Target Sports

SNIPER RIFLE: SNIPING REMARKS

Created on 29th May 2009

Nigel Greenaway follows up his No. 4(T) series with a look at the WW1 British sniping rifle

I AM PLEASED that my recent articles on the WW2 British No.4(T) sniper rifle went down well enough that I have been asked to write about the origins of modern British sniping and the equipment used during World War One. It is an interesting story, one that initially showed the British to be ill-prepared. But, like many British endeavours, it soon showed us in our best light - meeting adversity with ingenuity, British pluck and dedicated training schools. The Germans were definitely ahead of the game at the start of the war with 20,000 telescopic sights in service by the end of 1914 - many being used by ex-Forest Guards and Jagers (hunters), who used their skills and excellent equipment to exact a terrible toll from the unsuspecting British in their newly dug trenches. Trench warfare had arrived with a vengeance and it didn't take too long for some ex-big game hunters in the British lines to realise that the plague of head wounds our troops were suffering was not down to bad luck!

How the British overcame this situation and ultimately attained mastery of the German snipers is the focus of this article. I will concentrate on the five main combinations of rifles and sights developed, which made up 90% of the 9,788 sniper rifles passed into service during the war. On the way I will examine some of the tactics, training and personalities that together made the British the acknowledged experts of 20th century sniping. Many of the lessons learned by our forebears are still taught in sniping schools around the world today.

During early 1915, the British found themselves confronting German battalions with an official sniping establishment of 24 Scharfschützen (six per company) armed with Gew' 98 rifles and overhead mounted telescopic sights from a variety of world renowned German optical manufacturers. To counter the German sniping threat the British had... well, the British had virtually nothing and certainly no official service rifle with a telescopic sight. You only have to read 1915 copies of The Field to see the pleading letters written from officers in the trenches to fellow sporting enthusiasts at home. The letters ask for sporting rifles to be sent to the front, particularly those with telescopic sights. There are also letters from enterprising officers who had privately purchased optical sights known as Galilean sights. These crude devices consist of two lenses, the larger of which is fixed near the foresight while the smaller is fixed on the rearsight, or in a fashion like the old A J Parker or Parker-Hale target sights. They were relatively cheap and required no special skills to set them up. They worked quite well, although they were fragile, with a magnification of about 2x power and narrow fields of view (about 5-7ft at 100yd). While outside the subject of this article, these Galilean sights nonetheless played an important role in the early days of British sniping. The War Office purchased three main makes and 13,945 Lattey, Barnett and Martin sights were officially bought, plus the thousands that were purchased privately. These sights helped hold the line alongside numerous sporting rifles, plus some early conversions of SMLEs by the trade who fitted various different types of scopes.

In July 1915, the first big War Office contract (1,120 sights) was placed with the Periscopic Prism Co Ltd (PPCo) for what was to become the most numerous sight used during the war (4,830 in total). In September and October of 1915, Holland & Holland and Purdey were contracted to fit Aldis scopes, each with their own design of fitting. These became the next most numerous type with over 1,700. At the same time, Whitehead Bros started to fit Winchester A5 scopes and this combination became the third most numerous with 907 made. Other scopes were used such as the Evans (about 120), the Watts (about 160 fitted in three different ways!), and there was one company, J Bartle & Co that was contacted to fit 2,000 Aldis scopes using the Bartle mount. Unfortunately, nobody knows what this mount looks like - but more about this mysterious mounting system later!

Design fault

One unfortunate design fault of all the SMLE sniper rifles was the fitting of the scopes with side mounts, offset to the left. Officialdom decreed that this must be so - in order that the rifles could still be reloaded with five-round chargers! This made them far harder to use, particularly when a fast snap shot was required. It also meant that you had to cut a bigger hole in a loophole plate (making it easier for a German sniper to put a bullet through that hole). Only later in the war were some experimental overhead mounts developed. The Canadians, less constricted by officialdom, soon started to fit Winchester A5, PPCo and Aldis scopes on overhead mounts to their Ross Rifles and maybe also to some SMLE rifles. They used their own armourers to do this with some success, judging by the tallies that some of the Canadian snipers achieved. Cpl Francis (Peggy) Pegahmagabow MM and two Bars was the highest scoring sniper of WW1 with 378 confirmed kills. He was an Ojibwa Indian from Perry Sound Island, Ontario, Canada.

You can tell by the contract dates that the first rifles converted would be freshly produced SMLE No.1 MkIII rifles dated 1915 and manufactured at Enfield (which coincides with the Enfield inspectors' marks you see on some PPCo mounts and Winchester A5 mounts). As the war progressed and steps were introduced to speed up manufacturing, 1916 dated SMLE No.1 MkIII and MkIII* rifles were used for conversion. In July 1921, stocks of sniper rifles held at Weedon showed a preponderance of MkIII* rifles (877 rifles with various scopes fitted) compared to only 70 MkIII scoped rifles. On 20 August 1921, the Small Arms Committee recommended that all telescopes and fittings for the SMLE were to be disposed of (which is why it is almost impossible to find a matching scope and rifle today).

It was also recommended that the Pattern 1914 rifle with Model 1918 telescopic sight become the standard sniping rifle and the Pattern 1914 with fine adjustment sight - P14(F) - be issued as the sniper weapon for the Territorial Force. The P14(F) was extensively used at sniping schools during the war and was generally rated as being more accurate than a scoped SMLE! A few experimental P14s fitted with overhead mounts and Aldis scopes were used in the war as early as September 1917 (one was captured by the Germans) but it is unlikely that many P14s fitted with the Model 1918 scope ever fired a shot in anger during WW1 as the type was only approved for service in April 1918 with the specifications approved on 31 December 1918.

Sniping schools

The first of the British Scouting, Observation and Sniping (SOS) Schools were set up at Army level in December 1915 (2nd Army) and the 1st Army SOS school, under the famous H Hesketh-Prichard, was established in the summer of 1916. There had been unofficial schools at Corps level prior to this. A number of other schools were established later, including a Canadian school. Standards were high and snipers were expected to achieve headshots 50% of the time at 400yd.

Each of these schools had a slightly different syllabus and it was Major FM Crum who succeeded in writing a common syllabus, he also wrote the first official pamphlet SS 195 Scouting and Patrolling (Dec 1917). This was after he got into trouble for privately publishing a book called Scouts and Sniping in Trench Warfare. He even produced a film on sniping training and established a course at Aldershot to educate senior officers about the benefits of sniping. He was a pioneer of his time but has never received the same level of recognition as Hesketh-Prichard.

Next month I will describe the different scopes and mounting systems in more detail.