MOSIN – NAGANT MODEL 1891 RIFLE – U.S. MANUFACTURED

World War broke out with a vengeance in August, 1914. It wasn’t long before all of the combatants were looking for increased supplies of food, money and weapons. The United States traded with England, France and Russia. Germany and its allies were not recipients of our largess. This was the state of mind of our international politics; we traded with one side in the conflict while we told the world that we were neutral. If you look up the word neutral in the dictionary it does not correspond with the meaning of neutrality that the Wilson Administration had at that time.

The Russians were off to a bad start militarily from the very beginning. The soldiers were under trained and they were short of supplies which included rifles. In 1915, the Russian government signed contracts with Remington Arms and Westinghouse to build rifles for them. Westinghouse received an order for nearly 2 million rifles and these were produced at the Savage Arms Co. plant in Chicopee Falls, Mass. As Westinghouse did not have any rifle production facilities.

Many of these rifles were shipped but the political situation in Russian prevented all of them from being accepted by the Russian government. This was the case with both Westinghouse rifles as well as Remington. With a large surplus of rifles on hand in the USA that could not be delivered, the U.S. government purchased some 250,000 of these rifles and used them to train the large numbers of recruits that were mobilized after our entry into the war in April, 1917. They were not of the correct caliber, but they were certainly better than broomsticks which were being used in training.

The Russian M-1891 rifle in my collection was made by Westinghouse. Its serial number is a little over the 1.3 million range. The bolt and the receiver serial number match on the rifle which is always a plus. On the left side of the breech is an U.S. ordnance bomb stamped into the metal. This signifies its use by the U.S. military (army) in WWI.

On the left side of the butt stock is an imprint in the wood; Angliskii Zakaz which translates into English Contract. The equipment at the Chicopee Falls, Mass. Plant was owned by the British Government and they were paying for these Russian-Westinghouse rifles. As they say, Truth can be stranger than fiction!

After the Great War many of these rifles were sold to the American citizens as it was a non-standard arm and it was not worth keeping in U.S. Ordnance inventory. Many were turned into sporting rifles by cutting the wood back and in some cases the barrel length was also reduced. The original rifles can still be found on racks at pawn shops and at gun shows. It is a very interesting rifle of World War I and a nice addition to any collection.

Mosin Nagant Rifle Model 91 / 30 - Korean War Capture

During the Korean War, the United Nations forces captured 100,000 of weapons; many of these were the 91/30 Mosin – Nagant rifles and carbines. These rifles did not have the fine workmanship of the German Mauser of WWII and thus they were not highly sought after as a souvenir.  I have talked to veterans of the conflict and learned that piles of these captured weapons were put to the torch.

 Some of these captured weapons were reissued to the ROK (Republic of Korea) forces if not for a front line weapon, but as a weapon for guard duty or rear line use. A 91/30 in my collection was manufactured by Izhevsk Arsenal in the Soviet Union. It is stamped with the date of manufacture which is 1936.

 The interesting thing about the rifle is the Korean lettering on the stock in white paint. I have taken it to a local man of Korean birth and had it interpreted. It says basically; BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN LOADING THIS RIFLE.  This evidently refers to the caliber in 7.62 Russian. They did not want some recruit with minimal knowledge of ordnance to try and fire a .30 U.S or .303 British round in the rifle. This was probably a prudent precaution when one considers the level of training of recruits drafted in any army. They may know just the bare minimum about the rifle in which they were issued and from there on it’s a matter of luck that the recipient of a rifle doesn’t shoot himself of a peer. A soldier in WWI wrote home in 1918; “If the men keep shooting themselves in firearms accidents, the Germans will win the war without firing a shot!”

The rifle in this short dissertation is a most interesting one. It is not just another rifle which was made in a foreign country for the military, but was actually used in one of our “limited” wars. Was it discovered in a front line cache or was it part of the great Chinese invasion of Korea in November, 1950?  We can sit here, while holding the rifle, and think up scenarios of the possible story behind the rifle, but in some cases, dreaming can be as interesting as the real facts.

NOTE: The name of the rifle is Mosin – Nagant.  Mosin is pronounced MO-seen and Nagant, is pronounced Nah-GON (the second syllable is nasalized). The word Nagant is Walloon  and is a Belgiun-French name.

It is not known how many 91/30 rifles were manufactured in 1936 but some 17.5 million 91/30 rifles were produced from 1939 to 1945.

The information was taken from the excellent book on the rifle entitled: The Mosin-Nagant Rifle by Terence W. Lapin. It is published by North Cape publications and is recommended for those interested in a lot more on this series of rifles.