M1903 Unertl USMC Sniper

Sorry for bringing up something which is not German, but since we had a discussion ...

The pictured rifle is a verified and original WWII USMC M1903 sniper rifle. It was rebarreled by the USMC either during sniper conversion or in a later overhaul, as shown by the typical barrel vise markings. Since not all were rebarreled, it can't be seen as a typical feature of original sniper rifles.

This rifle is exactly as it was sold off by the USMC - scope bases removed, holes plugged, new handguard added. Note the fine file marks where the scope bases were carefully placed. The USMC also blued the bolt in a beautiful plum coloured blue, while below still the rifles serial is visible - remember that they used ex NM rifles and team rifles for conversion to sniper rifles! Also note the staked trigger guard screws, another USMC feature. Also note the original front sight cover it came with - the enlarged USMC type. And on (nearly) all sniper rifles the rear sight was replaced with the earlier variant, see the dished knob. There are some more very small features that I won't go into detail with, but the ones previously mentioned are already very distinctive and allow to avoid 95% of the fakes out there.

I'm leaving this rifle in exactly the shown condition, there is no reason for it to turn it back into a sniper rifle - it's much more interesting to show how it had been converted back into a service rifle, since I anyway have a second sniper which still has it's scope bases.

How was it verified?

By book author and to me the living M1903 legend John Beard - and personally with comparison to other M1903 USMC snipers.

Interesting piece. Had I seen this in the wild, filled holes, wrench marks on the barrel, and staked screws, I would have assumed that it was a bubba special.

That would have been my reaction as well. Actual M41 snipers weren't surplussed and I'd like to see a footnoted reference of one ever having been returned to general issue. Without a national archives hit these are a very gray area. Level 4 and 5 armorers didn't use pipe wrenches and only the most skilled Marine ordnancemen even had access to these. Without the original barrel, authenticating one takes a lot of faith.

The Marines did use a vise when barreling these rifles. This is the reason for the vise marks. Here is a picture of what they used.

First of all, there were very few M41s and these were stored at regimental level or Quantico, scopes mounted, and in individual crates. The vast majority of Marines never got to even see one. A very few of us who had armorer buddies actually got to handle one because these were prized items. They remained on the TO&E lists until at least the mid 60s and our arms control accountability regulations were extremely tight. Any missing weapon had its serial number reported to the FBI and whoever was responsible for it was out several times its replacement cost. How any M41s found their way onto the civilian market during the 50s would have to be a good story. Those I saw at 2/2 in 1963 or 4 were identical in all respects to the original NM Springfields they were made from with the exception of the modifications required to mount the scopes. They were kept in pristine condition.

The stock on the rifle pictured is a replacement with only a drawing number, not the full serial as required. These could be purchased by civilians from Springfield Armory. The original barrel would have been star-gauged at the crown in the six o'clock position with the number on the barrel under the handguard. The barrel date on the rifle pictured is approximately correct to the date of receiver manufacture, so if it isn't original, someone took care to see that it was at least correct. If it has both the large and small gas relief ports, the bolt is the correct nickel steel type but the electric pencil numbering is sloppy compared to mine, which is slightly smaller and more concise. These were numbered at Springfield during manufacture. The bolt shroud appears pitted and refinished and is most likely a replacement. The Marine Corps front sight cover saw service extensively during early WWII at Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Cape Gloucester but during 1943 the Marine Corps finally had the funding and the Garand became its primary battle rifle.

The rifle pictured is interesting, but the tapped non-star gauged barrel, the replaced stock and handguard, the colorized bolt and electric pencil work raise questions that only proper documentation would resolve. Although tapped, its strength is its nickel steel receiver, bolt and barrel. Rebarrels of M-1s, BARs, MGs and M14s were ongoing and I never saw vice or wrench marks on any.

Sir, I don't know where your "story" on Unertl USMC sniper rifles comes from, but it contains lots of errors. Anyone claiming that USMC snipers have blank polished bolts already show that they know nothing on those rifles, and just repeat what is commonly stated wrongly on the internet.

If you research the history, you'll find out that these rifles were built on Team rifles, which itself were rebuilt NM rifles (overhauled), and some were based on original NM rifles. Rebarreling a rifle is just a step during overhaul - and replacing the stock is also a common feature. There are even several pictures of USMC snipers out there, which have the straight grip fingergroove stock on them - they used what was at hand.

PS: many USMC M1903 service rifles were rebarreled - they also have vise markings below the wood. And the interesting thing is when comparing USMC snipers that the vise markings on those who have them, are 100% identical to each other.

Team rifles had star gauged barrels and when they were rebuilt, they were virtually indistinguishable from new. These were also done at Springfield and the wood had cartouches added to any earlier ones present. The original cartouche in your serial range would have been SPG but again, the wood isn't original to the rifle. Parts of your rifle may have once been taken from NM production but there the similarity ends and your time would be far better spent seeking the input of an actual Marine armorer who is familiar with the type of rifle in question when they were still in use, or else simply buy a copy of Brophy's book. The Marine Corps has always been very particular about its weaponry and this especially applies to its match rifles. What I'm seeing is hardly the work of any trained Marine armorer and most likely the effort of someone who tried to create a bogus M41 and gave up. Our workmanship was never that poor with the exception of lower echelon armorers keeping recruits supplied with weapons prior to the adoption of the M-1. These early WWII cobbled jobs with wrench/vise marks are fairly common and typically saw hard use. In summary, withithout actual supporting documentation, what you have is nothing more than a barreled action with four added holes that would be very difficult to sell to any Marine familiar with the '03, 03A1 NM or the M41.

Hello my name is Steve and someone told me to come over here and see if I can help in the discussion some. To let you know a little about myself, for the past about two years all we have been doing is searching at the National Archives for the records of the Unertl sniper program. And building a database of known real rifles, and detailing all the characteristics of them. As of right now we have probably around a 1000 documents on the Marine National Match team rifles, and the Unertl sniper Conversion itself. I really don't think there is too much documentation at this point that we are missing honestly. We have all the NM shipments coming into the Marines from 1919 to 1940, so we pretty much know if your rifle is fake just by the serial number anymore. The details of the sniper rifles are also heavily described in the documents.

I'm not sure where to even start on this discussion as I don't want to knock anyone and it seems several of us here are former Marines, so Semper Fi. In fact I would be interested to talking to Oldcorps to see if he ever saw any of the M1952 snipers with the Kollmorgen scopes, or even of the M1D's in his time. One thing I'm working on now is the history of the Army M1C rifles being used by the Marines, as many of these documents are still classified.

But the Unertl snipers were built on Factory built Springfield National Match 1903's. What happened is the Marines would buy factory SA NM rifles new from SA, they would equip their rifle teams with these new rifles. On average each team shooter had two rifles, one as a primary and one as a backup. At the end of the season the NM rifles were all sent back to Philly and put into one of three categories. New and usused, New and serviceable (usually less than a 1000 rounds), and Used and needing rebarreled. The NM rifles that were rebarreled, had standard barrels put on them, that were star guaged, but not star marked at the muzzle.

The Mairnes bought their own star guage tool (it cost like $300 at the time, I have the purchase order) and did not need to pay the extra fee to SA for star guaged barrels since they had their own tool and could do it themselves. These rebarreled NM rifles were now called Special Target rifles by the Marines. They were in everyway identical to a NM rifle, except now had a replaced standard barrel, and many times were restocked with a new stock. The teams purchased tons of new stocks, as they valued stock fitting more importantly than new barrels. So many of these rifles were restocked multiple times. These special target rifles (rebarreled NM) were then used for Divisional and Elliot trophy matches, and you see Philly sending them out to different Marine bases for that purpose. But only new NM rifles were reserved for the Matches at say Perry. Except the Reserve team did have some rebarreled rifles. But that is another story.

The barrels changed by the Marines at this time do indeed have vise marks. All of them. Including the barrels on the Special targets that became snipers. It was the same tool that changed them, and it's not the one you see all over the interent.

But anyways, there were a 1047 NM and Special Targets that were used for the pool of rifles for the Unertl Sniper conversion, ranging from 1919 to 1940. I have the counts for the divisions in theater in the Pacific, and at Philly and it's a little bit confusing, but my honest best bet is only about half of them were built into Sniper rifles, before the program was cancelled. I really doubt many more were built, as there were not many left in 1951. But a total of 574 of the 1047 possible were rebarreled NM rifles. And at least another 21 fro m the Reserve Rifle team had been rebarreled as well in early 1940. So at least 596 of the 1047 possible NM rifles from the Sniper pool had replacment barrels on them. So it is actually more common to see a replaced barrel on a real sniper than it is to see the actual original Star Marked factory barrel.

I usually don't go much into the details of the real rifles online because of humpers. But a real rifle is pretty hard to fake. There are so many small details that no one knows about, and it clearly states them in the documents on why they are there. And we can even go by serial range and barrel date as we know when they were coming in and when they were buying the replacment standard barrels.

I honestly have no doubt at one time Abolut's rifle was real. I just don't know when it was plugged. But it looks like it was ordered in a shipment of 150 NM rifles in January 1932. It would have been rebarreled most likely for the 1940 Divisional Match competitions as a Special Target rifle. There is a slight chance it might have been done for the 1939 season, but I seriously doubt it. The way the documents read, I'm really betting that barrel was put on there for the 1940 season.

Hope this helps guys, and Semper Fi.

Thanks for your research and taking the time to reply.

Now, are you a Marine armorer and if so, during what period and at what level? I served my enlisted time in MAG-26 from 1961-65 both stateside and overseas, mainly HMM-265. No, I never saw a 1952 Kollmorgen equipped Garand. We were shown an M1D in ITR at Pendleton but no one was allowed to touch it. Some experts have tried to tell me that the USMC never used these but a buddy in Force Recon at An Loc had two issued to him at different times.

When did the USMC begin its own star gauging and what barrel numbers did it use? Is there a star gauge number on the barrel in question? Did Marine armorers blue the bolts on match rifles? If so, I never saw one.

Early in WWII, the USMC used a variety of rifle/scope combinations (both official and otherwise) which were mostly deemed to be unsatisfactory and this is well documented. The 03A1 NM/Unertl combination fared best.

Regarding the barreled receiver in question, do you have any information specific as to its serial number? Springfield Armory shipping info as to type, date and consignee? My 03A1 NM is number 13479XX and documented UTA as an unaltered 1932 national match rifle. Professionally, I would never put myself in the position of offering the parts grouping under discussion to a prospective buyer if the best I could do would be to tell him "I have no doubt," "slight chance," or "I'm betting..." without specific documentation. This forum specializes in academic standards of research on Mauser rifles which are quite precise and the opinions expressed on fonts, inspection markings and even machining techniques are easily verifiable from a variety of observed examples. Anyone can bugger a barrel and throw a parts grouping together. Convincing me of the authenticity of this conglomeration would take a lot more than I'm seeing.

Gentlemen, I have been collecting, shooting and dealing in high grade Springfields of all models since 1795 for well over fifty years and have served ten years on the executive board of a national dealers' association, in addition to one term as its president. These offices have given me access to and I have known many of the most informed researchers, expert collectors and dealers for decades. In the final analysis, all we have regarding Absolut's parts grouping is a "could be" or "likely is" with absolutely nothing definitive to support the speculations and reputable dealers do not place much value on undocumented opinions.

Semper Fi!

Thanks Steve! That is great information. And by the way, I have seen several pictures of you rifle and it is awesome. It is the type I hope to own someday.

No I never served as a Armorer, I was just a 0311.

Oh yeah they for sure had D's. I have a lot of evidence of them, I just can't figure out when they got them. My sniper docs stop in 1952, and it was after that. But that makes sense the D was at ITR, they used the A4 in WWII for the same purpose. Thanks for telling me about the Kollmorgen. I keep on trying to find Marines who saw the M1952 sniper. But other than one or two, I can't find them. I think they were gone a lot earlier than what the books say. They seem to be a ghost.

No, none of the Marine star guaged barrels are marked. That was a SA thing, and the Marines didn't mark theirs. Only the factory NM barrels will have the star mark on muzzle, and the star guage number under the handguard. If the barrel was replaced by the Marines, it it is just a normal looking barrel. I have documents that detail what dates the barrels would be, but would rather not say them publically, as it makes it very easy to pick out a fake sniper.

Now I should say I'm going to be a little generic in some of these answers. Me and a buddy have spents thousands of dollars on finding this info. So I hope you understand why I am being guarded.

I am a little leary of saying the year that they bought their star guage tool, as it's sort of a clue. So I would rather not say publically. But it was $300 back then, and the Army only had 5. So the Marines had to do some pursauding to get one.

Yes every bolt on the 1047 NM and Special Target rifle pool was blued. This was done months before the actual conversions started. I think I can safely say this publically, as I think this is pretty common knowledge at this point. If someone is offering a sniper to you with a bright polished bolt that is not blued, that bolt has been changed at sometime after the conversion, or it just wasn't Marine. The Documents are very clear that every one was blued before the conversions started.

Yes I do have some of the serial lists from the shipments of the NM rifles, like which crate they were in and such. I also have NM serials just listed in the documents, usually with them being shipped to some Marine base team from Philly It just depends on which year if I have the invoice or not. I do however have all the dates, how many, the shipment number, and all that stuff for the rest.

But I hope this helps.

mdarnell19 said:

Thanks Steve! That is great information. And by the way, I have seen several pictures of you rifle and it is awesome. It is the type I hope to own someday.

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Thank you for the kind words. I just got extremely lucky on finding it. It was always one of my dream rifles as a Marine Collector.

There were only a handful of M41s for the entire regiment at 2/2 when I looked at them in 1963 or 4 and all were stored in wooden cases with scopes mounted. Bolts were bright and with the exception of the modifications needed to mount the scopes, all were otherwise identical to 03A1 NMs, as Bill Brophy observed in his research. I also discussed this with one of his former execs who was set up next to me at a Denver show. Even at LeJeune, there were very few of these rifles and most Marines probably didn't know (or cared) that they existed. In fact, according to old-timers, M41s were scarce even in 1943. At any rate, from a Marine armorer I met through the VFW who had been stationed at LeJeune during the 70s, I learned that none of these rifles ever made it to the open market and that all were bought along with their scope cans, by very senior officers. Perhaps as these gentlemen pass on to the great yellow footprints in the sky some of these will become available. Capt. Braun was lucky enough to have one with this provenance at a Tulsa show a few years ago.

The Marine star gauge would have to have had a number and the forms required to list its readings or how could it be known which barrels had been measured if they weren't proofed? Records of serial numbers and round counts also had to be kept, not to mention TO&E lists. None of this was done haphazardly, even in my day. The overall problem with alleged Marine sniper's rifles is that these had no specific identifying markings and only some modifications which could have been done by anyone. These are an enormous gray area and a paradise for fakers which is why dealers avoid them. The item under discussion is a good example. How does anyone know that it was even USMC issue? Without conclusive provenance all we're discussing is a lot of loose parts flying in tight formation with some characteristics that COULD indicate work by a Marine armorer, but this is far from conclusive evidence that they constitute the remains of a Marine sniper's rifle. Someone could even claim that it had been Chesty's favorite. Basically, it's still a turkey shoot either way and the identity of the assembled parts is pure conjecture. At least the sight hood is probably original but I still use these at the range and installing one doesn't make that rifle instant USMC issue.

I own and shoot '03 #12927XX in its original unaltered S stock with DAL cartouche and completely as issued for that period. It has all the bells and whistles that as a Marine, I suspect it to have been one of ours but without documentation, it's just another nice, honest '03.

Have fun with the parts.

S/Fi

I have done some study on these and typically I rely on John Beard and a bunch of other guys that have studied them. It is a swamp and fakes abound. If Cplnorton(sent you a PM) or anyone has definite evidence, numbers, etc. on these it is always welcome. Until every piece of known and confirmable data is compiled on these, buyer beware. No need to hide the known data if you have serial numbers. That closes the case. The fakers are not gonna successfully or wisely fake the serial number, club fed for 5 or more.

The debate on blue or still in the white bolts has previously been ongoing. It is pretty clear that was the intension. Did they actually do them all?? They were mostly NM rifles with polished numbered bolts. Many of these NM rifle numbers are known. I still hear arguments on the bolts, and from well known "experts". I am not convinced even a document that says all were blued is proof but it is likely that they were intended to be blue.

I think at this point I'm going to back out of this one. I can see it turning into a big argument and that isn't what I intended. And for me to prove my point I would have to just start posting documents and at this time I don't want them public. I just jumped in to help with the OP's rifle.

I can tell that you disagree with what I'm saying. I can understand that. I just hope you understand, I'm just literally reading everything I said off the original Marine Docs. So I mean no disrespect. I think I will just leave it as, We will agree to disagree.

Semper Fi and good luck to you.

To the op, nice rifle and I see no problem with your claim saying it was a Marine sniper at one time.

cplnorton said:

I think at this point I'm going to back out of this one. I can see it turning into a big argument and that isn't what I intended. And for me to prove my point I would have to just start posting documents and at this time I don't want them public. I just jumped in to help with the OP's rifle.

I can tell that you disagree with what I'm saying. I can understand that. I just hope you understand, I'm just literally reading everything I said off the original Marine Docs. So I mean no disrespect. I think I will just leave it as, We will agree to disagree.

Semper Fi and good luck to you.

To the op, nice rifle and I see no problem with your claim saying it was a Marine sniper at one time.

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Steve, again thanks for your great research and info you have posted here. There will always be those who don't want to believe even when evidence is presented. I look forward to reading more of your info when you are ready to present it.

As any researcher knows, verifiable facts are vital to any hypothesis and these are lacking. Without specifics unique to the parts in question, while they have some similarities to what are claimed to be known examples, the fact remains that no one has demonstrated to any reasonable degree that they were actually even USMC issue. A star gauge with no acquisition date and number and no proving of its application on the alleged sniper's rifle? A claimed receipt for its purchase by the Philadelphia depot with cost but no date? Bill Brophy did a thorough study on the variations of the '03 based upon having been involved as an ordnance officer during that era, having completed advanced study in ordnance engineering and providing footnoted sources. His findings leave little to chance and coincide with personal experience over the past fifty-five years. I have read nothing in this thread that even approaches his standard of accuracy, only a lot of supposition and "could-be." Could I or anyone else seriously offer this collection of parts to a customer in good faith as a USMC sniper's rifle on the basis of the information presented? Hardly, but this is America and we are free to make any claim we please. I was attracted to this forum by the demonstrated expertise available here and continue to learn from the experience. Applying the prevalent academic standards of research here on Mausers to the claims made in this instance simply does not support them.

Cplnorton probably said it best. Your argument is "I was there, I saw this". How can someone proof you wrong, without having been next to you? All documents show different, and even Big Larrys list of USMC sniper rifles mention blued bolts for nearly all rifles, and only with a single one it says "polished, not blued". One would ask why he not only mentions the polishing, but also found it worth enough to say that it's indeed not blued?

Could it simply be that you remembered it wrongly? Could you have looked at Winchester 70 rifles with the Unertl scopes? Or could it be that you were in a dark room and from just a distant look at the rifles the blued over polished bolt appeared not to be blued? That happens quite often, and cplnorton in fact also demonstrated this with several pictures from different angles of his rifle.

There was a rifle sold by jackthedog last year - needless to say it also had a blued bolt. Why not? Makes sense, something blued is harder to make out than something polished bright.

You claimed that the USMC never would leave such vise markings on a barrel - you were proofed wrong by several persons, independent from each other. Obviously you also accepted this, why can't you also accept that you are wrong on several other accounts?