I am looking for an example of the Police Kar98a sniper rifle a HZA mounts and Reichert sniper scope i hear so much about any one have pics of an exmaple in there collection??
thanks
vaughn
Hello Simson,
thanks for the info but do you mean they really do exist but hard to find real examples or is this something that was never a Reichweir assembled used sniper and is a post war (WWI or WWII) hoax all around and is a collectors community made up sniper??
thanks
vaughn
Thanks both,
The reason I am asking is kind of a 3 fold process. 1, I to thought due to the Germans own words of how they fell behind on sniper rifles and really didn't restart the program till the late 20’s, early 30's roughly this was a farce. 2ndly, I found a rather messed up Kar98a. Since I heard about this so called sniper, I thought while this action is available I would inquire about it. Since I am building a repro WWII sniper collection (still collecting parts as usuall). Now I have added a WWI gew98 and with my disease spreading I would have liked to add one of these so called Police Kar98a Snipers if it were true since i had this new candidate. 3rd, and lastly I found a WWI M95 Reichert sniper scope stripped of it mounts but evidence is still present of it former sniper use and said man I have about 60% of what i needed why not, but the last 40% will be almost impossible to get and wanted to know if it should sell what I have or wait for the mounts on a SOMEDAY hopes?? But by the sounds of it they never existed I am not into just making a sniper out of anything unless at 1 point and time there was a rifle that existed. Thanks for all your help!!! You saved me a ton of money and time LOL
Later
Vaughn
Bill G. asked me to comment on this thread, from an historical perspective I guess. Asking this question in the Imperial Era forum is problematic. There were of course no scoped rifles used by Imperial era German police troops. The Kar 88 seemed to be the singular rifle used by any police forces in the period. Some are found with L.G. for the Landes Gendarmerie. But modern G 98 or Kar 98a was not employed by Imperial police forces.
Sennich's book on snipers includes a chapter that states that Weimar era police forces adopted the scoped rifle (Kar 98a) for used during the increasing civil unrest that marked the clashes of Red and Brown street armies. A very interesting hypothesis, but he fails to provide any documentation to substantiate these claims.And photo evidence like this of a demonstration in Berlin seems to indicate that the standard K98a was used by police monitoring the crowd situation. No scopes are mentioned in the various listing of Prussian police weapons and accessories in service. Nor is mention of a scoped rifle found in the training manual of the Bavarian Bereitschaftspolize from the mid 1930s. That accounts for almost 80% of Weimar era police forces.
Documentation does exist that the III Reich police provided training material in the use and are of a KZF (Karabinerzielfernrohr) that was pictured and discussed in their training manual "Waffen- und Schiesstechnischer Leitfaden fur die Ordnungspolizei" written by Karl Fischer and published for police use in 5 editions from 1940 through 1944. Pictured are both a schematic of a scope and a photo of one in a short side-rail mount. The scope is a P. Kohler maker. Sennich pictures this photo in his book. As Sennich writes, the scope was to carry the serial number of the associated rifle. Only a 98K was mentioned to be used with this scope.
Did the III Reich era police use sniper equipment? I have found no documentation supporting this theory. I have heard of police accepted or marked sniper rifles over the years. One was in Texas I believe. I can't find my records of it. Police units were never fielded above regimental organization. I believe Heer sniper units were allotted to larger scale command units. So I do not see how they would function on the command scale of police regimental/battalion organization in combat. I would love to find documentaton supporting their use.
Excuse me if I misspelled his name.