What Would Ross Do? The .280 Military Match M10 Rifle
Straight Pulls Around the World
•
4m 40s
There were many different versions of the Ross straight-pull bolt action rifle made and adopted by the Canadian military. However, the version that Sir Charles Ross thought would be best was only ever made as a small run of prototypes. this rifle was called the Military Match M10, in .280 Ross caliber.
The .280 Ross was a powerful cartridge on par with 7mm Remington Magnum, firing a 140 grin bullet at 3000 fps. This made it very flat-shooting, which Ross saw as ideal for minimizing range estimation errors. Ross' military experience had been in the Boer War, where long range individual marksmanship was perhaps as important as in any other modern military conflict. For his idea rifle, he used his M1910 action with a Mauser-style 5-round double-column flush magazine, a finely adjustable rear sight with an aperture for precision shooting but also a notch sight for snap shots. He gave a it a 26 inch barrel - longer than many of the rifles being adopted in the early 1900s, but long enough to have good ballistics and a very long sight radius.
Ross presented his rifle to the Canadian and British militaries, but it was not accepted, because of the British retention of the .303 cartridge if for no other reason. Only about two dozen were made, with serial numbers in the 102XX range. Only perhaps half of those still exist today, and it's a rare treat to be able to examine this one!
Up Next in Straight Pulls Around the World
-
Ross WWI Sniper Rifle w/ Winchester A...
The standard Canadian sniper's rifle of World War One was the MkIII Ross fitted with a Warner & Swasey "musket sight" purchased from the United States. However, armorers in the field did create sniping rifles using other scopes - in particular the Winchester A5. The A5 was a popular commercial ri...
-
Prototype Ross "H5" from 1909
The Ross MkII (aka Ross 1905) was a reasonably successful rifle design, but it lacked a few elements that the Canadian military would have preferred. Most significantly, it was not compatible with the charger clip that was introduced for the Lee Enfield rifles in 1907. The rifle we have today is ...
-
Prototype Italian MBT 1925 Straight-P...
Note: This video was filmed over a year ago, but I have been holding it in anticipation of the rifle going to auction. That doesn't seem to be happening, so I'm posting the video now.
Only three example of this 1925 prototype rifle from MBT (Metallurgica Brescia gia Tempini) were ever made, an...
