Aug 22, 2010

Fot this installment Sgt. D handed the keys to the Gun Locker over to PCP’s own Habu06.

If you are a fan of the Call of Duty series especially “World at War”, or just liked the movie “Enemy at the Gates” then you have at one point seen the Russian Mosin Nagant rifle. The Mosin Nagant is popular with shooters and collectors of surplus firearms because they’re inexpensive, fun to shoot and ammunition is easy to obtain.

History and Overview

The Mosin Nagant (pronounced MOYESEEN – NAH GON) is a five shot fixed magazine bolt action rifle which was the primary Russian Army rifle from 1892 to the end of World War 2.  While some might characterize it as an antique, it is the longest serving military rifle in the world and has been used in every major armed conflict from the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 to the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The name Mosin Nagant comes from its two developers Col. Sergei Mosin, an Imperial Russian Army officer, and Leon Nagant a Belgian arms designer.  The rifle is mostly Mosin’s design but it incorporated Nagant’s design of a fixed magazine. Incidentally, the official Russian Army designation for the rifle wasn’t Mosin Nagant.  It was called the “three line rifle model 1891.” The term three line is based on the Imperial Russian arshini measurement liniya which is roughly .1 inch. Three liniya equals about .30 inches or 7.62 millimeters. So, translated it would be called the 7.62 mm rifle model 1891.

The Mosin rifle currently being imported to the United States is the 1891/30 variation.  The 30 designation comes from changes made to the rifle design in the 1930’s.  First, the rear sight gradients were changed to metric since the Bolsheviks adopted the metric system. Second, the receiver was changed from a hexagonal shape (referred to commonly as a hex receiver) to an easier to make round receiver. And last, a protective front sight hood was added. This version of the Mosin stayed in production until the end of WW2 when it was replaced by the SVT -40, the SKS carbine and eventually the AK-47 rifle. The rifles coming into the states now are from two Soviet State Arsenals; Tula and Izhevsk. Between the two factories, they produced almost 17 million rifles before WW2 ended.

The Mosin has been made in several countries including the U.S. Almost three million rifles were made in the United States by Remington and Westinghouse under Russian contract in 1916. These rifles were never delivered to the Russian Army due to the Communist revolution and were eventually used to train U.S Army recruits, sent to National Guard units and later sold to the public through the civilian marksmanship program. These rifles are considered collector items.

Specs.

The rifle weighs a little over eight pounds and is just over four feet long without the bayonet. It fires a 7.62 x 54mm rimmed cartridge,which is the oldest active military cartridge in the world. Ballistically it is comparable to the U.S .30- 06 cartridge. The effective range of the rifle is approximately 500 meters, although the sights have settings up to an optimistic 2000 meters. The sniper version has a bolt with a longer and bent bolt handle to accommodate the 3.5x or 4x power telescopic sights mounted on the left side of the receiver. Ironically, the early sniper scopes were made in Germany by Zeiss. The Soviets copied the design to make their later issue version. An original Mosin sniper with it’s issued mount and matching Zeiss scope is a high value collector’s rifle.

The rifle is extremely sturdy, simple and robust. It is well balanced given its length. Recoil is typical of most .30 rifles; stiff, but not a shoulder bruiser. Bolt manipulation is typical. The rifle cocks on opening, so it does require a sturdy upward push to unlock, but it is not a problem. You can load individual rounds into the magazine or use a five round stripper clip. Surplus ammo is cheap and readily available.

There are a couple of caveats with surplus ammo. First, not all countries made quality ammo. You must also be sure it is the correct cartridge for the rifle. Second, Eastern bloc surplus military ammo has corrosive primers which means you must clean the rifle as soon as possible after shooting or the bore will begin to rust.

COD Vs. Reality

The Call of Duty games more specifically, World at War, do a really good job of giving you the impression of shooting the Mosin, except for the actual recoil. Loading is similar to in game action. Pull the bolt back, take a stripper clip with five rounds insert it into the top of the magazine, push the cartridges down until they come off the clip, remove the clip. In combat, you would toss the clip since the ammunition was preloaded on clips. You can also leave the empty clip in its slot on the magazine and shove the bolt forward flipping the clip away and simultaneously loading the first round.

The sight graphic in game is very similar to the real thing. The rear sight on an actual Mosin are a little smaller, but not by much.

One difference in the COD Mosin is the spike bayonet isn’t attached. The Russian Army doctrine was to keep the bayonet on the rifle as a matter of practice. In COD you can get the bayonet as an add on in multiplayer as you level up.

The biggest difference between the in game rifle and the real one is the bolt manipulation. Because the bolt handle on the Mosin is almost at the mid point of the bolt, it is difficult to manipulate the bolt while the rifle is up on target. This means that every time you fire, you have to take the rifle off your shoulder, eject the fired round, load another, and then come back up on target. This makes its effective rate of fire slower than the rival German K-98 Mauser because a Mauser bolt can be cycled while keeping the rifle in shoulder. In a firefight, getting a second shot quicker could be the difference between living and dying.

Some people might want to know about the recoil. If you have ever fired a typical “deer” rifle, then you have an idea of the recoil; it’s similar to any 30.06 bolt rifle you may have shot before. Recoil is hard to quantify. What I might think is mild; someone else would swear their shoulder was coming off. You have to remember, millions of people were able to shoot this rifle when the time came to do so.

The Mosin Nagant helped change the course of world history. That’s one of the interesting things about surplus rifles that we now collect and shoot for recreation. The Mosin rifles now coming into this country were at one time issued to Red Army soldiers and quite possibly were carried and actually used in combat in the locations portrayed in the Call of Duty series.  Hold a Mosin Nagant and you are touching history; fire one and you experience it.

Thanks to 7.62x54r.net and russian-mosin-nagant.com for some of the information included in this article.