Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Myth and Reality of the Ross MkIII Rifle" video.

  1. "the rifle can by cycled with virtually zero movement, allowing the sniper to remain very well concealed in his shooting position" The Ross was surely a superb sniper rifle, but the video above disproved this last statement. The Ross rifle has a "long" action (that's a necessary evil for straight pull actions with rotating bolt heads, as part of the rearward movement of the bolt serves to disengage the bolt head from the receiver), that forces the shooter to move his  head, so losing the point of aim, when cycling the action. And this is also the reason why a not properly assembled rifle was dangerous. Even if the bolt was not coming out of the receiver, the shooter would end up with an inch of metal in the skull. Other rifles, as the Lee enfield, or the Carcano, have a "short" action, that allows to cycle it without losing the point of aim. However, for a sniper, this was a minor inconvenient, as he was supposed to shoot a single decisive shot, not to fire repeatedly at the same target in a short time.
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  2. WhiteCavendish Since the movement made by bolt head is about the same (first rotate 90°, then slide rearward for the lenght of the cartridge), the movement of the hand is not so "quantitatively" different. In the Mauser it's divided in two distinct actions "high - rear", while in the Ross it's a single, longer, one. As for the effort, that's probably true for sniper rifles, adeguately cared and that tend to shoot fewer ammunitions than infantry rifles. One of the problems of the design as an infantry rifle infact was it's tendency  to require more and more effort to cycle the action as the rifle keep shooting, as a result of tight tolerances and dirt (unavoidable in trench warfare). Another superbly accurate and smooth straight pull, the Schmidt-Rubin, especially in it's K31 incarnation, if used in the same conditions would have probably suffered of the same problems (that were repeatedly reported in training) for the same reasons. It's worth to note that another widely used (the most widely used of them all actually) straight pull, the Steyr-Manlicher, although being far less smooth than the previous two at first shot, did not suffered from the same problems. The famous Russian weapon desiger Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov (the father of the Fedorov Avtomat), in his reports from the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese war noted infact that the Manlicher design was even less sensible to mud and snow than the M91 Moisin-Nagant.
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