Sniper Ammo Selection

[Alfred]

P'14 fine adjustment sight in WW1 too...............? That's not quite the Ordnance Board understanding of the matter is!

As World War I progressed, the need for a sniper rifle became apparent. Due to the P14's demonstrated accuracy it was the natural choice for a precision rifle.

Efforts were quickly made to develop a micrometer type back sight to improve upon the P14's natural accuracy. By late in 1917 a windage adjustable micrometer sight was available. These sights were approved for fitting to Winchester made rifles. The Winchester, having proved to be the most reliable and accurate of the three manufacturers. These rifles were designated Pattern 1914 MkI(F), the F denoting Fine Adjustment Sight.

Pattern 1914 (T) Sniper Rifle

Doesn't say who manufactured it.

Rifles of the world page 110
Rifles of the world - Google Books
Lists both remington and Winchester manufacture Fine adjustment sight (F) rifles.
I's suspect the windage adjustable slides were by Lyman. Similar slides were fitted to barrel mounted ladder sights for match shooting.

I would imagine that this was the same windage adjustable slide used for the BAR, that sight being basically the same sight as thw M1917 except for the windage adjustment feature.


I have an old American Rifleman magazine around here somewhere that has photos of several experimental scope sight attachments for the P-14 rifle, one I remember was a German style claw mount dovetailed into the receiver ring.
Lord Cotteslowe's Scope mounting design was not approved till December of 1918 so it would have only seen action on a trial basis, perhaps a few other prototype scoped rifles were tested in the field.

Since commercial sporting rifles were used to some extent, its not unlikely that prototypes of scoped rifles of various sorts were field tested as well.

The only Kynoch Matchgrade .303 I've read of is the "Swift Bullet" designed by J H Hardcastle, a heavy ball pointed bullet that is considered a step in the evolution of the lighter MkVII bullet.

I have a copy of his notes of all his work that he wrote in 1920, and although he worked on such diverse topics as electric caps for .303 and 12 bore Chain Shot, he makes no mention of any development of boat tailed ammunition.

You can check Hatcher's Notebook
Hatcher's Notebook - Google Books

Jones may have been testing a bullet designed by someone else.

As for civilian use of Cordite, Greener says in his "the Gun and its Development" that if ammunition is to be loaded using cordite one should obtain it only from those factories that supplied it to the government and be sure it met government acceptance standards.
Records of the British Parliment mention deffective lots of cordite obtained from commercial sources, huge quantities being found contaminated by mercury.
There are mentions , in Greener's book perhaps, of Cordite being delivered to ammunition manufacturers still in a paste form, the manufacturers extruding the paste into whatever form they used for their ammunition. Besides the common strands there were flat ribbon types and flake types.

Most likely the information I found on the other forum confused use of Mk8Z in WW2 with use of MkVIIz in WW1.
Both the French and the Germans used heavy Boat Tail bullets for Long range Machinegun fire during WW1.
Hatchers notes on the development of the M1 boat tail bullet mentions the superior range of the German, French, and the Vickersguns in .303 used by US forces compared to the Browning using the 150 grain 06 loads. His notes give the range of the 06 load as very near that of the published maximum range given for the Vickers using the MkVII round which is no where near the near 50% greater range that Hatcher attributes to the Vickers of WW1. His figures seem more suited to the MkVIIIz which was not officially adopted till more than ten years after the M1 boat tail heavy Ball rounds.
Makes me wonder just what the US crews were feeding their Vickers Guns.