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The entire 1933 Soviet Sniper Manual is now available. Of course, there's other material a lot of which will be of interest to collectors, conservators and curators who have WW II sniping equipment.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wor...=9780982481318
The Reichswehr did a fine job of teaching the Red Army all about sniping in the 1920s, and Zeiss and Busch got them all set up with suitable scopes.
"Cutting off your nose to spite your face".
@Surpmil - I know the Soviets and the Germans had a secret military pact, but can you please cite your source that sniping instruction was included? You are correct in that Zeiss set up an optics factory allowing the Soviets to grind their own glass and that the Busch 4.5x Visar scope was the basis for the Soviet 4x PE and later PEM.
IIRC the Reichswehr under Gen. v. Seeckt began their secret military cooperation with the Soviets around 1923 - once the Russian Civil War and I suppose the Russo-Polish war were well and truly over and the Soviets had consolidated control such that the survival of their regime appeared certain. The German goal was to evade the restriction of the Treaty of Versailles around armoured forces, artillery, airforces and gas warfare, among other things. I don't recall seeing any specific reference to sniping, but considering what was shared was much more significant, I see no reason why sniping would have been excluded; does anyone else?
As you may know, there was always a school within Germany and the Prussian/German Army who favoured cooperation with Russia. It was on-again & off-again back to the Napoleonic era wasn't it?
Strategically it made a good deal of sense as it secured the eastern frontiers for whatever adventures or insecurities :D might be considered in the West. Against that school were those who wanted to expand eastward in terms of annexations or at least overt control over puppet states. The Ukraine was the primary target of course for food supplies and resources, and incidentally still is in some quarters. ;) The Nazis took this to the most extreme form of course, but it was widely discussed even in the 19th C and attempts were made in WWI to put this sort of thing into effect; witness the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This is all exhaustively documented in Griff Nach der Weltmacht by Dr. Fischer.
No doubt the General Staff were quite sure the Soviet peasants were nothing they couldn't handle no matter what was shown to them, ;) and at the time the greatest resentment was directed at the Allied powers so Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia found themselves allies of convenience. Training the Soviets and no doubt encouraging them to look south towards India would have been just the sort of little "revenge" policy that would appeal at that time. :D
Anyway, I see I'm ranging off into context here and to get back to specifics, the Soviet military leadership in the 20s was made up mostly of people from non-professional backgrounds who didn't have a lot of mental baggage in regard to "how things should be done" and so were looking for whatever worked. It would be logical that given the insecurities of their situation they were also looking for "force-multipliers": technology and tactics that would help to overcome their weaknesses. Just as for example Japan did in the 20s and 30s with her emphasis on night naval engagement and torpedo warfare.
Of course the Soviets were also dreaming even then of "liberating" western Europe and were interested in offensive warfare: look at their pioneering work on airborne forces.
Naturally the Soviets were studying the war on the Western Front and it would have made no sense for the Germans to try and hide something like sniping which was well-known from open sources anyway. To do so would merely have stimulated the Soviet's interest!
You might find buried in the archives of the Soviet General staff the details of all this - or just as likely in the archives of the Reichswehr taken to Moscow in 1945. But otherwise, we'll just have to go with logical deduction: when you've laid out a smorgasbord, why keep a few side dishes hidden in the kitchen when your guests are sure to notice their absence from the table?
I forget the details, but IIRC the Soviets bought a complete optical production facility from Zeiss about 1936. Zeiss already had a presence in St. Petersburg before WWI, but whether that included manufacturing as it apparently did with Zeiss London, I don't know. If it did, those facilities may have been the foundation of one of the Soviet factories in that area. There must have been some native optical manufacturing as well pre-1914, but what would have been left by 1919 is hard to say.
Besides, helping the Soviets to build up their industry was a popular business in the West in the 20s and 30s, and no doubt German firms felt they might as well get a share of the pie. For example that much discussed dam on the Dnieper was designed and built under American engineers, and we know Mr. Christie's designs were the foundation of Soviet tank production.
It's to the credit of the Soviet military leadership that they realized the military value of sniping and marksmanship and put so much emphasis on it. Even Germany, despite her preeminence in that field in WWI had rather lost the plot by the late 1930s: hypnotized like the other western powers by "volume of fire" and all that into forgetting that the only bullet that matters is the one that hits the target and nothing is as economical a single bullet. Probably the Soviets realized that their wide-open spaces were ideal for such methods. Isn't there a reference somewhere to a German regiment recording 75 men lost to Soviet snipers in a single day?
So without citation of sources, it's conjecture then? I know the Soviets got hold of Hesketh Prichard's Sniping In France and studied that assudiously and had ghillie suits (complete with netting to deter eyeshine) for war against Finland.Quote:
Naturally the Soviets were studying the war on the Western Front and it would have made no sense for the Germans to try and hide something like sniping which was well-known from open sources anyway. To do so would merely have stimulated the Soviet's interest!
You are right in that the Soviets took sniping seriously and their 1933 manual shows how recruits were identified as marksmen who could receive further training. Even pre-war Soviet citizens could get sniper training (provided they earned the Vorishilov Shooter award) in the para-military Osoaviakhim.
From the existing evidence, circumstantial and otherwise I would say it is a certainty.
Would German firms supply the Soviets with military equipment without clearing that through the proper authorities in Germany, particularly after 1933?
I expect the Soviets gathered up all the literature on the subject they could find, and some of it might even be material given to Imperial Russian military missions in WWI.
For whatever reason the Allies apparently never supplied the Russian Imperial Army with scopes, and they may not have thought the idea worthwhile - or suitable for their soldiery - that is a conjecture, but one that somewhat fits the class distinctions of pre-revolutionary Russia I think.
Without any citable sources, I am skeptical that the Soviets were trained in sniping by the Reichswehr. Remember the Soviets were poor and that they didn't acquire scopes until the NKVD decided it wanted some (that was the aforementioned Busch Visar 4.5 X) and Zeiss opened a plant there. You can teach a person the principles of sniping (camouflage, concealment, stalking, observation, range estimation, shooitng with iron sights) but without optical sights, the program can only go so far.
Sniping would have been low on the priority of military things for both the Germans and the Soviets. I can see the Germans providing instruction in aviation, tank development (lookee at the LK I and LK II) and modernized German infantry training without sniping. The Germans themselves did little in the way of scope develpment in the inter-war period and the scoped rifles made were supposedly for the police in event of another communist/socialist revolt. Germans themselves did have good marksmanship training and I'm sure this is what was taught to the Soviets. I'll have to find an earlier Soviet infantry manual to confirm their method of "musketry instruction" (British term).
I've found no evidence that the Allies provided Tsarist Russia with scoped rifles either and during WW I the best the Tsarist Russians did was to develop a periscope rifle as a counter-sniper weapon. Post-Russian Revolution (not to be confused with the later October Revolution) the British supplied scoped Ross rifles to the White Russians which the Reds captured when the Whites fell/fled. So while the Soviets had a handful of scoped Ross rifles, they had no means to reverse engineer their optics.
I do agree that the Soviets collected a lot of foreign military literature and Hesketh Prichard's book was among them. The same Soviet General was identified by myself and Maj. Plaster as asserting that Prichard's book was used to develop their program.
It's good to be sceptical. You are probably right that it would be a subject fairly low on the list of Red Army priorities compared to tanks or gas warfare, but anyone studying war on the Western Front as they no doubt did, would know it was a significant part of the methods there. And as there were lots of original and unconventional thinkers in the Red Army, I suspect they would recognize the "economies of scale" immediately - economy was very important as you mentioned.
When was that Soviet movie "Sniper" produced? It indicates the level of interest; did they make a movie about tank-men or gas warfare specialists? Movies like that were made for specific propaganda reasons and nothing was made without a propaganda component.
It's a bloody business and they were a bloody regime, killing was high on their list of priorities as any student of Soviet history knows. Hesketh-Pritchard mentions how in the trenches he was called "the professional assassin" in a semi-humorous way - only semi-humorous because then, unlike the fetish made of all things sniping today, picking men off like ground hogs wasn't considered sporting, gentlemanly or even humane - many on the Allied side in fact regarded it as at best unsavoury and "unfair". One comes across such sentiments in memoirs and even regimental histories of WWI - and perhaps WWII for that matter.
The Bolsheviks made a point of rejecting all such "bourgeois" notions of morality, and so I believe they were instinctively drawn to such direct, deliberate methods of killing, just as they were no doubt attracted by the idea of killing enemy officers in particular who they would consider political as well as military enemies. IIRC this political/class aspect comes across clearly in the movie. Some may think that's a bit thin, but one needs to have a sense of the foundations of their ideology and how such people see the world. They were determined to be different, to reject all that had gone before, if possible.
As you mentioned the regime clearly realized the importance of marksmanship and instituted a very thorough nation-wide program to encourage it - and that despite the fact that marksmen can be quite dangerous to despotic regimes! ;) That also demosntrates how important they felt the matter was militarily, and how clearly they saw such questions.
The Reichswehr did field at least one new scope and mount system in the Weimar period, and whatever pretenses might have been necessary before the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, I think we can be pretty sure they continued to train and maintain schools or cadres. How much was done in Russia at the training grounds there is debatable, since most such work could be done easily in Germany without attracting attention from any Allied inspectors. If large scale exercises or formation training was done in Russia, then one would expect snipers to have been part of that. For example IIRC the German Army had a policy of using snipers and MGs as both cover and protection for each other, so if MGs were part of training in Russia, then snipers probably were also.
How much was shared with the Red Army probably depended most on their level of interest; it was a trade-off situation and I doubt the Reichswehr would have offered more than the Reds asked for, but I also doubt they would refuse much they did specifically ask for. The use of the bases in Russia was too important to Reichswehr.
I haven't heard of scoped Ross rifles being supplied to the Whites; is there a source for that?
Sniper was produced by Timoshenko in 1931. Gotta love that opening scene where the bagpipeless Scottish Band is marching to the tune of It's Long Way to Tipperary. Yes, it is a propaganda flick showing how WW I pitted proletariat brothers against one another by the reactionary monarchists regimes of Europe and a counter-revolutionary's attack on peace loving proletariat workers with a side of sissy-boy more interested in self-pleasure instead of sacrifice for the glorious socialist state (OK, I grew up around that bovine feces and I'm being facetious).Quote:
Originally Posted by Surpmil
Said development was under the cover that it was for the police.Quote:
It's a bloody business and they were a bloody regime, killing was high on their list of priorities as any student of Soviet history knows. Hesketh-Pritchard mentions how in the trenches he was called "the professional assassin" in a semi-humorous way - only semi-humorous because then, unlike the fetish made of all things sniping today, picking men off like ground hogs wasn't considered sporting, gentlemanly or even humane - many on the Allied side in fact regarded it as at best unsavoury and "unfair". One comes across such sentiments in memoirs and even regimental histories of WWI - and perhaps WWII for that matter.
The Bolsheviks made a point of rejecting all such "bourgeois" notions of morality, and so I believe they were instinctively drawn to such direct, deliberate methods of killing, just as they were no doubt attracted by the idea of killing enemy officers in particular who they would consider political as well as military enemies. IIRC this political/class aspect comes across clearly in the movie. Some may think that's a bit thin, but one needs to have a sense of the foundations of their ideology and how such people see the world. They were determined to be different, to reject all that had gone before, if possible.
As you mentioned the regime clearly realized the importance of marksmanship and instituted a very thorough nation-wide program to encourage it - and that despite the fact that marksmen can be quite dangerous to despotic regimes! ;) That also demosntrates how important they felt the matter was militarily, and how clearly they saw such questions.
The Reichswehr did field at least one new scope and mount system in the Weimar period, and whatever pretenses might have been necessary before the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, I think we can be pretty sure they continued to train and maintain schools or cadres. How much was done in Russia at the training grounds there is debatable, since most such work could be done easily in Germany without attracting attention from any Allied inspectors. If large scale exercises or formation training was done in Russia, then one would expect snipers to have been part of that. For example IIRC the German Army had a policy of using snipers and MGs as both cover and protection for each other, so if MGs were part of training in Russia, then snipers probably were also.
OK, in 1926 the Soviet Union acquired 150 German Zeiss Dialytan 4x scopes and Geschow mounts.... By 1929 another 350 Zeiss scops and Walter mounts were acquired." Source Yee, World War II Snipers, p 299.Quote:
How much was shared with the Red Army probably depended most on their level of interest; it was a trade-off situation and I doubt the Reichswehr would have offered more than the Reds asked for, but I also doubt they would refuse much they did specifically ask for. The use of the bases in Russia was too important to Reichswehr.
See Timoshenko's 1931 flick, Sniper. Stop it at the scene where they show the rifles. They're scoped Ross Rifles. I shared that with Martin Pegler and he was also amused by that.Quote:
I haven't heard of scoped Ross rifles being supplied to the Whites; is there a source for that?
BTW. Soviet Lt. General G. E. Morozoff made the assertion that the Soviets learned from Hesketh Prichard's book. Yee, World War II Snipers, 24.
I know the scenes you refer to because I saved screenshots from them a year or two back. ;) As you know there is also a very grainy crop of a photo showing a Mk.III Ross with a severely cut down stock and a German-made scope mounted.
Perhaps the Red Army was experimenting at that point and decided to use a non-standard rifle for the same sort of reasons that the British chose to use Springfields for a comparative test of certain scope mounts: apparently it was felt that choosing a totally unfamiliar rifle would focus the user's attention on the components that were to be compared. :dunno:
Or perhaps it was just an economy measure, or possibly they recognized the superior accuracy of the Ross - and perhaps the speed of loading - and decided that since it was a limited run, they might as well use the best they could get?
Have you seen any reference to rifles being supplied to the Whites with scopes fitted? I never have and what's in the movie is just in a movie. Sort of like the Ross .280 takedown that Clint Eastwood handles in "Joe Kidd" (scope on backwards etc.)
If there was any intention to supply the Whites with such rifles by spring of 1919 there were about 8000 scoped SMLE's sitting in store at Weedon or Enfield that could have been sent, and since so many SMLE's were sent it would have made sense to send the same rifle, despite its many flaws as a sniping rifle. Particularly since the rifles were going to be broken up for spares anyway, though off-hand I don't recall when that decision was made.
1926 is pretty early for a scope acquisition by the Soviets; within a few years of their cooperation with the Reichswehr beginning.
I see Gen. Morozoff/Morozov was speaking to the N.Y. Times in 1942. I suggest he was being both polite and deceptive: implying the Soviets were just learning and new to all this etc. etc.!
Other than the cinematic evidence I have not seen any documentation on the White Russians being supplied with scoped rifles; but I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would resort to providing a film producer with a dummied-up scoped M91/30 when foreign scoped rifles were readily available. The Soviets certainly had machinists who could make mounts or prop makers who could fabricate a prop mount & scope (and glue it on) for non close-up views. If prototypes were being developed at th time of the filming, it is unlikely that the Soviets would allow it to be have a cinematic debut. Second, would the Soviets spend time and money to make German style mounts for a foreign rifle? Limited resources in the Soviet Union mandates that any skills would have been used to develop mount prototypes for a M91/30 and besides, they had German mounts that could have reverse engineered. I'm certain those scoped Ross rifles were real. 1931 predated the unsuccessful Soviet primsatic PT scope's debut and before the PE was developed. In the typical Soviet pechant for secrecy, use the Ross and keep any potential foe in the dark about Soviet sniper rifle development.
Ross rifles were very accurate, but why send a SMLE with scope when the jam prone (when dirty) Ross would do? I doubt if the Canadian War Ministry would allow top line SMLEs to go to Russia instead of the Ross. Recall that Canada like the US supported the White Russians. I already mentioned the other German equipment and mounts the Soviets bought before Timoshenko's film, but it is highly unlikely that the secretive NKVD would share with a film production.
By 1942, there is no need for Gen. Morozoff to be deceptive about sniping. The Soviets were already making grandiose & unsubstantiated claims of one shot, one dead nazi and bragging how effective their snipers were. They asserted that a sniper killed "Field Marshal" von Kleist in 1942 (never mind that von Kleist wasn't a field marshal yet & he died post-war in Soviet capivity). Also in 1942 two snipers and political organizer Nikolai Krasvachenko were sent to represent the oviet Union at the International Student Conference. One sniper was Lt. Vladimir Pchelintsev (156 kills) and the other was Jr. Lt. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (309 kills).
There is one scene in that film that puzzles me. Check out the P14 at 11:20. Scope seems offset and what is that band behind the distance dial? Prop? Your thoughts please?
Upon further reflection, those Ross sniper rifles may have been either captured or abandoned when the Canadians withdrew from the Polar Bear Expedition in Siberia. I don't know enough about Canadian involvement but do know that the US forces there did fight the Reds.
It seems pretty clear that these rifles represent experimentation that was going on. By 1931 had the Soviets not settled on using the Mosin-Nagant as their sniping rifle? I'm not a student of the M-N, but IIRC the first PE/PEM scopes we see are dated 1931? So perhaps by the time the movie was made, these Ross and P14 models were no longer under consideration and effectively just experimental "left-overs" which could be used without divulging any secrets.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
As in my previous, we don't know exactly why they were using Rosses (and P14s), but we can hypothesize. One other reason the Ross is suitable for sniping is that the straight-pull action requires less obvious movement to operate the bolt, in particular no need to raise the hand/arm to rotate the bolt. A good deal of work was done at RSAF Enfield to develop a straight-pull sniping rifle, apparently just for this reason. To use the Ross action was of course "politically unacceptable" :D
IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canada, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.
It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.
Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West
H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. :D It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.
Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.
As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!
One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.
I doubt if the Soviets would consider any rifle for sniping other than the M91/30. They would have to tool up to produce a foreign rifle and why bother when they were happy with the M91/30? They had the tooling, jigs and trained workforce. Look at the simplicity of the bolt compared to the rifles used by other armies. If anything, it could have been modernized to have an internal staggered magazine but that would mean they would have two types of M91 rifles (logistics nightmare). The use of the Ross in Timoshenko's flick was only as a prop as a scoped rifle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Surpmil
By 1916 the Canadians replaced the Ross with SMLEs. The exception were the sniper rifles. Snipers were trained or expected to take care of their rifles and could be entrusted with the Ross which remained in limited service as a sniper rifle. As mentioned in an earlier post, upon reflection it is more likely that the Ross sniper rifles were not supplied to the White Russians but used by the Canadians themselves in Siberia. The British War Ministry would have no say on what the Canadians used or could take to Siberia.Quote:
IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canada, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.
The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.
It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.
Too bad Clive Law crossed the Styx. I'd love to hear his insights.
While we both agree that there was plenty of exchange between the Reichswehr and the People's and Peasant's Army of the Soviet Union, there is still no evidence that the Reichswher provided sniping instruction. Besides lack of documentation, sniping itself was not taught in the Reichswher for which its own infantry emphasized marksmanship with iron sights. Budget for the Reichswehr was limited so sniping was a low priority. Additionally we see Soviet modernization effort in aviation and armor (and very little in the way of naval development in the '20s) and chemical warfare. The Soviet Union was poor nation and modernization for the Soviets meant more so in bigger equipment. Infantry training certainly improved with German assistance, but would the Germans teach sniping when they weren't teaching it to their own soldats? Unlikely. Last it was Yagoda's NKVD that provided the funds for scoped rifle development and not the Red Army. Yagoda could tell us about NKVD interest in sniping but he himself was executed so he had no memoirs and left only a confession (probably beatened out of him). Those scoped rifles went to the NKVD border guards.Quote:
Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.
Sniping wasn't considered important in the post-war Reichswher and if there was no program, why would they instruct the Soviets? The lack of post-war interest in sniping is evident in the Germans, like the Western Allies, decommissioning of sniper rifles by removing the scopes and scope bases and restoring them to original configurations. The Reichswehr sold the scopes to soldiers and the West to civilians. Some WW I rifles did survive (in both Germany and the West) that were pressed into service in WW II. Hans von Seeckt was more interested in improving the individual quality of the soldier such that it would allow for rapid expansion.
Touring of sniping schools did not happen in the inter-war periods. I don't think anyone operated a sniper school in the interwar era (except in the '30s when the Soviets operated their own training program). Great Depression was a global thing and even the US Army's ammunition budget was halved one year. The Soviets were a pariah nation and no military would cooperate with them. However, as you suggested, it is likely that happened during WW I with the possibility of Tsarist Russian Officers observers being sent to the West.
While I concur that the Soviets could have gotten Hesketh Prichard's book in the '20s, there wasn't much published in the way of Great War sniping literature. McBride's A Rifleman Went to War wasn't published until 1935 so that it could not have been used to write the first manual. It may have been picked up subsequently and studied. I wonder if the Russian Army has a library where sniping literature may be hidden at? The Russian State Library is in St. Petersburg but darn if I'm going there. Like our Library of Congress, it's a very pretty place.
Concur that the purges harmed the Red Army's professional officer class. What Churchill says still applies to them: a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I'm unsure what role Morozov may have played if any in sniper development. His name doesn't appear on the first manual (1933). In 1942 the Soviets were hanging on by their fingernails and wanted desperately for the British and Americans to open a second front to relieve them. Propaganda was used to buoy morale, encourage the Western Allies and to demoralize the enemy.Quote:
As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West.
Quite right that the Soviets were loathe to attribute anything useful to the decadent Western capitalist society (how they viewed us). They could have obtained Parker's biography of Hesketh Prichard and their own manual does promote snipers to work in teams. Hesketh-Prichard's book is valuable for the "mindset" it teaches a sniper.Quote:
H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. :D It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.
Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.
I agree that P14 used in the movie was a real prop gun. That band/strap on the stock doesn't exist on the normal P-14. Also the range knob is canted, suggesting that the scope is offset. IMO, it was Mikhail-Mouse installation built by a prop maker. For props, they would have been better off making wood mounting blocks and gluing it onto the receiver but the Soviet viewer is unlikely to have known enough back then to discern the difference.Quote:
As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!
One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.
We need a foreign scope expert to ID that scope or at least verify that a long eye relief scope of that type was available in 1931. I bet it wasn't a long eye relief scope though and if it was, it was the prototype to Jeff Cooper's Scout Rifle concept. :D
I also suspect that the movie may have been released to the West (for propaganda purposes). I read one memoir where the soldier said he saw a movie and critiqued the sniper bringing a friend with him.
Are you a member of The Company of Military Historians and if so inclined to join, I'd be happy to sponsor such a well read person.
The forum’s response coding has reached its limit now, so I’ll just put my previous in italics, your replies in normal font, and my lastest responses in bold.
It seems pretty clear that these rifles represent experimentation that was going on. By 1931 had the Soviets not settled on using the Mosin-Nagant as their sniping rifle? I'm not a student of the M-N, but IIRC the first PE/PEM scopes we see are dated 1931? So perhaps by the time the movie was made, these Ross and P14 models were no longer under consideration and effectively just experimental "left-overs" which could be used without divulging any secrets.
As in my previous, we don't know exactly why they were using Rosses (and P14s), but we can hypothesize. One other reason the Ross is suitable for sniping is that the straight-pull action requires less obvious movement to operate the bolt, in particular no need to raise the hand/arm to rotate the bolt. A good deal of work was done at RSAF Enfield to develop a straight-pull sniping rifle, apparently just for this reason. To use the Ross action was of course "politically unacceptable"
I doubt if the Soviets would consider any rifle for sniping other than the M91/30. They would have to tool up to produce a foreign rifle and why bother when they were happy with the M91/30? They had the tooling, jigs and trained workforce. Look at the simplicity of the bolt compared to the rifles used by other armies. If anything, it could have been modernized to have an internal staggered magazine but that would mean they would have two types of M91 rifles (logistics nightmare). The use of the Ross in Timoshenko's flick was only as a prop as a scoped rifle.
Yes, ostensibly it would not seem wise to use a rifle for which they had no domestic supply of parts etc. On the other hand, we don’t know how many Rosses or P14s they had! It may have been tens of thousands. We don’t know a lot about where many of the Ross Mk.III rifles went after WWI; that is those that were in British service. Many went to India, but apparently not all.
Regardless, there are two questions: were the Soviets considering using the Ross officially as a sniper’s rifle in any capacity, and if they were, was it in the Red Army or only the MVD internal security forces (which were under NKVD control) The MVD constituted an elite force that AFAIK was never deployed in front line combat operations; they were the Praetorian Guard of the regime in a sense. Their needs in terms of quantities would be much smaller than the Red Army’s, and like most elite formations, their options in terms of equipment were probably wider.
I expect the Ross would have been of much more interest than the P14 for sniping purposes if only because the turn-bolt of the P14 made it no better than the M-N from a functional point of view, though the rifle’s stock design and iron sights were far superior to the M-N. (And the stock superior to the Ross as well)
But, it could well be that for the Soviets the Ross was simply a convenient and highly accurate “test-bed” on which to evaluate and develop their scope and mount designs; witness the grainy illustration which appears to show an early side rail mount, but with a Zeiss Zeilvier instead of a PE series scope. That would tend to suggest work done before the PE scopes were available, but the mount is not one imported from Germany, though it could be said to be inspired by German designs.
Apparently the Rosses didn’t all go in the smelters or to the front during WWII, even though old junk like Berdan rifles did in late 1941. And as we all recall Rosses showed up again as the Soviet running deer rifles in the 1956 Olympics, so they certainly weren’t entirely forgotten either.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen the bolt of the M-N as “simple” compared to the Lee Enfield or P14!
IIRC the CEF turned in most of their small arms before leaving the Continent or the U.K. in 1919. Probably some SMLE's and Rosses were brought back to Canadaicon, but I suspect all the SMLE snipers were returned to U.K. stores from where they had been issued. There is no record of them being in Canada post-WWI, unlike the Ross-Warner & Swasey rifles and scopes which were in store here until WWII (except for WWI losses of course). Most of the sniping rifles used by the C.E.F./Canadian Corps were Rosses fitted with Winchester A5 scopes by Canadian armourers; the scopes being purchased directly and possibly supplied from UK purchases as well. AFAWK, except for some examples in museums, the Rosses with A5 scopes were scrapped after WWI.
The Canadian Dept. of Militia & Defence would have had no part in deciding what the British War Department sent to Russia unless such weapons came from Canadian sources and there is no evidence that any did.
It is unlikely that any Ross sniper rifles accompanied the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, (sent at British request) and even more unlikely that any such arms were handed over to the White Army. Certainly not the Warner & Swasey rifles as we have precise counts for those.
By 1916 the Canadians replaced the Ross with SMLEs. The exception were the sniper rifles. Snipers were trained or expected to take care of their rifles and could be entrusted with the Ross which remained in limited service as a sniper rifle. As mentioned in an earlier post, upon reflection it is more likely that the Ross sniper rifles were not supplied to the White Russians but used by the Canadians themselves in Siberia. The British War Ministry would have no say on what the Canadians used or could take to Siberia.
Too bad Clive Law crossed the Styx. I'd love to hear his insights.
R.I.P.
Well, let's think about this: if the Red Army began to study sniping in the early 1920s, and received training or at least training materials from the Reichswehr, we can be pretty sure they being both thorough and untrusting of "imperialist" states like Weimar Germany, would also do their own research. That research would naturally involve first all the open-source material available, of which H-P's book was the most well-known and detailed, though not the only by any means. So logically they had those books in hand by the mid-20s at the latest. As I mentioned, it's quite possible that materials on sniping were provided to Imperial Russian military missions and attachés during WWI. Touring sniping schools was a popular diversion for senior officers and foreign guests etc. after all. Considerable effort was put into helping the Russian Army before the Bolshevik coup in October 1917; I expect we provided them with all sorts of training and tactical materials and instructional manuals etc. Quite possible that the Bolsheviks acquired those materials after they took over, and by the early 1920s would have had time to start digesting such materials.
While we both agree that there was plenty of exchange between the Reichswehr and the People's and Peasant's Army of the Soviet Union, there is still no evidence that the Reichswher provided sniping instruction. Besides lack of documentation, sniping itself was not taught in the Reichswher for which its own infantry emphasized marksmanship with iron sights. Budget for the Reichswehr was limited so sniping was a low priority. Additionally we see Soviet modernization effort in aviation and armor (and very little in the way of naval development in the '20s) and chemical warfare. The Soviet Union was poor nation and modernization for the Soviets meant more so in bigger equipment. Infantry training certainly improved with German assistance, but would the Germans teach sniping when they weren't teaching it to their own soldats? Unlikely. Last it was Yagoda's NKVD that provided the funds for scoped rifle development and not the Red Army. Yagoda could tell us about NKVD interest in sniping but he himself was executed so he had no memoirs and left only a confession (probably beatened out of him). Those scoped rifles went to the NKVD border guards.
No definitive proof as yet that is true; only logical deduction. Doubtful that swine such a Yagoda had much interest in such matters; they were too busy manoeuvring within the state and party apparatus. Besides, these developments were well underway before Yagoda had any role in the OGPU/NKVD. Incidentally, have a look at his wiki biography and note his taste for pornography etc. and the strange bruises and marks on his "adopted daughter"!
What evidence is there that sniping was not taught in the Reichswehr? The rifles were there, we know that from photos if nothing else. It was an army known for thoroughness; are we to believe rifles were issued without the men being trained to use them? Its priority level is debatable, but I doubt the German Army had forgotten the lessons it taught the Allies in WWI.
One should remember that for example, the mechanized and armoured forces of the German Army were the creation of a small group of “tank enthusiasts” such as Guderian, who frankly admitted their intellectual debt to Fuller and the other British “tank enthusiasts” of WWI and the interwar period; not the German General Staff as a whole. The difference was that Hitler soon forced the army leadership to allocate resources to armoured warfare, whereas Fuller and those like him in the British Army had no such advocate, or at least not one who could overcome the fanatical resistance of the “Equine Tammany Hall” who in Fuller's phrase, dominated the senior officer corps.
The Reichswehr remained a highly conservative organization, philosophically and militarily, but not to the extent of obtusity. It is to the credit of the German senior officer corps that having seen the armour advocates proved right in 1939/40, almost all of them became convinced and cooperative, unlike the ____________s who continued to predominate in the British high commands, who despite being decisively defeated in 1940, and having the lesson repeated several times by Rommel in the desert made a sort of perverse virtue out of muddling on in the usual way as though refusing to adapt to circumstances, at the cost of uncounted thousands of lives and very nearly the war itself, was evidence of some sort of moral victory. Not for nothing did Fuller remark that “there are two truly conservative institutions in the world: the Catholic Church and the British Army”! Not that other armies in the Anglosphere don’t have such people as well, to say nothing of the French Army, though Fuller thought them very quick to adapt new ideas so that may be an unfair comment.
The point of all that is, that the high command of the Reichswehr were not the types to be hypnotized by mechanization and automatic weapons to the exclusion of sniping, nor did they have any philosophical reasons for abandoning the lessons of the Great War; quite the reverse in fact. Their highly developed training and instinctive thoroughness predisposed them to use whatever was useful, and sniping which every officer who served at the front in WWI would remember was highly effective, would be as much a part of that as mortars, machine guns etc. If anything they might have been predisposed to exaggerate its effectiveness, given that trench warfare was almost an ideal scenario for sniping. Armies are perpetually and inevitably preparing to fight the previous war as we know.
As for the poverty of the Soviets in the 20s and 30s, they were well able to find money for what the regime wanted, even at the cost of millions of lives. Sniping is a force-multiplier, perhaps the most potent conventional one to this very day in terms of efficacy and economy. That alone could explain much of the Soviet interest.
Sniping wasn't considered important in the post-war Reichswher and if there was no program, why would they instruct the Soviets? The lack of post-war interest in sniping is evident in the Germans, like the Western Allies, decommissioning of sniper rifles by removing the scopes and scope bases and restoring them to original configurations. The Reichswehr sold the scopes to soldiers and the West to civilians. Some WW I rifles did survive (in both Germany and the West) that were pressed into service in WW II. Hans von Seeckt was more interested in improving the individual quality of the soldier such that it would allow for rapid expansion.
I see no evidence of any loss of interest; merely a possible conflict of resources and the dramatic force and weapon reductions mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. There are photos of optical equipment being broken up post-war for example. But anyone who knows the Germans knows they found as many ways as possible to evade and conceal, and which country would not in that situation?
Do we see a sudden influx of ex-military scopes on the German market in the 1920s? Such scopes are seen in civilian mounts, but no more than one could ascribe to soldier souvenirs etc. Many a sniper took his scope home with him if he could in every country - except of course for those who never wanted to see such things again...
Touring of sniping schools did not happen in the inter-war periods. I don't think anyone operated a sniper school in the interwar era (except in the '30s when the Soviets operated their own training program). Great Depression was a global thing and even the US Army's ammunition budget was halved one year. The Soviets were a pariah nation and no military would cooperate with them. However, as you suggested, it is likely that happened during WW I with the possibility of Tsarist Russian Officers observers being sent to the West.
I’m not making any reference there to the inter-war period; the schools were long gone as most were in France, though there were some in the USA and Britain, but highly unlikely that any survived the massive demob and force reductions in the UK. As we know from subsequent histories, most of the innovative minds left the services in the interwar period and the usual mental rut-runners made haste to put things back as they were before the war. There are books written about these people and the harm they do. “Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier”, and “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence” for example.
While I concur that the Soviets could have gotten Hesketh Prichard's book in the '20s, there wasn't much published in the way of Great War sniping literature. McBride's A Rifleman Went to War wasn't published until 1935 so that it could not have been used to write the first manual. It may have been picked up subsequently and studied. I wonder if the Russian Army has a library where sniping literature may be hidden at? The Russian State Library is in St. Petersburg but darn if I'm going there. Like our Library of Congress, it's a very pretty place.
As you may know, Stalin's purges more or less destroyed the officer corps of the Red Army in the late 1930s, so those who oversaw developments in the 1920s and up to the mid 1930s, were mostly dead or imprisoned after 1937. True, some survivors were released from the Gulag to fight, such as Marshal Rokossovsky who emerged minus some finger nails, but I'm not sure how many overall. As far as I can tell, Gen. Morozov/Morozoff may have been a senior officer on the Northern Front in 1942, and he may have been cited in the article because he had something to do with the development of Red Army sniper doctrines, or just because he had an aristocratic sounding name that might have been thought to resonate better in the West.
Concur that the purges harmed the Red Army's professional officer class. What Churchill says still applies to them: a riddle wrapped in an enigma. I'm unsure what role Morozov may have played if any in sniper development. His name doesn't appear on the first manual (1933). In 1942 the Soviets were hanging on by their fingernails and wanted desperately for the British and Americans to open a second front to relieve them. Propaganda was used to buoy morale, encourage the Western Allies and to demoralize the enemy.
Yes, that was my point there. A Morozov may have played some part as a relatively junior officer in Red Army sniping developments, but without access to their archives we’ll never know.
As for Churchill’s comment, it reflects two things, an incapacity or lack of interest in understanding the history and psychology of the country and their reflexive secrecy. And perhaps also a certain inconsistency in policy seeing as it was always largely at the arbitrary whim of a more or less absolute ruler and could therefore change abruptly and dramatically in ways that appeared "mysterious" to the outsider.
H-P's book may have played a notable part in the development of Red Army sniping doctrines, but the Red Army hung by a Lend-Lease thread in 1942 and it was wise to be polite to temporary allies like us. It was never Soviet custom to admit any technical debt to "imperialists", so it's doubtful such an "interview" was ever published in the Russian-language press in the USSR. No one in the West would quibble about that in 1942 either.
Not to say that H-P's book was of no value, but it is a general interest review of the subject after all. As much or more interesting material is found in Eric Parker's biography of H-P, which the Soviet's "friends" in the West had also no doubt purchased on their behalf, along with whatever else was thought potentially useful. One point that suggests some influence is the Red Army doctrine of snipers working in pairs, which AFAIK was never the German practice.
Quite right that the Soviets were loathe to attribute anything useful to the decadent Western capitalist society (how they viewed us). They could have obtained Parker's biography of Hesketh Prichard and their own manual does promote snipers to work in teams. Hesketh-Prichard's book is valuable for the "mindset" it teaches a sniper.
As for the P14 in the movie it appears the scope is a long eye-relief model set forward of the boltway perhaps to address the perpetual problem of loading the magazine with a scope in the way, but looking more closely it is probably just something made up for the movie to contrast with what the hero using. Straps have never worked well as a method of holding scopes onto rifles!
One of the few advantages of the Winchester A5 was that it could be slid forward in the mounts to allow the Ross to be clip loaded.
I agree that P14 used in the movie was a real prop gun. That band/strap on the stock doesn't exist on the normal P-14. Also the range knob is canted, suggesting that the scope is offset. IMO, it was Mikhail-Mouse installation built by a prop maker. For props, they would have been better off making wood mounting blocks and gluing it onto the receiver but the Soviet viewer is unlikely to have known enough back then to discern the difference.
We need a foreign scope expert to ID that scope or at least verify that a long eye relief scope of that type was available in 1931. I bet it wasn't a long eye relief scope though and if it was, it was the prototype to Jeff Cooper's Scout Rifle concept.
As it’s only a movie, the actor doesn’t even need to be able to see through it, much less get a proper field of view.
I also suspect that the movie may have been released to the West (for propaganda purposes). I read one memoir where the soldier said he saw a movie and critiqued the sniper bringing a friend with him.
Was it released in the West and if so when? Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing likely to have been in the theatres here.
Are you a member of The Company of Military Historians and if so inclined to join, I'd be happy to sponsor such a well read person.
No, but thanks for the offer. Will look into that idea.
There is one other possible source of Russian/Soviet interest in this matter and that is among those Russians who served in the Russian expeditionary force in France in WWI and may have received training or at least visited schools etc. They certainly would have experienced German sniping in the West, but then they did to a perhaps even greater degree on what we call the Eastern Front, since the Germans and Austrians had no serious counter-snipers to contend with and tended to “get away with murder” from what I’ve read, though the impact of that experience on the military leadership is debatable given their well-known indifference to losses, and the fatalism and endurance of the soldiery.
I seriously doubt if any consideration was given to the Ross rifle. While its straight pull bolt was easy to operate, that it jammed made it less reliable. As for the P14 rifle, why bother even considering it? Retooling, manufacture of jigs, training of workforce all mitigate against a new foreign design instead of the M91/30.Quote:
Regardless, there are two questions: were the Soviets considering using the Ross officially as a sniper’s rifle in any capacity, and if they were, was it in the Red Army or only the MVD internal security forces (which were under NKVD control) The MVD constituted an elite force that AFAIK was never deployed in front line combat operations; they were the Praetorian Guard of the regime in a sense. Their needs in terms of quantities would be much smaller than the Red Army’s, and like most elite formations, their options in terms of equipment were probably wider.
I expect the Ross would have been of much more interest than the P14 for sniping purposes if only because the turn-bolt of the P14 made it no better than the M-N from a functional point of view, though the rifle’s stock design and iron sights were far superior to the M-N. (And the stock superior to the Ross as well)
But, it could well be that for the Soviets the Ross was simply a convenient and highly accurate “test-bed” on which to evaluate and develop their scope and mount designs; witness the grainy illustration which appears to show an early side rail mount, but with a Zeiss Zeilvier instead of a PE series scope. That would tend to suggest work done before the PE scopes were available, but the mount is not one imported from Germanyicon, though it could be said to be inspired by German designs.
Apparently the Rosses didn’t all go in the smelters or to the front during WWII, even though old junk like Berdan rifles did in late 1941. And as we all recall Rosses showed up again as the Soviet running deer rifles in the 1956 Olympics, so they certainly weren’t entirely forgotten either.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen the bolt of the M-N as “simple” compared to the Lee Enfield or P14!
The PE scope was not available when Sniper was filmed in 1931. Even if the PE scope was developed earlier and in time for the film, I question whether the Soviets would allow new technology to make a screen debut. State secret? Finally regarding the movie, you do raise a valid question as to the film's distribution outside of the Soviet Union. Are you aware of any other WW I or interwar movie about snipers; especially those in the West?
As to simplicity of the M91/30 bolt to the P14, just look at the number of parts and ability of the soldier to disassemble it. I've disassembled the K98 and 03 bolt but never tried a Lee-Enfield (lemme check the manuals).
Logical deduction and hard evidence are two different things. You may well be correct but per Whacker's book, German Sniper Rifles, there were no Reichswehr sniping schools in the interwar era. The old tradition of giving the scoped rifle to the best shot in the company prevailed. The only thing the soldier was taught was how to maintain it and to adjust it for distances.Quote:
No definitive proof as yet that is true; only logical deduction. Doubtful that swine such a Yagoda had much interest in such matters; they were too busy manoeuvring within the state and party apparatus. Besides, these developments were well underway before Yagoda had any role in the OGPU/NKVD. Incidentally, have a look at his wiki biography and note his taste for pornography etc. and the strange bruises and marks on his "adopted daughter"!
What evidence is there that sniping was not taught in the Reichswehr? The rifles were there, we know that from photos if nothing else. It was an army known for thoroughness; are we to believe rifles were issued without the men being trained to use them? Its priority level is debatable, but I doubt the German Army had forgotten the lessons it taught the Allies in WWI.
While the Soviets may have had enthusiasm, they lacked equipment and they'd have to be iron sighted snipers since Soviet optics were not available until the PE scope was developed. Similarly, a shortage of rifles in the early World War II compelled the United States, Britain and Australia to resort to iron sighted rifles for training purposes. The aforementioned acquisition of German scopes allowed the NKVD Border Guards to have scoped rifles, but not the Red Army. That had to wait.
Absent a memoir or documentation proving contrary to that, I'll stand by Whacker that the Reichswehr did not operate sniping schools. The Reichswher had more important things to do. Von Seeckt wanted every private to be able to function as a sergeant, every sergeant to be able to perform the duties of a Hauptman, etc.Quote:
One should remember that for example, the mechanized and armoured forces of the German Army were the creation of a small group of “tank enthusiasts” such as Guderian, who frankly admitted their intellectual debt to Fuller and the other British “tank enthusiasts” of WWI and the interwar period; not the German General Staff as a whole. The difference was that Hitler soon forced the army leadership to allocate resources to armoured warfare, whereas Fuller and those like him in the British Army had no such advocate, or at least not one who could overcome the fanatical resistance of the “Equine Tammany Hall” who in Fuller's phrase, dominated the senior officer corps.
The Reichswehr remained a highly conservative organization, philosophically and militarily, but not to the extent of obtusity. It is to the credit of the German senior officer corps that having seen the armour advocates proved right in 1939/40, almost all of them became convinced and cooperative, unlike the ____________s who continued to predominate in the British high commands, who despite being decisively defeated in 1940, and having the lesson repeated several times by Rommel in the desert made a sort of perverse virtue out of muddling on in the usual way as though refusing to adapt to circumstances, at the cost of uncounted thousands of lives and very nearly the war itself, was evidence of some sort of moral victory. Not for nothing did Fuller remark that “there are two truly conservative institutions in the world: the Catholic Church and the British Army”! Not that other armies in the Anglosphere don’t have such people as well, to say nothing of the Frenchicon Army, though Fuller thought them very quick to adapt new ideas so that may be an unfair comment.
The point of all that is, that the high command of the Reichswehr were not the types to be hypnotized by mechanization and automatic weapons to the exclusion of sniping, nor did they have any philosophical reasons for abandoning the lessons of the Great War; quite the reverse in fact. Their highly developed training and instinctive thoroughness predisposed them to use whatever was useful, and sniping which every officer who served at the front in WWI would remember was highly effective, would be as much a part of that as mortars, machine guns etc. If anything they might have been predisposed to exaggerate its effectiveness, given that trench warfare was almost an ideal scenario for sniping. Armies are perpetually and inevitably preparing to fight the previous war as we know.
As for the poverty of the Soviets in the 20s and 30s, they were well able to find money for what the regime wanted, even at the cost of millions of lives. Sniping is a force-multiplier, perhaps the most potent conventional one to this very day in terms of efficacy and economy. That alone could explain much of the Soviet interest.
We had talked about foreign designs and the Soviets earlier. In hindsight, the Soviets did not automatically reject foreign designs. The Vickers 6 ton tank became the T-26, the Christie fast tank became the BT series of tanks (later evolving into the A20, T-32 and later T-34), Some of those multi-turret Soviets tanks were influenced by British designs. For ships, the Tsarist Russians relied on Italian designs (those Marat type four triple turret battleships) and for the Soviets, Italian designs for cruisers.
I don't disagree with you that the Soviets were enthusiastic about sniping. They were and produced the first post WW I sniping manual in 1933 and were screening recruits for snipers during the basic induction process. This was during a period that the Western Allies (of WW I) were removing scopes and selling them for surplus. Soviets may have had a sniping program that preceded the manual, but I've found no evidence and it was only until the PE scopes were produced that they could equip their snipers with optically equipped rifles.
A. J. Whacker in his book on German Sniper Rifles asserts that while some sniper rifles were retained by the Reichswher, there was no specialized training. It was thought by the Reichswehr that sniping arose because of trench warfare and that the Reichswher did not anticipate trench warfare in the near future.Quote:
I see no evidence of any loss of interest; merely a possible conflict of resources and the dramatic force and weapon reductions mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. There are photos of optical equipment being broken up post-war for example. But anyone who knows the Germans knows they found as many ways as possible to evade and conceal, and which country would not in that situation?
Do we see a sudden influx of ex-military scopes on the German market in the 1920s? Such scopes are seen in civilian mounts, but no more than one could ascribe to soldier souvenirs etc. Many a sniper took his scope home with him if he could in every country - except of course for those who never wanted to such things again...
The scopes were sold as surplus in the 1930s, not the '20s when the Reichswher began converting then back to normal configuration. Instructions were issued on how unit armorers were to accomplish this. This practice was stopped in 1935.
Very possible for Tsarist officers to visit the Western Front and see the schools, but lets not discount that the Tsarist Russians experienced German sniping on their own front too. Hence their development of their own periscope rifle. This is largely a counter measure and the nature of a periscope rifle makes it less steady than a nornal scoped rifle. Even if Tsarist officers did learn about sniping from visiting a school, would any of them survive the purge of the Tsarist officers or later White Russian officers after the revolution? Unless they defected to the Reds, their chances of survival was slim. Heck, even if they turned Red, their chances of surviving a pre-war purge was also slim. Purges, it's what the commies do well. :DQuote:
There is one other possible source of Russian/Soviet interest in this matter and that is among those Russians who served in the Russian expeditionary force in France in WWI and may have received training or at least visited schools etc. They certainly would have experienced German sniping in the West, but then they did to a perhaps even greater degree on what we call the Eastern Front, since the Germans and Austrians had no serious counter-snipers to contend with and tended to “get away with murder” from what I’ve read, though the impact of that experience on the military leadership is debatable given their well-known indifference to losses, and the fatalism and endurance of the soldiery.
Jamming issue is a subject in itself; no space for that here except to say the design like all straight pulls lacks the leverage advantage of a turn-bolt, but as long as dimensions and case quality are maintained it's not a problem. The Soviets would have had no trouble figuring all that out; they were already well familiar with captured Steyr-Mannlichers. The rifles were retained for sniping in the CEF right to the end of the war, and according to Frank Iriam whose book you would probably find interesting, Ross Mk.IIIs were supplied new from the factory into 1918. We know from photos they were used with and without scopes as the factory iron sights were considered good enough by some.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
The Lee Enfield is even simpler than the Mauser actions such as the Springfield. Ross Mk.III is pretty simple too, though machining is somewhat complex. Not that it matters much as soldiers were not supposed to take them apart in any case.
No, am not aware of any movies or docs dealing with the subject in the interwar period.
Does Whacker make a definite statement to that effect based on records he cites?Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
When you say "were not available" you mean they were not on issue to the Red Army? Probably not beyond experimental purposes, as the OGPU/NKVD would get priority if they wanted it. Probably there was a certain amount of overlap between the Red Army and "the Organs [of state security]" as they were called. What the Red Army may have begun, may have been adopted by the Organs or vice-versa. That all remains to be determined.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
Yes, I was suggesting the PEM scopes would not appear in film being new and secret and therefore the experimental stuff could be used as it was now effectively obsolete.
Whacker may be right, but of course, but even if there is some documentary evidence that such schools were not operated, one has to remember that until the repudiation of Versailles, a degree of duality or pretense was maintained internally as well as externally that Germany was conforming to the Treaty requirements, when in fact of course she was not; the bases in Russia being the most glaring example. What happened in Russia (probably) stayed in Russia" :D That would be no more than obvious and customary military secrecy. Those who need to know do, and the rest don't, at least not officially. ;) Just something to bear in mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
Who was removing and selling scopes in the 1930s? The British Empire and Commonwealth was fielding the P14 with Patt.18 scope in limited numbers, and the selling off of the UK's WWI scopes was long over by then. You'll see that Skennertion refers to the proposal that the better WWI Aldis scopes be kept in store for possible future reuse, but we can see from the miscellaneous scopes fitted to the 421 Alex Martin P14 conversions done in 1940-41 that they almost certainly were not. And if further evidence was needed, many of those better Aldis No.3 and 4 scopes showed up in the 1920s and 30s being fitted to sporting rifles by leading gunmakers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
I believe the USA dumped the Warner & Swasey scopes in the 1920s judging by the advertising of them for sale, though they probably were available from dealers into the 1930s as even at $7.50 a piece they apparently didn't sell very well! ;)
I haven't read Whacker, but if he documents that then that is an interesting angle, perhaps suggesting that by the early 30s sniping was indeed being forgotten and considered passé in the Reichswehr. Is there any evidence that the scope and mount combination fielded by the Reichswehr after WWI was being disposed of at that time? If not, that might suggest merely that WWI rifles, or just scopes, that had been kept hidden from Versailles-mandated destruction through the 1920s, were by the early 30s considered to be no longer needed and could therefore be sold off? Sometimes such decisions are made by "one hand" while "the other hand" doesn't know what is going on, and depression-era economy or fund-raising may have been a part of that as the Depression hit Germany very hard in the early 1930s. Could be that some were sold from some military districts/departments and not from others. One would have to know exactly how such things were organized and controlled in Germany at that time. We do know that at least some Gew98 SSG's were still in store well into WWII because Waffen SS formations were equipped with them at that time..Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
I was referring to those Russians who actually served in the Russian force sent to fight in France - it's not a well known episode of the war in the Anglosphere. Russian Expeditionary Force in France - WikipediaQuote:
Originally Posted by Riter
He does make that statement, but unfortunately does not cite his sources.Quote:
Does Whacker make a definite statement to that effect based on records he cites?
Until the PE was produced, there were no issued scope or scopes in the Red Army. Only the NKVD had scopes and all of them were ordered from Germany.Quote:
When you say "were not available" you mean they were not on issue to the Red Army? Probably not beyond experimental purposes, as the OGPU/NKVD would get priority if they wanted it. Probably there was a certain amount of overlap between the Red Army and "the Organs [of state security]" as they were called. What the Red Army may have begun, may have been adopted by the Organs or vice-versa. That all remains to be determined.
Concur, but the PE and later PEM scopes weren't in production until after the film was made.Quote:
Yes, I was suggesting the PEM scopes would not appear in film being new and secret and therefore the experimental stuff could be used as it was now effectively obsolete.
Great Depression. Who had $7.50 for an old surplus scope back then? Feed the family first.Quote:
Whacker may be right, but of course, but even if there is some documentary evidence that such schools were not operated, one has to remember that until the repudiation of Versailles, a degree of duality or pretense was maintained internally as well as externally that Germanyicon was conforming to the Treaty requirements, when in fact of course she was not; the bases in Russiaicon being the most glaring example. What happened in Russia (probably) stayed in Russia" That would be no more than obvious and customary military secrecy. Those who need to know do, and the rest don't, at least not officially. Just something to bear in mind.
Who was removing and selling scopes in the 1930s? The British Empire and Commonwealth was fielding the P14 with Patt.18 scope in limited numbers, and the selling off of the UK's WWI scopes was long over by then. You'll see that Skennertion refers to the proposal that the better WWI Aldis scopes be kept in store for possible future reuse, but we can see from the miscellaneous scopes fitted to the 421 Alex Martin P14 conversions done in 1940-41 that they almost certainly were not. And if further evidence was needed, many of those better Aldis No.3 and 4 scopes showed up in the 1920s and 30s being fitted to sporting rifles by leading gunmakers.
I believe the USAicon dumped the Warner & Swasey scopes in the 1920s judging by the advertising of them for sale, though they probably were available from dealers into the 1930s as even at $7.50 a piece they apparently didn't sell very well!
Re-check Skennerton. The British & Australians were removing scopes. We know the US Army was discarding their Warner & Swasey too. The cash strapped USMC didn't get rid of sh*t and pressed those Winchester A5 and Lyman 5As into service during WW II).
Yes. I happen to have a receiver where the scope was removed and a dovetail piece of metal installed in the space. It was re-proofed afterward. I'll check with Kareen & Steves if they say anything about it. It should be noted that like in the British and Canadian and American Marine Corps, there were survivors that were pressed into service in WW 2.Quote:
I haven't read Whacker, but if he documents that then that is an interesting angle, perhaps suggesting that by the early 30s sniping was indeed being forgotten and considered passé in the Reichswehr. Is there any evidence that the scope and mount combination fielded by the Reichswehr after WWI was being disposed of at that time? If not, that might suggest merely that WWI rifles, or just scopes, that had been kept hidden from Versailles-mandated destruction through the 1920s, were by the early 30s considered to be no longer needed and could therefore be sold off? Sometimes such decisions are made by "one hand" while "the other hand" doesn't know what is going on, and depression-era economy or fund-raising may have been a part of that as the Depression hit Germany very hard in the early 1930s. Could be that some were sold from some military districts/departments and not from others. One would have to know exactly how such things were organized and controlled in Germany at that time. We do know that at least some Gew98 SSG's were still in store well into WWII because Waffen SS formations were equipped with them at that time..
Thanks. Unware of Russians being sent to the West.Quote:
I was referring to those Russians who actually served in the Russian force sent to fight in Franceicon - it's not a well known episode of the war in the Anglosphere. Russian Expeditionary Force in France - Wikipedia
OK.Quote:
Whacker may be right, but of course, but even if there is some documentary evidence that such schools were not operated, one has to remember that until the repudiation of Versailles, a degree of duality or pretense was maintained internally as well as externally that Germanyicon was conforming to the Treaty requirements, when in fact of course she was not; the bases in Russiaicon being the most glaring example. What happened in Russia (probably) stayed in Russia" That would be no more than obvious and customary military secrecy. Those who need to know do, and the rest don't, at least not officially. Just something to bear in mind.
The information about the Russian and Polish forces on the Western front was really interesting.
Of course, AFAWK we're only talking about experimental work until the PE is settled on circa 1931Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
My copy is well-thumbed; no mention of scopes being sold in the 1930s that I can recall. Do you have a reference?Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
It's really a shame the US didn't do better for scopes in both wars and Korea: B&L had a fairly close relationship with Zeiss until the USA entered WWI and afterwards they produced good stuff. It wasn't like the basic design of a good straight tube scope was any great mystery, nor protected by patents etc. Noske was producing a good product that could have been brought up to milspec, and of course the Lymans could easily have been improved as well. Remember how the Ordnance Department approached Goerz in about 1915 asking permission to copy one of their designs, but when refused they seemed to lose all interest and just carried on with those bizarre W&S door-stops!? (Give them their due though: they fielded the first range-estimating reticule AFAIK)
I can only ascribe the neglect to cultural factors in the end; defects might be a better term, same as the U.K., though the No.32 had the great advantage over all competitors of positive indexing of the drums. Why the PE series never had that I don't know, but can only guess they felt it would not function well in extreme cold., though there is no evidence in the remaining early scopes of the idea ever being tried except for those silly little thumb screws copied from Zeiss. Maybe something in the Russian-language literature on that? The spring-loaded lever acting on the drum knurling that Busch used might have been the best: simple and easily defrosted being external; bit tricky to use one-handed though. Best might have been something that could have been disengaged completely if desired. The advantage of the No.32 no one else seemed to grasp at the time was putting the markings where they could be seen from the prone position! Did the Germans ever learn that lesson? Soviets got it for the PU, and indexing finally came with the PSO-1 circa 1960. But then the No32 never had to function at -30 with windchill either. ;)
You mean a WWI fitting or a Reichswehr one?Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
"In 1921, the Small Arms Commitee ordered that all SMLE rifles be sent to Weedon for parts cannibalisation and scrapping. It is recorded that 9,788 of these rifles were stripped, their telescopes and mounts removed. Many sighs were sold surplus and adopted for sporting rifles; these may be encoutnered with range drums re-graduated for another cartridge."Quote:
My copy is well-thumbed; no mention of scopes being sold in the 1930s that I can recall. Do you have a reference?
It's really a shame the US didn't do better for scopes in both wars and Korea: B&L had a fairly close relationship with Zeiss until the USAicon entered WWI and afterwards they produced good stuff. It wasn't like the basic design of a good straight tube scope was any great mystery, nor protected by patents etc. Noske was producing a good product that could have been brought up to milspec, and of course the Lymans could easily have been improved as well.
On the same page Skennerton writes:
"Because the SMLE sniper rifle had all been broken up after the Great War, assorted sights from store were reconditioned and fitted to the No. 3 Mk 1* rifles by Alexander Martin in Glasgow, Scotland. These became known as the Rifle No. 3 Mk 1* T(A), the 'A' suffix indicating 'Aldis'
Quotes are from Skennerton, British Empire Sniper Rifles (Small Arms Identification Series No. 22), page 13.
You're quite right in that a nation with over a century and a half experience with scoped rifles did so poorly in WW II. The USMC was broke and pressed the Winchester A5/Lyman 5A into service along with some Unertls. Fear of the return spring catching in the brush meant they were removed, requiring the user to pull the scope back for a follow up shot; unnecessary movement kills. The Army liked the Lyman Alaskan better but the Weaver 330 was available and adopted solely on that basis. Lyman weren't plentiful enough. Concur that the Noske was a better scope and came in 4X (hooray for Noske in San Pablo) and at one point it was proposed that the USMC adopt it. They didn't (as we know).
The War Department adopted the W&S pre WW I but were not the first to issue scoped rifles. The Confederacy did that with the Davidson scoped equipped British Whitworth.
My information hows the PE being adopted in 1932-3, not 1931. It was not out in time for the film. I don't see why Timoshenko couldn't have the prop department make fake scopes. Turning a lathe isn't that hard.
It was from WW I and the dovetail cut into the receiver for the front scope base was filled. It was afterwards reproofed.
Yes, that's what I referring to when I mentioned the U.K. sell-off as happening in the early 20s; all gone by probably mid-20s at the latest. A few survivors have turned up over the years just as they were apparently sold: with the mounts on and the matching bases dropped into the scope cases.
All done on the cheerful assumption that war either would not come again, or if it did something much better would either already be in hand, or could be improvised at the last minute. It has been said that insanity is the doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.:rolleyes:
What they should have done was junk the Purdey fittings and rebarrel the rest with new heavy barrels of the CLLE profile and put the rifles back into store, or else issue them to the Territorial Army units that had to make do with the P14 and fine adjustment backsight. Either way, things would have gone very differently with those 8000 odd rifles on hand in 1939-43. And it was 1943 before many units received scope-sighted rifles.
Yes, we're on the same page regarding the PE adoption and the movie etc.
So your Gew98 is a WWI fitting and the date of re-conversion is unknown?
I'll have to find the action.
I'll add a caveat to what I said in my last: instead of rebuilding the SMLE snipers with heavy barrels, another and perhaps better option would have been to refit the scopes to more P14s.
Of course stepping back even further, one could say that what was needed was a scope like Dr. Common's circa 1900 design: short, sealed and with external adjustments.
The Japanese figured this out with typical thoroughness on their Arisaka scopes: an etched reticule with aiming marks up to 1300m on the reticule; no need for any adjustments. A bit less useful in low light than thick posts and crossbars, but overall worth it for the gains probably.
Give the Soviets their due on the PE/PEM/PU they also realized you might as well put on range markings until you run out of space on the dials! What thinking was behind leaving it blank after 1000m/yds as so many scopes did?:rolleyes: Looks more tidy maybe? :lol:
Something like Dr. Common's scope with a proper reticule, a spring steel front attachment and simple zeroing screws at the rear would have been cheaper and better in every way and could have been fielded in far greater numbers, with commensurate effect on the battlefield.
Holland & Holland appear to have designed a "swing-away" type mount for the SMLE during WWI, presumably to allow clip loading of the SMLE, and that was even more necessary for the P14 of course with a five round fixed mag. I've only seen one example and don't have permission to post photos of it, so that's all that can be said about it. I may be wrong as no base has turned up: it might have been just a design intended to simplify manufacture and fitting by having a one-piece base and one-piece mount. Not sure!
In the post-WW I era, Australia made some heavy barrel target rifles with nicer sights for civilian competition. These were pressed into service as sniper rifles (unscoped) and Winchester produced P14s were retrofitted with scopes (though not as nice as the very late (or too late to see service) WW I scoped P14s. Skennerton covers this in his book (don't ask me which one this time b/c I have to go to the library and that means getting up from my arse).
Chapter 13 of World War II Snipers: The Men, Their Guns, Their Story covers a lot of the sniper rifles. You are correct in the Japanese having a great reticle; easily the most advance of the era. Images of it from the National Infantry Museum and Collection (Fort Benning) are included in it. Night shooting is always difficult and the advantage of the scope is amplification for low light shooting. I read an incident where a German coporal/squad leader was shot under very dim light conditions. According to the soldier who told me, it was likely done by a Soviet equipped a scoped rifle (I had wondered if it was done with the WW II infrared SMG that the Soviets had).
1,000 yard shots weren't that common back then. Sniping up to 400-600 meters is; something today's snipers consider as medium range. There were some long range hits, some of which were done with iron sights by old time soldiers who learned how to use their sights. I remember reading of one German officer who got his hands on a 98 Mauser (not the shorter K98k) and was having fun lobbing long range shots at the Soviets. While a comrade watched with binoculars, he figured if he aimed for the roof, bullets would be somewhat close to the unwary Soviet. It keep the Soviets from exposing themselves at one door. Not sniping but pure harassment.
@Surpmil - check out Voices of Russian Snipers by Drabkin. Andrey Ulanov writes a very good essay, Stalkers of the Enemy that constitutes Chapter 1. It covers early attempts to learn sniping in the Soviet Union.
Per Paul Tammony (who translated a couple of sniper manuals) Czarist Russia did make a handful of scopes which were issued to one regiment in WW I. They just didn't have the resources or training program to raise the proficiency of the men.
I have read what could be called a "first hand anecdote" of Russian snipers being trained in Germany. I think it was either in Sepp Allerberger's memoir or Roza Shanina's diary where there is a comment to the irony of some Soviets having been previously trained in Germany. I cannot comment about hardware, technology, etc. If it's not in the two sources I gave above, it's in a similar source. But as I said - a first hand anecdote isn't the same as documentary evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
Page 72 of Allerberger only mentions that an optics factory was supplied during the era of Weimar-Soviet cooperation. Generally the Germans went to the Soviet Union to instruct the Soviets and not the other way around. It mentions snipers working individually, in pairs and company strong units. However, these are things that the Soviets could have learned from Hesketh-Prichard (at least up to squad strength in the infantry battalion).
Re: Shanina, what copy did you read? Mogan or Walter? Please direct me to where in her diary.
I read the English translation I linked to above. It might not be there since your page 72 reference in Allerberger could very well be what I was remembering.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
equally interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
LOL @ myself. I thought you underlined and didn't realize it was a link. We read the same one then. There's actually information in her diary if you know how to interpret it. I mentioned it in my own writing and includes:Quote:
Originally Posted by ssgross
1) units she served with (bounced around so they were not a division asset)
2) joined in infantry assualts (sometimes a no-no)
3) Girls didn't have sex but women did (distinction they made among themselves)
etc.
Rather ridiculous that the Allenberger book has 2500+ reviews on Amazon and the "Voices of Russian Snipers" has precisely one. Allenberger is useful for the window it provides into the typical mentality of the type. Apparently he took up sniping as a sport with a captured Soviet rifle at the outset.
The Shanina book is poorly reviewed as being mostly a recounting of personal relationships and that of only about six months total coverage.
yes. it read like a petty juvenile's love diary more suitable as a romance novel than a historical reference...but it was interspersed with valuable details of how such a co-ed army functioned in the reality of the times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Surpmil
The regular use of exploding ammunition by the soviets and german's alike, the latter in retaliation with captured ammunition whenever available and the former as a seemingly SOP (grain of salt here given the bias of the author) I found a worthwhile detail that I hadn't read in any of the more meta-level historical account.Quote:
Originally Posted by Surpmil
I just fast forwarded thru that movie.Quote:
Originally Posted by Riter
The P14 and Ross MkIII sniper rifles are great.
I believe the apparent off set of the P14 may be an optical illusion.
There are at least 2 Ross MkIII snipers used (1 with fore stock cut at mid band, several full length stocks).
What I noticed were several shots of non-sniper Ross Mk3B rifles.
I attempted to see the front sights on the "optically sighted" Ross rifles to ascertain whether they were Canadian or British contract rifles, but all the scenes were too quick or cut off .
What was amazing was that the machine gun used was the (little known & extremely rare today) Maxim-Tokarev M1925 Light Machine Gun Maxim-Tokarev M1925 Light Machine Gun - Axis History Forum
Allerberger's book has been out for a while and Voices of Russian Snipers is relatively new. Hence the lack of reviews. As it is fresh new material, I liked it better than Voices of Snipers (released earlier in 2022). I went through the bibliography of the latter and virtually everything cited was read before. Allerberger's book has the advantage (over Shanina's) of it being written for him by Whacker who could ask questions, arrange it and present it in an interesting narrative. Shanina's diary doesn't have that and it's hardly any different from other diaries. If she had survived and used that as a basis of a book, that would be a different story.
As such, it reminds me of many Civil War diaries I read with many, many useless entries (marched 10 miles. Hardtack, salt horse and coffee for dinner or it rained all day and we struggled in the mud). There was utility in it if you knew how to interpret it. Take Civil War's 2nd USSS William Greene's Letters of a Sharpshooter. One notable Civil War historian remarked that it was nothing but a bunch o' whining letters. He's mostly right but there was one valuable tidbit. In one late 1864 letter Greene wrote, "Tell Marl to get me a telescope rifle. If I have one I can stay out of the charges." That statement made the book worthwhille because it showed a change in tactics in 1864 that recognized the utility of long range riflemen armed with specialized equipment. That wasn't the case from 1862-3 and early 1864. At Mine Run, one telescope armed sharpshooter company was ordered to charge the Confederate line. The officer who gave the command was ignorant about their nature and their equipment. They suffered some casualties from their charge. So, it's a matter of having enough knowledge to know how to interpret what is said and then to place it into the context. I tried to do this in my book WW II Snipers (not the WW II Sniper's Pocket Manual).
Regarding the use of explosive ammunition, the first incident was in 1939 when an explosive bullet hit Simo Hayha's face and disfigured him. It is strongly likely that the Soviets used them first and the Germans followed suit. Hitler's authorization to use explosive bullets was limited to the Eastern Front and the Germans made their own too. Here's a link with some good cutaway images of the German version.
https://americanshootingjournal.com/exploding-bullets/
War is hell.
I suspect the reports of explosive bullets are somewhat exaggerated as the German 7.92x57 S Patrone was often mistaken for an explosive or dum-dum round in WWI due to the "explosive" nature of the wounds it caused by its high velocity.