Winchester Marine Mount A5 USMC & Army Sniper Rifles WWI

cplnorton

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Apr 28, 2012
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* It's going to make me post multiple messages to get all the pics of the documents in, so please bear with me.


Several years back I started a case study on the WWI Marine and Army A5 Sniper rifles. Everything I read in the books didn't seem to match up with what little info I could find on them. Many of the books would only have one or two paragraphs on the A5 and a few pics of a Mann Niedner, but not much else. After several years of searching the WRA documents, as well as documents from many archive Archives, I feel very comfortable with providing this research.

A special Thanks goes out to Andrew Stolinski of the Archival Research Group. Andrew has spend a considerable amount of time pulling documents for me from the National Archives. I am a subscriber to his website at https://archivalresearchgroup.com/ and I highly recommend you do the same. Many of the topics discussed in books and online by experts, are not what the official documents state. Therefore I believe if many of us would put down the books and start to do first hand research, we are going to learn so much more about the hobby we all love. Also with every additional subscriber he has, the more time he can pull away from working overtime at his current job and spending more time copying new documents at the archives. So continued memberships help fund new exploration of the Archvies, which is yielding amazing results. This is a just a small handful of the docs on these A5 snipers, where on Andrew's website you can literally see hundreds on just the WWI Sniper program alone, which also includes documents on the Warner Swasey and the Model of 1918 sniper by WRA.
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Also a special thanks to Tim Plowman for postings a lot of the research on his http://usmcweaponry.com. One thing I have hoped to do with this research is to clear up a lot of the confusion of snipers in general and Tim has been been a tremendous help in that quest. He is a true friend and fellow researcher who has done a real service to the Hobby we all love. You can go to his website and see a more expanded view of the documents and pictures I'm posting a brief snippet of below. Tim is updating this link daily, so more info will be coming out, so check back often. https://usmcweaponry.com/usmc-m1903-a5-sniper-rifle/

Now on the subject of the A5, it has long been assumed that Winchester produced the Mann Niedner style A5 sniper rifle of WWI, but this is not the case at all. It also has been assumed that the Mann Niender was the main A5 sniper rifle of the war. But this is not the case either. The most common made A5 sniper used in the war by both the Marines and the Army were the A5 scopes mounted by Winchester on bases they named the "Springfield Marine." The "Springfield Marine" bases seem to have been developed between March 1917 and June 1917. They were the answer to a quick fix of the Army's main complaints of an earlier 6'' on center A5 based sniper that was trialed in 1914/15.

These "Springfield Marine" bases are nearly identical to the later John Unertl O&E bases used by the Marines in WWII on the Unertl Sniper rifles. In fact when you put WRA "Springfield Marine" Bases next to the Unertls, there are almost identical. John Unertl seems to have copied the WWI Marine design (with minor changes) to be used on the WWII Unertls.

Now it is interesting to note, these were not the intended A5 Sniper rifle of the war, as the Marines had chosen the Mann Niedner style that is commonly known of today. The Mann Niedner employed a tapered block design that was created by Franklin Mann and used by Adolph Niedner. The Mann Niedners were a wedge shape design that tightened under recoil and were a very secure way to mount a scope that was first trialed by the Marines in late 1916. A series of unfortunate events happened very early in the war that lead to this style rifle not being built in number, till basically the wars end. Which leads to the reason why the WRA Springfield Marine mounts were the main A5 sniper of the war.

In May/June of 1917, Adolph Niedner was given a contract to mount 1650 scopes on Marine Corps M1903 rifles, for the war. After he completed his first 150, he was going to take a small vacation for about a month and come back and mount the additional 1500. Before leaving, he was witnessed by 3 men saying he wished Germany would win the war, and he would do his part to help with that. Because Niedner was a German Immigrant, and the fear of German Saboteurs was very real in WWI, the FBI were called, and a potential German Saboteur case was opened against him. This effectively fired Niedner from the USMC contract and from that point on, he was not involved in the A5 program during the war.

This left the Marines in a tight spot, because they were still developing the ability to work on small arms in house. At this time they still contracted all work to be done on their small arms to others. Such as the Army still did their rebuilds at this time.

After the firing of Niedner by the Marines, the contract had to be given to someone else. This lead to Winchester awarded the contract on July 2nd 1917 to mount 500 rifles furnished by the Marines. Winchester used their new special bases that had just been developed in an attempt to win an Army contract for A5 telescopic sights, which were based on the 7.2'' spacing that is common today. As was tradition, because the Marines ended up using them first, they earned the nickname of Marine by WRA. Just as many items did in the day, such as #10 sights.

What followed is very interesting as the Marines received 500 of these WRA mounted A5 rifles by the fall of 1917. It appears they most likely all shipped to France and probably were shipped to the 5th Marine Regiment. In January 1918 because of shortages of sniper rifles with the Army, and the Army not being able to order additional scopes by Warner Swasey because a shortages of lenses, you see the Army order the exact same A5 style rifles from Winchester that the Marines had received in 1917.

In January 1918, the Army supplied Winchester 500 M1903 rifles to have them mount the A5 scopes with Springfield Marine bases. In the Army documents they start to nickname these mountings as the "Marine Corps Mounting" or "Marine Corps Model." Sometimes they even just refer to them as the exact same model used by the Marines earlier. The standard WRA commercial mounting of the time on a 1903, were still the 6'' on center bases that WRA called the "Springfield" bases. So that is also why they earned the "Marine" nickname, to distinguish them as the beefier design that employed the more stable 7.2'' spacing compared to the 6'' commercial bases.

Without posting 100's of pages of documents on this, I am going to post some of the top ones. To see many more than this, please visit Tim's website above which does a great job, and to see a much more complete inventory of the documents, please subscribe to Andrew's website above. Which will be including new docs as they are discovered.

This will not be the end all to this story as we are still finding documents on these rifles. Andrew just pulled about 400 the other day, and has more trips planned to find more, which will be put on the website when found.



Many of the Marines Corps documents did not survive a purge in 1920 by the Marines, but the Army detailed the whole Marine sniper progam in 1917 by WRA, in an attempt to copy it for 1918. You can see some of the Marine documents on Tim's page, or Andrew's site, but those posted here will be mainly WRA and Army.

First and foremost, these are the original pictures taken by Winchester of their "Springfield Marine bases." This is the exact style rifle that was made for the USMC in 1917, and the Army in 1918. In total WRA for sure made 1400 of these rifles. There is no difference between one issued to the Marines as the Army.
WRA side view.jpg

WRA A5 top view.jpg




These are the original pics I blew up for more detail.

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These are original WRA drawing of their "Springfield Marine" bases. These are a beefier design that seems to be created in early 1917. For all intensive purposes they are nearly identical to the Unertl 0&E of WWII. There are only minor differences between the two.

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January, 1918: The first contract of 500 A5 scopes mounted in the Marine Corps mounting are ordered by the US Army. An Additional 400 will be ordered on April 11th 1918.

jan 17 1918 first itme marine mount.jpg

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Besides the actual pictures and drawings of the Winchester Marine mounts, it's also proven they were not Mann Niedner in the docuemnts. I am going to expand on the request by the US Army for spare parts for the Marine Corps mounting A5's, to prove they aren't the taper block Mann Niedner style. Here is a request asking for what parts they need for the first 500.

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Here is WRA's official response to the US Army which was asking for what parts they will need. WRA declares that if they need any spare parts, to ship the scopes back to WRA so they may supply the parts. This is a key clue to the next document that proves they were not Mann Niedner.

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In the last document it states that if they need spare parts for the A5 scopes, they should return them to Winchester so WRA may install them. This is where it proves they were not Mann Niedner as the Army is in desperate need of the Clamping screws to mount the A5 scopes to the Marine bases. Clamping Screws are the name WRA used for thumb screws. The Mann Niedner conversion does not use Thumb screws as it mounts in a wedge design that tightens under recoil.


This is one document asking for clamping screws for the Marine mount A5's.

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This is the better document asking for clamping screws. As they say it's ridiculous to ship an A5 scope back to WRA to have them only screw in a screw. They request they supply a shipment of replacement clamping screws (thumbscrews)

363 clamp screw june 25 1918.jpg




About two weeks after they request clamping screws, you see Winchester get a contact for 500 replacement clamping screws. This is from the WRA ledger.

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If you have any doubt that clamping screw is a thumb screw. Here is the WRA document detailing that a clamping screw is their name for the thumbscrew to mount it to the dovetail base.

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This is a Mann Niedner USMC A5 conversion. Notice there are no clamping screws (thumbscrews)

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This is a real Winchester Marine Mount A5 sniper from the WWI era. This rifle has the WRA Springfield Marine bases installed. Notice how it has just the standard A5 scope with the clamping screws.

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WRA steel Clamping screws used to mount the A5 to the Marine bases. These are not available on a Mann Niedner.

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This is the WRA Marine Mount rifle in France in very late 1917. The Marine is most likely a member of the 5th Marine Regiment.

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This is the Army with the Marine Mount A5 taken in the WWI era.

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The whole confusion has been that no one had figured out that WRA ALSO had a mount they named Marine. Everyone has assumed a Marine Mount description had to be a Mann Niedner. But this isn't the case.

Also there is further evidence that the Mann Niedner conversion had nothing to do with WRA and was created and produced by the Philly Marine Depot.

marine tappered blocks.jpg


This document is from the Handbook of Ordnance Data dated November 15th, 1918. This document has long been shown in books to prove that Winchester had produced the Marine mounting, and that Marine Mounting was the Mann Niedner.

Now that you know Winchester had their own style of Marine mounting, and it was not MAnn Niedner. This document takes on a new meaning and makes a lot more sense.

Also the US Marines and the US Army both had seperate contracts for the same number of 500 rifles, many times these two orders have been confused with each other. Even though it's not detailed, the Army did also have an order for 400 additional MArine Mount A5's on top of the 500. So the Army acquired 900 in total. The 400 order is not as detailed in the WRA and Army docs and that is maybe why it was excluded from this.

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Also one more killer document that Andrew found that proves that WRA had nothing to do with the Mann Niedner. Here is the timeline of events prior to this Army document.

- January 15th 1918- The Army orders 500 Marine Mount A5's from WRA

- Febuary 28th 1918- 360 A5 rifles have already been delivered to the US Army, the remaining 140 are done, awaiting shipping orders.

- March 5th 1918- The 79th Infantry receives the first WRA Marine Mount A5's to use

- March 19th 1918- The 500 Marine mount order is complete and all have been received by the US Army.

- April 11th, 1918- The Army orders an additional 400 Marine Mount A5's off WRA.


Then this document happens on April 23rd 1918, the Army had pulled the Mann Patent on his tapered blocks. The same blocks that are on the Mann Niedner. The Army was exploring if they should use his tapered block design for scope mounting. Now if you look above at the dates, why would they need to pull a patent on the Mann Niedner if WRA had provided them the Mann Niedner A5's? There would have not been a need to pull that patent drawing if WRA had provided the Mann Niedner taper blocks. Just a really neat doc and shows why funding trips to the Achives with Andrew yield such amazing results.

By the way when it says it will go with the new WRA sight, they are talking of the WRA Model of 1918 sniper. Which was a sporterized M1917 rifle with a scope based on the Goerz design.

Mann Patent.jpg


For more document and details on this pleast visit Tim's and Andrew's web pages. Thank you again for taking the time to read my post.

https://usmcweaponry.com/

https://archivalresearchgroup.com/
 
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I liked all the posts, except I can't see your pics! Can you post directly or have a link?

Added: Per a pic on Tim Plowmans website, I had never realized the 6th Marines Insignia was so close to that of the Army 2nd ID. I wonder if it had anything to do with them being hustled together in WWI?
 
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I can't see any pictures being displayed here but can see them on Gunboards. Switched browsers to Chrome and also can't see any pictures here. I went into the Page Source and the imgr links are there, but not displaying.
 
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Are the pics not showing up for anyone else? I'm not sure why they wouldn't show up?

Sandwarrior how about if you go to Gunboards? Can you see the pics there? I posted it on several forums.

https://forums.gunboards.com/showth...-Army-Sniper-Rifles-WWI&p=9467461#post9467461
They do show up now and thank you! Great pics! I've seen most of them before but not together and in this context.

I remember asking this question years ago, about U.S. Sniping in WWI and at that time, not a whole lot of information was out there. Most of the information went back and forth on the Germans and the British. I got some general info on what got issued..."they thought"(therefore, I thought...) But, nothing brought forth was really concrete. So your research on this is fantastic.

Until one delves into it, it appears a lot of historians had glossed over WWI sniping as "mostly designated marksmanship". In reality, the ability to create hides and shoot from them at the relatively close ranges they did was sniping at it's very best. We all think of the longest shot, but to conceal and shoot from a distance where the enemy could see you with the naked eye was the ultimate in the craft.
 
What's cool is we have a new sniper rifle to try to find. I know of where 4 are now. Three in private hands and one at the Cody museum that is complete. There are also a few parts rifles at Cody as well, but they have been hacked up pretty good. It appears by Army and Marine docs very few of these would have survived even into the 20's/30's, so it's hard to say how many exist today. Bbut no one has been looking for them either. So maybe there are more out there undiscovered. If nothing else we all have a new variation to try to find..

But all four of them that exist today are the exact same and have the same very distinguishable trait, that I will probably hold back on, because it's a good tell of a real one.

This is mine compared to the WRA WWI pics.

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What's cool, the rifle in the France pic is a Pre 1910 rifle. Evidenced by the no reinforcement clips in the handguard, and the highwood stock. Both were changed late in 1909/early 1910. My rifle is a 1909. The serial is 368496. Serial 367,312 was a Marine Mount A5 in the WRA docs. So pretty close to mine.

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Someone posted this pic on a forum. I've tried to find the original pic as this one appears it's taken from a book or a newspaper. But this also looks like a WRA Marine Mount A5 rifle. If anyone has ever seen the original location of this let me know, and I mean where it originally came from, not google or on a forum. I would love to find the real pic of this, because he has a optical ray filter on the A5 scope. Which the Marines bought 925 of them, and trialed them at Quantico in the summer of 1917.

Quantico Marine.jpg

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