The Army rejects the Mann Niedner Design in April 1918

[cplnorton]

I have posted before that the "Marine Mount" made by WRA had clamping screws (thumbscrews). I have showed the docs for about 7 years.

The hardest part of this is trying to condense thousands of pages of sniper docs and post one or two docs that prove a point. I can detail it all out, but 99% of the readers will not be interested in this topic that much to follow it.

This is the least amount of docs that I can show that can prove the Winchester "Marine mount" was not a Mann Niedner tapered block design.

In Jan 1918, the Army ordered their first order of A5 scopes. The Army DID NOT have A5 scopes prior to this order. They hated the A5 scope and only went with these because an order of 4000 Warner Swaseys was running late. The Army ordered 500 A5 scopes with what Winchester called their "Marine Mount". That was only the first order, there was another one as well.

Here is the 1st order of "Marine Mount" A5's off WRA. (credit goes to Andrew as he found this first before I found it at the Archives, thank you Andrew)



In April 1918, the Army conducted yet another investigation into if there was a better sniper platform than what they currently had. So they started to trial all the different types of sniper rifles and mounts.

The Army even though they had hundreds of "Marine Mount" A5's they purchased directly from WRA for months at that point, they had to pull the actual patent on the Mann Taper telescopic sight mount, to study it. Because they DID NOT have any tapered block A5's to study.

Here is the Army in April 1918 rejecting the Mann Tapered block design, saying they did not want to go with that. They wanted to go with the new sight that Winchester was developing based on the German Goerz design which was called the Model of 1918 scope. They are detailing they are returning the patent drawings they had borrowed to study



Here is Patent 830,729 referenced in the doc above. This is the Patent that Franklin Mann patented for the Taper block telescopic scope mount and this is the basis of the Mann Niender USMC sniper. You can look this patent up under the 830,729 number to confirm everything I am saying.




I think it's very hard for someone to argue that the Army, who ALREADY had hundreds of "Marine Mount" A5's they purchased off WRA, would have needed to pull a Patent on the tapered block design, if Winchester's "Marine Mount" had tapered blocks.

Now add this info into the succession of docs I have posted for years that show the Army had to order Clamping Screws (thumbscrews) for their Marine Mount A5's they got off WRA because they were loosing them.



.