Ross rifle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ross | |
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| Type | Rifle |
| Place of origin | Canada |
| Service history | |
| In service | 1905-1916 |
| Used by | Canada, Commonwealth |
| Wars | First World War |
| Production history | |
| Designed | 1903 |
| Produced | 1903-? |
| Variants | Mark II (1905) Mark II .280 (1907) Mark III (1910) |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 3.90 kg |
| Length | 1320 mm |
| Barrel length | 711 mm |
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| Cartridge | .303 Canadian |
| Caliber | .303 (7.7 x 56R mm) |
| Action | straight-pull bolt action rifle |
| Rate of fire | N/A |
| Feed system | 5 round charger |
The Ross rifle was a straight-pull bolt-action .303 calibre rifle produced in Canada from 1903 until the middle of the First World War, when it was withdrawn from service in Europe due to it unreliability under wartime conditions, and its widespread unpopularity among the soldiers. Although the Ross .303 was a superior marksman rifle, its components proved too easily clogged in the adverse environment imposed by trench warfare in the First World War. It was also possible for a careless user to disassemble the bolt for cleaning and then reassemble it with the bolt-head on back to front, resulting in a highly dangerous and sometimes fatal failure of the bolt to lock in the forward position on firing. Snipers, however, who were able to maintain their weapons carefully and use them to maximum effect, retained a considerable fondness for the weapon.[1] A sporting version using a new .280 calibre "magnum" round was produced for some time, and both the Ross rifle and the .280 Ross cartridge acquired a very considerable international reputation among deer-stalkers and safari hunters.
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[edit] History
During the Second Boer War, a minor diplomatic fight broke out between Canada and the United Kingdom, after the latter refused to sell or license the Lee Enfield design for production in Canada. Sir Charles Ross Bart., a Scottish nobleman, soldier, inventor and entrepreneurial businessman, offered his newly designed straight-pull rifle as a replacement. Ross was well connected in Canadian society and eventually landed his first contract in 1903 for 12,000 Mark I Ross rifles.
Although he claimed the design was entirely his own, Ross proposed an action that was actually patterned very closely after the Steyr 1890. In this design, the bolt locking lugs are mounted on a screw, and when the operating handle is pulled or pushed, the screw automatically turns to rotate the locking lugs into place in the action receiver. The design is generally similar to that used on most artillery pieces. Unlike the more common bolt actions found in the Mauser and Lee Enfield, the Ross action did not need to have the handle rotated a quarter turn before the bolt was pulled back, and this feature theoretically offered a higher rate of fire. In addition to this alleged advantage over the Lee Enfield, the Ross was also a pound lighter and could be disassembled more quickly without special tools.[2]
[edit] Service
The first 1000 rifles were given to the RCMP for testing. Routine inspection before operational testing found 113 defects bad enough to warrant rejection. One of these was a poorly designed bolt lock that enabled the bolt to fall right out of the rifle. Another was poorly tempered component springs that were described as being as "soft as copper." In 1906, the RCMP reverted to their Model 1894 Winchesters and Lee-Metfords.
The Ross rifle was modified to correct these faults and became the Mark II Ross (Model 05 {1905)). The Model 10 (1910) was a completely new design, made to correct the shortcomings of the 1905. None of the major parts are interchangeable between the 1905 and the 1910 Models. The Model 10 was the standard infantry weapon of the First Canadian Contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force when it first arrived in France in February 1915.
The shortcomings of the rifle were made apparent during the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. The rifle showed poor tolerance of dirt when used in field conditions, particularly the screw threads operating the bolt lugs, jamming the weapon open or closed. The bolt could also be disassembled for routine cleaning and inadvertently reassembled in a manner that would fail to lock but still allow a round to be fired, leading to serious injury or death of the operator as the bolt flew back into his face. "Thankfully such incidents were minor."[3] Another well-known deficiency was the tendency for the bayonet to fall off the rifle when the weapon was fired.[4] Many Canadians of the First Contingent (now renamed the First Canadian Division) at Ypres retrieved Lee Enfields from British casualties to replace their Ross rifles.[5] Lieutenant Chris Scriven of the Tenth Battalion commented that it sometimes took five men just to keep one rifle firing. [6]
Complaints rapidly reached the rifle's chief sponsor, the Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes. He nevertheless continued to believe in its strengths, following professional advice from Sir Edwin Alderson. In particular, the Ross was more accurate at long range than the SMLE, and this potentially overcame the serious problem British and Canadian troops had faced during the Boer War, with the accurate long-range fire from the 7 mm Mauser.
[edit] Replacement
Canadians retained the Ross even as additional contingents arrived in France. By the time of the Somme battles of July 1916, Sir Douglas Haig, the new Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, had ordered the replacement of all Ross rifles in the three Canadian Divisions by the Lee-Enfield, which was finally available in quantity. Hughes refused to accept that there were problems with the Ross, and it took the intervention of many influential people to persuade him otherwise. In November 1916, Hughes resigned after Sir Robert Borden's decision to appoint a Minister of Overseas Forces. Ross rifles were then used in training roles, both in Canada and the UK, to free up more Lee-Enfields for the front. (More were also shipped to the U.S. in 1917 for the same reasons, freeing up supplies of the M1903 Springfield rifle.) Hughes' reputation was inevitably tarnished, but Sir Charles Ross had already made a considerable fortune from his rifle design and manufacturing contracts.
At around same time, the Dominion Rifle Factory (Quebec City) converted a number of Rosses to light machine guns (LMGs), under the guidance of a designer named Huot. It was an ugly but effective design, feeding from a drum magazine, and cheaper than a Lewis Gun. Unfortunately, despite the Canadian Corps' facing a severe shortage of LMGs, protracted trials led to its being rejected for reasons of flimsiness of construction.[citation needed]
Because of its long range accuracy, the Ross rifle continued in use among Allied snipers after it was withdrawn from normal front-line use in Europe. British snipers found the rifle accurate out to 600 yards and more, with only one inherent disadvantage: the Ross accepted only perfectly clean ammunition, totally free of mud and grit, or else it invariably jammed.[7]
[edit] Sporting variant
In 1907, a civilianised and sporterised version of the Mark II Ross rifle was produced, and chambered for a new and very powerful .280 caliber sporting cartridge. The new high-pressure round required some strengthening of the bolt and action receiver, but the rifle was otherwise only slightly different from the .303 Mark II. The problems with the Ross in combat were that it was really a sporting design of rifle asked to do the work of a military rifle under trench warfare conditions, so it is not surprising that in the sporting role the Ross became quite popular after the war. The new .280 Ross cartridge gained it a fine reputation for medium-sized game, and for a time after 1918 it was a fairly common rifle on safari.
[edit] Other users
Ross rifles were used once again in the Second World War, with some being shipped to the United Kingdom after Dunkirk in May 1940.
[edit] References in fiction
In Margaret Atwood's 2001 book The Blind Assassin, reflecting on the WWI, the narrator mentions Ross rifles and says that some of the Canadian soldiers who were sent to France were supplied with Ross rifles, which occasionally jammed in the mud and rendered their users helpless.
[edit] References
- ^ Without Warning: Canadian Sniper Equipment (Service Publications, 2005).
- ^ Rawlings, Bill. Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps 1914-1918. (University of Toronto Press, 1992). p.12
- ^ Rawlings, Ibid. p.17
- ^ Rawlings, Ibid. p.17
- ^ Dancocks, Daniel G. Welcome to Flanders Fields
- ^ Dancocks, Daniel G. Gallant Canadians: The Story of the Tenth Canadian Infantry Battalion, 1914-1919 (Calgary Highlanders Regimental Funds Foundation, 1990)
- ^ Winter, Denis. Death's Men (London, 1978) p.81
[edit] Sources
- Phillips, Roger F., François J. Dupuis and John A. Chadwick, The Ross Rifle Story (ISBN 0973241608)
- "Huot", in Bernard Fitzsimons (general editor), The Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Weapons and Warfare (Phoebus/BBC, 1978), Volume 13, page 1385.
- Duguid, A. Fortescue A Question of Confidence (Service Publications, 2002)
[edit] External links
