The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

The PU elevation turret is graduated in hundreds of meters specific to the ballistics of a particular cartridge. What cartridge was that? Was it the M1908 type L 147 gr. , the M1930 type D 182 gr., or something else?

Or does it make such a small difference in the point of impact that it's not worth worrying about?

Wow. Ok. Either nobody knows or nobody cares.

I bought some PPU Match Line. I'm sure it'll do fine.

I don't know.

I have the unfo in my files somewhere, but I run either Czech Siler tip LB/147gr <600yds or PPU 182gr Match>600yds.

As I remember, from one of the Soviet sniper histories, the sniper's preferred certain lots of ammo, and would have the supply people keep and eye out for the stuff and stash some for them. I do not recall that they called out specific bullet weights. The other ammo that the snipers would squirrel away for the right moment were the explosive rounds. There was a gory description of what happened with a head hit with one of them.

The most likely situation is that they used whatever was available and dialed the scope in for what they had. They weren't making a lot of shots from extreme distances like shooters try for today. Comments from both Russian and German snipers suggest that 400 meters was longest distance for a sure thing. There were extreme distance shots made, but they included a bit of luck as well as skill.

I decided t dig through my books.

"The Official Soviet Mosin-Nagant Sniper Rifle Manual" contains a table of elevation turret scale corrections for shooting the "type-1930 heavy bullet" rather than the "type-1908 light bullet". It says to add 1/4 graduation for 100 through 600 yards and no adjustment beyond 600 yards. That seems to imply the elevation scale is calibrated for the type-1908 light bullet of 147 grains.

"M91/30 Rifles and M38/M44 Carbines in 1941-1945; Accessories and Devices; History of Production, Development, and Maintenance" by Alexsander Yuschenko contains a table of information gathered from surveys of snipers during the war. Two of the questions asked in the survey were the type of bullets used, and at what ranges. Most snipers say they were using the type-1930 heavy bullet (aka type-D 182 gr.) with most shots between 200 and 600 meters, and very rarely 800-1200 meters being the maximum.