[ M1903-A4 Sniper ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at the standard US Army sniper rifle
from the Second World War, this is the M1903-A4.
It is essentially a 1903-A3 Springfield with this
adorable little 2.5x power Weaver telescope on it.
Now before we go any further, I am excited to say that this is the subject of a give-away for us.
So we are going to be giving this exact 03-A4 away to one of you guys.
It's in great shooting condition. It is an original, all correct, 1903-A4 from the Second World War.
And it'll be one of yours, whether you want it for a collectible
or to take out on the range and shoot, because it is in great shooting condition.
I have partnered up with a veteran-owned small business called
getenteredtowin.com to do this give-away.
You may have seen some of the ones we've done before, they've been pretty awesome too.
The deal is this, you go to the link in the description text below, it's
go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons
and you buy one of our cool custom collectibles themed on the 1903-A4.
And with that purchase you also get a chance to win this very rifle.
So if you're interested in it, definitely check out that link in the description text:
go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons
sign up and get your chance and your cool collectible as well.
Now the US Army entered World War Two without any sniper training program, nor any sniper rifles.
We had both of those things during World War One, but they'd both been scrapped.
So the World War One standard official US Army sniper rifle
was the 1903 Springfield with a Warner & Swasey 5x power what was called a 'Musket Sight" on it.
And that thing was in fact as outdated and obsolete as the name makes it sound.
I actually have a video on that, I'll link to it
at the end of this one in case you are interested in checking it out.
But those Warner & Swasey scoped rifles were all decommissioned
and taken out of service before World War Two happened.
So 1941 rolls around, Pearl Harbour hits,
and the US military suddenly is going to start deploying into the field
to fight the Germans, and the Italians, and the Japanese.
And as soon as US troops start seeing combat,
requests start coming into the Ordnance Department for a sniper rifle.
People thought this wasn't really a big deal, well, the troops in the field really wanted one.
So how do we go about doing it? Of course the standard rifle that the US Army has adopted
is the M1 Garand, but it feeds from the top, it ejects out the top.
It's going to be a little tricky to come up with a sniper scope mount system for it.
So development of that is begun.
But as an interim measure the government decides we'll just take 03 Springfields,
... they're in production right now, Remington has tooled up,
has restarted production of 1903 Springfields.
And we'll just convert some of those into snipers until we can get M1 Garand snipers on-line.
Now this is right about the same time that Remington is introducing
the simplified and cheaper 1903-A3 version of the Springfield.
And so ... a sniper rifle contract is signed in January of 1943
that essentially is just convert 20,000 of those 03-A3s into sniper rifles.
And the government will take the responsibility for providing both the stocks and the scopes for them.
So all Remington has to do is sort of rework the rifle a little bit.
It would turn out to add only about 10% to the cost of the rifles, less than 2 dollars apiece,
to go from an 03-A3 to an 03-A4 sniper rifle version.
So let's take a closer look and let me show you what they did to these.
Fundamentally, this is a 1903-A4 Springfield that has a scope on it instead of iron sights.
That's the fundamental difference, but there were a few other things that had to change.
If we start at the front of the rifle here, you'll see this H-shaped sort of cutout.
And that is where the front sight on the 03-A3 was originally mounted.
Sniper rifle production used barrels that were taken straight out of regular rifle production lines.
And they just didn't install the front sight on them, but they still have those cutouts.
So that's what is to be expected up there.
There are a number of stamped parts on the gun as part of the 03-A3 simplification program.
So you can see that our stacking swivel here is a stamped part.
This front band is actually stamped, it looks pretty good, but
the band and even the bayonet lug in fact are stamped parts.
If you look here at the front of the nose cap, you can see that it comes together.
... Like the bayonet lug is not a milled fixture, it's a cleverly done stamping.
The barrel band and front sling swivel are stamped.
The magazine floor plate and trigger guard are stamped, all that sort of stuff.
Now on the 03-A3s the rifle designation is on the top of the receiver.
That couldn't be done here because of the scope mount, so what they did is just
roll it over to the far left edge of the receiver.
And curiously they actually marked them all "03-A3",
you will not find a 1903-A4 designation on any of these rifles.
This does however make them basically impossible to fake.
So unlike say German sniper rifles, where a lot of the markings are the same or easily added on,
there's no easy way to fake this sort of thing.
By the way, that hole is a vent hole in case of a ruptured cartridge, that's what that is there for.
The serial number was applied on the opposite side of the receiver, right there.
There are three different blocks of serial numbers for 1903-A4s.
I'll include the specifics in the description text below, but this is an authentic 03-A4.
We still have a magazine cut off, even on the 03-A4 that was included in the design.
So "on" means that the magazine is on and functions normally.
If you flip this down to "off" that means that the magazine is restricted.
The bolt will not open far enough to pick up a new cartridge from the magazine.
It will go far enough to eject one, but not enough to pick up a new round,
and so you can keep the magazine full and fire single shots.
This really wasn't done very often, this is an antiquated holdover but it was still there.
The disassembly position by the way, is this middle one where you can pull the bolt out.
While we are here, I will point out we have a couple of stamps on this stock.
We have the Ordnance Department crossed cannons.
This is a refurbished World War Two gun.
So the gun was re-Parkerised by the military, it was given a new stock.
And these are the initials of the arsenal that did the work and the inspector that oversaw it.
OK, let's get into what makes this unique as a sniper rifle, and that of course is the scope.
As part of their contract, the US Ordnance Department was responsible for
providing scopes and stocks (which we'll get to) to Remington for these rifles.
So they went and looked at what was available commercially and found two good options,
the Alaskan from the Lyman Company and the 330C model made by Weaver.
Now the Alaskan was the better scope, that was the one
that was officially chosen, it was designated the M73.
But Lyman didn't have a very good production set-up, they weren't making very many of these things.
And so the Weaver 330C was chosen as sort of a substitute standard,
like, "We'll use those until we have enough scopes from Lyman to transition over to that."
So this was designated the M73B1.
And you can see that designation right there on its data plate.
Now rather to the Ordnance Department's chagrin,
Lyman was never able to substantially scale up production during World War Two.
And so virtually all of the 03-A4 sniper rifles that were made were equipped with these Weaver scopes.
There were a small number that were manufactured by the Frankford Arsenal, basically as a copy of this.
There were a handful of Lymans that were used, but mostly on trials guns.
Essentially it's all this scope.
Which is fine, the scope is acceptable, but it's not great.
It's really a civilian target shooting or maybe hunting scope.
It is low magnification, it's only got 2.5x power magnification to it.
It does have nice fine adjustments, we have windage and elevation dials here
that are each set up for quarter minute of angle clicks.
Which is a bit unusual for a military scope at that time.
Of course it wasn't actually a military scope.
These are just free turning dials, this little sheet metal tab here
gives them some resistance and interacts with those slots to give it the clicks.
You do have adjustable focus, so you can thread
the eyepiece in and out and then lock it in place with that.
So you can focus it to your own eye, which is nice.
But this has a very simple plain crosshair reticle, no sort of ranging assistance.
It's a very minimalistic, simplistic scope.
In order to mount those scopes the Ordnance Department purchased
Redfield "Junior" commercial scope mounts.
And then they made this base below.
So the scope mounts are quick-detach that theoretically maintain zero.
You take this screw out.
And by the way, your gross windage is done by adjusting that screw
and this one on the other side which limits how far in the scope goes.
But once we remove that screw, the scope pivots around on its front base 90 degrees and lifts out.
So these are the Redfield JR mounts.
And then this is the scope base designed to hold them.
So two screws here that lock the base down onto the receiver.
The rear segment here was actually designed to fit onto the standard 03-A4 rear sight bracket
to minimise the amount of ... change, of work that was needed for these rifles.
So that's it. This in theory holds zero.
Although I haven't actually tried taking the scope off and putting it back on and re-zeroing it.
Gone on there. These screws not surprisingly, were often lost in the field, were in short supply.
So how often do you really want to take the scope off? Nyah, probably not a lot.
Now a couple of other quick changes to point out.
The bolt handle had to be reshaped a bit on the 03-A4 so that it would clear the scope there.
And the stock had to be cut out for it.
Here is a regular 1903 Springfield. It's not an 03-A3, but the bolt handles were the same.
You can see the bolt handle sticks out much further and that would interfere with the scope.
And there's no cut out here, so they had to make those changes.
And then I mentioned that the government was also responsible for supplying stocks.
Now these were supposed to be full pistol grip stocks,
that was the 1903-A1 stock, or the "Type C" stock as it's also known.
But the government didn't have enough of them, and they had a tremendous number
of stock blanks from the original 1903s, which were straight wristed - like this guy.
And what they found was that they could take a stock blank for a straight wrist gun
and you could get a little bit of a pistol grip out of it.
This is typically referred to as a "scant grip" or a "scant C stock".
And so some of the 03-A4 snipers had full pistol grip stocks.
But a little bit later in the war and when they were refurbishing these guns
after World War Two, they were given these scant grip stocks like this.
There was really no other work done to these rifles
to make them into sniper rifles or to accurise them.
The triggers are pretty good, but 1903 triggers were all pretty good.
So that's not really surprising they didn't do anything special to the triggers.
They did not do any bedding to the stocks.
... Like these were really not sniper rifles,
these were much more like designated marksman's rifles in practice.
The first deliveries of 03-A4s were in February of 1943,
so barely a month after the original contract was signed.
This was really a pretty easy conversion for Remington to do, not that big of a deal.
They would continue production until June of 1944,
at which point 28,635 of them had been delivered to the Army.
Some of them by the way did also get to the Marine Corps.
The Marines had their own standard Unertl-scoped Springfield 03-A1s,
but they did also use some of these, you'll see some period pictures of Marines with 03-A4s.
But anyway, 28,000 and change are delivered, production shuts down,
like that's enough to supply everybody, we have enough.
The M1C Garand rifle is getting close to being ready.
And so this is in fact the ... only sniper rifle
that would see service for the US Army during World War Two.
Reports of its efficacy were really kind of mixed.
And part of this is because the Army never did institute really a sniper training program.
The guys who got sniper rifles typically got about two weeks of extra basic training
that involved some extra range time,
a little bit of practice and training in sneaking around and in range estimation, and that was it.
... They really weren't snipers, they were really more like infantrymen with scoped sniper rifles.
And with only a 2.5x power magnification, their ability
to do good observation of longer range targets was kind of mixed.
As for durability in the field, it was a little bit iffy, it was not great.
These Weaver scopes were, as one army soldier turned author put it,
"They were great for a .22 plinker, not so hot on a .30-06 calibre rifle."
So in the Pacific these scopes had problems with water tightness, they would fog up.
There are some armourers who talked about literally having to pour water out of them
when the scopes came back for maintenance and service.
They did the job, but they weren't great. This was far from the best sniper rifle of the war.
However, it would continue to serve ... into and through the Korean War.
At the very end of World War Two the M1C came into service.
A few of them got into combat, probably, in the Pacific.
None in the European theatre, combat there was already over by the time the M1C was around.
The M1C would also of course see service predominantly in the Korean War.
So after World War Two a bunch of these rifles were refurbished.
This is in fact one that has been refurbished, you saw the markings on the stock.
Some of them were updated with ... M84 scopes, some were not like this one.
Ultimately, most of them were sold through the Civilian Marksmanship Program.
Although most of those sales were done without the scopes, they were just the rifles.
And so it's actually pretty rare to find an 03-A4 with the correct original scope on it.
Those scopes became very rare as the guns became collectible.
Today they are really cool collectible rifles, they are an iconic element of US World War Two history.
And for that reason I'm really excited that we can actually be giving this one away to one of you guys.
So as I mentioned at the beginning, the deal is go to the link in the description text below,
go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons, pick up one of our 03-A4 themed collectibles.
And with it you get a chance to win this very rifle.
So if you're interested check it out: go.getenteredtowin.com/forgottenweapons.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.