Winchester Marine Mount A5 USMC & Army Sniper Rifles WWI
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.
These are the original pics I blew up for more detail.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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