SMLE with Winchester A5 on Whitehead-Mount

[Surpmil]

Since the scope could only be zeroed at one range with those plain screw knobs shown on the Lebel, the distance between the bases would be irrelevant in that case.

[jmoore]

Yes, completely ridiculous that the front scope foot is mounted to a wooden stock, where as the rear scope foot is mounted to the receiver. And on top of that, the recoil forced the scope to slide forward and had to be pushed back after every shot. And having such a rifle in hand, you wonder what kind of cripple the shooter had to be, to be able and aim through such an offset scope.

War and the lack of material often resulted in solutions which appear completely stupid afterwards. But on the other hand this is what makes collecting so awesome.

I have one of the British A5s on some reproduction mounts which has been to the range enough to discover it's not as wretched as you might think. Has held zero reasonably well and isn't too hard to use, once you develop the muscle memory to automatically put the scope back. (Which also applies to Unertls, Lyman Targetspots, etc.) Not too left hand friendly, but not impossible.

[Surpmil]

Much then would depend on the quality and fitting of the forend and the ambient humidity, as well as the fitting of the backsight guard and the single woodscrew which attached it to the forend!

It would be interesting to know why something like Parker's proposed design was not used, since it was both simpler and cheaper to fit and easier to use. A sprung steel band around the rifle barrel would have made it even more serviceable, without drilling and tapping. Perhaps they didn't have the connections to get their design considered?

Looking at the spacing of the bases in the illustration, they could have made a short base to go in the rear sight mount and then screwed the rear base to the Nock's Form or even on the "receiver ring" as we call it here in N.A. This is what the Canadian armourers did for the Ross: screw on commercial bases with spacers made to suit. They could even have used the rail from a telescopic layer and added an extension to locate the rear base for fitting, thereby transferring the zero of the iron sights to the telescope, within reasonable parameters.

One advantage of the sliding Winchester scopes was that mounted over-bore they could probably be slid forward far enough to use a charger to load the rifle, whether a Ross or a SMLE. The sniper who objected to pulling the scope back could probably have rigged something up with those big rubber bands that were sometimes used to hold the W&S scopes in approximately the same position on their ill-designed mountings.

[Promo]

Back around WWI obviously every nation considered the possibility to be able and load with a stripper clip, plus to allow using the original rear sight, was considered to be more important than a straight overbore mount which not required the sniper to get a crippled neck.

I cannot even think of an officially introduced sniper mount from WWI, which did interfere with the open rear sight of the service rifle, aside of the M1903 with the Winchester A5 telescope. The Germans had "tons" of different designs, but still all had at least a hole in the bases to allow usage of the original rear sight or were offset to the left. The Austrian sniper mount was offset to the left, as was one of the Italian designs, where as the second Italian design had holes to allow usage of the original rear sight. The same applies to French designs, all offset to the left. The W&S Musket Sight on the M1903 Springfield was also offset. And nearly all British WWI sniper designs were offset too (Holland & Holland, Aldis, Purdey, PPCo, ..) - aside for the No. 3 T mount, wich still allowed to at least use it as an emergency sight. And think of the Alexander Martin sniper conversion of the No. 3, it was still seen necessary to have an open sight, so that even after milling off the original rear sight a simplified rear sight was soldered in place and the scope was placed off center.

The Parker-Hale solution can be seen as a similar mount to the Knoble/Van Wie mount for the Springfield M1903 rifle. Both required removing the rear sight ladder, both were for the A5 scope. The Knoble mount locked on the dovetail on the receiver bridge and since it was made of spring steel, it was held in place by the downforce. Still it was not even considered as a field sniper mount.

[Promo]

Upon Rogers request additional pictures of the bases only. Sorry, it won't let me upload the pictures with an edit of my previous post, hence I'm forced to do a double post. Maybe Doug can fix this.

[Roger Payne]

Many thanks - much appreciated!

[Surpmil]

Georg, good point about the insistence on having the open sights available in addition to the telescope. It's debatable whether there was any benefit to having the open sights as well: would the rare instance where the sniper found it necessary to use them outweigh the inconvenience and difficulty of the offset design? McBride mentions finding it useful to be able to use both on the Ross at times, but the Ross had a fully adjustable aperture backsight, rather than the open sights of the Mauser or the SMLE. Hesketh Prichard mentions an engagement he organized where the offset telescope on the SMLE caused a pair of snipers to be unable to get onto the target in time.

The Germans learned the lesson sooner than the War Office obviously, and the Canadian Corps went so far as to discard the back and foresight on the Ross entirely when the A5 scope was fitted. Presumably done to allow the scope to be mounted lower over the action.

Your photos reveal the origin of those base blocks as I'm sure you realize.

Another odd thing about the Whitehead fitting is that they bring the telescope ocular much farther back than most of WWI scope fittings. Looking at your photo from the previous page,



the scope could even be pulled back another 1/2 inch or so depending on where the locking ring was set. For a prone soldier that's going to be at least an inch into his eye socket. So instead of that rearward 'dog-leg' on the rear base, if they had made it curve in the other direction, they could have mounted the front base on the side of the backsight 'block' and had a perfectly stable setup!

One of the few advantages of a target scope like the Winchester models was the ease with which eye-relief could be adjusted, and the locking ring set to whatever position one wanted to return the scope to upon pulling it back to the firing position; done with springs on later target scopes of course.

[Promo]

Rob, there were two "correct" distances between the A5 scope rings: 6" and 7.2". I would need to measure to make sure this mount also follows this rule, but pretty sure it does (and also pretty sure it is the 7.2" distance). And since the front scope base could not be moved more forward, the rear scope base had to be moved backwards. Otherwise adjusting to the back then thought to be good 1000 yards would not had been possible.

Removal of open sights makes sense on A5 scoped rifles when considering the overbore mount not allowing the usage of them. Therefore the 6" center mounting on the M1903 was also on the rear sight base which resulted in a removed rear sight - what was no problem, since it anyway could not be used.

To the origin of the blocks: I'm nearly 100% sure the scope blocks are factory Winchester scope blocks. They have exactly the same dimensions as factory scope blocks, and the rounded bottom clearly identify them as not having been specifically made for those rifles.

PS: remember the most important sniper of WWII, Simo Häyha, never used a scope and preferred the iron sights. And that at a point of time where both scopes and mounts were of much higher quality than in WWI.

Edit: I might also throw in that in WWI Austrian snipers preferrably removed the scopes from their rifles when they were crawling to their emplacements. When they were finally there, they then mounted the scopes. I assume this applied for other nations too. No sniper wanted to be seen with a scoped rifle at the front, therefore a mount which was clearly to be made out was dangerous. And when you probably get under enemy fire with the scope removed, you are thankful for open sights.

[Surpmil]

I have a copy of the original Winchester brochure which spells out the possible distances between the bases and the effect of changes in that distance on the adjustment increments. Can't put my hands on it at the moment, but about 6" and 7" sounds right IIRC.

As for the Whitehead Bros. setup, I think we must be misunderstanding each other, but I see no reason why the front base could not have been moved forward onto the backsight base and the rear base made to curve forwards not backwards. That would have given a solid support for the front base and moved the scope forward an inch or two, which it plainly needs to do for eye relief reasons IMO. Does that make sense? One can see from the Ross fittings where the ocular lens needed to be for correct prone eye relief.

That is what I meant about the blocks: curved undersides = commercial production.

Interesting about the Austrians. Must have been close ranges or they had high confidence in the return-to-zero of their scope mounts!