What do you make of this M1903MkI USMC rebuild?

[Claven2]

Springfield Research Service (SRS) A series of publications with serial numbers of known martial arms.

Thanks. Are all usmc issued rifles documented there by serial number?

[browningautorifle]

usmc issued rifles

Rifles of all patterns are described as best records of witness can. They show where the weapon was issued if possible but there are many gaps in series. Thus he says "No hit"...meaning no record of your rifle number.

[Smokeeaterpilot]

Thanks. Are all usmc issued rifles documented there by serial number?

No, the archives house between 3-5% of all government documentation. So 95-97% of documentation was destroyed before it could be stored for long term presevration.

The SRS has 3477 USMC related M1903 entries in Volume IV. I found an additional 1500ish which were not in the SRS, still finding some. But the key takeaway is the vast majority of USMC rifles will not have paperwork.

A few more things (this is going from memory). The USMC abandoned the No. 10 sights in 1935/1936 because they went from the 1906 to M1 ammunition and that changed the zero. They contracted with R F Sedgley for front sight blades of varying hieght from .035-0.45"

The USMC likely kept the front sight hoods because they were practical, but the USMC sight blades were long gone.

The USMC learned of the Hatcher Hole (which he wasn't really involved in that but that's another discussion) from the Army on how to drill it. The US Army sent over instructions of how to and what rpms the drill press should be set to. It wasn't an exclusively USMC trait the Army did it before the Marines.

The Philly Depot had a large supply of parts. In January 1942 they took an inventory of what they had down to the number of individual screws. They has 20,232 receiver assemblies in storage. So it would make sense building these into complete rifles was a priority. It would make sense if you're building a complete rifle up from a bare receiver and a lot of them. They're going to share very similar traits. Probably why "classic usmc rebuilds" all share identitical looks because they all required the same parts. But that's just a theory.

Disclaimer: This is going by memory. I have all of the USMC Quartermaster records copied (it was about 7500 documents) from 1926-1942 (everything NARA has between DC and College Park). There's always more to the story but unforuntately a lot didn't make it to long term storage at NARA. Almost everything I copy is put on my website via an online library for subscribers (Not to be a cheap ad). If you're interested, I can PM you a link. Maybe you'll see some info I missed which is fine. If not, no worries.

It's an interesting discussion, anything USMC people get passionate about. Which is another reason why I put so much effort into data mining all those documents.

Hope some of this is useful in your pursuits.