Remington Model 1917 Enfield

hey hicock45 you know it's going to be a good day at least for me hopefully for you when i have a couple of classic bolt-action military rifles on the table we have the old autry springfield and we have the 1917 officially the united states rifle model or caliber 30 model of 1917 which i'm sure not many people uh referred to it as at least in uh around the barracks uh hey ralph hand me my united states rifle caliber 30 model of 1970 and that's something we'll talk about the old infield model 1917 was called by all sorts of different names and we're going to show it we're going to shoot it and it was a very common rifle in world war one i did not have one until recently but it was carried in france by its estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of the troops the u.s troops over there so it was you know as a lot of people have legitimately pointed out it was the workhorse of world war one for the united states the i tend to call it the infield 1917 and uh we'll talk about that but it is the uh model of 1917. let's take a couple of shots with it it's uh it's a little bit unusual and of course the world war ii rubber pad i have on it is really special that was hard to find made by who pacmeyer limb saver uh just makes it feel so much better i'm sorry now this one's hot i'm just going to pop the safety off and pull the trigger i think the bolt was not down all the way 30 odd six it will generally get the job done let's go across the hill and see about that plate over there nice probably went over we'll figure that out before we're finished so the the 1917 infield 1917 this is a a cool rifle it actually is a good shooter you notice you have your sights here rearward of the uh the action unlike the odd three where you've got the sights over there at least on the original r3s and so and you have a uh kind of a peep sight ghost ring so you have a long sight radius and uh you get a pretty good sight picture i really do now why is this called the infield now many of you know and are familiar with these babies let's load her up here and take some more shots with it while i perspire and and stay warm but this is a sweet rifle shoots well maybe not as pretty as the odd three i'll have to say it lacks some of that uh you know that sexiness of the odd three but it's it's a 30 odd six and it's a it's a great rifle this is considered to be the rifle sergeant york used october 8 1918 to win the medal of honor and there's some controversy about it but based on my readings his diaries uh you know it seems this is the one he had and uh basically as i understand in france they they the people who had all threes a lot of them they had to give them up at some point when they got there and they issued them the uh the 1917's because he complained and well kind of complained in his diary about preferring the american rifle as he called it and liked it better than the british rifle he called this the british rifle it's kind of funny and i can see why he would say that because it it kind of is a british rifle let's see where we were going over there take the safety off where we were going on the missiles not on the hit that's the sound i want yeah that's what i want to hear two-liter time wow and there's another one there hmm i think the 30x6 was designed for two liters actually oh who put a water jug right there wow this disintegrated didn't it wow it's empty so this this is a it's a law it's kind of a long rifle uh big old gun weighs over nine pounds but you know for the 30 odd 6 that's one reason it shoots uh so teamly it doesn't really beat you up and uh this is a nice shooter i like it i am very pleased to have found one i really am picked this up at a gun show guy walking around with it stole it from him beat him up brought it home no i purchased it from a guy at the gun show here in nashville a few weeks ago it was very very pleased to see it this one by the way has uh uh the date on the barrel is 5 18. for you folks in kentucky that's may 1918 okay five is may and uh which means it was probably not re-barreled you know because they made about a million of these between september and uh well of 1917 and then september of 1918 as i understand or that year that 12-month period they made about a million of these things and so i guess it's unlikely this one's been re-barreled that was probably you know the original barrel and everything okay uh so a lot of loaded here let me tell you a little bit about this this thing the british were in of course involved in world war one before we were and before world war one they were looking at changing their smle rifle their new cartridge new gun they were looking at uh what a 276 caliber kind of different cartridge they're uh really going to revamp that that gun and that rifle and with a different cartridge and everything well along comes world war one and they had to show that idea so they went back to the 303. the 303 which i have one here let me grab one the 303 is a cartridge it goes way back you notice the rimmed case different from the 30 odd six this is 30 out six of course we're shooting uh you got the rimmed rimmed case there uh on the 303 british and that cartridge was later in royal white was originally a black powder cartridge it goes back into the 1888 maybe late 1880s so that rascal has been around forever originally black powder and and then smokeless in the 1890s but they were looking at something different and uh maybe more effective they thought all that well like i say world war one uh shelved that and uh they're back to the 303 and needed guns needed rifles as many as they could get they contracted with remington and winchester in the united states to make them some and and i'm not sure what it was called the pattern 14 basically what they they they started making which was basically this gun very similar to this this rifle okay and in remington winchester and subsidiaries of remington made a ton of these for the british a couple of million i think and we're wrapping up those contracts when we entered the war okay and i think that was like 1917 and uh so we are in a position where we don't have enough off three springfields i think we had under a million about eight hundred thousand of these things and here we're ready to go to war and the retooling and everything and the training to to tool up to make these was going to take too much time the war would have been over but time had gotten any of these things made in significant numbers and so these companies you know remington winchester had just finished uh you know proving that they could make a lot of these firearms right here the pattern 14 in the 303 british cartridge and so someone got the bright idea well let's just rechamber this gun and tell them to keep making it and so what they did was they redesigned the bolt face the the magazine chamber re-chambered it in 30 out six and uh basically that was it so that's why this is called the infield the gun we were making for the british of course was the enfield the pattern 14. and so in 1917 just started making them again in 30 on 6 is what it comes down to and that's why this gun is referred to by some people as the pattern 17 and the infield 17 and all those sorts of things that's probably why sergeant york referred to it in his diary as the british gun you know uh because it is you know it's a british style gun you got the [ __ ] on closing on the bolt you see it it you know like the you know typical the standard bolts guns that britain you know like you know it [ __ ] when you close it not when you open it okay so they felt like they could fire them faster they could be trained to fire more rounds more quickly you know that the british just like that and uh so anyway uh so i understand that even the factory workers were calling to p17 everybody gets all upset about that because it's not really the p17 that's not the designation that's not what it's called but you know people would call it that and i'm sure troops called it everything you can imagine the probably the from the p17 to the british gun to whatever but that's what that was about let's load it up uh so we cranked up and made a bunch of these uh you know uh remington winchester uh eddie stone which you've probably seen some of those is a subsidiary was a subsidiary of remington and uh they made a bunch of them a bunch let me get that was uh there's three three or three rounds i had let me put those over there so i don't confuse those and uh that's why this gun was so prevalent in world war one in uh in the troops and the u.s troops hands okay and it served well it is a great shooter it it's uh it's a sweet shooter in fact it's a heavy gun and it uh it just feels good now it's got some quirks uh i'm not sure i like the bolt i notice if you if you notice here now way i would just normally pick this gun up and shoot it would be just like that maybe put my finger on the trigger and you notice the bolts right against my my finger almost and i have to watch that because it comes back even though it doesn't recoil excessively you know the bolt is right against the your bone there so i don't like that so i get my hand down on it like that and it does okay take the safety off take a couple shots here let's try that two liter over there i may never hit it but i'll try all right pretty cool let's try that watermelon i'm not sure where that went oh yeah i was nice nice i know i went under that it's interesting i i don't have to with the sights all the way down it actually shoots pretty much right on or just a little bit low uh you know these old bolt guns are just beautiful i mean they're just there's so much history and again as i have pointed out before this is not a replica that's a neat thing about these old guns and so many military rifles this gun was uh this one as i said was made in may of 1918 and we desperately needed them so i'm assuming as soon as it was made it was shipped probably to france you know it was used now you don't never know the exact history but yeah so this rifle as with that one they were very very likely you know used in battle you know and and that's the interesting thing about these things oh one of the interesting things about them the historical significance the fact they're actually used uh you know it's just amazing when you think about that and then we can bring them out here and just enjoy them on a shooting range with nobody shooting back at us which makes it nice and one thing i did not point out and you were going to remind me to uh to talk about that viewers where were you the magazine in this gun holds six rounds as opposed to five rounds in the british version and in five rounds in the uh of course the odd three springfield and uh that's because of the rim with the rim 303 case it uh you know that just takes up some room so it would hold five with the 30 out six uh rimless cartridge you can actually get six in so but the clips and everything just held five and so you know i probably end up sticking in five most of the time let me get my glasses cleaned off we'll take a couple more more shots with this baby so so these are guns uh especially of world war one okay uh which you know ran from what roughly uh 19 but we were not in it in 1914 you know 15 but up through 1918 the armistice was signed in what november of 1918 so you know i mean dangerous times you know world at war again and uh uh you know sergeant york uh was famous for his exploits uh in october of 1918. you know with this rifle as best anybody can ascertain uh there's i know again there's some controversy about what rifle he actually used but uh it's generally considered by most people that this was the one he he was carrying and again he was complaining about the the sights on it he he didn't grow up with peep sites and and that kind of thing uh you know in the that that part of history and in tennessee in 1900 and 1910 i doubt that there were any rifles around that he had been hunting squirrels with with a peep sight or a ghost ring site i don't know and he didn't favor those i know and then preferred the odd you must have better eyes than i do because i can't see the sights on that one and uh this is a this is this is nice having that uh ghost ring or that peep sight for me i love it all right even though i like the the feel of the r3 better the the sights on this to me are much much much much better i'll take a couple more shots at that plate miss it a couple more times so odd 6 for those who don't know is a pretty hot round it's a very similar to the 308 the 308 is shorter but in terms of the nato loadings they're about the same i told you i was going to miss a couple more times now i'm going to miss this watermelon now i just got one round left so that's dangerous isn't it casey attacks i'm not going to be ready well 3006 took care of him pretty well so what else got to tell you about this good ol yeah this old war horse just a an interesting piece of history it's cool having one you know made in 1918 1970 1918 well i guess 1918 if this is the original barrel it is a remington and again remington winchester eddie stone subsidiary of remington made a lot of these things and i think we really set records in this country for uh making rifles during that time period they cranked out a lot of these things like i say about a million of them just in that 12 month period that we needed badly could not have done that with the authority springfield so so this is again you know it's the rifle that was used so so extensively uh in our video the uh with the military rifles from 1776 whatever we call that that video which was fun doing you know just didn't have one of these and so i don't know that even talked about it but i don't have every every rifle and uh that in that video we're just trying to give a sampling of the different types of rifles as much as anything anyway but it would have been good to have this with it for that because this was the predominant uh bolt gun that the us used uh during that that war the infield i tend to call it the infield uh 1917 and again it's just it was made in this country you know uh just as the the british guns were so many of them you know as we kind of as i said contracted with remington and winchester to build them and then just kept building them and uh in 30 odd six so we would have rifles to take to to battle enough rifles and it worked out uh you know pretty well so the alvin york classic uh infield 1917 united states rifle caliber 30 model of 1917 to uh to call what it really is but uh either way uh again a rose by any other name is still a rose and now this is a pretty nice rifle whatever you want to call it and 30 odd 6 is a great cartridge so hope you enjoyed that life is good you

Channel: hickok45

Views: 471,221

Keywords: Enfield MOdel 1917, US Model 1917, Model of 1917, WWI, .30-06, 1903 Springfield, M1917 Enfield

Id: mM9LRs31JYU

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2013