This rifle had conventional telescopic sights made by Periscope, Aldis, Winchester, and others. The bolt head catch was altered for ease of production. Some of the Canadian rifles mounted the Lyman Alaskan scope, although less than were fitted. It was very similar to the Enfield No.
Australian came into being towards the end of the war. It used rebuilt actions that dated between and with a heavy barrel installed. The scopes were Australian Pattern Aus. Both high and low mounts were used. The iron sights remained and the rifle could be operated using iron sights without removing the scope. It was capable of hits out to about yards, but yards was a more realistic number. Weight approximately 2. The Type 97 first saw service in Caliber was 6.
Recoil was very light and muzzle blast was low. These qualities made for a good sniper rifle platform, and counter-sniping against the Arisaka was difficult. Having a barrel 31 inches long also allowed all the powder inside the mild cartridge to be completely burned so there was little flash or smoke. It had a 2. The scopes were manufactured by Tokyo Dai-lch Rikugun Zoheisho factory and others.
Each scope was zeroed to its rifle by adjustment at the mount. The only other changes from the Type 38 was the use of a slightly lighter stock with a wire monopod that swiveled at the front sling mount. With the advent of the 7. The heavier 7. However, this came at the cost of higher recoil and visible smoke from the shorter 26 inch barrel. Two different scopes were issued with the rifle. Towards the end of the war some 2,, give or take, were built with range adjustment. The scopes could easily be detached and carried in a pouch when the sniper changed positions.
There was one variant of the Type 99 that had a bent bolt and the scope fitted above the receiver which effectively turned it into a single shot.
The Izhevsk Arsenal produced 53, sniper rifles in A total of , were completed when manufacturing ended in Numbers for the Tula Arsenal, which only built sniper rifles in and , are not available, but certainly were much smaller than Izhevsk. The Tula rifles are identified by a five-point star with an arrow stamped onto the top of the chamber.
The Izhevsk symbol was a hammer and sickle within a wreath in the same place. Later, a simpler 3. This scope has no means of focusing, so the sniper had to have perfect, or slightly better, eyesight.
Its lower magnification made operation a bit easier, but what you saw is what you got. To fit the scope, the bolt handle had to be turned down and lengthened. The scope mount attached to the left side of the receiver by a rail. The PE scope was used from to around some sources say longer. The PEM was manufactured from to The lower power PU was built from to This rifle was the precursor to the M, but had a fair amount of problems.
It was not able to stand up to combat as was learned in the Winter War of when Russia and Finland opened hostilities. However, more than , of the M rifles were manufactured from to It had a complicated gas-operated short-stroke piston operating a tilting bolt that required special tools and depot-level training to service. Volunteers for sharpshooter duty needed to pass a marksmanship test but were rewarded with tremendous autonomy and prestige within the ranks.
They were exempt from routine camp duties and dedicated to pursuing high-value targets such as officers, artillery personnel and other snipers. Sharpshooters on both sides used a variety of weapons, often deferring to their personal rifles with which they were already familiar. Target rifles were typically much heavier than regular infantry arms and were shot from a rest such as a tree branch or earthen feature.
They sometimes featured a sensitive second trigger and required special accessories to load and maintain. Artisanal weapons usually required non-standard ammunition that the shooters cast themselves. For instance, the bullets for the Whitworth were hexagonal to fit the unique barrel of that gun.
Some target rifles were muzzleloaders and time-consuming to reload; others were breech-loading arms that were more convenient and safer but required a high level of precision in their manufacture. A percussion target rifle might weigh up to thirty pounds and cost a great deal more than less refined weapons. But they made up for the care and expense by their deadly efficiency. A key innovation in personal arms during the American Civil War was the use and refinement of telescopic sights. The instrument was practical for military use by the mids, although Davidson had been perfecting it for decades prior to obtaining a patent in With a more established manufacturing base than the Southern states, the Union Army used a number of domestically produced telescopic sights.
Chapman was a civil engineer who was familiar with surveying instruments. He eventually collaborated with fellow gunsmith Morgan James of Utica, New York, to make the Chapman-James scope, a widely used design. The scope below is mounted on a. Plate of San Francisco. The brass scope is a version of the Chapman-James model made by Leander Amadon, a jeweler and competitive shooter working in Bellows Falls, Vermont.
His designs used combinations of lenses to focus colors correctly across the spectrum, resulting in a sharper image with a generous depth of field. The nearly three-foot lengths of nineteenth-century scopes mitigated the optical limitations of the instruments. All of the guns visible are scoped. The instruments shown here featured magnifications ranging from about four- to twenty-power.
Some scopes were constructed for the eyesight of a particular individual, while others could be adjusted by loosening set-screws and sliding internal lenses housed in brass cells. I have waited anxiously to learn the result in actual service, of the telescope rifles, which we are testing in the field for the first time, and I have very little doubt that hereafter they are destined to play an important part in warfare.
I am happy to corroborate the testimony given by Gov. Andrew in their favor, by an extract from one of the sharp-shooters, who says:. We can do good work at half a mile and some at a mile. A Mississippi Regiment, 1, strong, came in sight of us and although we were unsupported and only thirty of us in position to see them, we opened fire at over rods more than a quarter of a mile, and our rifles fully met our expectations, doing fearful work, and soon putting the whole regiment to flight, while not one of their shots took effect.
Reliable marksmen became famous within their respective armies and regions. The illustration accompanying the anecdote below does not show him using a telescopic sight and is likely erroneous in that respect. While before Richmond, a rebel sharpshooter had been amusing himself and annoying our General and some other officers by firing several times in that direction, and sending the bullets whistling in unwelcome proximity to their heads.
And Joe did try. He brought his piece to a steady aim, pulled the trigger, and sent the bullet whizzing on its experimental tour, the officers meantime looking through their field glasses. Joe hit the fellow in the leg or foot. A more reasonable distance to the target during that time was more like yards for a sharpshooter or sniper. The average range for rifle shots during the civil war area was more like 75 yards. You can read a lot more about the history of rifle scopes and their use during the American Civil War here.
While researching the subject, I discovered that the first documented telescopic rifle sight was invented between and by John R. Chapman, he was an English civil engineer, and as an engineer he was very familiar with a surveyors transit and therefore was very familiar with its fine cross-hairs, precision lenses and good definition of distant objects. He was also an expert rifleman and familiar with rifle sights of that time. It is believed that Chapman designed the first practical telescopic rifle sight and that he and Morgan James worked together to produce a telescopic sight that came to be known as the Chapman-James telescopic rifle sight Comparing Hunting vs Tactical Scopes — What are the Differences?
Modern rifle sights represent the culmination of almost years of development in optical technology. Though the telescope had been around for a long time before anyone thought to attach one to a rifle, once this was done it was quickly realized that a good scope could hugely improve shooting accuracy.
The history of rifle optics in the US is a story of gradual improvement, with improved lenses and reticles giving each new generation of rifle marksmen a slight advantage over their predecessors. And though today there is a huge variety of scopes available for your AR or similar, in basic design they are almost identical to the earliest rifle scopes. Though the telescope was famously invented by Galileo way back in , it was many years before optical technology was fitted to rifles.
The reason for this is less to do with optical technology, and more to do with the evolution of the rifle itself. Until late in the 17 th Century, rifles simply did not have enough range to require a telescopic sight.
Though there are reports of soldiers in the American War of Independence fitting improvised scopes onto their hunting rifles, these homemade devices remained very niche pieces of equipment.
They were hard to zero, and even harder to use effectively. The first serious rifle optic in the US, and in fact anywhere in the world, was invented between and Though basic by modern standards, the sturdy construction of these optics meant that they stayed relatively true even after a number of shots had been fired, and were therefore the first practical rifle optics.
From about onwards, a number of US manufacturers began to produce their own sights. The Chapman-James sight was an early success, and was based on a collaboration between civil engineer John Chapman and the manufacturer Morgan James.
In , new technology was implemented on these scopes. Early rifle optic manufacturers primarily looked to telescopes to improve their designs, and saw the introduction of achromatic lenses in rifle optics, initially on the scope produced by William Malcolm of Syracuse, NY. The magnification on these scopes is thought to have been between x3 and x20, though very few survive for analysis.
Overall, the Malcolm scope was able to greatly improve the performance of rifle shooters, and became standard equipment for sharpshooters — essentially the first snipers — in the American Civil War. The years running up to World War I, where many nations were arming themselves and seeking even incremental advantages over their competitors, saw big advances in the technology of rifle optics.
One such advance was the development of refractor scopes.
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