USMC Sniper on James Julia Auction

[Marine A5 Sniper Rifle]

For what it's worth, Greg is actually dead on in his earlier statements. These rifles were not well regarded in the Pacific....

I wasn't discussing their acceptance; but yes, I know they were not highly thought of by those who issued them; but I would wager the snipers liked them. They weren't highly regarded in RVN either, due to very high maintenance issues. They should have issued them with hot boxes. Their replacement wasn't highly regarded either. There aren't many scopes that can take those climates for long periods of time.

jt

[Ls6man]

I'd really be surprised if 1/2 of the converted rifles actually were distributed. My guess is the vast majority sat in storage or at the depot level. The interesting thing to think about is the fielding of the M1C. By the time the USMC was island hopping in force...mid '44 on...SA was already looking at the Garand as the next evolution in sniper rifles. Does anyone have any documented serial number provenance to any actual campaigns or units during the war?

[cplnorton]

Does anyone have any documented serial number provenance to any actual campaigns or units during the war?

The Marines issued a order in 42 to stop tracking serials, and only track quantity. So I have tons of reports listing the quantity, but I doubt anything will ever surface with the actual Unertl serials to a specific campaign. Your best bet would be someone's journal or something along that line that he wrote down his serial number. Even their record books at this time, usually don't list anything. Where the previous timeframe Marines they do.


Now we have found a good portion of Marine NM serials in the team documents, which later would have been in that 1047 pool. And I have a sneaking suspicion on where all the rest of the of Marine NM serials all are, but haven't got someone to that location yet to see if my hunch is correct.

If you are going to find the serials of the NM rifles as a sniper, you best bet is looking into the mid 50's. As the Mariens didn't track them to at least the start of korea. But the problem in that is, after 1950 the Marine documents at the archives star to sputter out and everything is very sporadic.

I even filed a freedom of info request to get all that stuff, and was directed to where they were. But the reseacher hit it all and while finding some cool Marine M1C stuff not known, no trace of the end of the Unertls.

But it just seems the late stuff just hasn't been sorted and filed yet. Like for instance most of the sniper docs floating around right now are all from Frank Mallory. Frank put out a Unertl packet and that is where most of the stuff is from. But Frank pulled that probably 25 years ago or so and it's maybe 50 to 75 pages. And if you wanted to see most of it, you can pick up Senich's book. It's almost all in there.

But when my buddies went back and hit the exact same location, they pulled out over a 1000 documents that dealt with these Unertl rifles from the same location as Frank pulled. Many were just released in the past couple years.

So it's really important to keep on hitting the archives and going through there. I really doubt the serials from the rifles in WWII will ever show up. Just because it was ordered by the Commandant not to track them. But I do think we will find the remainder of the team NM serials, which we would at least know for sure if your rifle was even in the pool. And someday when the documents are released for the 1950 and up timeframe, we might even find the sales documents when they were sold in the 50's to the Marine officers.

The Marines tracked every sale of a rifle, I have many of them from before 1950. So there is a good chance they did the same post 1950. But I just don't think you will ever find the serial lists to a specific island if that makes sense.

But yeah on a side note, most of the Unertl rifles sat in storage. Just not a lot were used. Very few made it to WWII, and even less to Korea.