The Sgt York rifle and stripper clip types?

B

bamaranger

New member
Here we go, ..............there is a website that properts to have discovered the site of the Sgt. (Cpl) York engagement that won him the Medal of Honor. (Sgt York Discovery Expedition) They allege to have discovered bonafide physical evidence to support their claim. One aspect is that an obvious firing position related has a number of '06 cases and empty stripper clips.

So here's the question....What type of stripper clip does a P17 use as opposed to an '03 Springfield, are they interchangeable, etc? The spent clips have a difinitive oval on the end and a perforation in each oval.

If the types are not interchangeable and unique to each rifle, the arguement as to what type of rifle York used (P17 v. '03) might easily be answered. If they are interchangeable, we have not gained anything and must go with the old theories.

Lets not get bogged down in the rifle make/type debate, I want to know about the stripper clips and I'll draw my own conclusions.
 
I looked into this a few years back. According to SGT York's family, he used a 1903 Springfield.

To throw a monkey wrench into the story it is recorded that due to ammunition concerns the AEF was initially armed in France with 303 Brit rifles. SGT York complained about the accuracy of the rifle he was issued in France (likely the P14 in 303 Brit) and mentions in his memoirs trading it for a more accurate rifle later.

Unfortunately he does not mention the make and model of either rifle in his memoirs, however he did consult on the movie "SGT York" and in it his character played by Gary Cooper uses a 1903 Springfield. Wikipedia insists SGT York used a 1917, and so the debate rages on among historians. Records show that about 75% of the AEF used 1917s, so by simple math the 1917 has a 3 out of 4 chance of being correct.

However, the stripper clipped 30-06 has always been just that and not model specific. The rounded bottom on US 30-06 clips was to push the ejector for 1903's out of the way from what I gather, but there is nothing to stop those clips from working in a 1917. The US would not have had two rifles shooting the same ammunition if the stripper clips weren't compatible, and the number of stripper clips from other countries that are compatible with the 1903 (even without the rounded bottom) make it a near certainty that there was no specific stripper clip for the 1917.

Jimro
 
They both use the same stripper. Today it better to use 6.5 swedish strippers because they have no tabs and hold up better. I use the sweds on 7.7jap&6.5 jap arisaka,s to. They work in the 03 and rem&eddystone 17 too!
 
I wonder how, with the mind boggling amount of ammunition and ordnance expended in relatively small areas during WWI, that stripper clips and shell cases can be definitely said to have come from one particular soldier after almost 100 years, without comparing them to a specific rifle.

I looked at the Sgt York Discovery Expedition website, it seems legitimate, and they probably have the general area correct, though if you're looking specifically for X, then you tend to interpret what you see in terms of X.

My ex-wife is French, from a tiny village near Châlons-en-Champagne. Her family farmed sugar beets, and quite literally, couldn't plow their fields without turning up artifacts from both World Wars. She brought an American grenade in the house as a child, found in a stream, and to this day farmers are killed when their plows hit unexploded ordnance, though not so many as in the past. Their fields still show the marks of shells impacting, and you can still find many remembrances of the war in the woods around her childhood home.

Not trying to be a negative Nelly, but having seen a few WWI battlefields, there is so much debris still lying around I just can't see how, other than circumstantially, anyone could prove that casings and stripper clips were definitively linked to a particular soldier. A museum in Tennessee claims to have the Sgt. York rifle, perhaps that could clear up some questions, if it is indeed his actual rifle.
 
Strangelove is right. Many european countries still have full time teams of sappers that travel the country day after day, collecting and neutralizing ordinance as it is found. In some areas of america, frost heaving pushes arrowheads and other artifacts up out of fields. In france, the same thing happens with weapons, cartridges, artillery shells, and even human remains.

People were honestly blown to shreds by artillery, then buried by following shells, driven deeper when earthworks and trenches were destroyed.

It's my understanding that remains are sent to ossuaries and interred with all other unknown remains in large vaults.

Shoot, Fort Crowder is just over the county line from my home, and there was a hidden pile of buried ordinance of some sort hit by a backhoe a few years back.
 
In September's (if I remember correctly) "Precision Shooting" magazine, there's an article written by the son of one of the guys who served with and was friends with York. From what I remember, according to the article, they got to France and where trained on the .303 Enfield, but issued the M1917 before heading to the front line. Later York's platoon(?) "acquired" 3-5 Springfields they happen to find laying around befind the lines and they were given to the best shots among them. Accoording to the article that was what York was using that day.
Either way I don't see how they could possibly prove one way or the other who's stripper clip is who's or when or how they got there.
 
I agree that York used a 1917. As to clips, the 1917 and 1903 use the same clips.

These same clips are used to re-charge M14 mags while they are in the rifle. The are also used in the Model 70 and Remington target rifles used in Across the Course High Power rifles.

When I was running the AK NG Marksmanship program, much of the GI ball 7.62 came loaded in the stripper clips. We didn't have to turn in the clips with the brass so I supplied civilian HP shooters with clips. Had tons of them. Still have a few I use in CMP programs.

Brownell's, Creedmoore Sports, and others sell Stainless clips. I have a dozen or so but don't really find any advantage of the commercial stainless clips over the GI clips. In fact I think (for me anyway) the GI clips are faster as they seem to pop out on their own when you close the bolt, where the commercial clips have to be manually removed.

The Swede, Mauser, etc. may have had a tad bit different clips but the clips for the '03/1917 work in them also.

In CMP GSM vintage military programs, the clips are used extensively. They are extremely fast to load.

Using these clips in smooth action (such as the 1903s) don't really put you in a disadvantage when shooting against gas guns. Its the working the bolt that slows you down but that only takes a bit of practice.

I haven't used the clips on the 303 enfields, but I understand they are quite fast. Actually at the start of WWI when the Germans first came across the English using the 303s, the English were so fast they Germans thought they were all using semis.

Our American Army took notice and brought some British Army NCOs to the Infantry School at Benning to instruct in the rapid fire and loading of the Bolt Guns. It turned out that the 303 Enfields weren't that much faster then the '03s but it was the technique used in bolt action rapid fire.

In my opinion the 1903/1903A3s are the fastest in loading with stripper clips. I think mainly that's because they cock on opening instead of closing. Also the 1917s were originally designed to fire the 303, but were converted when England canceled the contract and we converted them to the 06 (30-03) round. The 1917 magazine is a bit more sloppier do being designed for the thicker cartridge. This is based on my 1917 & '03s, others may have different experiences.

If you haven't loaded and shot with stripper clips, give it a shot, it opens a whole new dimension in shooting bolt guns. And, when you think you got it down start shooting your Mosin while loading the Russian Stripper clips. You can get pretty quick but it takes a bit more practice.
 
'the English were so fast they Germans thought they were all using semis.'

Actually, at the Battle of Mons, the Germans thought that they were facing massed machine guns, not semi-automatics.

At that point in the war the British Expeditionary Force was a career force that was superbly trained in the use of their rifles.

Some of them could get off as many as 30 to 40 shots a minute in bursts, while 20 rounds a minute sustained was not at all beyond them.
 
I will have to agree with Dr Strangelove about the WW1 battlefields. I grew up in Europe in an area where many battles were fought during WW1. As a child, we were taught at school not to touch ordnance that we found, even though we did anyway. And we found a lot of ordnance, mostly small arms ammo but occasionally grenades or artillery shells, and construction projects in the area would frequently find bunkers with ordnance and/or human remains. Figure that over a 3-4 year period in trench warfare, an actively disputed site might accumulate quite a bit of military hardware. I know, AEF were only involved for 1 year, but you get the idea. Everyone wants to assign their finds to famous people, but there were thousands of now unnamed AEF soldiers fighting over that same piece of dirt. It's possible, I suppose, but difficult to say for sure.
 
Most of WWI was fought along static battle lines and the leftover ordinance there must be staggering. But there were areas that were almost untouched by the war according to the way I learned the history of the war. Only during the breakouts did the battle lines more a lot and once there was a breakout they moved a lot in a hurry. The initial German offensive lasted only a month and they captured a very large amount of land. It turned out to be too much of course and the First Battle of the Marne pushed the Germans back from near Paris to the lines that would be the battleground for most of the war between the North Sea at Belgium and the France and Swiss border in the east. This was a long period of being entrenched (literally). The end of the war was characterized by the 100 day offensive and the Second Battle of the Marne which led to the mass surrendering of German troops. Again the battlefields moved quickly during this period. Of course it was during this battle that York did his thing.

I'm just speculating that maybe York's great escapade occurred in one of the areas where not a lot of fighting took place. I do realize there were trenches in the area but those could be dug very quickly. It's pretty well known where York did his fighting. It was along the Decauville Railroad near the Ardenne Forest. How close this was to the Hindenburg Line is something I don't know. But if it was very far at all the amount of leftover ordinance could have been pretty light.
 
It was a 1917 rifle and the pistol he carried was a 1911. 45 ACP not a Luger. Howard Hawks couldn't find blank .45 ACP :eek:

In this battle I was using a rifle and a .45 Colt automatic pistol.
Click to expand...
 
,I don,t think you would find any.The strippers would rot quick. My Japanese M-38 is fast with with the strippers to,but the Mosin-Nagant strippers don,t work to good in my 91-30. There the Polish metal ones.
 
According to legend, York was issued a 1917 Enfield, but "traded" it for a 1903 Springfield, because the sights were better. (or he liked them better)

There's no real proof, beyond personal recollections of what they were told (York's family), as York himself never specified the rifle in print. But, it seems plausable to me.

Also, according to what I have heard over the years, the Luger in the movie was used because it would work with blanks and they couldn't get a 1911 to work with blanks (at least not in time to meet the shooting schedule).

Or, it could be as mentioned, they couldn't get any .45 blank ammo in time for the filming. Only those who were there can say, for certain, and they're tought to talk to these days, unless you are a medium. I'm a large/x-large myself, so I can't proove it one way or the other!:D

Also, I agree with the comments about the WWI battlefields. Many of the same places were fought over in two or three wars (and sometimes many more, going way back before firearms). A place like the Custer battlefield, where there has only been one specific battle in the last 100 years or so is a much different situation than the French countryside that went through the wars in 1870, 1914-18 and 1940-45.

While poking around some places in Europe myself in the later 70s, I found some linked .50cal ammo, a French 60mm mortar round, a WWII German 10.5cm WP projectile (dud), an abandoned and partially stripped US M3 halftrack, and three French AMX-75 (post WWII) tanks! There's still stuff out there, I'm sure. As late as the 1980s there was a company in Berlin that specialized in handling unexploded bombs, and they did a steady business when there was excavation for new construction projects!
 
"The strippers would rot quick."

US and German strippers both were made of brass with a spring steel insert. They'd last just fine over 100 years.
 
I still say the whole of the European continent would have WWII artifacts lying around. The land was fought on extensively throughout all of Europe. But not so much in WWI. For 3 years of the war the Western front was a stationary series of trenches known as the Hindenburg line that ran from the North Sea at Belgium to the France / Swiss border. That part of Europe would be one big pile of metal. Not so much for any of the rest of Europe. In the west the battles that occurred away from the Hindenburg line amounted to about 5 months of battle in total. And most of that fighting moved very quickly from one place to another with large amounts of ground being taken in a matter of days.

For example the French exploited a hole in the German lines and drove the Germans back from about 18 miles from Paris to the Hindenburg Line in a matter of about 5 or 6 days. That doesn't leave much time for dropping clips by the ton.

If you look on the Wikipedia page you'll see a photo of York taken just after the end of the war on the hill where his famous exploits took place. I'm guessing he knew pretty well where that took place. He would have known his positions too. It wouldn't have been that hard to follow his advancement by picking up his expended clips even though much of his firing took place while he was running.

He claimed he didn't have time to look for any cover or concealment at the time and that he was picking off enemy soldiers while he was on the run. That's his own words. I don't think it would have been all that hard to retrace his steps based on his own description of the battle and the remnants found there. He was on his own for a large part of that action so it's not like there would have been a huge number of clips lying around IMO.
 
Hollywood has never been able to get the 1911 to fire blanks reliably, so the common substitution is a Star Model B in 9x19, as used in "Saving Private Ryan" most recently. I'm pretty sure the Model B wasn't around for Gary Cooper to use....

Jimro
 
of course

Well..........I should have realized that the strippers would interchange...duh!

I have read the P17 v. Springfield stuff, son's memories, etc. The "Rifleman" ran a pretty good synopsis of the theories a few years back.

Take a look at the website .....I like it myself and want to believe.

BTW the .45 ACP cases located were marked UMC-17, probably rules out WWII combat. The totality of the artifacts, the correct German unit buttons, pistol cases, rifle cases, terrain, discarded live 8mm (from prisoners?) etc etc, make a compelling case to me.

Thanks for all replies.
 
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