previously we've covered the newest and most numerous rifle in US inventory in last episode we went over the oldest to see service in Europe but now let's talk about the official rifle of the United States during the Great War [Music] hi I'm Matthias and this nice and handy this is the US magazine rifle model of 1903 also known as the Springfield 1903 however that name is a bit misleading as we'll find out in this episode for now let's get it over to light box weighing in at eight point seven pounds and only forty three point two inches long this is a wonderful little universal short rifle as a magazine capacity of 530 out six cartridges fit in it's flush standard box magazine and fed by a stripper clip now if you just can't win to the title and came walking in here and haven't seen this series before it kind of recommends checking out some of the back catalog because we're on a roll in addition I highly highly recommend watching the previous episode on the crack Jorgenson because it flows right into the development of this particular rifle if you're too lazy to do that let's get a quick recap the United States first magazine repeating smokeless powder general issue rifle would be the Norwegian design Krag Jorgensen from 1894 to 1896 a wide variety of minor changes stacked to make interchangeable parts near impossible so they sealed a new model in 1896 and then played with it again to get the model 1898 we also saw repeated changes to the rear sight as various ideas of rugged versus finely adjustable competed this process actually wasn't done until after our rifle today was introduced the crank would serve in the spanish-american war which was an outright victory for the US but coming up against the Spanish rifles the Ordnance Department realized that their gun wasn't as good as the other guys then it would be the Mauser model 1893 and it's excellent seven millimeter cartridge fast loading flat shooting high velocity accurate as all get-out and way simpler to manufacture than the Krag yeah I should probably set this down because we got fish let's get out of the way we got a lot to cover so we have the Krag right 1898 this is what went into the spanish-american war I'm gonna need more uniform that set this guy down and then what it was up against was a little bit of an earlier of this particular gun the Spanish Mauser model 1893 it's a bit dusty gentleman alright so let's go ahead and kind of do a quick comparison and see why it was so intimidating no actually before i zoom in the one thing I can't really show is that this guy was pushing a cartridge about 2,500 feet per second versus you know 2,000 feet per second it's 25% gene and the US would actually try to push this to 2,200 feet per second they would fail due to the weakness of the single walking clog but again zoom in and take a look so here's our Mauser 1893 this guy actually let's walk it over to Craig and the Krag has a single locking log at the front if I get my finger in the right place and a flag style safety you know cock-on open action magazine cut off and then we're fed from a sort of rotating like it's what's called a capsule magazine where we dump our ammo in here comes out all the way on the other side it's very complicated manufacturer and there's no way to rapidly fee it you have to take a handful of loose rounds and just sort of yeah it's some easier said than done so guys I'm making a mess here what are the Spanish doing well they have em all 1893 which is way more sensible so we've got a nice solid receiver solid rear bridge opens up to dual front locking lugs long extractor actually the Krag had a pretty strong extractor so no big win there but leave this flush staggered box magazine five rounds just as compact without any extra stuff hanging off and way simpler we don't have this crazy arm and other stuff it's just a flat spring nice nice design this particular gun is cocked on close but they're readily adaptable to cock-on open and same flag style safety seeing ease of use realistically there's no reason why this can't be brought into sort of the US pattern without giving up any of these benefits now the other really big feature this gun is right here the stripper clip you put five rounds on this shove it in there oh I see open her up shove it in there strip them off toss her away and you're ready to rock and roll now the one thing you're gonna see that it's really missing is a magazine cut off we load the mag we feed from the mag the US doesn't like that the US wants a single loading gun with a magazine in reserve so the question is can we put a magazine cutoff on that can we get the bolt angle we want can we get some other features and still really keep this very strong durable system and by the way I will point out when you are handily defeated like the Spanish were on the spanish-american war and yet the guy who just kicked your patootie turns around goes man that's a sweet rifle I should really get one of those you know you've got a sweet sweet rifle this thing is extremely advanced for its era it is the King on that hill so the u.s. is ready to do away with the Krag they're ready to go away from all the little headaches of this particular design and they want to see if they can't tweak the Mauser and other technologies available around the world at that time into something usable well that means that they're gonna have to go back to the drawing board so of course the then chief of ordnance Brigadier General Buffington authorized Springfield Armory to work up a prototype based on all these goodies this would result in what we know as the model 1900 in well middle of 1900 its profile shares the same stocking and hardware as the Krag fitted with Krag sights in the same 30 inch barrel plus the usual cleaning rod in the butt trap although we can see a protruding single stack magazine with a follower system like the Mo's in the gun looking closer the bolt is derived from the Mauser 1893 it sports the same clip feeding cut out at the top of the receiver however it is a split bridge receiver like the Schlegel milkman liquor series of rifles that we've seen before this was done to allow a third safety log to pass through the rear of the receiver then turned down also alley style magazine cutoff was fitted to this although instead of a whole plate like we saw an early in field episode it's just a tab at the rear you can't see it here but the trigger and sear are still descended from the Krag that will swap over to more Mauser style pretty shortly the new rifle came with new ammo in this case they took 3040 Krag and they wanted to push the 220 grain bullet up to 2,300 feet per second that meant lengthening the case a little bit and they also tweaked the shoulder shape some so it's not compatible with the previous rifle it's a new thing but not very far off anyway by the fall of 1900 s they are testing the new rifle and the new cartridge like the Krag before it it was tested for rapidity with accuracy rapidity at will endurance dust and sand defective cartridges these are purposely damaged cartridges to sort of make it fail extraction excessive charges which means trying to blow the receiver up ease of manipulation and rust and sort of weather exposure the report would be ready in January of 1901 now the test went pretty well for the 1900 it was believed to be rugged and reliable and strong smooth everything about the gun that was Mauser related was good but a couple of features that walked in there that weren't Mauser related not so good and most of it was focused on that magazine sticking out the bottom that thing hanging out the wind was more likely to get dinged and banged and stopped functioning and it was unnecessarily complicated because that already had on 1893 Mauser 2 compared to and then things like you know what let me do a little comparison here I've got 1893 Mauser magazine internals the spring floor plate and follower and then I aside Lee do not have a model 1900 in front of me but I have handled one personally thanks to our friend Alex up at Springfield Armory and I can tell you without a doubt it's very similar to this a Mosin style magazine and again this is also similar to some things we see in mom liquors it's just a couple of arms and some flat springs but take a closer look at just how radically different these can be so this is the Mosin we have our follower a lever arm the base and then you have a flat spring and a flat spring all screwed together and it all has to be tuned to operate appropriately right so something like this was in the 1900s versus what they were comparing it to I've got a shaped piece of metal up top the floor plate which is inherent to either design that's the follower so these parts we can't get away from but spring arm spring have all been repeated by the way screws and other things to keep them attached and pinning them in there and making sure that they stay all that's replaced with a couple of little slots so that you can just sort of stick it in and stay no screws no craziness no press fitting and just an Emer w depending on your perspective in life of ribbon steel I mean this is radically simpler than that and it ends up being flushed to the gun so that it's not hanging out in the wind getting damaged now another magazine consideration is that they were running into rim lock the rimmed cartridges were interacting with each other in a nut so beneficial way realistically you could solve that by tweaking the magazine system or putting in sort of like a little interrupter or something then we've seen this sort of stuff in various systems and we'll see it again in other systems or we could just go to rimless ammo and solve the whole problem right there and I have to get fancy on the gun which is wisely what the US would do more on that in a second so magazine is getting simplified the ammo is getting simplified the other thing though is trying to go to the staggered flush magazine they didn't really entirely care for the cutoff so the cutoff they used again I do not have a Model 1800 but I have something with a similar cutoff this as we've seen in the previous episode will the Enfield so let's take a closer look now this particular cutoff blocks the hole let me get my patented plastic and pokey this kind of blocks almost the whole magazine well the ones for the 1900 it was just a notch at the rear that kept the rim from rising up the cartridge is still exposed just the little rim could it pop up and couldn't get snagged by the bolt so that thing sticks out to the side not a big deal but the the thing that the u.s. really hated is that if they had the magazine cut off turned off you couldn't load the magazine so you couldn't fill the magazine back up unless you open it so you'd have to have two strokes you have to open that up then load the magazine then close this up and they decided they really wanted the ability to top it up regardless of whether it was on or off for some reason that was very important to them now they had seen that possibility in another gun so that they weren't completely insane they had already been long already been looking at this particular giant monstrosity which is the Swiss straight-pull Schmidt Rubin and it's trying to eat my finger board a little bit of dust there this guy has a big old magazine sticking out and one day when we get out of World War one I'd be very happy to talk about this gun but they liked the cutoff so if we take a look the way this one works is they just lower the magazine so magazine on and therefore the cartridges are sitting high enough to be picked up by the bolt and then magazine off and you can watch the gun go up and down it's just all that's doing is I know you know the frame of reference is off but all that's really doing is raising and lowering the magazine so that that next round doesn't get picked up by the bolt so that's a system in which whether it's on or off we can still load up the magazine we don't have to do two operations so something like this was mentioned they said can't we get it but we don't want magazine hanging out so I'm not sure how you're gonna make a staggered box magazine move up and down there but let me tell you they figured out a way they got everything they wanted but before we get into all that during all of this they're still like I said some changes that cartridge remember they made a rimless they also made a couple little other alterations you know I'm just gonna skip ahead and tell you guys about the final product the 30 caliber cartridge model of 1903 or 33 this moved a bottle-nosed 220 grain projectile at 2,200 feet per second out of a 30 inch barrel yes there are a number of minor changes that precede this but this is the basic goal the trials in something akin to this would be used throughout returning to rifle development by 1901 we're seeing more prototypes now these are gonna be a lot like the 1900 but with a flush magazine in the new magazine cutoff applied still split bridge all the usual at least two patterns of this prototype 1901 were produced one with the original Krag bayonet and the other with a push rod ban it actually taken straight off the old 1888 trapdoor rifle this was actually a push by Buffington who was again chief of ordnance recall he was the man behind the Buffington rear sight for the Springfield trapdoor rifles which means he was involved about the time that we were strapping rod bayonets to these trap doors as well conceptually this is actually rather advanced the u.s. Ordnance Department believed that the bayonet was no longer a must-have weapon on the battlefield all right those of you who know u.s. ordnance are gonna laugh at the rod band at the minute I mention it but take a moment and let go of your prejudice and understand that this was not an entirely insane idea you have a rifle it has a cleaning rod and a bayonet is there no reason not to combine the two and have just one part especially when you consider that the bayonet is heavy large expensive to manufacture and in the case the Krag we got held up for months waiting on scabbards for bayonets to in order to issue these rifles that's pretty heat plus you got to carry the bayonet around with you slapping around it's never as good as your knife you'd rather just have your own knife and then if you're in the US you never use the thing bayonet fighting is not a huge factor for the u.s. front to your army at that time in 1888 or in 1892 or by the time we're getting around in the 1900s the u.s. is kind of over the bayonet the rest of the world not so much they have larger and Piro armies they feel men in line still in a lot of ways they have bandit charges the truth is the US was too far ahead of the game on the idea of getting a rid of the regular bayonet because as we'll see in World War one it still plays a role but we didn't know that at the time so the idea that we can just take our cleaning rod pull it out lock it and poke a guy if we really got to but otherwise since we almost never do it's just gonna stash there and just be a usual tool it's not bad it's really honestly in favor of the soldier to lighten his load and let him use a more modern rifle which is by the way completely insane that the army that is like blast to get off of single-shot rifles is first to decide well we're not gonna stab anybody we'll just slowly load a single cartridge and shoot them which is still better than poking someone that is where we're at now the only reason the 1888 really didn't take off but the hard reason is because the black-powder fouling meant that that mechanism never quite worked it was always gummed up and you could never get it out when you wanted it or you'd get it out and wouldn't quite lock back down it would go flying black powder room and so the project was abandoned and then on top of that they said also rods are stupid then the Krag comes out it's smokeless they don't quite make the connection that wait we could go back to the rod now we don't don't worry about the black powder fouling so the crack goes all the way through its service life we have problems with the crack bayonets and then they go you know what now they're working on this new Mauser style rifle can we revisit that rod bayonet thing and so that's what they selected was a rod bayonet alright so now we have a Mauser action through and through but with a new magazine cut off and at some point prior to this prototype the receiver was made solid bridged much more like the Mauser 2 with that safety lug being shortened down to clear under it it also appears that at this point the Buffington style sight ladder was still King there's more on that inner old Krag episode the gun was reviewed by the Ordnance Board and approved as the US magazine rifle model 1901 chief of ordnance Buffington would order preparations to produce 5,000 of these new model 1901 rifles but before the heavy work was done he would be replaced in November of 1901 by our friend William Crozier we've seen this man before with the Lewis gun and Krag episodes and we gave him kind of a hard time but actually Crozier was careful with taxpayer dollars and destroy full of taking broad steps into unknown arms development he would halt the 5000 rifle production and instead request funds to produce 100 shop models by hand for extended testing by board officers you see Crozier had learned from that whole mess with the Krag Jorgenson and let me tell you he was the right man for this we made fun of him for the Lewis gun but if you really watch the episode as much as I'm teasing he's given a gun that doesn't quite work and until it will work enough to that lives on it he will accept it it's the same thing that's going on here he's got rifles seem neat but he saw what happened with the Krag he wants these things to run he wants bandoliers he wants slings he wants two clips he wants everything sorted out and done except ibly before they produce one single you know one of these things in the thousands work it out now find the problems honestly this was brilliant because if we had rushed into this gun like we had in the Krag it wouldn't it worked like we would have been the u.s. would have had a totally different 30 inch barrel Dwalin rifle if it weren't for the fact that Crozier slowed the whole thing down he was right to do so now as part of this process he also having replaced Buffington if you saw in our Krag episode this is the moment when we start having the sort of Buffington Dixon site argument so if you haven't watched that again I'm sorry guys it's really built on that but it's basically a sight ladder versus a totally tangent rear sight now where's crows you're back in saddle we're looking at the tangent rear sight again that's that's back on the menu at least at this point in the trials process all right so a rifle selection board is convened in january of nineteen or three this features a cavalry infantry and ordnance officers plus six non comms of like master marksmanship experience these guys are hot hotshots and they are there to assist with the selection of this rifle and so they start up a series of trials between this sort of general 19:01 pattern which by the way will have some slight variances in it and the existing 1898 crag these started with a detailed examination of the guns with dismantling and measuring of all parts now then check the guns over for safety including proofing them to make sure that they were safe to fire and that all the little bits actually operated the way they should while this was going on they noted the ease of disassembly and reassembly then onto firing it was rapidity with an accuracy rapidity at will endurance dust defective cartridges excessive charge rust and whether the usual things we've seen before now they also paid close attention to factors like recoil the velocity of the bullet itself the penetration thereof and the penetration most notably of shields that means shooting through Gatling gun the carriage shields I should also say that at this point the US was still working with a 30 inch barreled long rifle and a 22 inch barrel carbine as our standard arms for the 1901 however they try out a variety of barrels between 22 and 30 inches and something interesting would develop both the cavalry and the infantry were happy to adopt the same rifle we've seen factors like this in the German car 98 AZ in the British short magazine lee-enfield but basically what happens is with the new smokeless ammo the muzzle blast gets pretty bad for cavalrymen at twenty to twenty inch barrels that sort of thing so they're happy to sort of get the extra two or four inches get out to 24 inches in the US case it's two inches they're fine with that it cleans up some of their problems now it also keeps some of their muzzle velocity that they would have otherwise lost now for the Army's perspective they're afraid of losing muzzle velocity but luckily Frankfurt Arsenal said no no it's fine we can get it to 2,300 feet per second by the way 2,300 not twenty-two we'll get to there in a moment we can keep it at 2,300 feet per second don't worry about it 24 inch just fine and so with that settled the army goes well this is great we chopped off all this length all this weight it's easier it's for us to take these things around and store them and rack them it's it's a universe short rifle we don't have to have a rifle and carbine we can just produce a ton of whatever and hand them out where they belong much better than the old system and we're glad to have everybody on board so they take the gun on tour showing them at various military facilities to 223 officers in 4660 nine men who are reported as giving an opinion on the new rifle so you know it's overwhelmingly positive showing a clear superiority over the current crag or Genson so by June 1903 the Ordnance board is made up their mind they're going with this new gun they're going with a 24 inch barrel they just have a few notes of what they want done a lot of these notes come from the fact that there's no 1 1901 rifle and as much as I want to unpack which came first that's a holder research project but some of these guns with different sights with different barrels with different hand guards they start to emerge and so the features are packed down into one package that they like just fine and it's all sort of built on like we saw with that 24-inch drawing that's the one that they start with then what the rear sight moves back a bit the handguard to extend to the upper barrel band the lower band moved two inches rearward for better sling position the rod bayonet should be thickened to 0.3 inch same as the bore it would no longer be a cleaning rod just a clearing rod where they pull through an oiler in the stock then one of the taller safety lug on the bolt and a means to sort of hold the bolt open under its own weight just like we saw with the Krag plus some other super minor changes to dimensions here and there yada-yada wear these in place adoption was recommended by Crozier and approved by the Secretary of War that same month making the new gun the US magazine rifle model of 1903 caliber 30 this handy darling weighs in at 8.9 pounds and had an overall length of forty three point four inches way more manageable than that previous Krag I'm really sorry to say I don't have a rod bayonet 1903 here I try guys but I can only get so many things in my hands no I don't really matter it's not field in the war we got a little ways to go so these guns they come out and there's immediate problem with barrel erosion and that means adjusting the ammo and slightly during that sort of phase when they're getting ready to lease them so they walked back the ammo by a hundred feet per second so now we go from the 2300 goal to 2,200 actual that's why you see the discrepancy with that ammo I listed earlier for 30-odd three and then they changed the rifling a bit it was one full turn in eight inches they expand that out to one and ten so it slows things down just a bit still keeps it stable but doesn't quite rip up those barrels as fast now the whole thing is up and ready to run by November of 1903 now one early problem would be solved around January of 1904 there was a single camming surface for the safety this could get sort of mushed and if so when you put the gun on safe and then pull the trigger the sear might drop and then rise back up and not catch the cocking piece that means when you go back from safe to fire that firing pin might actually fall setting off the rifle not so good it was fixed by just adding a second bearing surface in October of nineteen afore another change would follow this is still not that gun guys basically when you took your stripper clip and loaded the rounds they have to move laterally across each other and that first rounds dragging sort of finding its position on the follower some sort of like just the bevel wasn't right and they would sort of stack up on each other and jam up so they recut the bevel on the follower to make it simpler for the rounds to sort of Jocelin where they belonged at the same time as that changed they went ahead to meet another that when you withdraw the bolt and you have no more rounds left well that follower is gonna rise up and keep you from chambering on empty and dry firing into oblivion while you're distracted in combat so again that's all done long before this particular gun we still got a few more things to cover on the pure 1903 in May of nineteen oh four additional rifle production and tooling would begin at Rock Island Arsenal this government land had actually been earmarked for a small arm shop back in 1899 but the delay in selecting a new rifle had stalled machine installation full production settled in sometime around December of 1904 January of 1905 but by this time Springfield had actually already produced enough rifles to go ahead start issuing them to the regular army there's enough around to sort of general Erie equipped the most active units and then we start filling up the rest and the reserves and the cavalry and whatever else that all happened down the road so we've taken her time we've developed a rifle we know works we've worked out a couple little kinks during this sort of very slow year of development like we've got a million notes the modeling two or three but we're in the 1904 and we really aren't quite cranking them out to full speed until you know quarter the way into the 1904 then we really ramped up and then a couple of things come up and we pull them back and make some little adjustments this is way better than a crack the gun is ready for service for once we haven't made a big mistake so there's no stopping us now a to Theodore that's right President Roosevelt was shown the new service rifle and he was ticked off at that pokey stick I must say that I think that ramrod bayonet as poor and invention as I ever saw as you observed it broke short off as soon as hit with even moderate violence I actually Roosevelt's letter goes into more detail than that and especially points out that they should really check in with some of the field observers who were watching a then very modern conflict the russo-japanese war we actually referenced this conflict fairly often because it's one of the last big imperial army and navy conflicts before World War one it should have been a warning for a lot of nations and Roosevelt wasn't dumb enough to ignore its lessons the Japanese in particular had made great use of their long bladed bayonets and they were instrumental in their raids on enemy positions in the middle of the night where small arms fire it was less than effective this is honestly an important lesson because night raids were very much going to be a part of World War one so in January 1905 rifle production was halted and an emergency board was convened of five General Staff officers they were invited to consider three possibilities for how to fix this bayonet kerfuffle first up can we just beefed up the rod and flute it yeah I don't see the presidents gonna like that what about that crag bolo thing we have going it could be used as a bayonet a machete and an entrenching tool but it's a bit heavy and expensive and it's not knee on every front I guess that leaves us with the regular old knife again but since we shortened the gun let's get some length on there to make up for it 16 inches of blade yeah that'll do that makes this beautiful butter knife turn it the right way my friend shove it on there that is the model of 1905 bayonet and so the rifle had to change accordingly it had to have hardware to take the bayonet and this is in April of 1905 well in May they go ahead and decide that while they're at it you know they go on almost easier than they come off put this away okay April they decide they need to make another change because remember from our Krag episode we are in a showdown between the Dixon tangent rough-and-ready battle style rear sight and a wonderful battle computer of a thing the Buffington finally adjustable windage and elevation lots of little tiny marks and let me tell you it you could do a whole semester in college on just how to use this site we are not going in that detail today generally I guess you're gonna see who won by the fact that I'm already demonstrating one on the rifle but the original 1803 had these guys and it was time for them to go again in this decision like I said in the Krag episode because this is happening concurrently with the Krag in 1905 they decide that this particular site will not collapse on its own so if this one's up in the air okay and I can just sort of whack it this way it'll fall flat along the receiver it's not gonna bind in a scabbard so if I accidentally shove it into a scabbard okay so it's shove clap I can still pull the rifle back out of scabbard it's not gonna tear anything up or get bent or blind this particular site because of the way it just is tangent only well that means that it can't collapse because it's being held up by metal and so if I put in a scabbard and I'm cavalry and then I try to yank it back now and it hasn't been tit self to death it's gonna be stuck and I'm gonna be yanking on my horse looking like a dingus and they may or may not get shot in the process so over all other armies had sites like these and got around this problem but the u.s. decided this was enough and I'm gonna tell you that request just pushed it over the edge a lot of people in the US were still thinking on the shooting range not on the frontier and US marksmen really loved having the battle computer so the Buffington site is back Dixon's site is finally out and we see this mirrored on the crag as well then that puts us into a gun that was originally a model 1903 and we should probably call it the model 1905 now but the US decided that they were just gonna overhaul all of them and not have an original model 93 there's no reason to keep a single rod bayonet around now of course some survived this conversion process I don't have one but they they did so we have to be able to distinguish them so they just get called the 1903 rod bayonet but reasonably they are the 1903 this is the 1905 we're never gonna convince anybody to change the name and it doesn't even matter because it's going to see another change in the very next year which is going to be to that cartridge thanks to Germany you see in 1904 they would adopt a new Spitzer bullet that means pointy and it had a flat base the French had already done this back in 1898 with Baldy but apparently we did not care that but we cared now these light Spitzer bullets were faster moving flatter shooting and less upset by crosswinds us testing began in late 1904 and resulted and they now rather famous cartridge you see we pushed a 150 green bullet to 2,700 feet per second and trying to keep the same overall length the case length over honed the Oh give of the new bullet so we had to trim that back a bit approved in October of 1906 this cartridge with various changes would be a u.s. mainstay for decades to come but for now it was a logistical nightmare you see it was burning barrels in under 1,000 rounds basically the new pointy ammo had an air gap before it engaged the rifling that meant slamming in slightly off-center and hard so that meant that the rifling had to be pushed back that way it could engage right away now those barrels were still getting burned up pretty good but luckily DuPont stepped with their new pyro powder this was colder burning and extended the life with the changes in the rifling up through 4,500 rounds plus much better first service rifle who show with the new cartridge we now have to reset these guns new barrels right well 200,000 barrels had already been made that's a huge waste so what the US had to do is figure out whether they could reuse them you can't draw rifling back down it's already been you know reamed away but what they could do is they could take the barrels off cut two more threads in shave off two threads that walks the whole thing back just enough to recut the chamber and boom you're done so it's just a slight shortening of the barrel for the overall design they were able to save this 200,000 barrels much faster than making 200,000 new ones and so that seals up this guy right here the 1903 o 506 again since they converted everything back this is just considered the model 1903 same as the ramrod anyway we're finally up to our gun today so I think it's fair that we take a closer look look at beautiful beautiful rifle now overall this thing is definitely a Mauser I mean there's no argument let's get Mauser into the shot here I forgot to put the magazine back in but you get the idea staggered box magazine solid receiver bridge this one's [ __ ] our Springfield is cock-on open this one's [ __ ] on close but there's plenty of cock-on open mousers out there by this point I mean look at it guys the same extractor same general layout a lot of the same cuts and millings we've still got the cocking shroud with flag safety cocking piece although the u.s. opted to have one that could be manually cocked its dang near the same gun with different fixtures a lot different fixtures mind you but different fixtures so let me get this guy back down here all right the gun itself again turn down bolt like we had on the Krag puts us right by our trigger pop it up there by the way is our third log it's engaged against the receiver here as we come up it must then clear the bridge this is actually a very thin piece of metal compared to the rest of the receiver yes it's adding some rigidity yes it's good that it's there but you can definitely see why the u.s. went with a split bridge for a long time in the trials process and you can see the influence here all right so we come back full-length extractor staggered bock magazine it feeds thankfully unlike the Krag from a stripper clip well I dropped my fifth round but you guys get the idea five rounds in here push down clip goes away action goes forward rapid and easy now while we're at the rear you can see follower interrupts the path of the bolt this is to prevent panic troupe from sort of rapidly firing the guns boom boom boom and then he runs out of ammo the guy next to him is firing and he just thinks he's still firing it's just a panic thing this keeps you actually in the fight actually focused on what you're doing so other features include oh let's not smack the camera over other features include the magazine cutoff so let's take away I'm going to grab a loosey goosy and be a little careful so bolt goes all the way to the rear when the magazine is on so you how far back up in there is you can't even see it with that round in place it will invariably get picked up by the bolt but let's say I've got the magazine in reserve empty chamber I flipped this guy down pull this back and what it's done is it stopped the travel of the bolt sooner you can see it's even blocking off our clip feed there that means that this guy is not going to pop up high enough to be picked up by the bolt it's resting under it with the lever off she'll go all the way back and pick up this round now of course I'm not chamber in this guy all the way we are on a closed set so other features include that beautiful but complicated Buffington style over your site now this is a little different from the crags again ladder style twists to unlock lift twist to lock we have I don't know if you guys can see that let me get my patented plastic Toki there we go we've got a rear aperture set down in here we've got a notch we've got a notch there's a lot of choices in here and again you can do some nice reading on how to set this up for long-range target I recommend it if you're gonna get in this sort of milk shooting there's a lot that goes on to this site it's really not that important for the episode today except for the no good Lord you've got options so I'm gonna walk this guy back down there we go and then well it's like a windage so notches here these are a reading and dial up there and I'm trying to do this that I don't interrupt what you're seeing but we just roll this guy and we get our windage adjustment beautiful simple these are all read in minutes of angle at various ranges for different cartridges and honestly it's kind of going to depend on which cartridge you end up with nowadays so do your own tabulations my friends despite all the obsession on these sites I'll tell you after 1,200 yards on the markings they're wrong they were calculated wrong and it wasn't found until during World War one but didn't really matter because nobody was shooting outside of 1,200 yards and the next cartridge well it fell right in that performance range where it was close enough for government work hey anyway we're here on the gun and we've taken a good look at the outside I think it's time to get a closer look at the inside let's trip five rounds of 30.6 into this magazine fold forward and blammo now take a look at that magazine cut off let's flip it see that notch now on the outside that's where the left locking log would have struck stopping the bolt in its rearward travel until we flipped it over now when we pull the bolt back we'll see that it is stopped much further forward preventing the next round from feeding all right let's flip back to repeating fire take note of the safety log this serves to stabilize the bolt when out of battery and acts as an additional reserve locking lug in the case that the first to fail little special features aside this really is just a Mauser rifle so it should be pretty familiar otherwise [Music] the safety Hauer is improved like we said we now have twin lugs and twin groups the mini interrupted screw this cams back the cocking piece of the gun does not fire [Music] all right let's get this over to May [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I will not lie I actually have deeper interest in foreign rifles than US rifles there's a lot written about these and they're fairly common at least where I live I get excited by weirder stuff but I can't argue that especially for someone in my size this is a very comfortable rifle in very clear sights I can't deny American guns are fun to shoot no like I said this is basically the model 1906 even though we're calling the o3 we've converted all the o3 s and the O fives to the O 6 pattern and just called it O 3 that means the old rod bayonets are very rare and interestingly that means there's a brief period where you have a gun that looks like this but is chambered for different cartridge you'd almost not be able to tell from the Shelf really the only way to recognize it is the difference in the sight leaf markings so I guess good luck tracking any of those downs even if you could find them I mean I'm sure those are almost universally replaced but it's the third rifle of three at least we finally got it right now there is another problem with this gun at this point which is essentially we have just cloned the Mauser that's got to come back and bite us right rewinding our date just a bit with the adoption of the 1903 clip not the rifle the Ordnance Office got worried about possible patent infringement you see Mauser had several patents in the US on this simple piece of hardware and so Crozier would write to them in March of 1904 asking them to evaluate whether or not the US was infringing on their patents and what royalties might settle the matter well Mouser sent the lawyers to work and it was surprisingly pretty civil they found that there was also a rifle that infringed on their patents and they put together a package for everything they wanted one dollar per rifle and one dollar per one thousand clips made this was negotiated down to 75 cents per rifle and 50 cents per 1000 clips with the agreement that it would only be for the manufacture of guns and clips after the date of signing this agreement limited to two hundred thousand smackers not a bad deal everyone was happy and it was signed off in May of 1905 the final payment would go through in July of 1909 and the whole thing was amicably resolved good we're clear right nope sorry because what happens next is a little more interesting deutsche waffen ammunition fabric the parent company DWM / mauser well they wander back through how you owe us for that spitzer cartridge and since you're used to paying out money anyway you can start paying us now yep they had patented the pointy bit and they wanted paid but the Ordnance Department had evidence of their own research on pointed bullets back in 1894 and so they told DWM to take a walk that would actually cause dwm to sue for damages we're gonna to come back to this in a little while because it really got suspended during the war while we're in the weeds let's talk about bayonets this is another attempt at a bolo remember entrenching and machete all in one but it never really left the trials face in 1915 the concept would come back with actually 12,000 made up until 1917 still fairly limited use though returning to the rifle in 1910 a couple little things would work their way in things like a serrated trigger chequered butt plate to prevent slippage and also from them getting too shiny from repeated use little Inklings of whatever in production carried on for a while until in 1913 despite tensions around the world kind of rising the u.s. in order to save a buck went ahead and reduced military spending so that means in November of that year The Rock Island Arsenal would stop production of the 1903 it was mothballed and proved to not be a very good decision I mean you have to let all the staff go and that means they're not really necessarily around when you need them later because war were declared [Music] we've covered how the u.s. got in this conflict a little bit before and realistically we're not in the overall history channel anyway so let's get to the meat as I just said Rock Island was closed and they would have to reopen the facility in February of 1917 but man did it take a while to get things rolling again because good luck luring everybody back I mean think about it you have arms production through the roof not for the US but for the entire world in all these commercial sectors so all the guys that have been making 19 or threes they took top dollar positions at Remington and Winchester and others of course why not so you had the fight to get them back and that means very slow build-up to production and very slow expansion of production for the 19 or threes more on that in a moment because with our entering the World War One starting the summer 1917 we see US troops slowly making their way ad-hoc over to Europe until finally we get some bigger waves later in the year that means the Springfield's making it into the theater for the first time and it's seeing its first real big conflict how's it doing well overall it was loved for short length and handy wait the target styled sites were actually welcomed for sniping across no-man's land and the American obsession with marksmanship was paying off sadly our troops were pretty novice at everything else though it's hard to find a discouraging word about the 1903 and chances are if you're watching this you already have a fair bit of love for this classic as well but that doesn't mean there were no faults as a matter of fact with the rush to produce for wartime manufacture can get quite sloppy and three factors would combine to make the 1903 a possible time bomb war time out of spec ammunition the initial ingrained poor heat treatment of receivers right from the get-go in designing this gun and poorer still treatment of the receivers during wartime manufacture now the problem will be discovered or rather investigated by Julian Hatcher of Springfield basically these things were going in for proof testing and some were starting to rupture these were not rupturing in the hands of troops as far as I can tell at least not a lot there's not a lot of danger in this more on that in a moment so the chief cause of those three that I listed I mean the ammo we can't get around we got to deal with it and then the fact that we need to rush rifles we got to deal with it so that means that we have to make them strong enough out of the forge that this doesn't happen and basically Hatcher found out that these things were burnt they were being overheated in the Forge it's making them brittle he could just smash receivers with a hammer that's no bueno so he went back the forges and had them actually install what's called a pirate Lord my pronunciation on this because this is not my field I am no chemist I am no metal Smith sorry guys this is just the quick info show well quick they had pyrometers that they should have had that they did not have so these guys depending on a bright sunny day or a cloudy day when they eyeballed the forge their estimation of the temperature could be off as much as 300 degrees and it's critical so they finally installed instrumentation to get the temperature right which they never done up until this point for some godforsaken reason that mostly resolved the issue but they went a little bit further did some heat treatment fixes even things out pick up a book yeah proofing was done at 70,000 psi whereas the max cartridge pressure should be about 50,000 some guns were failing that proofing like I said and cracking after extended use despite passing the perfect now with the improved forging and the improved double heat treatment even heat treatment process these actions were exceeding 125,000 psi just fine the maximum possible in a 30 watt six case now this has caused a lot of people to fear low serial guns but the whole war practically was fought with these receivers and bolts and 100 plus years later they blew up long ago if they were going to so just don't use extra hot loads okay if you're worried about the serial range it's vaguely somewhere in the hundred thousands for Springfield they were producing parts ad hoc and slapping them together it really is a wide variety of possible you know properly treated or not as properly treated receivers good luck guys for Rock Island they actually halted production over this problem which means we know that the first improved receiver what is number 285 507 hopefully you just yelled bingo the war would also see other minor changes so fairly early on we ditched serrations on the trigger we ditched the checkering on the butt plate they add a cross log actually this earlier one was added for strengthening before but we got one further up now in order to help with rifle grenade launching they swept back the bolt a little bit the summer of 1918 just to get it a little bit closer that trigger just ease that process and then actually towards the end of the war they implemented Park the rising as the sort of surface finish for this gun interestingly the Parker is ones very few if any made it into the war but it's almost it's just dang hard to find one that is an original deep blue receiver because so many in the war would then come back and be refinished with parker izing because they were so roughed up by the war now of course there would be scope from 1903 s but that's a topic for another time if we get lucky there'd also be this neat collapsing periscope stock developed the 1903 the 1917 rifles I've handled it up at Springfield and it's cool but not super practical I'm also alarmed by the fact that the Dickson site is on this example I really hope they weren't trying for it again in addition experience with and even limited production of a semi-automatic pistol cartridge conversion for the Springfield 1903 would be conducted this resulted in the 1903 mark 1 rifle and Patterson device I actually hope to cover this in more detail later but it did not serve in the war so it's not that critical even though it's cool even weirder several models of flaming bayonet would be trialed these use special cartridges to shoot flames up to 15 feet for trench charging again never used in the war and finally there's this odd duck the model 1903 air service rifle those things are incredibly rare so I'm very happy to say look what I got this is the air service rifle now a key feature this is actually this extended 25 round magazine 20 in the mag and then the original 5 for the gun this thing apparently was developed for the 1903 overall they were just going to use it as a trench mag and then once they started got ahold of it and started to sort of testing it I mean the things cool guys and it's pretty rigid but I'm gonna tell you you'd get a lot of repair requests on something like this hanging out and then they also notice that when they really got into the field testing with these you didn't speed up your overall fire rate very much because you just ended up having a load 25 rounds and then shoot 25 rounds and then sit there and load it again there's not a huge advantage to this system it as cool as it is unless that we're detachable it's not a big deal sorry well it came in handy when they thought about doing this particular gun before I get in the details though let's take a look at what the heck is going on because a lot of people disagree as to why this thing was ever made so oh I guess we're not going prone the time alright so regular 1903 with a big honking magazine that's just cool let's be honest some us or benchmarks and otherwise just making it awkward to hold up the only real differences to this gun are in the fact that the stocks been cut down very uniquely this is easy to recognize if it's original because unlike the regular 1903 they've gotten rid of the rise to protect the rear sight because there's no actual leaf so let me get that up or you can see it there's the regular making that see see this big hump that is gone obviously that's pretty easy to fake don't get me wrong and then just trim it up a stock also fairly easy to fake but this is a proprietary barrel band and you notice instead of like our sling swivel or pin cheese going on like on the other one it's just solid with a screw right at the base this is the only gun that uses this particular type of barrel band so yeah that's one piece of proof these things are all barrel dated out from 1918 by the way and then oh if we get to the rear we're gonna see that there is no inlet for a rear sling swivel not filled in none ever so every other model in 1903 there's gonna be some sort of inlet or wood plug or something so you want to check to see if you've got an air service stock well there you go nothing now getting back to it it's got a modified rear sight and what they've done is actually changed up an original sight they just took probably a defective original rear sight something from the discard bin and they've just ground off the ladder to form a rudimentary Buckhorn kept the lower knotch and then used a cross plate to keep it from actually bending so this thing doesn't actually rotate it just looks like it does and interestingly you can still adjust it for windage I wonder if that was supposed to be some expectation for leading as we'll talk about its actual use in just a moment authors kind of disagree on this particular rifle up until hopefully this video today I got an Inside Man previously his thought that these were for basically balloonist go up in a balloon don't have to load your rifle shoot out of the balloon kind of a sitting duck there so it was also supposed that these guns were intended for I don't know sapling crews there was supposed to be survival rifles so it's not that the pilot shot out the plane with it because that'd be silly instead he took this around and since he had no like bandolier spare clips you just have one loaded gun and then you just had 25 rounds to get his self out of trouble so he could crash behind enemy lines he just it's light it's handy he packs it up and goes I have one problem with that theory which is that this thing has no provision for a sling and you think that'd be instrumental to a survival rifle but anyway luckily again inside man and again from a Krag episode our friend and read from archival research group email in the description if you need this kind of homework for yourselves the man is very talented because he turned off copies of cable grams that mention exactly where these honey's were and as exciting as that is he found a few that actually followed tracked cable grams back and forth on the development and the reason for this particular rifle which is indeed it was supposed to be taken up by pilots and crew and shot from the airplane at other airplanes they were offered up because originally as the u.s. started rolling from the field they got reports hey sometimes these machine guns jammed and we can't undiminished some of these stoppages we need something to keep us fighting long enough defensively to get back out of the air and fix these problems or if we're in a spot where we really could do a little bit more damage on another armed target we're gonna do it we need a rifle and so they wanted a lightened higher capacity magazine rifle in that regard the Ordnance Department said cool we'll just make one out of the Springfield 1903 well shorten it up we'll add the extended magazine this cable grams it takes time to go back and forth right and there's all this mess in just going back and forth the or dis apartment gets ahead of themselves they're like look we'll do open Buckhorn's so you can lead in the air will keep the windage will do all this other stuff we're gonna make nine hundred of these things I hope you like them and that's when the guys in the field are going to like the air units are going I don't know if we want a Springfield 1903 that's that's a lot of gun we were thinking of a non bolt-action because here's our problem we can't really fly in a plane and do what we need to do and then also manipulate this bolt we want high-capacity semi-automatic at which point Springville goes oh I don't know why didn't say anything about that sooner that's stupid we're already working on these things but what they really wanted what they requested that sort of walked off of this gun was actually the Winchester 1910 that was the gun they sort of wanted now changes to the machine guns improvements placing rear guns that sort of thing they ate up these problems to the point that they no longer needed a backup rifle and so that winchester 1910 idea in the US was dropped it probably got inspired by the French on that but that's a story for another day now where does that leave us with this gun why does it even exist at that point well that's because in the time delay they just started producing them and so ultimately like 680 of these things would be shipped to France because we already made them just if you want to use them fine take them get them you know we're not gonna sit here play with this forever we just cut off production of what we already cooked up and hurry and get it out to you so we know at least to those six 80 because again Andrews my hero and he found what guys we got these guns what do we do with them and then the Ordnance Department is going look take 25 of them send him over to the first send him up in planes on the front and see how they do now in that regard they didn't do so well nobody really cared about him they were unnecessary sorry guys tough and at that point that order was issued on October 1918 so there wasn't even a lot of time to really test them before the end of the war it's right there so what happens ultimately comes back and we got no real use for them Ordnance Department right before the war in goes okay well just give them out to drivers and couriers and things like that guys that don't really need to carry ammo belts anyway they're kind of lighter figure out how to strap them to their backs and let them go and I don't even know if that actually went through in time but even if it did you're talking about a gun that really didn't see combat doesn't mean it's not cool as heck looking though so I guess we should probably still go ahead and hand it over to May [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] all right I'm gonna tell you something that was an ambitious day we ended up with a lot of rifles ready to go so we hit the range and we're gonna film like seven rifles we filmed in 1903 and then we filmed the air service and then we went home because poor May was beat to heck funnelling rounds out of this thing remember we don't go through just one mag to get all the shots we need that was a lot of 30.6 alright so I'm gonna set this guy aside oh and I'm gonna get out the 1903 because this is really what we're talking about this is the American rifle of World War one on paper because realistically this was not even our primary service arm during the war we've already covered that that would be the model 1917 the US Enfield again we have this from a previous episode but how about some numbers you see the u.s. entered the war with the following somewhere around 800,000 Springfield 1903 160,000 crags 280,000 Mo's uns 20,000 Ross mark twos these were used for training and rifle production for the war we only managed to crank out a little over 300,000 1903 s but we managed over 2 million 1917 that's not including the Armistice period where the 1917 still surpassed the 1903 is in production so that means we have to 1917 s for everyone 1903 it almost seems wasteful to try and claim the 1903 is the standard rifle I mean are we really going to make more of them at this point well in March of 1919 a board was convened to pick who was going to be the standard US service rifle and they weirdly went with the 1903 anyway and I get it it's lighter it's handier and there's just something American about it but the 1917 was for plentiful and had a beautiful rear aperture sight and highly accurate shooting we've already talked about that having said there are a couple notes on the approval of this being the official gun in the 1917 being the limited standard gun and the notes were a we would like to get a rear aperture sight on this gun right away that would end up taking quite a while and be obviously this is all temporary because we're so gonna go with an auto loading rifle next and but time we get into any more conflicts don't worry about it this is not even going to be a factor well we'll have enough Auto loading rifles to serve our needs in due time no problem there what Lee these guns are both outside of our scope today instead I'll just limit this to one more post-world War one wrap-up story recall that DWM was mad about the infringe spitzer patent well they had sued back in the day for two hundred fifty thousand dollars before the war well that got tabled during the conflict they were obviously distracted well also during the war the patent was seized under the office of alien property custodian this is legally tricky because under Geneva you can't do that so kind of a war crime to steal foreign people's patents just because you're at war at them okay so what does that mean well it means that when DWM comes back they can't sue for the patent as being infringed by the bullet because again the US had studies going back to 1894 provably but the interesting thing is even though the patent was no good or unenforceable there was seized illegally so the lawyers get involved in the US has to pay for the seizure of a useless patent and the amount three hundred thousand dollars unfortunately in the time it took to appropriate the funds to pay for them it would rise to well over four hundred thousand dollars that they paid out to DWM post-war over the Spitzer bullet that they never had to pay on before stealing the patent beautiful wonderful strategy guys it's just it's hand caught in the cookie jar and you got away with it until you tried to really get away with it okay and all of that covered and the story wrapped up let's go ahead and get this over to min get her opinion on the 1903 all right once more we've made room for May and we certainly have plain space for this handy little universal short rifle so as per the usual we're gonna get your opinion on starting with the ergonomics how does it feel to handle the model 1903 we're just gonna call it the 1903 and I already have my opinions about that so how do I feel about the 1903 oh 506 just to make him happy boys no oh three this gun feels so mobile I mean go back to two weeks ago episode with the Krag like this just feels like I can run and gun with this guy I mean the wait has seriously dropped it feels fantastic it's very sleek it's very slim like I really feel like I've got a good bit of mobility I'm loving that on this guy and the balance still very nice rest right in my left hand I love that don't love the fact that I've got a straight wrist again come on seriously like it's it's not hard at throw a semi pistol grip on there guys I like my comfort I like my lazy boy chairs let me relax come on anyway but yeah seriously little features can make a difference on the sights they're very tall I actually do like how tall they are the actual rear sights they're actually these are a little over complicated I feel like there's a lot going on here more so than there needs to be but you know they function they work I guess I can't really argue in terms of make them less complicated I could see in a situation where I need to adjust for windows and stuff like that it would make a difference but just for what I was using it for I didn't need all the extra little bits and boodles but it did its job I was able to see that's what counts magazine cutoff very smooth easy to use it really feels like it wants to flip in the direction you go and hey if you're ever confused about if it is on or off they were very nice and then you wrote on or off on here it's even easier to use than a light switch nice flag safety very easy to use again they wrote ready and safe on here they're really trying to make this as little they're truly trying to take the complication out of this for the soldier who's just handed this directly first time handling a gun like I think they're gonna I don't think there's gonna be a lot of complication here for them they really trying to make this easy for anyone to understand the bolt you know it just feels like he's handling a Mauser it feels like I'm handling a Mauser 98 I know that they base this off the 93 but it just it's smooth it's simple like it just if I close my eyes yeah I just feel the Mauser 98 in here that's just what it it comes off as to me maybe someone else has got other opinions I'm sure we'll read that in the comments the comb you know it's just high enough I feel like they could have gone a little bit higher personally just a smidgen but it's it's still high enough like it still puts my face right where it needs to be on the cheek weld so that was all right cocking piece sticks out pretty well like I thought it was easy to grip him and you feel like if I needed to like if I just needed to like free [ __ ] the gun for any reason like I didn't think like I might have any problem with that but yeah otherwise ergonomics I really feel like it's not a carbine but I still feel like I could easily just go on asperton with this guy and not have that big of a problem with it it was economic this was actually pretty nice before anybody says anything else yes we're aware the 1903 sling yes it's very powerful when paired with this rifle correctly yes there's part of training we didn't do slings for any other guns and we can't do slings for every other gun and it's a big headache to get all the way into all of that so we're gonna keep this fair and we're doing the us equipment the same as everybody else no slings freestanding this is more history and a little bit of demonstration we're not I know how do you guys really want us to be like re-enacting World War one and getting it all just right so that we can tell you down to the fine line what the superior weapon is I'm not sure why because I'm not sure how many of you are planning on going in a time machine to World War one bringing the best gun with you but now this is a showcase of firearms history I'm sorry guys so check out the other videos online there's some world war ii ordnance videos and stuff that show how to use those slings they're great they're cool not factoring in on this i'm sorry now that puts us on to shooting though what's it like to actually pull the trigger on the venerated 1903 first things first I've got to load the gun and with this one we're loading five rounds from a stripper clip and it loaded beautifully no problems no jams loaded I think about four or five clips worth and we didn't have any problems there lining up the sights as I said previously the ergonomics they're tall I mean they're just like the Krag sights guys so if there was really no difference they're pulling the trigger it is a very smooth two-stage trigger like it I almost can't even tell when the break is actually going to happen it was so smooth which was really nice I love that about this gun and I'm actually pulling the trigger the actual bang that came with that the recoil it is a little bit gruff thirty out six is a little bit much I think of a cartridge it's a little over the top but it didn't feel like I wasn't able to handle it like don't get me wrong with this gun I felt like I could still you know fire multiple rounds off and not have any problems we rely on my sights or hitting my or hitting my my target oh my goodness may speak I felt like I get my heart just fine but after like maybe 30 rounds or so start to get a little bit much on the shoulder and I wish honestly they just included that semi pistol grip because if I had had that and it's been able to pull it more into my shoulder yeah I would have probably not even mentioned how gruff of a cartridge it is but it is a little bit difficult handling it after a significant amount has been fired through it but other than that it was actually a pretty fun shooter I just had a nice time out on the range that day it took a bunch of the us boys out to the range and had a good day I liked it I have to agree that the 1903 is a very fun range done and it's true 30.6 is one of those of upper and heavy-hitter cartridges which is an odd choice considering it was paired with what was adopted as his short rifle it's like we were like let's really crank up the power and shorten up the gun but it works it works just fine and by the way there's lots of fans at 30.6 to this day and I'd count myself as one yeah it's just it's a little much on this guy yeah so um talk about some other guns that shoot throught six in a moment so uh just limiting ourselves to 1903 we have some other things to discuss but how does it feel confidence wise to go into World War one with the 3006 cartridge a short rifle using the Mauser action I imagine this is going to be a terrible review but let's let you go for it terrible awful goodness no I could never see myself ever going into battle with yeah seriously guys I didn't have that many negative points this guy and even with a few negatives I gave with this no semi pistol grip and then like 30 got six being a little too overpowered for this guy whatever like it performed excellently and I performed well with it it's got a lot of fantastic features to it I mean there's no way I could say no to this guy yes I'm gonna take it into a battle it it's wonderful I feel like that is far too easy of an answer for such a big show okay of course we're gonna like the Springfield 92 and 3 of course it's gonna be in sort of the higher echelon I mean in a lot of ways like I said Mauser 98 with some refinements I kind of preferred to most of the mousers out there like of the mousers this is one of the nicer mousers so of course it floats up that top of our list but what if we had another improved Mauser design and I told her that she had to actually make a choice oh this ladies and gentlemen is the American Enfield the model 1917 and 30.6 and we have an episode on it hold on one second we have an episode coming up on it but just to review big heavy and also chambered in 3006 and also derived from the mauser action so I'm gonna hand you this here let me take that you should for a second you've had it for a moment you've been it all over it so let's do let's do this you give us a quick recap on anything about that gun you're holding that you would prefer before you have to make the decision just tell me if there's anything on that gun that you prefer and maybe not like as much so just get a list of the likes and don't likes before you give me the call how about that yeah okay okay all right all right so off the bat yeah I've got an aperture site that's that's instantly gonna bump it up in my opinion I've got six rounds instead of five also a nice plus honestly I like the trigger I like that bolt on this guy I think it deposits me in a much better place with that trigger and then yeah honestly I just can't get over those sights those are really fantastic got the semi pistol grip yes with the 3006 and then I will say the wait does help with recoil mitigation but I don't want to say negative in there I have to but the weight is also really big negative factor but yeah in terms of pros like those are all like really big point outs but it is super heavy and it is longer like I don't know differences why is those are the things that stand out to me the most though yeah there's only one other thing I can think of so lighter handier not as clear on the site it's not as heavy as a barrel mm-hmm straight wrist versus semi pistol grip triggers are roughly about the same I will say one other thing that is [ __ ] on closed-open know I tend to not notice the difference very much between either some people have a strong preference and I think you've said you prefer cock-on open most of the time I do I do before a [ __ ] on open you're right I forgot about that on this guy yeah it is that is gonna make a difference it is a negative on this one being [ __ ] on close so you gotta pick one you only take one in the Battle of the two is it going to be maneuverability or is it going to be precision can I pick the 1903 eight the 1903 a3 was not available come on my pester camp it's got the avengers' side it's called they all have semi pistol grips yeah I'm gonna have to go with oh yeah I'm gonna get I'm gonna get yelled at I'm gonna have to go with the other three just because I'm thinking of endurance on this guy's like I'm really I'm seeing myself trucking along with this gun and I'm going the distance with it but 90 70 knots so much it's just not gonna hold up you know a few inches off this barrel and I bet she'd change your mind we are not talking about cutting down military guns on this channel that is a no I meant by design thank you by design okay yeah by design sure got off a few inches and we will see each other again sir but no for now I unfortunately have to stick with this guy it's just in the long run he's gonna make it to the end of the finish line with me well the good news is I weigh a lot more and I don't mind I prefer the 1970 quite often quite honestly maybe it'd be more believable if I get the whole sentence out rear aperture heavy barrel and I'm big enough that I don't mind lugging this thing around but I'm not the average size of the average soldier so Mays made her call ladies and gentlemen please send all heat male oh no all right so that does leave us with another thing to discuss though we've cleared the worst of it now if I can borrow that back all right set this aside and we have to at least mention this ridiculous thing which by the way I am happy to announce technically the universal owns this guy we found it just for people to know we found it because we were looking to make a reproduction for the show and then we found an original and hiding in plain sight because it was sport Erised I managed to track down a mag for it because it was missing one and then there you have it the guns all here all together and I'll display at some point I guess we're gonna have to unload it so that we can help continue to fund the show but that's a separate issue for much further down the road we're hoping to get a little more leg out of this thing that being said you did get to shoot it I'm quite sure that spectacle drew a few people to the show so why don't you tell us what it's like playing with the air service and you're gonna have to close your eyes and pretend with all your money that don't creep me out I can fly can you just close them without them fluttering like that no I actually can't when I was gonna get facial or the other day like she was talking about how my eyes wasn't stopped fluttering as she got really mad at me and I was like I'm sorry it's just a reflex and she kept yelling at me it was not relaxing all right spa day and trust issues aside you know I didn't get invited to that I only got to go that one time for the pedicure I think that really pretty toes yeah so you're in the back of a plane ignoring the fact that you might even be flying the dang thing all right you have to use this gun so it's already gonna be pre-loaded you're not gonna be loading it I mean we had fun with that on the range but that's not they would have just been loaded and stuck in the guns right or stuck in the plane so you have to just start working that bolt and shooting how does that feel like it's gonna go for you all right so I gotta close my eyes and imagine I'm gonna plane okay there's less sound imagine I'm moving around a lot I gotta work at bolt action honestly what why am i hitting like a bullet action on a plane that seems like the worst last resort I mean I've happened to shoot not like got a stationary target on the ground mind you I'm shooting out another plane that's moving in the sky what I feel like the ludicrous sea of this is just over the top guys seriously I mean don't get me wrong like the book hard sights aren't bad but I still feel like there's a lot of things wrong with this scenario I've got a giant mag sticking out so I really can't go prone against the plane or like leaning on anything that's not gonna work out I like likely the action is smooth I mean everything about this is all like the 1903 like great but not still super useful an airplane I've got a magazine cut off a minor blade what are they facing cut all this is ridiculous like no I mean I think this is a ridiculous idea it's all fun for shooting I mean 25 rounds thirty out six they'll sure kick the heck out of your shoulder after a while had a nice solid bruise on that one but I mean for a fun the ground sure in a plane what you know maybe I should honestly just pick this guy let's go without flying I think that'll do better now don't give everything away my dear the French have nothing to do with this conversation I think that though check alright so big changes on this one of course were the extended magazine lighting up that for stock and that buckhorn site made out of cutting down I mean that's the most American thing I think I've seen I would have never if you if I didn't know that this was a real gun I would think this was Bubba's handiwork in a heartbeat I think it weren't bad no but taking taking a Buffington site and just turning it into a buck horn is the most country thing I think I've ever seen and yet it was done officially I guess good old boy was working for the Armory that's all I'm saying now we do know that these went out we know that they've probably barely served if they served at all and we know that they had a very limited role so unless somebody wants to come for with a biplane in some FAA regulations on whether or not we can shoot out of it I'm not sure that we're gonna get a lot of testing some permits you gotta go through for that or whatever but yeah I don't I don't wanna say that it won't happen but I'm not sure how it was some day I will shoot you out of a biplane out of something at the ground not something in the sky I mean me we're not holding this thing forever good lord yeah alright so I think we wrapped up oh no actually I had one other question for you you fired exactly what I take it into battle please tell me now go sorry I mean I can't be worse than a regular 1903 no but come on this actually it is fairly light it is very very light you can't go prophet if you're charging a trench and you have to choose between a 19-3 with a bayonet or this with no bayonet but the open Buckhorn sights in the big ol magazine which would you choose I mean yeah I mean it's terrible like it's got a giant magazine on it so it's like there's no going prone like if it's gonna whack on anything and everything including myself like I'm probably gonna hit myself with it to be honest hold it sideways like a gangster wait so I just hold it like like this yeah there you go grip it yeah okay I'm gonna go like this yeah no I couldn't even see the sights but um no I think I'll just stick with the oh three I feel like that's better in the long run plus it off a giant magazine sticking out the bottom uh ding up pretty easily because it would be me it'd be me running if you told me I'm gonna fall he told me I was rushing turns out take this he's really like 25 rounds ready to rock wait it is 25 rounds ah go away go away this show is falling off the rails Road fast so I think we'll just surrender on the air service no that leaves us with the final score may personal 18 to 3 I prefer the 1917 we both had a laugh off the air service who was never a I mean his official rifle I mean it was designated and they made like 600 plus of them but almost all those would have been turned back into regular rifles after the war they've been repaired back to standard so it's very rare and odd duck and worth a good laugh so let's wrap us out you're gonna see the credits and then after that you're gonna get some updates and we were filming well ahead because by the time you're seeing this we have hopefully already filmed and survived a big shoot down in Louisiana and hopefully we have cashed I hope I hope because this is what I have been working 100 hours a week for the past two weeks for to get caught up on I hope that we have just generated a ton of machine gun information for you and worked up some possible episodes so however long it takes me to get that ready should be exciting for the series mm-hmm thanks for your continued support over on patreon by the way that makes that sort of thing possible as much as we try to self fund where we can on little side things it's you guys you're making the show we rely on it alright how's it going thank you everybody [Music] I was going to try for a video update but currently the studio is a mess now I'm gonna save you all the headache and just say that if you're watching this fresh go ahead and keep an eye on the channel I'm gonna try to get something out as a sort of separate video announcement that wraps up everything we're doing it's just very very busy over here alright thank you for watching thank you for support on patreon and IndieGoGo campaign things like that let us know how you feel in the comments have a good one guys
C&Rsenal is a truly great youtube channel, ao much great knowledge and information that they teach!
That's not quite the complete history. C&Rsenal's video series is focused on WWI, so anything after that, the inter-war and WWII history, is left out.
Between C&Rsenal, Forgotten Weapons/InRange, and Mishaco, people interested in firearm history are spoiled for choice.
Also Othais and Mae’s Primer series is a must watch. Just... set aside quite a bit of time. They spent roughly an hour and a half just talking about the Krag-Jorgensen if I remember right.