Polar Bear Expedition Manual?

[Hombre]

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[Longcolt44]

That bayonet frog looks an awful lot like the Enfield spike frog. They were in Britain and American troops were not familiar with carrying a bayonet on the rifle except in parades or battle.

[Hombre]

That bayonet frog looks an awful lot like the Enfield spike frog. They were in Britain and American troops were not familiar with carrying a bayonet on the rifle except in parades or battle.

Makes sense. I did not save the text but in some of the soldiers diarys there were complaints about having to have the bayonet mounted to the rifle all the time. Maybe they had them off the rifles aboard ship as a matter of convenience getting around in close quarters. (That picture where I circled the frog was when they were traveling aboard ship.)

All the pictures I saw after they got to Russia shows them mounted on the rifle..

Notice that they had them on the rifles as they were getting off the ship.

[Junk Yard Dog]

The Mosin isn't flimsy, but it isn't a US M1903, or 1917 either. These were rifles of a first world economy using the most up to date technology. The 1917 had the sight mounted close to the eye on the back of the receiver, this design went back to 1913 when the British developed the rifle. This is a modern design that we use on weapons today, and it would have been unique to the men who first trained with it who if they ever owned a gun before it would have been a shotgun, or maybe a lever action rifle. To train these men to use the new sight system, get them qualified with it, maybe even to the point of expert marksman and then give them a 19th century rifle of the old style would have tossed a fly in the ointment. The Russians used the M1891 rifle for so long because it worked in the climate of Russia, and with two world wars, a revolution that lasted years and devastated the country followed by a world wide economic depression, years of Stalin purging the talent pool, another world war, and the subsequent devastation of the country again there was never enough resources to develop a suitable replacement until the opening years of the Cold War. The SVT's were considered, but the design was flawed, and there did not exist enough money to equip millions of men with it, many ideas probably never got out of someones mind for the fear of failure in a state that punished failure with death. Only the USA had the economic strength even in the middle of the depression to come up with a viable new weapons platform for all of it's military, the M1 Garand. We made millions of them during the war, and the years before it, the Soviets didn't have a hope in hell of pulling that off with the SVT, probably a good thing as that piece of shit was nowhere near as reliable as the bolt action Mosin. Money, and the sort of system that encourages experimentation even if it ended in failure are what made sure we were not still armed primarily with a bolt rifle during WW2, the USSR's repressive system, and flawed state controlled economy made sure they failed in attempting a similar feat.
The US 1917 is shorter than the M1891, the Russian rifle would have felt like a pike to US soldiers. US troops had been taught to use the weapon in hand to hand combat, it's no mistake that our weapons have thick walnut stocks, it's so when we close with the enemy we can beat the living hell out of him with the rifle itself if need be, the slim Mosin must have left them wondering if it would take it. The rimmed cartridge of the Mosin would have been familiar to British and French troops, but to Americans who did not serve in the army before the war with a Krag it would have been clumsy, and they would have had difficulty getting it to feed properly. Lets not even get into the charger, We stole the design of the Mauser stripper clip for our rifle, got sued by Mauser and had to pay royalty's, the Mauser stripper clip is the best designed stripper clip ever made, nothing works better. We have all had issues with that Mosin clip, at best they are a pain in the ass, at worst they are a clumsy piece of crap. To a Russian soldier who had years of practice making them work it would not have been an issue, but to an American who just last month was using the Mauser style clip it would have been a nightmare. Fumbling around trying to get their rifles loaded quickly while under fire must have been real fun, and because their cartridge belts had been made for the thinner and rimless .30-06 ammo they could only carry one clip per pouch, half their normal ammo load. The rest probably went into pockets and such. I like the Mosin, and I can shoot it well, but then I have decades of practice with it, if I was a 20 year old kid sent into the godforsaken shithole that was north Russia in 1919 with my 1917 taken away and replaced with a foreign rifle I would be mad as hell.

[desertgunner]

Thanks, Jim!
Russian thinking is easily expressed by : If it can be carved out of Siberian Wood, let's make it. We'll improve it later, if necessary.
Stalin's "Success or die" prevented a lot of improvements in his forces and he did not care until confronted with "the German Quality War Machine", then it was the other way round: "We need to improve production numbers and development in the weapons sector", nonetheless, the USSR with its available workforce did the job to get a gun into every soldier's hand.
And , ours now, the 42s and 43s did a good job against the sophisticated Mausers....they won the war....with lots of people behind them!

[Hombre]

Thanks for the digging!
I knew there was an involvement of US Troops , but certainly not where and that they were given the line rifle to work with.
Good job!

You are welcome.

It was my pleasure -I was interested in the subject and I enjoyed trying to find information about it. (One of my friends that I have lost was in the Navy during WWII and had his ship torpedoed out from under him in that area so I knew a little about the area.)