Memorial Day Salute: The Venerable Springfield 1903

By Chris Eger

If you are looking for your own piece of history, this circa 1918 Springfield Model 1903 is in our vault currently and is looking for a forever home.
In honoring those who have sacrificed while serving in the United States Armed Forces, we look at perhaps the longest-serving firearm in the U.S. military, the M1903 rifle.
First prototyped in 1900, the Mauser-style bolt-action Springfield service rifle was intended to replace the only recently adopted .30-40 caliber Krag-Jørgensen series of rifles which were found to have been less than stellar in service when fighting the Spanish in Cuba in 1898.
Type classified and adopted in 1903, the guns initially had a series of teething problems in their early life — including the personal intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt into the design of the rifle’s bayonet — but were soon equipping both the Army and Navy.
Noted for its accuracy, the M1903 was soon the standard rifle at the National Matches and is still seen at Camp Perry today. Here, Ohio National Guard Col. Charles B. Winder, a well-known marksman who in the 1908 Olympics won a gold medal in the team military rifle event, fires a Springfield. (Photo: Library of Congress)
There had been over 800,000 M1903s

Source: Guns.com