2024 - Mauser still in use

[adowns]

Most of these Yemeni militants have AK-47's but check out the Mauser in the center of the picture. (picture found in Sept. 30, 2024 N.Y. Times) I have also included a zoomed in picture. It looks like a long barreled version, maybe a WWI relic or a Czeck produced model. Maybe an expert can identify it from the sling attachments. Also what is the "sporterized" one to its right?

 

[ugafx4]

I think based on the sight ears the rifle that is cut down is an Enfield. There is another mauser to the left of the one you highlighted as well, floorplate towards us.

 

[Cyrano4747]

I don't think it's long-barreled, I think there might be some perspective stuff at work.

Pic quality isn't great, but I feel like I see a winter trigger guard there, and that certainly looks like a french-style sling cut-out in the side of the stock. You can also see the hole in the side of the stock for a normal K98k-style sling arrangement.

It could be just about anything given the odd assortment of crap that's been dumped on the mid-east in the last 150+ years, but just based on the picture I'd guess a French-used (or French-produced if it's a post-war MWO) K98k that someone put a new rear barrel band and a rear sling swivel on to use a more traditional sling arrangement if that's what they had on hand.

edit: I'll also note that the grandpa with the Mauser we're talking about is the only person in the pic with visibly bad trigger discipline. Lot of well indexed fingers on the AKs, and the other old timer with a Mauser too.

 

[adowns]

ugafx4... I agree on the Enfield "sporter".

Cyrano4747... Good observation on the the trigger fingers. The old guy with the Mauser has probably been some sort of rebel all his life. The younger ones maybe had a little bit of training by some terrorist organization.

 

[Muncher 1953]

x2 on the right hand Mauser being in a French-used stock, from the rear sling bar.
I also noticed the finger on the trigger, just the kind of guy you’d want to be near in a crowd….

 

[adowns]

And maybe the guy with the Mauser is the designated sharpshooter. I read this 2010 article today:

US rifles not suited to warfare in Afghan hills

KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. military’s workhorse rifle – used in battle for the last 40 years – is proving less effective in Afghanistan against the Taliban&#82…

www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Soviet soldiers in the 1980s found that their AK-47 rifles could not match the World War II-era bolt-action Lee-Enfield and Mauser rifles used by mujahedeen rebels.

“These are important considerations in Afghanistan, where NATO forces are frequently attacked by insurgents using … sharpshooter’s rifles, which are all chambered for a full-powered cartridge which dates back to the 1890s,” said Paul Cornish, curator of firearms at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The heavier bullets enable Taliban militants to shoot at U.S. and NATO soldiers from positions well beyond the effective range of the coalition’s rifles.

To counter these tactics, the U.S. military is designating nine soldiers in each infantry company to serve as sharpshooters, according to Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, who wrote the Army study. They are equipped with the new M-110 sniper rifle, which fires a larger 7.62 mm round and is accurate to at least 2,500 feet (800 meters).

 

[Cyrano4747]

And maybe the guy with the Mauser is the designated sharpshooter. I read this 2010 article today:

US rifles not suited to warfare in Afghan hills

KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. military’s workhorse rifle – used in battle for the last 40 years – is proving less effective in Afghanistan against the Taliban&#82…

www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Soviet soldiers in the 1980s found that their AK-47 rifles could not match the World War II-era bolt-action Lee-Enfield and Mauser rifles used by mujahedeen rebels.

“These are important considerations in Afghanistan, where NATO forces are frequently attacked by insurgents using … sharpshooter’s rifles, which are all chambered for a full-powered cartridge which dates back to the 1890s,” said Paul Cornish, curator of firearms at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The heavier bullets enable Taliban militants to shoot at U.S. and NATO soldiers from positions well beyond the effective range of the coalition’s rifles.

To counter these tactics, the U.S. military is designating nine soldiers in each infantry company to serve as sharpshooters, according to Maj. Thomas Ehrhart, who wrote the Army study. They are equipped with the new M-110 sniper rifle, which fires a larger 7.62 mm round and is accurate to at least 2,500 feet (800 meters).

This is a perpetual argument in small arms development, going back . . . god, at least 100 years. In a very from the hip kind of way I want to say that it really came about with smokeless powder and "small caliber" (i.e. .30 cal vs the old .45 - .60 you see with late 19th century blackpowder) weapons in general allowing rifles to really reach out and touch someone with accuracy. The British, for example, were extremely dissatisfied with the performance of .303 Enfield (an older round initially designed around black powder pressures) vs. 7mm Mauser in the 2nd Boer War. The territory out there - much like Afghanistan today - featured a ton of long sight lines and flat, open spaces where rifle fire by volley could be a real pain in the butt. They went so far as to design a replacement for the Enfield (the P13) and a new cartridge for it (.276 Enfield). The P13 was a more modern weapon with locking lugs at the front of the bolt like a Mauser, rather than towards the rear like the Lee-Enfield and other older designs (e.g. Krag), and .276 was a modern rimless cartridge.

Then WW1 happened, they had to abandon those plans because shifting your primary small arm cartridge during wartime is a bad idea, and lo and behold .303 was more than adequate for the ranges commonly experienced in the trenches.

All of this comes in cycles. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Army's new M7 and it's new 6.8x51 cartridge (adopted in large part to criticisms about the performance of 5.56 at range like that linked above) gets criticized down the road for being too heavy, having too much recoil, eating parts, and generally being more rifle than we need the next time we're mucking around in a jungle or urban area etc. Hypothetically it's supposed to replace the M4 but I am extremely skeptical.

At the end of the day you need a good mix of close range portability and handling and long range firepower, but miltiaries also have a tendency to gear up to fight the last war they were in. Personally, my two cents are that the squad LMG in a full sized rifle caliber is for dealing with the jerk across the valley taking pot shots with great-grandpa's Mosin, but I'm just an idiot on the internet.

 

[Honkey Tonk Devil]

Then WW1 happened, they had to abandon those plans because shifting your primary small arm cartridge during wartime is a bad idea, and lo and behold .303 was more than adequate for the ranges commonly experienced in the trenches.

Agreed. At least we got the rifle, the p14.
Interesting to think what would have happened if we wouldn't have been manufacturing the p14. What the U.S. would have done for small arms when we joined WW1.
I believe the picked the .276 back up after WW1 and that's what the m1 garands was originally tested in. Then war again.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Agreed. At least we got the rifle, the p14.
Interesting to think what would have happened if we wouldn't have been manufacturing the p14. What the U.S. would have done for small arms when we joined WW1.
I believe the picked the .276 back up after WW1 and that's what the m1 garands was originally tested in. Then war again.

.276 Pedersen and .276 Enfield are two very different cartridges. The Pedersen cartridge is much more svelte for lack of a better word - smaller across all dimensions than the Enfield cartridge. The case head on the Pedersen is .450 and the Enfield .517, for example, and the shoulders and necks are similarly smaller. The Pedersen is also significantly shorter - it's 7x51 and the Enfield is 7x60. 7mm Mauser, in comparison (another .276-275 bullet) is 7x57.

In a lot of ways the Pedersen cartridge looks a lot more like a 7mm flavor of .308 than anything else, although I'm not sure how stuff like the shoulder angle compares.

It must have been a hell of a mild cartridge out of a Garand, I'll say that much.

If the US hadn't been manufacturing the P14/m1917 I suspect we just would have seen a lot more m1903s. Jumping into a giant war isn't exactly when you start cranking out new, unproven designs and the war didn't last long enough for us to really develop anything new during our time as a beligerant. Even the m1918 BAR was in design a few years before WW1. The thompson was of course designed during the war, but they didn't start shipping prototypes until just before the armistace and ultimatly it was an inter-war weapon more than anything else.

 

[Honkey Tonk Devil]

I forgot that part that they were different cartridges. Just remembered that they were both .276.

Yea there would definitely been no new rifle developments. I'm thinking more of the lingering effects of not being prepared for a war that already had been going on for some time.

 

[Cyrano4747]

I forgot that part that they were different cartridges. Just remembered that they were both .276.

Yea there would definitely been no new rifle developments. I'm thinking more of the lingering effects of not being prepared for a war that already had been going on for some time.

In the short term, we most likely would have ended up using French rifles. They had a bunch of them and most of the equipment we historically had to borrow (planes, tanks, MGs, artillery, etc) we took from them and then deployed alongside them in the line to ease the logistics.

That said, the whole reason we ended up going with the m1917 for a bit was that Remington and Winchester were already geared up for making them for the Brits and the modifications to take .30-06 were pretty simple. They made a ton of the things - way more than wartime 1903s - and my guess is that we probably wouldn't have even needed many of the French rifles. 1903 production would have just been ramped up and you'd see Eddystone, Winchester, etc. 1903s instead of 1917s.

Keep in mind the AEF only started trickling into France in the summer of 1917, only got into combat in October, and only was up to Corps strength by New Year's. The real flood didn't happen until the spring and summer of 1918. Basically a year to really get stuck in, and that's a long time when it comes to tooling up to make rifles.

Don't get me wrong, it was good that we already had some lines ready to go, but I really don't think we'd have been stuck without guns.