American Mosin Nagant Rifles

hi guys thanks for tuning into another video on Forgotten weapons comm I mean I'm here today at the Rock Island auction company taking a look at some of the guns that they have coming up for sale in the February of 2017 regional auction and today we're taking a look at a pair of Mosin Nagant rifles now you may be wondering what on earth could be possibly interesting about a pair of Mosin Nagant rifles well these are American most in the got rifles so while I'm sure some folks are aware that there is such a thing I think it's about time that we did a video on a pair of these and really explore some of the history of the American most in the god so we'll start with the the most Nagant in Russia it was of course adopted in 1891 and when the rifle was adopted the the Russian Arsenal system set out with a bunch of orders for machine tools to get their three major Arsenal's up and running and producing rifles but it took a little longer than planned so they actually initially ordered five hundred and three thousand most ngons manufactured by the shuttle aero arsenal in france those were delivered in the 1890s so that was the very beginning of what would kind of be a trend with russian Mosin production now through the years leading up to World War one well in total by World War one the Russians had 3.8 million most ngons produced which sounds like a whole lot but in fact really it was nowhere near sufficient once world war one really got going they reassessed how many rifles they were going to need and came to the conclusion that for a war of three to four years in duration they would actually need 17 million rifles and they never did meet this demand the Russians ended up using well they were chronically short of small arms so one of the problems is before the war when the Russian military had gone through and done some studying to try and figure out how many rifles they wanted to stockpile they figured out the total number of troops okay and they came up with that many rifles and put them aside and that was about well about four million and the problem was they didn't take into account wastage or loss of rifles the fact that if you're training guys every year with rifles you're going to break them they're going to wear out they're gonna need service and and they didn't take into account needing to replace those so that's the first way in which the stockpile simply wasn't sufficient more importantly they didn't take into account wastage in combat and this became a an immediately extremely serious issue when World War one started and they pretty much immediately started losing about two hundred thousand rifles per month to you know just destruction on the battlefield and capture and loss you can't fight a war and not have to replace equipment and that's a lot of equipment to replace two hundred thousand some rifles per month now the plan was that the Arsenal's would of course produce guns as necessary but the Arsenal's had been at pretty darn low production in the years leading up to the war nineteen thirteen was the highest production status for the Arsenal system in Russia and that was a measly 13% of its theoretical capability and you can't just go from 13 percent to 100 overnight a lot of the the tooling and such required for full production was kind of quasi mothballed it had to be pulled out of storage set back up and this wasn't something that could be done immediately unfortunately the rifles were being destroyed immediately and by October of 1914 the Russian military was eight hundred and seventy thousand rifles short of what it needed just for daily operations right then these problems were exacerbated by a couple factors for one thing the Russian Minister of War sue come one of just flat-out refused to believe reports from the front about rifle shortages yeah that's not going to help things it's hard to solve the problem if you don't acknowledge that there is a problem on top of that the Russian military had no repair depots so of course if they're losing two hundred thousand rifles a month you can imagine how many damaged rifles there are going to be and in theory with the right facilities you could be repairing those rifles or you know even if you had no parts you could strip them all down and count cannibalize some guns to fix others the problem was in in in the hopes of saving some money and making the system more efficient the Russian military plan had been to have the repairs the main Arsenal's well of course now the Arsenal's are scrambling to do as much brand new production as they possibly can and they have no spare capacity left over to repair guns so that doesn't help things all this led to a decision in 1915 that the Russian government was willing to buy any rifle that it could get which it could get ammunition for so obviously their preference would be 7 6 to buy 54 rimmed the standard cartridge they already used but they were willing to consider anything else if you could get them ammo for it they'd be willing to look at buying the guns now they sent out purchasing commissioned officers around the world to look for anyone who could manufacture arms for them and the United States was really a prime opportunity here's this up-and-coming industrial powerhouse that's neutral in the war and willing to hypothetically make guns for anyone and not preoccupied with making guns for itself it's hard to buy rifles from France or Britain during World War two or during World War one because they're busy making as many rifles as they possibly can for their own use there's no capacity left over the United States is different and interestingly the Russian government actually already had some industrial ties to the companies that would be involved here through the railroad system so the Westinghouse company had been a in the supply chain for well in fact Westinghouse had patented a Trane air braking system that was kind of revolutionary and very helpful in Russian had been adopted throughout the russian railway system and that gave them this connection to Westinghouse which they would exploit for arms manufacturer and Remington was connected through a little bit more obscure path but Remington was also already kind of only like 2 connections removed from the Russian government so we've got some good opportunities here to get rifles produced in the United States and they were able to in 1915 a number of major contracts were signed for most in the got production by the Westinghouse company and by the Remington company so the Remington company had already gotten some contracts to make Berthier rifles for the French they'd started production on a massive new factory and they actually ended up signing three contracts in 1915 before the factory was actually done the factory wasn't even complete until November but in January they signed a contract for production of a million rifles followed in June by another contract for two hundred thousand and a third contract in September of 1915 for three hundred thousand more most in the got rifles so 1.5 million rifles total contracted with Remington the Westinghouse company actually at this point didn't have any experience in arms manufacturer so they were looking at getting in on this action they ended up buying the Jay Stevens Arms Company lock stock and barrel so to speak and that gave them some infrastructure to start working with they also actually bought the aah Fox Company now Fox is best known for high-end sporting shotguns and the Fox Company had gotten into the the war munitions business with a contract to make mausers for the Serbian government unfortunately the Serbian government didn't last very long and when Belgrade fell it left aah Fox kind of stranded they had expended a lot of money to get started in this contract but the Serbian government was no longer able to actually pay them so Westinghouse bought up aah Fox as well and used them use their facilities to start making most Nagant parts now Westinghouse actually sold its rifles through JP Morgan JP Morgan was acting as a purchasing agent for the Russian government in that case and they had two major contracts in 1915 actually was sort of one it was a contract for a million rifles plus an additional option for eight hundred thousand more and in August of 1915 that additional option was exercised so Westinghouse was contracted with another 1.8 million so we're looking at a total here of 3.2 million rifles contracted by the Russians in the United States in 1915 now the big question is how is this production actually going to work out those of us who have already lived past 1917 might recall that in 1917 there's going to be a big revolution in Russia and the imperial government is going to fall and that's probably not going to be a good thing for these companies that are massively capitalizing to make rifles for the Imperial government well as it turned out actually worked fairly well remington was able to ship and produce about five hundred and thirteen thousand rifles for the imperial government by November of 1917 by the time the revolution happened of course after the Revolution the new communist government was not so interested in receiving rifles or paying for them as I'm sure that had been happy to receive them but they weren't going to go pay for them so this left Remington in a bit of a lurch they ended up selling just under eighty thousand rifles to the United States government those were guns that were basically in house finished but hadn't been paid for and hadn't shipped as of the Russian Revolution so the US government stepped in and bailed out Remington to the tune of about eighty thousand rifles and then actually an additional two hundred and sixty thousand or so work sold to through the Russian embassy so basically to the white Russian forces who were still being recognized by the US government so they were able to operate out of US embassies they bought another couple hundred thousand rifles from Remington so Westinghouse was able to complete just over a million like 1.08 million of these rifles by December of 1917 shipped them out for JP Morgan got paid that was good they were also bailed out by the US government to the tune of about 200,000 more rifles that had been in you know partly manufactured at that point now interestingly the terms of that bailout were that the US government paid for the costs of the rifle but they did not allow Westinghouse any profit margin on them but it at least allowed Westinghouse to recoup their investment in that so let's go ahead and take a closer look at these two we have a Remington and a Westinghouse here to take a look at I'll show you the markings and some of the details that make them distinctive we're going to start with the Remington rifle here because this is just really a fantastic example of a Remington most a gun it is a matching gun and unlike the vast majority it is actually not finished property marked or modified by the fins so looking at this one we can see what one of these rifles actually looked like when it came out of the Remington factory ready for being shipped to Russia so as we pretty much almost ngons the relevant markings are going to be on the barrel shank here the top we have a russian imperial eagle the marking for Remington armory and that's how Remington chose to stamp their name and then these rifles are actually dated the year that they were manufactured so this one was 1917 you'll also find 1916 examples and this is serial number 520 1000 and change now the Russians also put on a Russian Eagle crest on the receiver which Westinghouse didn't we'll get to that in a moment you will find some other very small letter stamps on a bunch of the parts and those indicate exactly where various parts were manufactured Remington and Westinghouse both had a number of subcontractors involved in their production so for the detailed collector those markings are irrelevant we have the rear sight here which is marked 400 out to 1200 arjun's this was a Russian unit of measure equal to approximately 3/4 of a meter you can think of it as basically a average soldier's pace that was that was the unit of measurement used until Russia adopted the metric system in belief 1924 it's a little bit light but it's rare to find this at all this rifle actually even still has a visible Russian Eagle cartouche in stock that's really cool and lastly again really cool just showing you some of the history of this particular rifle just in front of the magazine well here we have a u.s. flaming bomb property stamp so this is a rifle that was produced it was it was finished it had the Russian markings in the stock and and all but was never actually shipped to Russia instead went into this was one of the rifles that was bought out to help support Remington after the Russian Revolution the second rifle we have here isn't quite as gorgeous of an example but it is a very nice Westinghouse this one has been slightly modified by the fins we'll take a look at those in a minute but let's start with the receiver markings Westinghouse markings in general are a little bit lighter struck than the Remington ones and kind of a totally different style here we do still have the russian imperial eagle at the top then we have New England Westinghouse company and there are a couple different styles of that marking then this is marked 1915 and then a Russian letter indicating year the Westinghouse guns were all marked with the contract date not the actual date of manufacture so no matter when it was made every Westinghouse rifle will be marked in 1915 and then of course the serial number this one is also five hundred and fifty seven thousand Remington and Westinghouse serial numbers are independent so they both start at one and go up now you'll see here that sa in a box that is a Finnish army property mark although what's interesting about this rifle is it hasn't had really any of the other typical Finnish modifications the Finns typically remarked the rear sight they'd like cut out these numbers crosshatch them out and replace them with metric markings on the other side but that hasn't been done to this rifle and nor have some of the other finished changes like changes to the sling swivels or that sort of thing it looks like the Finns did put on a replacement renumber bolt which is something that they would do if the bolt was damaged they'd replace it and they would restate to match the original serial number the stock however is the original American stock I know you can just barely see any of that but that's in fact the Russian Eagle cartouche in the stock a little bit more worn than on the Remington example we have so with all of these most ngons floating around there's some question as to what happened to them well the majority of course got to Russia they were used by the Russians and then they were they kind of had this diaspora like all of the other Russian arms at the end of World War one so some of them were retained by Russia and then sent to places like Spain as aid in the Spanish Civil War so you'll find Spanish Civil War rifles not many in this case but some of them ended up in Spain a substantial number of them ended up in finland captured by the finns after 1917 when Finland gained its independence and then Finland bought a whole bunch of well 170 some thousand most immigrants from other countries that had acquired them during the war and presumably some of those were American guns as well that filtered into Finland that way and the Finns would then retrofit and rebuild them and so probably well by a longshot the most common American most in the guns to find today at least here in the US are those retrofitted and marked as Finnish property and then the ones that the US government had gotten they didn't really have anything good to do with it's not like they purchase these Mosin Nagant because they really wanted most mcgann rifles they'd purchased them to help support these two American companies so they tried a couple of different things they did use them as training rifles because anything will work for that they did also send them to Eastern Russia the US hadn't was part of an expedition to Archangel after just after World War one and the thought was that if they sent rifles in a standard Russian caliber Logistics would be a lot simpler for that expedition so Mosin Nagant went up there but by and large they kind of sat in storage and didn't go anywhere in the 1920s they were ultimately mostly surplus largely to the Frances Bannerman company and Bannerman was sold them in a variety of configurations you get them in standard military config Bannerman sport Erised some of them by cutting down the stocks Bannerman also reach a m-- bird some of them 230 out six to make them more appealing to the US market I actually have a separate video on a thirty out six Bannerman's Porter if you're interested take a look at that kind of a scary rifle the way they did that reach aim burring is a little bit iffy but ultimately that when they were sold as surplus they were sold at about ten cents on the dollar so you'll find them today here in the US largely finish marked that's where most of them came from and as you saw this our Westinghouse here is Finnmark the Remington is one of these very rather rare examples in original configuration all matching and with US property mark on it so it was actually a military military property rifle here in the US at any rate if you would like to have these they are actually part of the same lot for sale here at Rock Island along with a couple other guns if you take a look at the description text below you'll find a link to rock island's catalog page on them where you can check out Rock Islands pictures descriptions the pictures and descriptions of the other guns in the same lot and the price estimate for the whole batch if you're interested in buying them well you can place a bid right there on the catalog page online thanks for watching

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Views: 476,005

Rating: 4.9590673 out of 5

Keywords: mosin, mosin nagant, m91, rifle, bolt action, american, remington, westinghouse, new, new england westinghouse, contract, russia, russian, world war 1, ww1, great war, 7.62x54R, bannerman, archangel, manufacture, forgotten, history, development, mccollum, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv

Id: L-OfevJb03M

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/sicarius2277]

Thanks for posting, I found this interesting and now I kind of want a Remington made Mosin.

[u/LawnmowaMane]

Y?