*FIRST* World War Rifles?

[Robert]

What is complicated with a 03 sight, the jarheads could figure it out so it can't be that much of a problem.

http://www.surplusrifle.com/1903/operations.asp
See figure 2.

Marines qualified with their Springfields at 1200 yards and they all were taught to aim with their sights.

At 1200 yards on man sized targets with iron sights? Do you have a copy of the training regs that state this? When and where did this action take place? 1200 yards is the maximum effective range of 30-06.

As for volley fire, call it what you want

I am calling it what it is/ was. Volley fire is accomplished by large numbers of, Company or larger, troops firing en-mass to saturate an area at extreme range with small arms fire. It was not well aimed fire. The two are vastly different.

And again. The 1903 is a fine rifle capable of great accuracy. But it is really a moot point considering that more Model 1917 rifles were issued than 1903s.

 

[Germster]

Most Doughboys carried either P-14's or 1917 Enfields. Many Marines were issued Krags. Not that many 1903's were issued. Sergeant York killed his Germans with a 1917 Enfield and his .45.

I was buying these old bolt beaters when they were cheap, in the 60's and 70's. They were considered junk. $25 to $35 was a standard price. I wish now, that I had bought more. The hardest for me to find was a good Lebel and a GEW 98. Mine is beat to death, Amberg 1915. Ring in bore. Battle sight. Great trigger. Shoots nearly MOA. Shoots high, so I have to carry a very fine bead at 6 O'clock. I have the butcher bayonet. Holding the rifle with bayonet attached causes one's hair to stand up. My Lebel rifle shoots around corners, so does the Mannlicher Berthier. Mine's a Remington. Have bayonets for both. Deadly needles.

 

[Germster]

My 1917 Enfield might be my very best WWI rifle. Shoots very straight. Is mint, or nearly so. Heavy. Long barreled. I don't have the bayonet. They used to cost $2.50, now about $125, I don't need one that bad.

You need the SMLE with the the long range battle sight. Each morning the Tommy's would arrise and fire a magazine full of .303's over to the German lines. They were great for volley shooting. Also rapid fire. Those Limey's could really pump out the rounds. Sounded like massive machine gun fire. I'm glad I wasn't there. My great uncle was. He told me the tales. Bloody. Bodies everywhere. Artillery fire. Massed machine guns fire (his job). He gave me his .45 and an artillery luger that he picked up from a German officer. I asked him how he got the Luger. He said that the German officer he got it from, "Didn't need it anymore".

 

[PreMod70]

If you visit the MCRD Parris Island, they have a library tour that gave me what information I wrote, I would contact them for verification. I've read many books on the merits of the 1917 over the 03 Springfield but most never realised that the barrels on the Enfields were .311 grooves compared to the Springfield's .308 which is the correct diameter for a 30-06, the Enfields were modified .303's with a 30-06 chamber. No way a Enfield is the better of the two, the Marines proved that on the battlefield and shooting ranges during the 03's service life. It is the better rifle before, through, and after WW1.

 

[Cosmoline]

was reading about that Mannlicher (sp?) the other day, at least I think that's the one, with the clip that falls out of the magazine once you chamber the 5th round, then, upon firing, yank back the bolt and insert a new clip from the top. I wonder if Garand looked at that when designing the M1.

Some early Mannlichers used an en bloc clip IIRC and yes Garand was inspired by these designs. It's kind of a throwback.

The Mannlicher-Schoenauer used a rotary magazine similar to a Savage 99's.

 

[Justin]

I've seen some photos of Mosins in this thread.

Perhaps I'm revealing my historical ignorance, but who issued Mosins during WWI?

 

[memphisjim]

Russia

 

[Cosmoline]

Not just Imperial Russia, but Imperial Germany, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Why? Because millions of Russian troops were captured on the eastern front. It was a very different battlefield than the West, and the Czars' arsenals could not keep up with the hemorrhaging of M91's. Remember that scene from "Enemy at the Gates" where only every other soldier got a Mosin? That didn't happen at Stalingrad, but it did happen in the Great War. It's not surprising the Russian troops eventually revolted.

You can still find M91's and Finnish reworks that have stamps indicating capture by Austria or other nations.

Some US troops used M91's as part of the efforts to fight the revolutionaries in 1919.

M91's, Cossacks and Dragoon variants were in use along with a few others.

One interesting thing I've recently learned is that black US troops who fought directly under French command were issued US built Berthiers. Imagine going up against Maxims and Mausers with an empty chamber rifle and having orders yelled at you in French. But they did pretty well regardless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Hellfighters

 

[lonegunman]

I was reading an article on Garands the other day. when they started production they had around 900,000 1903 Springfields in inventory and well over 2.4 million 1917 Enfields. This was around 1936.

I tend to collect WWII, but I have found myself a nice 1918 Enfield in good original condition, an 03 and an M91 Mosin/Nagant. AND a minty Webley revolver that was too much fun to shoot to pass up on buying.

 

[ball3006]

Yep, my Great War rifles are my favorites. The top of the heap is my 1917 and P14, followed by a Rem M91 and a NEW M91, several Enfields, including an Aussi 1917 dated, and several others.....chris3

 

[.45Guy]

At 1200 yards on man sized targets with iron sights? Do you have a copy of the training regs that state this? When and where did this action take place? 1200 yards is the maximum effective range of 30-06.

Pulling from Alexander Rose's book American Rifle, when the army created the sharpshooter classification CA 1883 the requisites were an 88% hit rate at 200, 300 and 600 yards as well as a 77% rate at 800, 900, and 1,000. This was with .45-70-405, and .45-70-500. Not the same timeframe, but food for thought.

 

[mortablunt]

I don't have any, but I'm thinking of getting a Mosin Nagant 91 as a late birthday present.

 

[mljdeckard]

I just inherited my grandfather's old sporterized 1917, and I intend to follow-through and modernize it a bit, since it's a great shooter. It already has a no-tap mount, I might have it re-barreled, improve the trigger, and Get a Bell and Carlson stock for it. Shutcher yaps about ruining the value, I'm never selling it, and my grandfather would want me to shoot the heck out of it.

I would love an 03A3, a couple of Mausers, a good SMLE, and a Carcano eventually.

 

[Gunnerboy]

to Mr Gus mcrae, if 1200 yards is the effective range of a 30-06 then i think youve never heard of Gunnery Sgt Carlos Hathcock have you ? i do belive he came close to over 1500yds for a kill and i seem to remember hearing of him hitting one of charlie but not killing her due to the shot was around 2600 yds or something close to that.

 

[Cosmoline]

IIRC that was with an M2.

How much individually aimed vs. volley fire was *actually* used as WWI progressed is a question I've been wondering about. I know the French were big on volley fire to the point of forbidding individual aimed shooting. It's one reason they had no safeties on their rifles. Soldiers were taught not even to load a round in the chamber until ordered to as a firing unit, and then to fire together on command. I can't imagine such nonsense lasted much beyond 1914 but the war was big on nonsense.

The tangent sights on most rifles of this vintage were rather optimistic. Some going out over a kilometer. I suspect some of that was to scare the enemy after the rifles were captured. I know of no instances in that war where men actually lined up for volley fire at 1,000 or 1,500 or 2,000 meters!

 

[Robert]

i think youve never heard of Gunnery Sgt Carlos Hathcock have you ?

Nope never.

i do belive he came close to over 1500yds for a kill and i seem to remember hearing of him hitting one of charlie but not killing her due to the shot was around 2600 yds or something close to that.

And yes I agree with Cosmoline. I am 99.9% sure those were done with an M2.

I admit that the source for that number is an old reloading manual that I had laying on the table. I should have checked more current data.

Pulling from Alexander Rose's book American Rifle, when the army created the sharpshooter classification CA 1883 the requisites were an 88% hit rate at 200, 300 and 600 yards as well as a 77% rate at 800, 900, and 1,000. This was with .45-70-405, and .45-70-500. Not the same timeframe, but food for thought.

If that be the case that is truly impressive. Now what where the sizes of those far targets. I know that BPCR shooters make 1000y shots on a regular basis but the targets tend to be rather large. But still, that is a very impressive feat. One that I could not do.

ncluding an Aussi 1917 dated, and several others.

Chris,
Are the ears on the nose cap of that Aussi open like my 1941 Lithgow or are they closed like the British rifles?

 

[Robert]

How much individually aimed vs. volley fire was *actually* used as WWI progressed is a question I've been wondering about.

I know the British omitted the volley sight and magazine cut off in the No1 MkIII* updates of late 1915. How much went on before that I am not sure. But I too would be interested.

 

[.45Guy]

Now what where the sizes of those far targets.

12'x12' with a 3' square bull.

 

[Gunnerboy]

I seem to remember that Both of those shots were taken with the ol 30-06 with a 173 grain bullet according to his biography Marine Sniper, the shot with the m2 browning with the 8x scope was a 2500 yd kill the 2600+ shot im talking about is one that just wounded the enemy.

 

[Germster]

The Marine Corps does a strange thing. It actually teaches their troops to shoot rifles accurately. Their marksmanship training it more than just, "Here's a rifle, here's how it works, now shoot it."

The Krauts figured this out in WWI. So did the Japanese later on, and I suppose the Arab's are today.

 

[Cosmoline]

There's the legend, there's the doctrine and there's the reality. On one extreme you had the Marines or the British professional colonial soldiers with a very strong tradition of individual marksmanship and individual responsibility. On the other you had the French army that punished individual initiative and didn't want soldiers firing out of turn. I suspect that at the end of the day the Marines had to do quite a bit of poorly aimed rapid fire and the French had to give up Napoleonic volleys pretty quick. But as it happens I'm ordering up a bunch of primary source material about this period and its small arms in connection to a book I'm writing and this is one of the questions I have. Specifically, what was the on-the-ground reality of small arms use in the trenches?

 

[kragluver]

Volley sights were never intended for "single" targets like an individual. They were intended for large bodies of soldiers maneuvering in the open - which almost never happened. The intent was "your" company would all set their volley sights for say, 1200 yds and all fire together at a group of "their" company and they would receive a hail of bullets. Range estimation was very crude however. The volley sights on individual rifles very quickly went away. However, they were found useful on machine guns and the MG was used in the indirect fire mode quite often during WW1 - not so much during WW2. It was more a direct fire weapon at that point.

McBride's book A Rifleman Went to War (also The Emma-G's) gives a good amount of information about how the volley sights were used on the machine gun during WW1. These books are a must read for anyone interested in WW1 combat history.

 

[Germster]

I graduated from Quantico in 1967 and have since those days been impressed by how well the Marines trained us to shoot. I'd love to go to the museum at Quantico but I live about a zillion miles from there here in Oregon. Frankly graduating from OCS in the Marine Corps was one of the high points of my life and my time with the Marines was challenging and fullfilling. I became an attack pilot. Amazing experience. My life would have been hum drum without those experiences.

 

[Germster]

There was an interesting transition from the black powder era to the small bore smokless and rapid fire weapons. Long range shooting was popular. It was also important in the BP era thus the long range sights in Trapdoors, etc. Soldiers often engaged enemy at 1,000 yds. When WWI came along long range rifle fire became more deadly and accurate. The volley sights that we see on early WWI SMLE rifles were made to launch accurate rounds at far off troops. I'm sure you have seen those long range sights mounted on the left side of early SMLE rifles. Those were not for granade launching, they were for long range fire.

When I was "in" during the VN War, we were trained to fire accurate killing rifle fire at 500 meters. That's a long way off. The sniper guys engaged at 1,000 meters and I guess today they shoot even farther. We didn't have the .50 cal sniper rifle but some guys figured a way to shoot the M2HB at long range. They mounted a scope on that thing. Killed people at over a mile. Good shoot'n.

 

[Germster]

The question is, however; which battle rifle was best, the Model 1917 or the 1903. The 1917 was a fine, but heavy rifle. The 03 was a shorter and lighter rifle with a very detailed rear sight. The 1917 had a large ring rear sight. Much simplier, but I'd guess adaquate at combat ranges.

I own both rifles. When we consider the mud, blood and beer of the trenches of WWI, well I'd rather have the Enflield. It's heavier and a better mount for the bayonet. If I were to jump into a trench and ran head long into the face of a German I'd rather have my knife mounted on a heavy and long Model 17 Enfield than the little itty bitty 03..