History of WWI Primer 014: Canadian Ross Rifle Mark III Documentary

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On the bloody fields and trenches of Ypres, Canadian soldiers gave a heroic display of courage and strength. They overcame not only the Hun, but also their own rifles. Terrible, finicky things, propped up by national pride and hubris. [music] Hi, I'm Othais, and this, oh, good lord, is the Ross Mk3 rifle. Let's see if we can squeeze this thing in the lightbox. At 50.6'' long and weighing at 9.9lbs, this is a big boy rifle. It chambers the .303 cartridge, feeding 5 from a single-stack magazine fed from a stripper clip. We'll get around to the .303 cartridge in more detail when we get around to the Lee-Enfield. Yes, we'll get around to the Lee-Enfield. The story of this rifle starts with its namesake, Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross. If you're having trouble with all that, just remember: CHAFLR. Anyway, Charles Ross is a bit of a character in History. Perhaps it comes from his Scottish nobleman ancestors, one of which just as a little aside, happened to be entrusted with a church plate during the Reformation. He quickly sold it, and bought a cannon which he used to blow up his neighbor's house. They are a breed all unto themselves. Now, Charles Ross isn't far behind, and a comprehensive biography of him is a bit much. We recommend The Ross Rifle Story if you want some good entertaining reading in the first two chapters. But, anyway, Charles Ross was an inventor, an innovator, a nobleman, a philandering d-bag. He had three marriages at a time when a single divorce was really looked down upon, and he sort of traveled the world entertaining actresses and other partners in affairs and... really just an early jet-set globally-minded person. But, for all his faults, he still had people that sung his praises. As a matter of fact, the best sort of summary we have for Charles Ross is "lovable son-of-a-bitch". Anyway, we're not gonna get into all of that. Instead we need to focus on one key instance before this rifle really becomes popular, which is that Charles Ross really did serve at the rank of captain in the Boer War, alongside a colonel by the name of Sam Hughes. Hughes would become Ross' fast friend, and his involvement would ultimately be what would have Canada adopting Ross' sort of oddball rifle. Let's get some quick details about Hughes out of the way because he's gonna be a major character here. He was as we said a colonel in the Boer War. He would through great zeal and charisma become a character strongly associated with Canadian nationalism and pride. Unfortunately, he was almost narcissist in his decision-making and refused to see evidence of anything contradicting his worst possible choices. He would still rise to the position of Minister of Militia and Defense. During the war, he would bully his will into action, which might work for him, but ignored proper training and equipment for Canadian soldiers. Insisting on Canadian-made equipment, he pushed things like the Ross Rifle, MacAdam's Shield-Shovels, which served poorly as shovels, and even worse as shields, poor boots and webbing, and the Colt 1895 machine gun. He would inevitably resign his position in humility in 1916. We'll get to that in a moment. Back over to Charles Ross, he had as early as 1893, patented a straight-pull action rifle. Now, it didn't look much like this at all. As a matter of fact, it looked almost identical to an Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher 1890. He borrowed heavily from the design, let's be fair. That means internal helical cut, straight-pull action, and the first version had a Mauser 1889 style magazine, but the second was already displaying a return to the Mannlicher magazine system. This is all on paper and a few examples built by hand, but he hadn't done anything quite magnificent with it yet because he has a short attention span and he keeps running all over the planet. But as early as 1897, he did set up shop in Hartford Connecticut, which is a familiar name to do a lot of you. There he employed a man by the name of Joseph A. Bennett to be his engineer in a small shop, and Bennett would ultimately be responsible for a lot of the early changes to the Ross patents, because Ross himself went off to play in the Boer War just like we said, and knowing Charles Ross I do mean play. Now, when he got back in 1900 it was time for business. Now, Charles Ross was an avid marksman. He maintained a 1000 yard range at home and sponsored annual shooting competitions with big prizes. He really really really was a rifleman. He loved target shooting. So you would think that his rifle would be sold commercially and that would be the market he would want to corner, but you'd be wrong. In his original patents he was already using terms like "soldier", and that's because he had his eye on the very lucrative military contract field. Around this same time, Canada has a problem: you see, in the Boer War, a lot of Canadians were being issued sort of obsolete Martini-Enfields instead of the new Lee-Enfields, and the Canadian government was desperately trying to procure modern rifles for their defense needs. Now, they would ask for 15,000 of what we know as the Lee-Enfield mk1 and be denied because Britain was still rearming in South Africa after the fight. This sort of started to upset people at home. Sir Frederick Borden, then Minister of Militia and Defense, was getting pretty fed up. He asked BSA if they would go ahead and produce rifles in Canada. Set up a factory in Canada. That way Canada didn't have to, you know, cross the ocean in order to get a new rifle. BSA refused. Now, Borden is completely done with this whole thing. He wants domestic rifle production now. And so, he goes to his friend Sam Hughes for advice. Sam Hughes introduces Charles Ross, Charles Ross offers to finance a privately owned factory in Quebec and produce the Ross Rifle for Canada's military. Borden's excited. This is everything solution he wants, all from the private sector, all wrapped up in a neat package. And he makes probably one of the worst deals you could ever make. He goes ahead and signs a tentative agreement for 62,000 Ross Rifles at $30 a pop, without ever seeing the thing. Anyway, he's not a complete idiot, so he sets up a trial board. It's got 5 members headed by W.D. Otter, and they're going to review whether or not the Ross Rifle is a serviceable military weapon, and if it fails, he can get out of his contract. Thank God he that did. We're safe now, right? Except that 5 members are really a token group with limited experience in firearms and they count in its members, you guessed it, Sam Hughes. So, while they do not some problems comparing the Ross to the Lee-Enfield, it's going to be full sail ahead. But, even with that wonderful stacked deck, they did notice some issues in that comparison. The Ross Rifle began to suffer with over-pressured rounds, whereas the Lee-Enfield did not. The Ross became stiff and had misfires on the 1000 round test. And, once it heated up pretty well, that soldered front sight sort of melted right off. Well, obviously they just weren't gonna go ahead with a soldered sight, and Ross explained the rest away on shoddy military ammo, and the production line could be modified easily to fix the issue by rechambering. They did take note of some real advantages of the Ross though, which is that it was lighter than the than Mk.I rifle. The straight-pull was faster. The locking strength was higher overall, in theory. And it could be disassembled with a pocket knife. Word of the Ross Rifle gets back to Great Britain, and they rush to try it against the Enfield, and find numerous lengthy problems with the Ross by comparison. They send the report back to Canada, with tons of exclamation marks and probably red ink, and it arrives just after the Canadian authorities sign a contract in March of 1902 for the Ross Rifle production, making it official. Now, the Empire wanted uniformity. This is the number one problem with adopting the Ross: it's that it doesn't interchange with every other troop that's being fielded. The Canadians would argue that it chambers the .303 cartridge so that's good enough. And Ross would go a step further and argue that the obvious solution is that the Empire should adopt the Ross Rifle. He is a majestic, majestic creature in History. Now, by 1902, in the Fall of 1902, we go ahead and see Ross moving his factory up from the United States into Quebec and expanding rapidly. Now this is where I have to get really generic. You see, there are so many sub-variations of the Ross Rifle, it's unbelievable. But I want to talk about 3 big varieties right now just so that we can get sort of the path cleared for the Mk.III. That being said, we will take the time to do a Mk.II episode later. There's a lot, a lot of confusion between the Mk.II and the Mk3, because both are called the "Ross Rifle" and both have very unique features, and both turn up in different places. Everything about this video that is important for WW1 is going to be about the Mk.III. However, let's go back in time just a bit. First up is the Mk.I. Coming off the adoption committee, a few changes were made that would create this little model. The model was cock-on-close with a push-button safety. It used the Harris "dump" magazine, where the rifleman could depress a large button on the right side of the rifle. This lowered the follower, allowing the shooter to roughly deposit 5 rounds at once into the action. The magazine cutoff switch was set in the right side of the stock, just above the front of the trigger guard. Assembly began May of 1904. Right away there would be trouble. Weak firing pin springs broke. Actions became tight when firing. Only two caming lugs created binding in the action. Lacked proper caming for extraction. Overtight chamber. Bolt stops failed and bolts clattered to the ground when drilling. Feeding was... difficult due to the lugs being vertical when withdrawn in the unlocked position. At least one rifle exploded, blinding the shooter in one eye and injuring the next man over. That really should have been a deal-breaker for this rifle, but Borden still wanted his Canadian rifle. He still had friends in Sam Hughes and Charles Ross. So, he went ahead and set up another committee. This time it was called the Standing Small Arms Committee. It was designed to improve and refine any, uh, currently issued weapons that the Canadians might have... which is the Ross Rifle. That's pretty much its whole mission. Anyway, so you're setting up a committee to chase Charles Ross around and make sure that he gets this crud done. So you would pick small arms experts with lots of experience and sort of hard-assed opinions who aren't going to take any guff, right? Well I bet you can guess who Borden picked. This leads us to the Mk.II. You see, the Standing Small Arms Committee, or SSAC, would have Ross make some necessary changes. Now we have fitted to provide some caming action to aid in primary extraction. Receiver's been reinforced. We have 4 helical lugs to smooth the internal operation of the bolt, instead of those two. We have a magazine cutoff that has now been moved to a small lever which is set in front of the trigger guard. It's less likely to snag and cut your hand than the previous Mk.I. A two-piece hardguard to fit the new sight. The Mk.II would easily experience the most change of any Ross. There's somewhere around 80 alterations in this gun. Each time a big change occurred, a star was added right after that designation. This would get up to quintuple star. We won't go into detail on this yet, it's really another episode entirely though. We should go ahead and mention that Ross' first attempt at a perfected model was in the Mk.II series. He was intent in calling it the Mk.III and it may have had more of the features of the actual Mk.III to come while it was in his head. What actually emerged was what many consider to be the best Ross Rifle variation, the Mk.II**. Its 30.5'' long heavy barrel, improved two-stage trigger and the fact that it was often fitted with a receiver mounted aperture sight added up to a very powerful package. This gun would go on to dominate military shooting competitions to the point that officials had basically claimed it was a target rifle masquerading as a military one. Hughes himself had to present details proving it was a standard issue rifle. You'd think the Mk.II** would be a salvation for the Ross, but no. It still wasn't enough, because despite how good it was at the range, it's still not a good military rifle. Hughes and Ross are really obsessed with marksmanry and they're not paying attention to actual ground conditions. This may have something to do with that Boer War, honestly, with all those long ranges. But anyway, that aside, the Mk.II just isn't cutting it, and it's getting into the papers. It's getting into the government. People are arguing about it. It's becoming a debacle. On one side, you have people that are even rudimentally informed about the situation calling for it to be pulled back or completely overhauled or just... just saying it's a disaster really. On the other side, you have Sam Hughes, who is unwavering in his support of the Ross Rifle, going so far as to say "[The Ross Rifle] is the most perfect and complete in the world." I can't make that up. He also went on to say that if you found a Lee-Enfield that didn't jam when he fired it, he would eat it. I wish somebody had handed him a Lee-Enfield. Anyway, uh, public concern is split for a while,but it's starting to gain against the Ross Rifle. People are starting to see more and more problems with this thing and there's a whole big political battle going on anyway just because, politics, hey! Well, in 1911 they have an election, and Frederick's cousin, Robert, wins. Now, they need a new Minister of Militia, and you'll never guess who gets the job. I... Canada why? Anyway, now the Ross is completely safe, and at the same time thereabouts, Charlie Ross has come up with another set of improvements. A big set of improvements to do the perfected military rifle in the Mk.III. That one's this'un. Alright, let's take a closer look at this rifle as it was intended to function. We'll get to the problems in a moment. Uh, instead of using the line drawings, obviously, we'll just take it over to the other camera. First thing first, this is a straight-pull action rifle. So I pull back, bolt goes back. I push forward, bolt goes forward and locks. Alright, when we pop her open, we're gonna see that it has a serrated lug set up. This is different from the Mk.I and Mk.II. They were solid all the way through. In theory this adds to the locking surface and acts sorts of like the interrupted screw on an artillery piece. It's a very, very strong action. I mean, it's radically strong. Unfortunately, the execution of all the other parts in the gun meant that it's sort of a moot point. Also, do you really need all that when you're firing .303? Eh, that might be because this rifle is really designed for .280 Ross. Now, this cartridge was worked up by F.W. Jones for Charles Ross, which he lovingly named after himself. And both the Mk.III and that earlier Mk.II** rifle, they were built for .280 Ross, above being able to chamber .303. Ross really believed that this was a superior cartridge, and that the entire British Empire would obviously adopt it. And in his defense, it's a great round. Almost what we'd consider a magnum today. It closes in on 3000 fps. Small bore, very flat trajectory. That means we get a really long point-blank range, so soldiers aren't having to adjust their sights. It works pretty well, except at that time, the bullet technology lagged behind and so it had a tendency to fragment, which made it a little unreliable. Anyway, the Brits were already looking at a different cartridge which we'll cover when we get to the P14. Alright, so, aside from that, and she will turn when I push her forward, we have: our adjustable aperture rear sight, with a leaf when folded down. As a matter of fact we can show an image of that. And that. Alright. We have our safety set right here at the bolt handle. Very easy to access, pretty easy to use and read. Terrific safety. If I flip her around, we're going to see, like the Springfield 1903, we have a 3 position switch for magazine on, magazine off and to remove the bolt. So, the way this works - and I'm going to have to point this down the camera a little bit, and line her up, sorry folks, just a moment - the way this works - if I can get her to show - is that if I pop this back, she's gonna go all the way rearward in that position on the bolt stop. If I switch the bolt stop over - and I'm sorry I'm in front of the camera - she will no longer go as far back, therefore not picking up the next round. That's it. That's as simple as you can get for a magazine cutoff. It just controls the position of the bolt. Pretty simple. In third position, she'll go ahead and let the bolt out. I'm gonna get this rifle out of the way for a moment. Now, if we look at the bolt itself, you can tell it's a lot like that old Austria 1895. It wants to collapse on you if you're familiar with those. Lovely hobby. For disassembly on this one, it's no longer as easy as the Mk.II. As a matter of fact, you need to take some wire or a pin and get a hold of that rear of the firing pin. I'm using a little Allen wrench just to kind of get in there. Lift her out, right. So, and this is going to be tricky to show you on camera, but I'm going to lift it out, and apply the safety, which is ridiculously hard to do while pointing at a camera. There we go. I've applied the safety. Now, all I have to do is drift out a pin in the action - sorry one second, I'll reach for a makeshift punch. The pin's not set to hard so I can actually just take another Allen key and pop her out really quick. That released the firing pin and the cocking piece. Cocking piece is here. Firing pin is now down here. All I have to do is release that extractor, and I'm gonna have to take it to the side, I'm sorry folks for the boring bland screen. But what I'm going to do is to pry out the extractor. So I've pried out the extractor. Pull it away. Now she's free to come out, and you can see quite clearly our helical cuts. That aside, the Ross Rifle also has a massive, massive heavy barrel. As a matter of fact, let me get back to this camera for just a second. Look at that thick wall. It's a heavy sucker. It's hard to convey it on camera, but let me tell you, this is a hefty rifle. Other than that, I think we can take care of this in the rest of the animation. I just want to make one mention here, is that Britain opted for a different version with a sort of simplified rear sight. This is called the Mk.IIIb. Now, a British inspector would show up to make sure these were usable for Britain to release other rifles, namely Lee-Enfields, for the front while using these as reserve arms. That inspector would be responsible for sort of shaking things up enough that they started finding some of the problems with this gun that we're gonna talk about later on. Alright, let's get it over to an animation and see how this thing really works. You know, thankfully we turned up a drill purpose rifle so we even could do this animation. Those are pressed together magazines. Alright, so, looking at it, disregarding the straight pull, simple rifle. We've got a cock-on-close action. We've got a beautiful two-stage trigger, and we've got sort of a single-spring follower-and-arm setup. It's single stacked, there's nothing fancy going on there. If we look at the safety, it simply blocks the cocking piece and therefore disengages it from firing. It will also cork-screw into the receiver so that the bolt is now locked shut. Alright, onto that straight-pull. Now, we have two pieces. We have the bolt shroud and the bolt body. The shroud is going to press forward, allowing the bolt body to spiral into position, twisting it 90 degrees in to lock. And the same on the reverse. Okay, let's get this thing over to Mae. We'll strip out 5 rounds in. Bolt forward. The safety's easy to read, but a bit small. Oof, that was heavy. Nice hits though. Hey, Mae didn't blow up! I guess that means I put it back together the right way after all. Awesome. Alright, so, uh, getting back into this gun just a bit. Service life for the Ross Rifle is going to be, in one word, nightmarish. Right from the get-go, when the Canadian troops were mustering in Canada still, for training. These guns started moving into their hands, and problems rose immediately. Jams we'll get to in a moment, but right away, Canada's trying to save any pointed modern rounds that it can use, so it's taken the old round noses and put them back into service for training. Now, the Ross was not designed, especially not this one, not the Mk.III, it was not designed for the old round nosed ammunition, and so immediately there were all sorts of misfeeds. So Ross engineers had to come out and readjust the feed lips. Then, when we get back to the spitzer rounds, we're gonna have to readjust them again. That aside, the magazine themselves were proving to be pretty weak. They're thin-walled steel and they dent easily at that time. This would cause production to go ahead and adjust to thicker walled steel, but, in the interim, a lot of the early magazines, you'll find them with holes drilled into them, so that soldiers could push the follower back up into position if it got dented or jammed, and they could also kinda get in there with a pocket knife and pop the dents back out. This is looking real good for a military rifle. It's worth noting that the Lee-Enfield gets around this problem by having a dimpled mag, with grooves running vertically so that those dimples are what's interacting with the cartridge, that way any dent that's not as deep as those dimples doesn't interrupt the feed. I should also point out that there's going to be lots of minor issues, like broken extractors, swollen stocks. There's going to be all sorts of problems with procurement, just at the factory. In addition, the rear aperture holes are going to be a little bit too small, they're going to get drilled out in the field. Just little fit and finish things. None of them platform-killers, but they're problems. Especially for untested rifles. Now, Charles Ross, to give him credit, sees this coming. He understands just from the training period, whoa whoa whoa, we need more field armorers. We need something halfway between the British and the American system, because there's just... there's not enough out there to service a gun like this, especially so new. So he starts to roll out all these programs for training. He wants to get them into the factory. He's really willing to work with the government on this and have these guns sort of hand-held out into the action. All those plans just sort of get dropped in the rush to get to the war, unfortunately. Once on the battlefield, it got a lot worse. The rifles were long and heavy, not well suited to running, climbing, jumping and moving through trench lines. They made soldiers clumsy and awkward. Interestingly, Ross had offered a short rifle, but Sam Hughes boasted that "[he had carried his Long Lee] for thousands of miles in the saddle... without any trouble." And with that declaration, the Canadian soldiers were told to suck it up. Alright, we've got some gremlins, we're a little bulky... what's the worst that can happen? Well, let's get to the very worst, which is not a likely scenario but it can happen. The bolt body on this rifle can be inserted incorrectly, which means that when we drive our bolt handle forward, it picks up a round and places it in the chamber, and we pull the trigger and fire, that the bolt head has not turned. It has not locked the action. And that means when it goes bang, it goes right back out the back. Now, our friend Ian over at Forgotten Weapons has put a lot of detail on this exact issue, and he has even live-fired an unlocked Ross Rifle. We recommend that video highly. So go take a look after you're done with this. That's all we really need to say about that one, because, thankfully, it was a minor issue. It was fixed quickly by putting a rivet as you'll see in Ian's video. But, even without that rivet, you sort of gotta assemble it wrong and ram it in there, and training would have taken care of that problem pretty quickly. Now, for the real problems with the rifle. You see, the Ross Mk.III went into battle in March of 1915 with the Canadians. They drew on their enemies, fired, reached for their bolts, and many of them found them stuck. And they would continue to find them stuck for the next year. This would happen for various reasons, but, whatever the cause, the Canadians quickly became sick of this gun. They would drop it in favor of a Lee-Enfield found on some dead comrade, and they would keep that rifle hugged to their chest through the night. Now, the problem became so acute that they Canadian officials ordered that all of the Canadians in possession of a Lee-Enfield would be subject to court martial. This did not deter them, and eventually with what would explain to be all the problems with the Ross piling up, in 1916 during the summer, the Ross was finally dropped from the battlefield. At that time, it is said that many of the Canadian soldiers cheered openly, and on the announcement that they would be allowed to use Lee-Enfields, suddenly, quite a number of them turned up from every nook and cranny in their dugouts. Now, a lot of people'll say that mud was the big killer of the Ross, that it couldn't handle it. And yeah, it's a little open on the side, and you can kinda get it in there and pile it in if you aren't paying attention, but it's not that much worse that any other rifle of the day. Mud is something that Charles Ross himself would blame, and he would issue cleaning sticks for the chambers and things like that, trying to keep the mud out, but that's not really the problem. We're gonna get to those in just a moment. It's just kind of funny though that that notion has persisted to this day, even though, realistically, we've got much bigger problems with this. Let's get into those right now, starting with 1: the ammunition and the chamber. You see, the Ross Rifle had been designed around Canadian ammunition, which, in credit to the Canadians, was a very good quality. It was tight to the military tolerances and specifications. It was made of good metal. It fed and fired reliably. It was hard in the sense that when you fired it, it would expand and then minutely contract, which made it easy to extract. British ammunition, especially going into WW1... eh... We've got some real loose tolerances. Like, the amount of stuff that was accepted for military use that shouldn't have been was pretty high, but the Lee-Enfield ate it up. The Ross, with its tight chamber, a chamber tight because Sam Hughes and Charles Ross wanted a target rifle instead of a military rifle, well... it caused sealing issues. That soft British brass would add up to 30 extra pounds of force necessary for extraction, and on a straight-pull rifle, that's getting real rough. Okay. In addition, in that chamber we've got another problem coming straight from the factory, and that is, pinching. So the rifle factory is told "hey, open up those chambers", and in the field, they're opening up the chambers, and it's working, okay? It's going well. Except, some of the new production rifles, they're still getting stuck. It's still seizing. And that's when they hit upon, what we said, pinching. You see, at the factory, they would, you know, they would attach the barrel, screw 'em in, set 'em up, true 'em. When they did this, the barrel was mounted in a clamp and spun into the receiver. They were over-tightening the clamps, to the point that there was a slight pinch on the inside of the receiver. That means that it's out of square, well, out of round, really. And so, there was no inspection after the fact. They did all the measurements for the chamber before attaching it to the barrel. Well, the problem became simple to fix: you just had to re-check the chamber after attachment, and if it did have a pinch, give it a quick re-ream. But it took months to find this issue. And, so now, we have proper chambers, they can handle the soft British ammo, we're extracting pretty clean. The Ross Mk.III should have no more problems from this point out, correct? Eh... Within a couple weeks we have another issue that's cropping up, and that is soft bolt heads. You see, the Canadian third division had made it to war with their factory new rifles, well, better than the ones that had not been reamed properly. And they get into battle, and... jam. What's going on now? Well, in the field, they managed to figure out that the bolt heads were too soft, and so, this developped into what's called the Harkam method, because they thought, at the time, that they hadn't been properly hardened at the factory. And so you have rather inexperienced men, because remember, we're short on field armorers, heating up the bolt heads with a torch and quenching them and treating them with other chemicals. At best it's doing nothing because that's not the real problem, and at worst, it's making them even more brittle and causing even more problems. What really had happened is that a batch of inferior steel had managed to get into the Ross production lines. Specifically, the bolt heads were made out of softer steel than they should have been. It's hard to say whether Ross was at fault or if the steel supplier was. It could have really been either because nobody in Canada was practiced at doing this sort of stuff. Regardless, the soft heads were deforming pretty easily, especially with all the shooting, and with all the problem with British ammo, and the hot and light loads and that sort of thing... It's a nightmare. But on their own, they shouldn't have been completely dire except for that they pair with the last problem, which is the bolt stop. Alright so we have our soft bolt heads. We need to kick the dang thing open as it is, or we've gotten into the habit of it. When we force this thing open, that left side lug strikes the bolt stop. Now, because of the way the serrations are set up, if the bolt stop doesn't go all the way to the root of the lug, it's going to deform that serration. And if it deforms the serration, like it does on the early Rosses before they found this problem, it's going to cause the rifle to jam up even more. So you just have these two problems feeding into each other. You whip her back, it deforms the lug, we shove her forward, now it's stuck, we whip her back even harder, it deforms the lug even more. Rinse and repeat. This is finally discovered and solved by 1916. It's a thicker bolt stop, it's a harder bolt head. The gun is ready to rock and roll. There are no further known problems with the Ross at that point. It is finally ready to be a reliable military rifle. And it's pulled from combat. Because, as we've been going through this you might have noticed, we have maybe four big problems, but we've had like six, seven answers to the problems, and it's taking months to figure this stuff out. Nobody believes this is the final problem. It's the boy who cried wolf. We can't possibly know that the Ross rifle is gonna work at this point because every other solution has not gotten us anywhere. So, the Ross Rifle falls, and Sam Hughes falls with it. And, Charles Ross kinda goes with it too. As a matter of fact, in 1917 they're gonna expropriate his factory and take it over on the auspices of producing the P14, or Lee-Enfield. They don't end up doing either. It just get shuttered. Nobody wants to remember this horrible event in Canadian history. Don't feel too bad for Charles Ross, because he would get a 2 million dollar settlement out of it in 1920. Alright, so, the Ross Rifle is pulled from the battlefield. It's going into training roles. It's going into, you know, naval roles. And then, it's sort of gathered up and sent to Britain, who then hands it off to Latvia as a check against Russia during the interwar period. And then when Russia rolls through Latvia, it gathers up the Rosses and puts them in storage, and during the German invasion of Russia during WW2, some of them actually get brought back out into service then. So, it did make it all the way to the end of WW2, in small numbers. As a matter of fact, I actually have a Latvian manual that makes reference to the Ross by name, and that thing was dated 1939. Anyway, back over to our heroes Sam Hughes and Charles Ross, their obsession over marksmanship, of target shooting, of long range, would really be what ultimately set this rifle up for failure. In addition though, when Borden set up that small arms committee, SSAC, he didn't do anybody any favors. Putting two eclectic buddies in the same group and asking them to watch over each other... it's not gonna work well. What Ross needed was a hard sounding board. He needed somebody to kinda... be on his ass. And that was not Hughes. Hughes was defend his every mistake. That's an enabler. So, you know, if he would just had someone with a bit more grit pushing against the Ross, this might have evolved into one of the best military rifles of the time. It certainly won target shooting matches. It certainly has potential there. It's just... unexecuted. [Sigh] Anyway, ultimately the Ross dies of a thousand cuts. It falls apart in many different ways and it's kinda sad, because if they had just pushed a little bit further, by 1916, there was a short rifle that could have really saved its named. Colonel Gregille Harston, in a repair depot, took the final updated version of the Mk.III and shortened it to a 26'' barrel, altering the stock to match. He made only a few examples but apparently they were extremely well received. They were better balanced, and finally reliable. But it was too late. If only someone had pushed back on Sam Hughes sooner. Getting back to Charles Ross, look, he obviously wasn't the man for the job. He kept piddling and poking, he had a short attention span, he was all over the place... but, honestly I think his heart was in the right place. The man was a genius. He knew certain things very well. His .280 cartridge was a good idea with some poor execution. His rifle was a good idea with some poor execution. His business practices: good ideas, poor execution. And it's mostly just his unwillingness to commit and follow up on something in detail. You see it in his marriages. You see it in his adventures across the world. He just... he can't settle down and get something done. He's like an 80%-er. Anyway, Ross himself, did have some good points. He did see that the war was going to be bigger than anybody expected. He radically expanded his production. He was all over trying to get resources for Canada, and a lot of the faults in the Ross Rifle production line, just all those hang-ups, those mostly come from the fact that he just can't import anything. Britain's not sending anything over because of the war. The United-States starts gobbling up everything because of the war. He's in competition with all these other arms manufacturers that are providing contracts before the US even enters the war. He's got to fight for every little piece of metal. Anyway, after his factory was expropriated, and he got his paycheck, he sort of went back to globetrotting and mild inventing. A lot of it went on to big game hunting. Again, I recommend, you know, checking out his biography. But, sort to sort of wrap things up nicely for him. He did retire in Florida, St. Petersburg, where he was known for wandering around with pajama bottoms and a Pith helmet, and recklessly driving a Chrysler Imperial. He would die in 1942, and his last words to his nurse were "get the Hell out of here." Alright, with that happy wind-up, let's get this gun over to Mae and see her opinion on firing the Ross Rifle. Alright we've made room for Mae. We've made almost enough room for the Ross Rifle. Let's get one's opinion on the other. Mae, why don't you tell us about this Canadian Beast. Okay, so, starting out with the ergonomics of this gun, I could instantly tell it was going to be a little bit off. Like, look at the balance on this thing, and this isn't me leveraging it in any sort of way. I have to hold my hand far out towards the barrel band up here, and you can actually see on the video, every time I'm using the action and firing the gun, I'm fighting the weight. I'm trying to keep it down to keep my precision up. It was actually a really difficult gun to shoot as a result of that weight. Yeah, the Ross is barrel-heavy. Here, let me borrow that for just a second and we'll show... Look at... look at the balance. You know, most guns, we're gonna see a balance point near the magazine, that's what we want. That's why we got rid of tube-loading. But on the Ross, because, again, Sam Hughes and Charles Ross want to be marksmen at all times. They want to win target shooting competitions with this thing. The barrel's gotten heavier and heavier until our point of balance is somewhere about there, right where the handguard starts. That's not super great. And by the way, it's still a 10 pound rifle, so you've got to get your hand forward, and you've got to kind of keep that muzzle up. You're putting more and more weight into that left arm, unless you're prone. Then, okay, those problems go away, but in WW1, yeah you gotta live in the trench a lot, but you also had to shoot and move from time to time. Alright, giving this thing back, uh, what do you feel about that straight-pull bolt, because that's really where the fascination is for everybody. You know, I've actually got a collection of Swiss straight-pull rifles on the wall behind me, and I thought the K31 was gonna be the smoothest action I've handled. Until I met the Ross Rifle. This thing is absolute glass. I mean, one finger I can pull the bolt back, and ram it home. It's completely smooth. And because it's cock-on-close, by the way, there's no real difference between fired and unfired on this gun. The only difference is, if there's an actual cartridge in there, and it might stick. With good ammunition, it worked out pretty well on the videos. But for bad ammunition... might be a little bit of a different story. Yeah, the Ross lacks primary extraction, to a degree. The Mk.III obviously is improved, like we said. It gives us a little oomph. But, you can see how in a straight-pull, how much stick you have in that spent casing is gonna matter a lot. But, we had modern ammo. Both of us shot this gun. I have to say, you know, like she said, we have K31s, we have Steyr-Mannlichers that were hand-fitted like they were supposed to be, they're not the refurbs; we'll get to that in another episode. The Ross is the smoothest straight-pull bolt action I've ever handled. It's terrific. It's hard to express over the air just how easy it is to flick that bolt back and forth, and still have it positively lock up. Yeah the only thing that was giving me the problem was just the weight. Like you mentioned before it was just coming up and down on me, the butt of the gun. Yeah, I would say, standing, the Lee-Enfield is the faster gun to shoot. Everyone thinks of the mad minute. But if I'm prone? I guarantee you I'll get more shots off with the Ross. And more accurate, like, precision shots with the Ross too, because that, especially in a prone position, that bolt doesn't interrupt your line of sight. Speaking of sights, how did you feel about them on this rifle? The sight picture on this is actually really clear. It's got this rounded rear notch sight for the battle sight, but I loved the aperture sight on here. It's got a range knob here for me to twist that's easy to manipulate. There's a windage cylinder in here that I can use. It's a little bit stiff but it's not that big of a deal. As far as the sight radius goes, it's one of the longest rifles in WW1 for that. As far as using this, like, for a marksman, this is probably one of the best marksman rifles in WW1 that they had available to them. Yeah, you've got a really long sight radius. You have really finely manipulable sights. You have a clear sight picture. You have a nice sight hood. You have a heavy barrel. You have a target rifle. That does not lend well to maneuverability. They could have shortened it up like we talked about with that 26'', and it would have been a lot nicer and still had some really good features. By the way, receiver mounted rear aperture sight. That's not something you hear a lot in WW1. As a matter of fact I think I know what pair of guns everybody's thinking of right now, and yes there will be an episode soon. But, the longer your sight radius on a rifle, generally the more accurate your shot. It's just much cleaner, more accurate to read. So, this is terrific for that role. It's just terrible at other ones. So sights-wise we're good. Okay, let's see. We have handling, we have sights, we have the action. The magazine's sort of unremarkable, we talked about it. It feeds. There's just a handful of other little fiddly bits I think you know about. Walk us through the last little knobs and whistles. Fiddly bits, right? No but seriously. The safety on here being one of them. It was a little bit stiff to manipulate, but I think I'd actually probably prefer a stiff safety. It was kind of middle of the road. At least I know that it's definitely gonna stay in the safe position when I want to. I'm not going to accidentally flip it into unsafe. Other fiddly bits... Magazine cutoff. Now, I do have to... It's a little more fiddly I would say than the safety. I've gotta flip up the aperture sight in order to actually move it down, but I can put the aperture sight back down in order to flip it back up. My only concern is that I maybe accidentally might up catching it, or, I don't know how, but it might get flipped into the center position when I'm not expecting it. And the bolt comes out when that happens, so, that's my only concern. Not a really big one but I can see it maybe happening on the off chance. Only other fiddly bit I can think of to add is, I don't know it's was 'cause of we had a British stripper clip or if there's a difference with that and the Canadian one, but, it just didn't seat right, and when I was trying to push the rounds in, it still wanted to unseat itself. So I don't know if there's a difference or not, but it was a little too fiddly in my opinion. Yeah, I'm not sure where they took the measurements from, but regular British .303 clips were not fitting in the bridge of this gun very well. They sort of slopped around and almost popped out whenever you fed. It was almost easier to single load if you were trying to go fast. Now if you took your time, ok, yes, the clip was kind of handy, but, I don't know if this receiver bridge on this rifle got bent. I don't know if there's some sort of model I'm missing. I'm just not that well versed in stripper clips. If anybody has an idea, let me... you know, gimme an email. But, overall, kind of middle of the road on stuff. The safety's okay. The bridge is terrible. That cutoff, we're gonna see it again in the Springfield 1903, so I'm not gonna go into too much detail there. I guess that kinda puts us to that final question: what do you do with the Ross on the battlefield? Do you take it? That's a little bit tough. If I'm on defense and I'm able to like, prone with this, or able to prop it up on something, it's easy to manipulate and I can see myself defending well with it. As far as attack goes, it's like I'm trying to row a boat. Like, I can't see myself attacking with this well at all and still being precise with my shots. So, 50/50? Maybe I should say, uh, okay let's rephrase this. You're saying that if you have a chance to set up a position, and hold it, that you feel confidence as this... using this as a marksman. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so, you have high ground, you're secure. You don't have to move. This is... is it one of the higher guns you'd go for? Like, is it really high regard, or is it just okay for that? I would actually put it in really high regard. This would be the top so far. By the way, we are assuming all of the improvements that we talked about earlier in the episode have been made. Exactly yeah. Not 1914 Ross Rifle. No. Nobody wants that. I'm not even asking that question. Okay, so... but if you're on the attack, it's not quite good enough for on the attack? Like, not even on the attack, but just... you're told you're going to have to move and shoot, you don't take this thing with you? No, of course not. Like I before, it's like rowing a boat. Like, I'm having to actually realign the barrel with every single shot because it's so weighted forward that it's just not easy to handle on the run. I cannot see myself running, having to line up a shot and accurately fire this thing. It just... it's... I don't see it as doable for me. Now, we have other rifles, like the Gewehr 98. You've already said that you wouldn't prefer to have to run around with that gun, but you would if you had to. Is this one of those ones where you'd drop it in favor of another one though? Like, in other words, you could make do with the Gewehr 98 but you don't feel like you could make do with the Ross? It all just comes down to the balance. It's... this is not a comfortable move and shoot gun in my opinion. It just can't do it. You know, I'd agree. As a matter of fact, the more we've been doing this episode, the more curious I've been about that 26'' barrel, so, just if anybody's watching, I know a few years ago I passed up on a Ross that had been shortened. It had been sporterized. And they had sporterized the barrel as well. They had turned it down and shortened it. Now that we've been doing the episode, I kind of wish I had bought it on the cheap side, and just gone ahead and played with it. So if anybody knows of one that's sort of in rough condition and it has a shorter barrel and would like to loan it to us, I'd really like to get an opinion on the Ross Rifle that never really was, and see, you know, see if it kinda lives up to a better role with just a few inches off that length and just a little improved balance. You wanna see if you can move and shoot with it? I... I suspect that with the gremlins resolved and with the balance fixed, the Ross could have been an excellent weapon. It's just that old... it's the boy who cried wolf. We don't know that the Ross is fixed by the time the Ross is fixed. We can't possibly... no reasonable person is going to believe the Canadian government the 4th and 5th time around. So it's fair that it got pulled, but it is a better rifle than History serves. Fair enough. Okay, so, I think that resolves the Ross. We're gonna have our updates after the credits. Thank you all. Don't forget to check the updates because we do have that poster project going on for 2015, unless this is the future and you guys don't care anyway. Alright, thanks again for watching, we love you all. Thanks guys! [music] Alright, final word. You might have noticed, unlike usual, I'm still wearing the same clothes. That's because I just finished recording the Mae-versation, and I haven't even edited the episode yet, and it is Monday night. So you guys are probably the early responders to this are commenting and I'm probably asleep. This episode, as you probably noticed, ran pretty long. I'm estimating... good Lord it must be reaching nearly 40 minutes. But, that's just our commitment. We really want to make the episode as good as possible for the gun in question. Now the reason I'm so backed up on this one is because we had so many .32s in a row, I wanted to go ahead and get a rifle in because everybody was screaming for another rifle. There's gonna be more small pistols after this and then there's gonna be more surprises. So, let me play catch-up for a bit after this one. But, nice big one to hopefully cheer you guys up, and a well-known rifle. I'm putting some extra work in to add all sorts of glittery things that you've already seen now. In addition to that, Great War has worked out with us that we're gonna post the repeats of the live shows. So you've seen the edited French rifles and pistols. Well, starting next week, I'm going to start dropping the unediteds. So, French rifles and pistols will appear, and then we worked out an agreement to sort of space things out. So, once they release the edited German pistols, a little time will go by and I'll release the live show. And then we've already filmed the Austria-Hungary episode. A lot of you are asking about it. We got a little while to wait, but it will eventually be available on this channel. Let's see, what else? Oh, Patreon is at $936 as of this moment. That's closing in on that $1000 mark. That is hugely helpful. We do take a paycheck yet. We are still consuming the entire budget for various things. We still haven't made all the upgrades we wanna make for the show, so you could pour about $2k a month on us for 6 months, and after that we might start to take home some money, but until then, I gotta lot of things I wanna do for you guys, to just improve the show. Let's see... Next thing after that. Oh, posters, posters of course! This is the last show before the poster project of 2015 wraps up. Hopefully we'll have another one next year. Not the same poster though. Hopefully I should be able to make those available. Just not for this screaming deal. We've really lowered the margin. So, that means we've taken in a little over $7000 now. We'll get to keep about... not quite a third of that, because I really didn't... I went light on what we take home because I wanted you guys to be able to have a piece of the show *snap* right away, without a lot out of your pocket. We don't want to break anybody's bank going into Christmas time. So... But that's going great and thanks a lot for your support both on Patreon and Indiegogo. Don't forget: if you want them, get 'em now. As a matter half of you are probably watching this episode after, so, sorry, you'll have to pay a little bit more. Let's see, what else? Oh, oh, I must confess, while we're talking about the posters, I did lie a little bit. But I got confirmation so I can open my mouth just a bit. We did not arrange for 4 machine guns. We arranged for 3. The 4th firearm is actually a single shot rifle, and that's all I want to say about it until we actually get out there and shoot the thing. But I think some of you might know what I'm talking about now. Alright, well, that's it. Thank you all one more time. I know I say it a lot. I don't want you to think I don't mean it. It's very important to me when I get those messages, those comments. It really keeps this moving that you're out there. And those who have become donors and patrons, you are definitely fueling the project. We literally could not do this without that Patreon coming in. Okay. Thank you all, we really appreciate it, and goodnight/morning/whatever time it is, and I hope you're wearing pants. Cut it. Yeah.
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Channel: C&Rsenal
Views: 323,876
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Ross Rifle (Invention), Shooting Sport (Sport), World War I (Military Conflict), History, Documentary
Id: 2uGYSQ_-FJU
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 54min 8sec (3248 seconds)
Published: Wed Dec 09 2015
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