Tag Archives: air service springfield

I heard you like really nice 1903s…

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Rock Island Auction’s upcoming December Premiere Firearms event, which is this upcoming weekend, has a bunch of really nice goodies– especally if you are a M1903 rares collector.

Among the nicest I’ve seen is this great Griffin & Howe “exhibition quality” National Match Springfield. From hand-stippling on receiver ring to rich engraving on the barrel bands, floor plate, trigger guard, and rear sight base, this rifle is a showcase piece before you mention the jeweling on the bolt and hand-checkered English walnut stock.

Even the companion 1911-dated M1905 bayonet has gotten attention.

Then there is this late WWI model (1918-marked barrel) Springfield Armory Model 1903 rifle comes complete with a very hard to find Cameron-Yaggi device, one of several “trench periscope” setups tested for use in that horrible “War to end all wars.”

This particular rifle comes from Bruce Canfield’s own collection (he literally wrote most of the noteworthy books on U.S. military small arms currently in circulation) and was featured in a number of books itself. Every time I talk to Mr. Canfield I come away enlightened.

More on the exhibition gun in my column at Guns.com here and the Yaggi here.

Also, if you have about two hours to kill, check out Mae and Othais from C&Rsenal on a 1903 deep dive in the below video. They cover everything from the .30-03 and early rod-type bayonets to oddball WWI spin-offs like the Air Service Model, the periscope-equipped trench guns like the Guiberson, the Pedersen semi-auto and Warner-Swasey sniper variants.

The Air Service Springfield 03

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AMER#3B2

 

Look up there! It’s those amazing young men in their flying machines. The thing is, those early biplane pioneers needed a little bit of insurance and Uncle Sam had just the thing: a chopped down Springfield rifle.

Until 1947, the armed force we know today as the US Air Force did not exist. From the time of the Wright brothers until then, the US Army had reign over most land-based military aircraft with the exception of those operated by the Navy/Marines and Coast Guard. Flying, then as now, is a dangerous activity. It was possible for pilots and aircrews to crash land in remote areas, unreachable by anything else except another flying machine. For military aviators you could add the prospect of being shot down behind enemy lines.

The first US Army aviators to fly in a warzone were those of General Pershing’s 1st Aero Squadron of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Air Service. These hardy flyboys were shipped 19 Winchester Model 1907 rifles and 9000 cartridges of .351SL ammunition to use in arming their craft if they got lost over the Chihuahua desert while looking for Pancho Villa in 1916. The Winny ’07 thought to be lighter than the current issue Springfield rifle. Well when Pershing left with the American Expeditionary Force for France in 1917 to take on the Kaiser, he realized his much larger corps of flyers there would need a new rifle.

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Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com