Blogs - HyperBorealis

I would like to say something about bolt action rifles of WW2. It's favourite opinion that best bolt action rifle off WW2 is Mauser Kar98k. Reality hovewer is not so simple.Mauser Kar98k was of the most modern bolt action rifles and without doubt it was in many ways superior and advanced compare it to Russian old Mosin-Nagant, Japanese Arisaka or Italian Carcano. You didn't have to count the bullets like with Mosin-Nagant.. after last shot you was not able to close the bolt - which means you have to reload. Lever had modern shape and you could remove the clip from the gun by just locking the bolt. It seems that for Mauser, Mosin Nagant was not an opponent. But if so, why so many German snipers used Mosin-Nagants rifles? Why about 19 of 20 best snipers of WW2 had Mosin-Nagants?
I always say "If gun works in Russia, it should work everywhere". German equipment was reliable and modern... until they came to Russia. Their Mauser Kar98k rifles had worse oil then Mosin Nagant and by intensive shooting they were loosing it's accuracy.. Mosin Nagant hovewer had same accuracy for whole time. Reliability and simplicity was also strong advantage of Mosin Rifles. Mosin can be used by primitive and work just fine. As sniper rifle Mosin was superior to German Mauser Kar98k in most of aspects. So generally Mauser Kar98k was more advanced and modern rifle then Mosin.. but Mosin was tougher, very reliable and had advantage of better oil, accuracy and was used as sniper rifle with bigger success.Which of these rifle is better?That's individual result. For me it's Mosin Nagant.. but people who believe that comfort of the shooter and modern aspects are more important then simplicity and other things that Mosin has superior, I would say these guys would say it's Mauser. Every person has different ideology how ideal should rifle look. That's the reason we can't say which rifle is best. Typical example is endless battle of AR-15 and AK-47 fanboys. When AR-15 guy say that his rifle has magazine well, AK lover will say it's not important as much as simple design and so on.So, both Mauser and Mosin are great rifles and definitely one of the best of it's time. Mosin has different advantages and disadvantages to Mauser and they're both iconic rifles of WW2.