This is the biography of British Army Sergeant Harry Furness.  It contains much of his own writings to the author, Martin Pegler over a 20 year period. 

So, there is evidence after all that one of the unwritten tasks of the British sniper in WWII Europe was to scrounge for accurate ammunition! The promise to send forward the best and most accurate Mk 7 ball ammunition to the snipers was not followed through. He also discussed barrel life and replacement by unit armourers. Barrel life for the No. 4 T was considered to be no more than 1000 rounds! 

Rumor had it that scrounging the Red  Label (aircraft machine gun) in preference to "regular" Green Label ammunition was an ongoing project.

No idea if its actually true. It was just more reliable to reduce jams, but may have acquired a mystique.

He said that “standard .303-inch service rounds did not provide extreme-range accuracy, … At sniping school, we were promised that rear supplies would send the sniping sections special batches of tested ammunition of a Match standard suitable for competitive shooting for instance.  In practice, this did not happen…it was very important to try and find ammo from the best makers.”

Winchester was favored and some batches of British Mk 7 that tested good were sought for.  He also said Mk VIIIz ammunition intended for machine guns was used, but supplies were not plentiful.  I would expect that with the higher muzzle velocity and streamlined bullet, the snipers would have to establish zero’s, at least every 100 yards, as the scope range index markings would be off by a fair bit, especially beyond 400-500 yds, but he did not go into this. 

Oh I'm not talking about The MkVIIIz stuff. It was infamous for "Burning Barrels" probably because of blow-by with that odd rebated boat tail.

This was regular MkVII but mostly U.S. Made  & the machinegun part was reliability, nothing else.

I suspect Furness is referring to regular Winchester made Mk VIIz ball. I might have some of that, definitely have some fired cases from WWII WRA headstamp.  

Here is what he wrote:

From Tony Edwards & Richard Tordoff’s web site on British Small Arms ammunition, the design of the Mk VIII bullet was changed in 1942 from the rebated boattail to a regular smooth transition taper, so I’d expect by 1944, it was the later bullet being issued in Europe.  He gives the muzzle velocity as 2550 fps, pressure as 20-21 tsi. Doesn’t say what barrel length the velocity is based on, but I’d guess it would be the Vickers MG with 28 inch barrel (which would give perhaps 50 fps more than the 25 inch rifle barrels).   He also says that Pamphlet 11 permits the use of Mk VIIIz in rifle and Bren guns when less flash is required i.e. at night. That may be another reason snipers used this stuff as they often took their shots in dawn or dusk conditions. 

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It's a common thing After Action.

"sniper" = bad.

In the late 80's on a local gun range I often shot with a lad who had seen service in Northern Ireland as I had, his regiment, The Royal Anglican's known over here as "The Poachers" were stationed in Kent at Shorncliffe barracks. 

After our weekly revolver shoots we both swapped story's of daring do like most ex squaddies after a pint.

Mick, (same name as mine) was not one of those people you associate with BS, his reminisces were always believable and had a strong ring of truth about them. His regiment had been "warned for active service", once warned anybody going AWOL could (and would) be court martialed. 

Weapon training ensued and the sniper platoon were not happy about the accuracy of the 4T's which rarely left the armoury.

At this point it's worth mentioning that the British army didn't have a sensible cleaning regime for rifles in 1969 and the majority of barrels would have been extensively copper fouled.  Add to that the ammunition would have come from Radway Green, who history records didn't have a good reputation; RG stopped .303 production 1973.

These were the days of many squaddies having private weapons and shooting alongside civilians at local clubs, after a discussion at the local civilian gun club some .303 reloads (or possibly commercial .303?, it was a long time ago!) were obtained and proved more accurate than the issued the RG .303. 

Bearing in mind I was told this about 37 years ago and the event took place 56 years ago. The upshot was an ammo can swap of RG 7.62 for a similar quantity of club .303.

This happened at a time when some Infantry regiments were a law unto themselves and having worked alongside the Royal Green Jackets in 1973 I can well believe the authenticity of the story.

My memory seems to think that Mick may have been the sniper platoon sergeant?    

 

It's unfortunate that some very extensively experienced men refuse to accept that which they hadn't seen during their time in the military.

Derek

So it would make sense that the boxes of 20 rounds were packed for bolt action rifles, because it's not even going to fill a Bren.

Rare find you lucky devil.I'm not sure if the red label was intentionally made for rifle use, but 20-round boxes was standard packaging & the MG ammo would have to be linked anyway.

The way I heard the tale it was simply horse traded for "whatever" & then used.

Mick, this story may have given me another small piece of the puzzle regarding the T. Going back thru data I’ve collected over the course of shooting the T with 3 different barrels has shown me they all have the very same behavior regarding the influence of variations in muzzle velocity!  What I thought was a “bad barrel” may well be something inherent in the scoped action stiffness behavior. 

With consistent velocities, the rifle will stack shots on top of each other at 600 yards, quite remarkable actually. I watched it happed again today, clusters of shots within 1/2 minute, or less, at 600x when velocities were within about 20 fps. 

It might be time to break out the Dominion Arsenal 1951 Mk 7z ammo used in the DCRA matches for several years. And do some tests with it. 

Geoff, I shall be interested to hear how this goes...

Sniper ammunition over hear in the era of the L42 was the L2A2 round and once Radway Green had set up their reloading presses for a run of it the first 200 rounds were selected as "sniper grade" or Green Spot to give it's commercial name, or so popular myth tells us... 

I honestly don't know if that is correct but I've certainly been guilty of repeating it in the past; actually 200 rounds doesn't sound much at all so the more I think about the commerciality of it I keep coming back to popular myth? 

A friend (Seth) acquired a box of Green Spot (80's dated from memory?) and tried it a few months ago; he wasn't impressed! 

Please keep us informed how this goes Geoff, I was born in 51 so it'll be interesting to see how it performs or whether the knees have gone like mine!     

From memory a TA regiment which disappeared or amalgamated with another unit in the early 1960's?  

This implies that elevation spreads at 300 yds may be as much as +/- 6 inches (+/- 2 MOA), for a total extreme spread of 4 MOA.  That sounds like a lot, but if you break this down:

 1) Errors in range estimation of +/- 25 yards, +/- 1 MOA 

 2) Aim/hold errors, +/- 0.5 MOA 

 3) Bullet drop variation due to bullet muzzle velocity variations of +/- 50 fps, +/- 0.5 MOA 

 

At times, these errors can cancel out to some degree (on a good day).  But should the rifle have negative compensation, errors due to 3) bullet velocity variation will be amplified, perhaps by another +/- 1 MOA.  If the rifle has very strong positive compensation (say at 800 yds), the muzzle velocity variations may be overcome such that the error at 300 yards is in the other direction but of a higher magnitude.  So, it's easy to see why head shots would not be attempted beyond 300 yds and the need for ammunition with consistent velocity was so important.      

Sgt Furness preferred to work alone, reducing the chances he would be detected.  His goal was to get within 400 yards.  He explained that it was potentially disastrous to miss on the first shot and take a second shot as it would often invite a massive retaliation by the enemy who would throw everything they had in his direction including rifle and machine gun fire, mortars and even artillery. 

 

We were taught to aim at the "V" of the uniform jacket or shirt.

Same idea high was a head-shot & low was a center body hit out to about 500 yds or so.

In last nights "episode", Furness was observing the enemy at about 600 yards away with his 20x scout regimental telescope and spotted what appeared to be a high ranking officer.  With a single shot from the T, the senior officer fell.  The repercussions of that action nearly got him killed; they threw everything they had at Furness: she!!ing, mortar fire, machine guns, the works.  He was very lucky to have escaped alive.  He was deaf for over a week from the exploding she!!s all around him.  

It is hard to imagine the stress of moving forward of your own lines to observe, and try not to get caught for it would usually mean immediate execution for being recognized as a sniper.  

I got to thinking about just how difficult it is to hit a man sized target on the first (and only) shot at 600 yards with a No. 4T.  Even with the 3x scope, that's a pretty small target to hit (a 14" wide chest is just over 2 minutes at 600 yds).   

Furness was clearly a master at range estimation, there were no range finders in that day!  I'm hoping he explains somewhere in the book how range estimation was done, there is not much to go on using the graticule post to estimate range, the width is 8 minutes.  

 

We had this exact conversation last Friday at our 200 yard McQueens shoot, the lad with the T and the other with the L42 bot conceded it was difficult enough at 200 yards! 

britrifles wrote: Furness was clearly a master at range estimation, there were no range finders in that day!  I'm hoping he explains somewhere in the book how range estimation was done, there is not much to go on using the graticule post to estimate range, the width is 8 minutes.

Geoff the answer to this is football pitches; at least that's what we trained to do in the mid 60's.

A British football pitch is typically anywhere between a 100 and 130 yards long and we had to visualize the length of one and apply it to whatever we needed to range find...not easy! 

It's also worth noting that it wasn't until the introduction of the Schmidt & Bender 3~12x scope on he L96 with Mil dots that first gave the UK sniper the ability to range find without guessing. 

The method that was taught to me at an Appleseed unknown distance event I attended 15+ years ago was to use the foresight blade width (8 MOA on an M1 Rifle) against something of a known width (such as the width of a human, lets say 14 inches).  So, if the target appeared as 1/4 the width of the 8 MOA foresight ( i.e. 2 MOA), the range is estimated by 14/2 x 100 = 700 yds.  If it appeared as 1/2 the width of the foresight (4 MOA), the range would be 14/4 x 100 = 350 yds; and so on.

A similar thing could be done using the width of the post graticule on the No. 32 scope; and I wondered if this is what snipers did as well as count the number of football pitches. 

At practical sniping ranges with the T, you would not want an error on elevation of more than +/- 2 MOA (+/- 12 inches at 600 yds),  so you must be able to estimate range within +/- 50 yds.  And that does not account for any other errors, so you need to do better than that! No easy task.