M1903A3 Springfield Rifle Review

what a joy to shoot love history love military history there's nothing better than u.s. military history and here we've got a m103 a three Springfield 3006 rifle these were adopted in 1905 by the US military and were the standard issue rifle until 1937 which of course was replaced by the m1 garand which is a semi-automatic thirty-aught-six designed in the 3006 caliber a devastating rifle highly accurate very reliable on the battlefield all through World War one and even saw service up until Vietnam a couple of really fascinating things about this rifle was it was the first time the u.s. standardized their issue rifle to all military before that there were different rifles for different branches of the military and so the the m103 became your standard issued rifle another thing that the springfield m103 did was it did away with the rifle carbine with the two rifles it went to one 24-inch barreled rifle which suited loads purposes and a lot of this had to do with the Germans and the British already going along that doctrine now this is the m103 a3 made by Springfield of course during the war many other companies made these made parts for them this specific rifle is a Remington made rifle it is in about the four million serial number range there were many obviously millions of these rifles made but from World War one all the way up until 1944 these were in production this is the model M 1:03 a3 and one of the advances of this rifle was the sight they put a rear aperture sight similar to that of the garand and that allowed for cross-training for those that had been trained on the ground to still be able to use these rifles but the early models the early a one models had eight their traditional bolt-action front sight here with a leaf like you normally see still on rifles and was used predominantly during World War two here's a little closer look of the site itself it does have a very small aperture and that was designed that way because it really increased the accuracy of course you have your windage and elevation right here built in a very nice rear sight now the front post as you can see is not hooded but that's one of the things that the Marine Corps did they took their rifles and hooded this front sight to keep it protected there is a little brass bead on the tip now while I was shooting this rifle at the range I did notice sometimes it was difficult to see that front sight in this very small aperture these rifles are not lightweight they're about 8 pounds and 11 ounces but really they handle extremely well there's just something about the way these things move around a lot of the design features came into this rifle because of the spanish-american war and the forces faced in Cuba which were shooting mousers this is really what led to the birth of the Springfield m103 a 3 of course we have the turndown bolt which is really nice of course it is unloaded you can feed five rounds either by stripper clip and or singularly just with pushing down one of the things I'll show you is there is a block fact when this was pulled back on an empty chamber you can't move it forward of course that alerted the soldier when he was firing that his gun was empty but one of the things that they've done here to block the system here for the stripper clips there's this button right here and what happens is when it's pushed down it will not come back all the way so a stripper clip cannot be fed this is one round at a time here is the safety written right across here means ready of course on this side it says safe it completely disables the firing pin okay when we charge the bolt you notice that the bolt is going to come back and [ __ ] so it's in cocked position when this is extended it's cocked position you can place your finger in the trigger holding this bolt which this is somewhat dangerous to do if you have a round in the chamber but since we're empty we're going to just demonstrate it hold back the bolt pull the trigger and you can release it to put it in a non firing position this your safety will not engage in at this point but this allows for the tension of the bolt to be released without firing the weapon look at the machining on this rifle it is beautiful absolutely incredible rifle this is a really beautiful specimen by the way it does have a boxed magazine that's fixed inside and with the plate here here is the bayonet attachment with a attachment for your strap up front or here attachment to the rear as well here's the buttstock comes up over the back of the bolt and then it has a trapdoor for your cleaning supplies nice crisscross pattern on it now reportedly these rifles were sited in at 2500 yards and point-blank was considered 500 yards that's when riflemen were riflemen these are incredible little rifles a lot of fun to shoot in just a really classic piece of history now while in 1937 the grand took preeminence over all of the rifles because they were still trying to get these rifles ready for front-line use the m103 was still in combat in fact all through World War Two and a lot of the US Army Rangers actually preferred the the bolt-action rifle for many of the specialized combat operations they were involved in because of the shortage of arms during the war there were many irregular units were outfitted with these m103 s the Free French were also in fact that they preferred this rifle after France was liberated and given many thousands of these to help drive the Germans out of France the Brazilian units in Italy also predominantly used these really fine rifles now I do want to make mention of the m1903 a4 and that was the first attempt by the US Army to standardize a sniper rifle and they put on a Weaver 2.2 power scope remove the sights and one of the problems was the scope was really underpowered and it wasn't waterproof and the big problem with that is is that if the scope was inoperable you had no sights and the rifle was useless the US military came up with a you nurdle scope that was eight power and they had some success with it over what the army did but really the m103 was never really considered an adequate sniper rifle even though it was used up through vietnam the springfield m1903 a3 is just an incredible piece of history and a lot of fun to shoot and great to collect and it's always thanks for watching please subscribe for more fun gun reviews and sensible survival god bless america long live the Republic then our German boys learned a lot about this rifle right here all the way from world war in the world to you don't want to be on this band of that rock

Channel: sootch00

Views: 407,037

Keywords: Springfield 03, M1903A3, 30-06 caliber, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, War, AR15, H BAR, Rifle Scope, Optics, Military Issue, Tactical, M-14, sniper, long range, Remington, SPS, Savage Tactical, bolt gun, rifle, firearm, Sootch00

Id: yJjKH7nPJas

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2011