fields they occasionally go by those names there really is no standard
recognized
Nomenclature for this rifle this is this rifle is kind of like a mullet
it's an Enfield in the back and it's a Mauser in the front and
This dates that this originates with captured and filled rifles from World War one that Turkey acquired
They sat in inventory for a while and in the 30s
They were completely rebuilt not just to match the sling swivel and the sights and the general
furniture pattern of the Mauser rifles
But even the magazines and the chambering so this rifle is actually chambered for 8 by 57 Mauser it has a 5 round
standard flush Mauser magazine instead of the original 10-round detachable
Enfield magazine the extractor has been changed for eight millimeter Mauser instead of the rim 303 and
In all as this is basically as close as you can make an Enfield action to handling exactly like a Mauser
So it's really quite a cool rifle now the other thing that is particularly interesting about this one and about many of these is
This rifle actually has a brass disc in the buttstock
Indicating when and to whom it was originally issued by the British Army
So let's take a closer look at this and I will tell you about exactly where this rifle came from
So we'll start with the original manufacturing marks on the rifle. You can see right here this identifies this as an Ishapore
manufactured so in Indian Lee Enfield
Manufactured in 1911 and it is a short Lee Enfield mark 3 note that this was pre 1916
It doesn't have the star so it never went through the British
simplification or upgrade program to be a Mark 3 star
Manufactured in Ishapore, this is a little bit unusual for these turkish hybrid rifles most of them are actually manufactured on older
Actions most of them were made well most of them were captured
charger loading lee-enfield or magazine lee-enfield some of the earlier guns before the number 1 mark 3
moving back to the buttstock we have this very
helpful brass disc on the stock so a couple markings here the
10.14 indicates when this rifle was actually issued that would be October of 1914
103 MAHR
indicates that this went to the
103rd Murata light infantry that was part of the 17th Indian Infantry Brigade of the 6th division and that
12 means this is the 12th rifle issued to that particular unit
Now normally tracking where a particular rifle was during a conflict like World War one can be very difficult
However in this case because we know it ended up with the Turks
And we know it started with the Mirada light infantry
We pretty much know exactly what happened to this rifle that particular Indian unit was one of several
involved in the siege of cut
It's a town about a hundred miles south of Baghdad in December of 1915 the British
British and Indian troops
Retreated to and occupied coot and then held out there under siege from the ottoman turks they
Initially when they went into the town they had about a month's worth of food
And they were hoping to survive about a two-month siege before they were reinforced
Ended up they were never able to be relieved
the garrison ultimately surrendered in late April of 1916
about ten thousand Indian troops and about twenty-five hundred British troops were taken into Turkish captivity and
Unfortunately they did quite quite poorly in captivity a great number of them died before the end of the war
But that is one of the two main sources for rifles like this one captured by the Turks the siege of coot of course
Got the turks several thousand captured rifles
the other source was Gallipoli where the British troops attempted an invasion of
Turkey and were ultimately forced to withdraw
Turkey captured a substantial number of Enfields there as well
So you will find some unit marked hybrid Mauser Enfield rifles that can be traced back to the Gallipoli
Operation as well
Now if we take a look at the Turkish markings on this rifle. This is the primary one on the receiver ring?
That TC is a Turkish army mark
ASFA Ankara is the Arsenal that did the conversion work?
And it's dated in 1936 and you'll find mid-1930s dates on pretty much all of these
Just as you will find this exact sort of marking on a great number of Turkish Mausers and converted Gewehr eighty-eights
That is when and where
This upgrade program took place for Turkey
The Turks also issued their own serial numbers on these rifles so marked here on the back of the receiver. This is number 1425
that number is also present on this reinforcing bar on the side of the receiver and
Also on the back of the bolt you can see where the original British serial number has been ground off and a new serial number
Applied this one looks like it is mismatched though. It's close, but it's not quite the same
Now let's take a look at what the Turks actually did mechanically to convert these rifles
I have a number one mark three star here in the background
Just for a comparison sake that's a standard British World War one rifle
And then here's our hybrid so you can see first off they added in this
Reinforcing bar on the side of the receiver where there originally was none
And they actually cut a big slot in the bolt head to accommodate it you can see that
right there as
Opposed to the original and because the 8 by 57 cartridge is longer than 303
They had to notch out the front of the receiver right here so that this could actually accept a stripper clip of
eight millimeter cartridges and
Speaking of the stripper clips you can see that
the stripper clip guide has been
Rebuilt slightly so the Enfield stripper clips because they wrap around the outside of a rimmed cartridge are
actually substantially wider than Mauser style clips
So they had to weld up and recut these stripper clip guides this this was a quite substantial
Rebuild that the Turks did on these rifles
Looking at the underside one of the other major changes is
That they actually got rid of the Enfield box magazine and replaced it with a flush Mauser magazine
So they went from ten rounds to five
Makes everything handle the same
I suppose
The magazine release buttons have been changed on the Enfield you have a button right there that allows you to remove the magazine
On the new guns instead they have a release latch
Kinda similar to a Mauser to allow you to remove the floor plate we have a little latch right here
that I can pop with a
cartridge tip
And that allows me to pull out a very Mauser esque magazine follower
I should also point out here the bottom of the magazine does have a little Turkish crescent and some markings on it
the trigger card still has its British markings and
This new replacement floor plate that the Turks made
Doesn't quite completely cover the opening from the original magazine because I'm pretty sure
this is just a modification of a standard Mauser floorplate a
Couple changes were of course made to the bolt head
You can see for one thing the notch here for that reinforcing bar and then more substantively
There is a much deeper
Extractor on the hybrid rifle here than there is on the British one
that's because this is for a case with a large external rim and
This is for the rimless eight by fifty seven so the extractor has to come in a little farther
Since the bolt face remains the same size
It's a little difficult to see inside the rifles
But you can see up here that there is really no covering on the inside of the magazine well on the original British gun
Because well, there's a metal detachable magazine in there to do that job
When the Turks converted these two eight millimeter, however, they got rid of that box magazine and so they had to also
Create an inside magazine box and right up there
You can see right here, they had to add some front feed lips also to hold the cartridges in place
There's actually a little bit of a rear one back here as well
That's a little difficult to see but they had to have something to hold the magazine hold the cartridges in place
Here's the one on that side
Because of course that job would have normally been done by the Box magazine
Other than that the bolt and receiver assembly of these guns is unchanged
I've taken a handguard off here to show you a little bit more of the barrel. Which naturally had to be changed
the Turks did go ahead and stamp the barrel with the serial number of the new rifle as well and
Because of course this was one of the main reasons for the overhaul in the first place the sights have been replaced
Going from Enfield type to Mauser type still leaf sights the Enfield had a little bit larger
u notch where the Mauser sights have a V notch, but other than that not very different and
then a front band from a Mauser a
Bayonet lug from a Mauser a cleaning rod like a Mauser and a Mauser
Barleycorn style of front sight there
Now interestingly the import mark which was put on by century when these guns were imported says 1893 German
8-millimeter and the reason for that is it's best
I've been able to tell these rifles were all actually imported accidentally Century was importing a lot of Turkish mousers
and it seems that a couple times people grabbed the wrong crate and
auxes of these Enfield Mauser hybrids came over they
weren't recognized by the people who were doing the basic import stamping whose job of course was simply to go through and
Stamp this on the barrel of every single rifle in this you know stacks of presumably thousands of guns
And so they got miss import stamped
they showed up on the market and
Were kind of quickly snapped up by people who recognized that there were something a little bit different and interesting
My understanding is only about
5,000 of these were actually done by Turkey and of those only a couple hundred
Maybe less than could be probably in the two to three hundred maybe 350 range
Were actually brought into the US so they are quite scarce rifles here
It really is pretty cool to see to find a rifle that has both
The really detailed provenance that we can actually track as well as having some really crazy
mechanical features like this sort of hybrid system
Again, I'd like to give a big thanks to Wyatt for providing this rifle
I've been wanting to do a video on one of these for quite some time now
And just they're rather scarce and hard to find and I hadn't been able to get my hands on one so
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video make sure to tune in tomorrow for more cool forgotten weapons. Thanks for watching