Kar98k vs Mosin Nagant

Both the Mauser and the Mosin are 19th century turnbolt rifles , and they both fire cartridges of similar performance. To me there's not much to choose between them. Both rifles were basically obsolete by WWII, but were kept in service anyway, as were the British SMLE, the Japanese Arisaka, the Italian Carcano and a few others. The US Garand was the state of the art for WWII.

 

Not state of the art, most countries having semi automatic rifles. What was needed more was light portable fully automatic weapons with a high firepower. That's when weapons such as the MG42 & StG44 come into the picture, these were state of the art for WW2 and provided the basis for all modern small arms.

 

Hmm... I don't know about that. SVT was an inferior product and the G-41 did not impress either. I believe the French had a prototype but hey, if it wasn't fielded it does not count.

 

Well the SVT40 might have been inferior in some areas but it was there, and the technology was therefore not really state of the art. Ofcourse there was also the G-43. The Garand was a great weapon no doubt about it, and certainly a better std. issue rifle than any bolt action, but it wasn't state of the art technology in WW2.

What no'one besides Germany had however were light belt fed machine guns which culd operate as both LMG's & HMG's. Furthermore no'one alse had selective fire assault rifles. These two weapons were state of the art, and ahead of their time.

 

The Kar 98k and the Mosin Nagant are pretty much the same in essence, only the Kar98k being more accurate than its counterpart. However, the Mosin was more reliable that the Kar98, by that I mean you could drop it in water, sand, mud etc. and it would still be operational, much like the AK nowadays. The Kar apparently jammed easier as well. Of course, knowing Soviet weapons, the Mosin was pretty darn simple, as opposed to the Kar98, which was a bit more sophisticated in terms of it having an additional rifle grenade launcher to go with it (the Schießbecher), along with a more accurate sight line, I should think.

 

The Germans did have some problems with the K98k getting jammed in the east, the reason being the extremely tight tolerances under which the weapon was manufactured. The problem was however largely solved some time in 1942 when a new specially manufactured lubricant was issued. This helped keep dirt out of the action.

 

the tolerances were certainly the issue as you say,well made but in extremes do tend to malfunction,russians mixed oil and petroleum I believe to overcome the cold which mostly stopped the weapons from becoming frozen and inoperable.to maintain and keep a firearm functioning properly, it requires a certain amount of maintenance and some gun oil. It seems that the Russians were running short on gun oil, though, so they decided to thin it down by mixing their gun oil with gasoline. not adviseable under most circumstances, but it proved to be effective for the Soviets in this situation. As temperatures drop, oils tend to lose their fluidity. The thinner lubricant in this particular situation actually worked in the favor of the Soviet troops because the Germans were using the thicker lubricant and it made the actions on their rifles much more difficult to operate in the harsh winter conditions.I watched a program on this way back last yr I think,where a k98 and nagant were each oiled up and were put in deep freezers for a preiod of time,and then taken out and tried to use them,the k98 was stuck,frozen solid,whereas the nagant although sluggish to operate! still did... .and they put it down to the oil/petroleum mixture the russians used...

 

THAT I would agree with. Light weight, air-cooled and belt-fed is what was needed in a squad automatic weapon and oddly no one saw that except the Wehrmacht. StG-44 is a superior weapon to the AK-47 in some categories.

 

The real fact of the matter is...both the K98 and the Mosin are great rifles. For bolt action. I own both (2 K98's and 4 Mosins...Dunham's had a 79.99 fire sale last year) and I would give you all 6 of them for the Garand. The Mosin is a very simple rifle with clunky action, but very reliable. I can attest to the being able to drop it in the dirt and shoot with no troubles. The K98 is a sexier gun, though obviously much more stringent engineering. What was the better gun? Well, the Mosin wasn't on the losing side, and that speaks volumes.

 

I gotta say that wether a piece of equipment belongs to a losing or winning side has absolutely nothing to say when comparing them.

 

Proeliator, I've got to agree. When comparing weapons the side that they were on doesn't influence the actual comparison.

 

I like the k98k the best because it has more firepower and dosnt jam as easy. i sulute all who picked the k98k:afv_sherman:

 

That would depend on where it was used. On the Eastern Front in winter the Kar98's froze up and jammed way easier than the Mosin. In autumn with the 'rasputitsa' the Kar could clog up with mud when dropped on the ground, water as well could interfere with its operational ability. In summer, yeah, it was better than the Mosin.

But if we're talking about weapons as a whole, Kar98 or Mosin-Nagant, that doesn't matter, it all depends on the skill of the one who wields it. Vassili Zaitsev killed 32 German soldiers in the space of a month (month and a half maybe) with a Mosin, using it as a sniper rifle (with no scope), and it was wintertime.

 

Yeah, looser tolerances usually works to your advantage when it comes to operating under extreme conditions. The AK-47 is an excellent example of this as-well.

 

Yeaaah Kalashnikov was a genius I wanted to mention him earlier on but I thought it wouldn't fit in with the overall WWII theme.

Most Soviet weapons were like that - not very accurate, pretty bulky, uneasy to handle, often badly engineered (the AK wasn't around yet, if we're talking about WWII) but they could withstand anything you threw at them. And due to their simplicity they were easy to make, repair, clean etc.

 

25-75fps for a given cartridge/bullet weight?

 

I took them both out this weekend, comparable performance (about 2 inch groups at 100 meters with surplus ammo). The mauser had a bit more recoil than the mosin, but I felt the Mauser would have been the better rifle, the action was smother and the 5 round feeders worked better, and easier than the mosin. I put 30 rounds through each, and my shoulder noticed those 60 rounds alot more than the 300 I put through the M-4, thats for sure. I'll be adding an Arisaka to my collection next month so I'll have to do another comparison shoot then.

 

Mosin-Nagant because it outlasted the Kar98K and it's round is one of the most produced in the world. Besides the Mosin-Nagant was a rifle and the Kar98K was a Carbine (hence the K).

 

The fact that the mauser fired faster was just one advantage. It also has better accuracy, and was made in much larger numbers.