I was going to post about Major Hession’s rifle but have been beaten at the post. This was one of the small arms gifted to the UK via the American Committee for Defense of British Homes. There was a receiving committee in the UK. In fact the ACFDOBH was one of around 200 NGO organizations set up in the USA to provide aid to the UK from 1940 inwards. This included organizations that purchased ambulances and mobile canteens that could provide succor to people that had been bombed out of there houses and so on. The story of the American Committee’ is quite involved with many facets including committees in the UK changing their name overnight. In theory each firearm was a private donation from an American citizen to a British Home Guardsman in the UK. Virtually no records exist to say were any specific firearm went or too whom it was issued.

For anyone interested in this topic I suggest you read a book by Malcolm Atkin, ‘To the Last Man – The Home Guard in War and Popular Culture’. It has a whole chapter devoted to this subject. Also covered is the London based 1st American Motorized Squadron, which was a Home Guard unit made up solely of U.S. citizens living in London. There were around 60 to 90 of them. They were armed with Winchester Model 1907 .351 S.L rifles, Thompson’s and a few Potato Diggers – not to mention some huge Marbles Bowie Knives.

Regards

AlanD

Louis Luttrell said
Hi USMCSGT-

Thank you for the information.  Very neat!!!  I’ve wondered where the DFA list came from!!!  

In your experience, are there any markings, e.g. inspector stamps or cartouches, on the stock of the USMC M70s that are still in sporter configuration (possibly still in their original stocks)?  I can see that the S/N was impressed in the pistol grip of the Marksman stocks you’ve got.  One sees a few M70 standard rifles in the right S/N range turning up in auctions (seemingly never on the DFA list), that have cartouche-marked stocks.  I’ve always been suspicious of those…

I also wonder about the 8-31-42 order in my table above, which was from SOD, not USMC.  If that order (which was placed – not just quoted) was actually filled, there would have been many more M70s in government hands than the famous 373 USMC rifles.  One of these days I’ll have to see if I can track down that later order from the US Government side.

Cheers,

Lou  

I’ve seen quite a few M70’s with a cartouche mark on the sporter stock, but I don’t know if they’re legit markings or something Bubba put on there to get a higher price at a gun show. There’s no solid proof one way or another, so i can’t really help with this info. I’m suspicious of these rifles as well, that’s why I’ve never bought one. I’ve never seen a USMC rifle with cartouche or acceptance markings. In one of Senich’s books, he has a photo of a USMC BSS M70 that was used at Camp Pendleton, it has a Pendleton brand on the side of the butt.

A friend of mine (cplnorton is his forum screen name) has pulled tens of thousands of military documents from archives and found a few pages that document early M70’s. According to him, the Army purchased a ton of M70’s, I think he said it was around 2,000. I’ll ask him about these M70’s the next time I talk to him.

Also, here’s another document to add to your research, it appears that after WWII the USMC was authorized to sell 371 M70’s at the PX…..

In my post on the first page of this thread I mentioned an M70 that was purchased in Japan towards the end of the Vietnam War. My friend sold this rifle a few years back, I regret not buying it, but I didn’t have enough cash to pick it up at the time (the price was quite high). I finally found the pics and info on this rifle:

Here’s some good photos of my 2 original USMC M70’s. In the pics you can see some brass pins pressed into the stock of rifle 50586. This was probably done by an armorer to prevent the wood stock from warping in a wet/humid environment. I’d like to think that this rifle was used in Vietnam and that this was a modification to keep the gun up and running, but there’s no real proof that this was the case. Regardless, the brass pins give the rifle a little bit more character, even if we don’t know the whole story.

Here’s the photography setup:

M70 sniper rifles and shooting team rifles both used Unertl 8x scopes and Lyman Super Targetspot 20x scopes. These Lyman scopes were also used on .22lr rifles the Corps had at the time, I also have one mounted on a USMC Remington 40x .22lr (it’s an awesome vintage smallbore setup!).

The USMC Lyman scopes are far more rare than the Unertls, so they’re rarely seen or used on clone builds. There’s 2 types of Lymans, one version has USMC PROPERTY rollmarked on the tube, the other version has USMC PROPERTY hand engraved on the tube. Of those 2 variants, the rollmarked tube is more rare and is highly sought after.

Here’s some original USMC Lyman scopes in my collection, 2 of them need to be rebuilt:

I recently picked up this USMC Unertl from a friend, this scope is going on an M70 sniper clone:

I’ve posted a lot of stuff today, hopefully it’s useful information! Let me know if you guys need anymore pics or info, I’ll do my best to help out with the M70 knowledge base.

Ok, last post for today. I got this Kenyon M70 trigger from Colonel Chandler years ago, he said it was used on a stooting team M70. This is the only military used Kenyon trigger I’ve ever seen and it was used on rifle serial number 48699 (this serial number is also on Chandler’s list in DFA vol. 1). Kenyon M70 triggers are quite rare on their own, this one is absolutely unique. I’d really like to use this trigger on a clone build!

Louis Luttrell said
Hi USMCSGT0331-

This is GREAT STUFF!!!  Thank you for posting it.  I’ve downloaded the thread for future reference. 

It would be great if CPLNORTON could post some of his research on the Army M70 purchase(s).  I wonder if they have any relationship to the “SOD” order for 2674 standard 30-06 M70s in 1942 mentioned in my original post (screen shot of the Quotations and Orders ledger is there).  As you say, if USMC authorized the sale of 371 M70s in 1944 and there were still about 250 of them still around in the mid-70s when Chandler’s DFA list was compiled, there there must have been considerably more that 373 M70s in USMC hands alone during the war.

Like you, I’m puzzled by the “USMC Sniper” scope blocks.  They do look like Unertl manufacture and as you said appear to be marked just like the USMC Sniper 8X Unertl scopes.  The short one on top looks like it’d be a Unertl P-1 (0.860″ hole spacing, 0.230″ total height, with 1 1/8″ radius on the bottom).  But those were, I believe, were intended to mount to the bridge, not the receiver ring.  Which means they would not work with either a pre-war M70 or even the later oval tang M70 target rifles (which were the only type III receivers that still wore clip loading slots).  The lower three look like the Unertl “L” block (which one of them appears to be). 0.860″ hole spacing, 0.170″ tall, 7/16″ radius).  Those would fit the factory D&T holes on the receiver of every M70 made (at least before 1964)…  FWIW… The factory rear block on M70s was dimensionally like a Lyman “U” block, coved on top and 0.185″ tall.  The factory blocks on commercial Winchester M70 target rifles were not coded underneath, insofar as I know… 

The long blocks are a mystery to me. You say the hole spacing is not 1.750″, which was the hole spacing on the M70 target weight barrels used (sometimes) during the arsenal rebuilds.  Even if the hole spacing did match, the Unertl P-1 or W block was supposed to pair with a B-70 block (0.230″ tall), while the Lyman-type “U” block was paired with a 0.360″ tall coved top Lyman-type block on the medium heavy target rifle barrels (contour of the USMC sniper rebuilds) or a 0.262″ tall flat top block on the 28″ extra heavy bull gun barrels.  Assuming that the “crescents” on those long USMC blocks were supposed to go on the right, they’d be extending the spacing between front and rear scope rings of a target scope.  Are those long USMC sniper blocks radiused on the bottom?  How tall are they (total height sitting flat on a table top)?  What is the hole spacing? 

I can’t come up with any solution for how they’d fit on a M70 receiver OR target barrel…  My friend Clarence on this site knows a lot of crazy stuff about scopes… Or maybe he’s just is crazy!!! Either way, maybe he has an idea!!!  

In closing, while I do not own a genuine USMC M70, I do have Victor Dawson’s “Van Orden Sniper” S/N 351439 (these also listed in DFA volume 1).  Since you got me inspired, I put a period 20X Lyman STS on it today.  The scope is not USMC either, but this was one of the civilian-sold VO snipers, so probably wouldn’t have gotten a USMC scope:

Cheers,

Lou  

Great looking Van Orden, the Lyman scope is perfect for it!

I don’t think the Corps had more than the original shipment of 373 M70’s, but they did order more rifles a few decades later. Even though 371 rifles were given the authorization to be sold, it doesn’t mean they were actually sold. Maybe it just gave unit leaders discretion to make space in their armory? Maybe the missing serial numbers in DFA weren’t just damaged or war lost rifles; what if the majority of the missing numbers were the rifles that ended up being sold? In a previous post I showed an M70 that was sold in Japan 1971. That rifle isn’t on the DFA list and was probably allowed to be sold decades later because of the 1944 authorization.

I just measured the USMC sniper bases, results are below. I measured the overall height like you suggested (perpendicular to the base, as opposed to running down the length). To measure the hole spacing, I measured the distance between the far sides of each hole then subtracted the size of the hole from the previous measurement (1.1″ distance – .24″ hole size = .86″ center to center for the L marked base).

Long USMC base – 5″ long / .18″ tall / 2″ center to center

Short USMC base – 1.28″ long / .24″ tall / .85″ center to center

L marked base – 1.26″ long / .186″ tall / .86″ center to center

I also measured the center to center hole spacing on the USMC Douglas M70 sniper/target barrels (blued), here’s the results:

Front screw holes – .56″

Rear screw holes – 1.75″

The USMC Douglas M70 shooting team barrels (in the white) only have front screw holes, so they were iron sights only. These barrels have the same front hole spacing as the blued Douglas barrels, .56″

The factory Winchester M70 medium/heavy sniper barrels (blued) have the same front screw hole spacing as the Douglas barrels, but have a different rear screw hole spacing. The screw hole spacing on the rear of these barrels is 1.76″

I’m not sure how accurate these measurements are, but they’re the best I could do. The USMC bases have a slight radius, definitely not as pronounced as the radius on the L marked base. I tried setting them on a Douglas barrel and the radius on the base isn’t enough to sit flush with the barrel contour. Hopefully this stuff makes sense, I’m a dumb crayon eating Marine, not a numbers wizard, lol.

I don’t think the L marked base goes with these USMC bases, I think Norm Chandler just threw it in the bag with the USMC ones. In total, I have 5 long USMC bases and 3 short USMC bases. I’d like to find 2 more short USMC bases, but that’s probably never going to happen, given how rare these bases are. Please let me know if there’s any commercial Unertl bases that match their dimensions, that way I can pair them up with the long bases and create 2 more sets.

Please let me know if you guys need anymore pics or measurements.

The SSA just posted a teaser of their upcoming 2022 raffle rifle on Instagram! I posted this info here in the vintage section because the raffle rifle appears to be some sort of Winchester M70 Vietnam War era USMC sniper rifle! The raffle rifle was also photographed alongside Carlos Hathcock’s Vietnam War issued M70! More information on the raffle rifle will be posted this weekend, but I can tell you is that it’s an epic clone build using original USMC M70 sniper rifle takeoff parts!

The rifle is going to be unveiled this weekend at the Gathering of Snipers at 7 Foxtrot Firearms Training Complex in Pearsall, TX. Guardian Long Range is also holding a match there this weekend, so it’s going to be an awesome event! The raffle tickets will be up for sale sometime before Christmas and the drawing will be held on March 17th (03/17, the USMC Scout Sniper MOS is 0317).

https://www.instagram.com/usmc_scout_sniper_association/?hl=en