Small differences

[Mike]

Comparing my three M91/30s side by side is has become obvious to me that Russian manufacturing tolerances were pretty damn sloppy, every rifle has difference somewhere. For instance, I just noticed that the cleaning rod on my 32 Izhevsk is 1/2 inch longer than my other two. I guess Ivan had a little too much Vodka for breakfast the morning he made that one!

[zeebill]

Ivan had the Enemy at the Gates and slight differences were more than exceptable to keep Hitler at bay. They were literly fighting for their lives and although we laugh now they were at deaths door and hoping to awake alive the next day. Bill

[Junk Yard Dog]

They were sloppy before the war also, and before the first war, I attribute most of it to arsenals that were widely separated from each other and probably not cooperating very well. Under the commie system each arsenals commissars would have been trying to outshine the assholes at the other facilities. Also under that system there was great incentive to get the job done exactly as you were told how to do it. There was little incentive to put yourself forward by going above and beyond, if a certain level of fit and finish was acceptable to the commissars then your life was already as good as it was going to get, why rock the boat.

[bocephus]

After looking at a Mauser I think it's interesting to see how simple of a rifle the Mosins were. Simple, effective and IMO more "soldier proof" and the Russians seemed to have kept that way of thinking going with the AK47.

[SA1911a1]

The design and production may have had some variance, but what other rifle do you know of that you can take a 1898 bolt, put it into a 1960 recieiver and have an expectation of having a functional rifle. The firing pin from a Remington will work in a 1941 Tula, the magazine from a T-53 from the 1950s will work in a Finnish M-27. So the important stuff works! The Russians and Soviets were able to keep their eyes on the big picture and not sweat the small stuff. I call that a very successful strategy.

[zeebill]

The design and production may have had some variance, but what other rifle do you know of that you can take a 1898 bolt, put it into a 1960 recieiver and have an expectation of having a functional rifle. The firing pin from a Remington will work in a 1941 Tula, the magazine from a T-53 from the 1950s will work in a Finnish M-27. So the important stuff works! The Russians and Soviets were able to keep their eyes on the big picture and not sweat the small stuff. I call that a very successful strategy.

All good valid points that actually carry over into Vietnam and the AK's, all there specs were very loose but they worked in very poor conditions. There is always the agrument that they weren't as accurate, maybe so but they spit out a lot of ammo in close combat conditions and over there that is what you needed. Many of SOG's back door patrols were armed with Swedish K's and AK's. They will put out a lot of ammo quickly with 30 round mags while the US guns had only 20 round mags for quite awhile and amazingly we had a lot of AK ammo and 9mm ammo. Many people are very hard headed on the value and quality of Russian and Chinese weapons but man they got the job done and had bigger mags for a time. They were preferred at times over US weapons in places where they had to go. Eventually when the CAR carbines were to be had with 30 rounders bought from private sources, not through the government, they ruled the roost with effective hitting power and capacity and the AK's were discarded. The Swedish K's still came along because they were silenced and the flash would not give away position but that little 9 mm just would not get the job done at any distance. Bill

[Ironnewt]

Another thing to take into consideration. The nazi's were fielding equipment that was often years ahead of anything any one else had but in such small numbers that it really didn't matter. The Panzer Mk IV, fought from day one of the war until the end, heavily upgraded but never really replaced by the Panzer Mk V (Panther) or the Panzer VI (Tiger) or King Tiger (Tiger II). Both were excellent tanks but had flaws. The fritzes just could not produce the numbers needed nor get the bugs ironed out. If they had reverse engineered the T34 with their longer 75mm gun or worked out a way to get an 88mm gun on it there could have been a change on the Eastern front. Would they have won the war?, I doubt it but who the heck knows.

[desertgunner]

Ironnewt,
you came up with a very important point:The Germans with all they threw out of their arsenals never kept that important KISS slogan in their planning and constructing: Keep it simple (and) stupid. The Mauser k98k is certainly not the most easy to clean and/or field/shop disassembling rifle, but it is very accurate in the first place, even the non-snipers.
So what is the Mosin 91/30 war rifle: A very much so "KISS" related rifle that did not have problems with accepting another gun"s bolt, trigger or what have you. The USSR just had more "young soldiers, men and women" to throw into the battle with our Mosins than the Germans had men shooting accurate Mausers against them. And in the end, the Mausers were decrowned by 17 Million Mosin Rifles built to work under circumstances foreseen, but not directly built in, with tolerances allowing easy interchangeability of parts between rifles of different arsenals. IMHO, the main reason why we can enjoy collecting and shooting refurbs.

[Junk Yard Dog]

No country to fight in WW2 fielded an army with better small arms that the US military, near five million M1 Garands, most made between 1941-45 and every single one the same with perfect parts interchangeability. The M1 carbine made by ten manufacturers who used dozens of sub contractors making the carbine into the millions again with perfect parts interchangeability. Add the Browning machine guns, BAR, 1911, and so on. Of course our factory's weren't being bombed, and our facilities and work force weren't ruined by decades of communism, and murderous dictatorship. Yet the Garand and carbine were new designs, the Garand introduced in 1936 and the carbine in 1941, but we pulled it off. The Soviet system was a corrupt and degenerate one, a system that stifled innovation because failure could mean death. The Mosin was a 19th century rifle, and they were barely able to manage to produce it, and other than a sight upgrade they did little to improve it. One only need look at what Finland, a free country, did with the Mosin in the years 1924-39, constant improvement, and had they the money and time I am sure they would have abandoned it altogether in favor of something auto loading that actually worked well ( unlike the SVT40) The Germans were equally as degenerate, feverishly building up for war yet failing to provide the next generation of infantry rifles, instead arming their soldiers with a slightly warmed over version of the last wars rifles. By the time they realized that error the war was already lost. During the 19 century the US military was the most hidebound of services, slow to adopt any new innovation, and badly underfunded, yet in the middle of the Great Depression they come up with the Garand, and put it into production, you could say we were the only country to learn some lessons from the last war. We knew the killing would start again and we would be involved, only this time GI Joe wasn't going off to war with antiquated rifles ( in WW1 early on some units went over to France carrying Krags) Under our system John Garand wasn't killed for taking too long to iron out the rifles bugs, John Pederson wasn't killed because his design didn't end up meeting government standards, arsenal supervisors weren't jailed for life or murdered because they failed to meet a monthly quota. Our workers didn't get sent to Siberia because they missed a days work, yet the arsenals churned out millions of rifles in a few short years without missing a beat. The only thing that amazes me about the Soviet Mosins is that they managed to get them made at all, and that the finished product was usable , f***in degenerates, the Soviet system was a stain upon humanity.

[zeebill]

Russia also was fighting to survive the same time the Mosins were being churned out and as far as I know the US was the only country besides Australia that had no battle going on in the country while it was churning out 03's (obsolete but still made for WW2 and holding its own) and anything that could be made quick for the war effort. Russia did what they had to under a system of government run by a maniac probably equal or worse than Hitler but that is the way it was. For sure we did what was necessary to ensure our survival in the few years we actually worked at it before we got involved directly in the war. We learned from helping England with lend lease and the protected convoy system which we ran to our allies like Russia and China too. We were just a sleeping dog trying to avoid the European War for many years with much protectionistic activity in country. Even our national hero Lindy was not for war until it was thrust upon us by Pearl Harbor. You don't hear half of what leaders in this country did then to keep us out of war versus what they did when we were thrown into it. The sleeping giant Japan woke up was for the most totally not involved physically with battles on its soil in anyway till Nazi subs started sinking ships right off our coasts. So yes we could keep good quality control and start making tanks and guns in our autoplants without having to move whole factories to avoid invading armies and falling bombs. Half of more of what we made then in this country is made in foreign countries today by a system that now seems to support the daming socialism that Stalin espouted then and we knew was wrong then.

We have the greatest country in the world if we get it aimed the right way and straighten some things out but Mother Russia had some crazy things working the way they had to then so give them some credit. Their methods stunk but their products did what they had to beat Hitler away from their doors while still turning out tanks and weapons. Wartime never will make any sense to us looking back in the hindsight mode for it is really just action and reaction in high gear. Bill

[Junk Yard Dog]

The war explains the rough finish and other issues on the wartime produced rifles, it does not excuse the sloppy production standards between the arsenals before the war, that was all the commies at their best.

[zeebill]

All communist designed weapons are done to loose and sloppy standards to tolerate their weather and climate and the fact that most of their soldiers were peasents with little or no education. The factory workers had about the same educations too so their products reflected that but they all worked when the chips were down and that is what counted.

Heck we were so desperate to get weapons of any kind to the war we were willing to try the Johnsons which proved totally unusable in the sands of the Pacific. If you look at the M1 Carbine manufacturing system there were many makers who only made certain parts because they proved totally inept at making others. We weren't perfect either and remember we were not directly involved in this country, bombs were not landing on the factories involved here. It took months longer than what was desired to get Garands where they were needed and our soldiers fought on with the 03's they had. If you want to take a look at the failure of a manufacturing system look at the obviosly superior weapons of the Nazi's that were so complicated they couldn't make them fast enough or get them to where they were needed in time. There are design concepts of the Nazi's that were so advanced for the time we are still experimenting with them today and finding they work just fine. We aren't perfect but we the best out there then and now I just don't know? Bill

[mrb7]

The war explains the rough finish and other issues on the wartime produced rifles, it does not excuse the sloppy production standards between the arsenals before the war, that was all the commies at their best.

+1 And if we fail to change course we're headed down the same road to ruin I'm afraid.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Bill, the Mosin was not a communist designed weapon It was not a badly designed one either like the SVT38, it was just sometimes poorly executed.

[Starshina]

Some rods could have been cut back and re-threaded during refurbishment, if there was damage to the threads.

[zeebill]

That indeed was very common even in Finnish weapons. I had a short cleaning rod on one M27 that took a long time soaking with penatrant and shooting before it came out and it was way short. Bill