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Sabotaged 98k?

tsmgguy

Senior Member
There was in interesting thread recently that had to do with possibly sabotaged WWII German rifles finding their way into the hands of modern collectors and posing a safety hazard. IIRC, opinion here had it that there were so many layers of manufacture and inspection in place at the time that this was unlikely.

Still, I'm wondering if I might have found a 98k that left the factory deliberately sabotaged.

I took my recently acquired ce 43 98k out the range for the first time expecting great things from it as it is minty, all matching, and completely unmessed with. It shot a very nice initial group indeed, fully 10" left at 100 yards. Another group of three impacted in the same place.

The rear sight does not wobble and does not appear to have been damaged in any way.

I removed the front sight hood and noticed that the front sight blade was slightly right on the base, but that the factory witness marks were still perfectly aligned. It was a simple matter to drift the front sight until it was centered on the base. This neatly zeroed the rifle.

Still, I'm thinking that the rifle might well have left the factory shooting fully 10 minutes of angle to the left. This is enough error to cause a complete miss of a man sized target at 200 yeads.

Sabotage? I don't know. You be the judge.
 
Sabotage!? Definately Not. Not from Sauer. Too early in the war, if it ever did occur at Sauer. IMO I cant see the nearly-all-german workers of sauer wanting to "sabotage" a gun ment for their own troops. What ammo are you using? Chances are its the ammo.
 
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Agree, it's NOT the rifle, nor sabotage.

99.999% of K98's do NOT have sight blades centred in he base. Nor do MOST military rifles. Lee Enfields, for example, front sight bases are OFF centre to start with to allow for the bullet harmonics, correolis etc etc.

I think you will find with ORIGINAL spec ammo etc that it would have been ON target.

I cannot recall what the sighting in distance was for K98's (haven't got the books handy), but I am pretty sure it WASN'T at 100 metres (despite the rear sight's lowest marking of 100 metres).

If the rifle is original, I'd return the blade to it's old marked position and hold off - it's what I have always done when not using original ammo (if I use Fedral ammo, I have to set up a target NEXT to mine to aim at. If I use Portuguese military ammo, I hold dead on, yet slightly low)
 
Was shooting some beautiful Yugoslavian 196 gr. brass cased corrosive ball ammo dated 12-1953. Groups were consistantly sub 2 MOA. The stuff is clean, too. It's basically post war Ss ball.

It wasn't the ammo. Several rounds of surplus Egyptian shot to the same spot.

One should not have to remember to "hold off" with a rifle capable of good accuracy, unless the error is small or no windage adjustment is possible or desirable. 20" at 200 yards is a lot, so why not just zero the rifle? It'll stay zeroed, too.
 
Your rifle...

At 200, the distance off target would NOT have been 20".

Lee Enfield rifles for example are NOTORIOUSLY inaccurate at 100 yards (3 inch groups the norm), but take them out to 300 to 600 yards, and the rifle starts becoming incredibly accurate
 

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