Winchester Model 1903

About the Winchester Model 1903

The Winchester Model 1903 is a blowback-operated, self-loading (semi-automatic) rimfire rifle and the first commercially successful semi-automatic firearm produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Designed by Thomas Crossley Johnson and introduced in 1903, it was chambered exclusively for the proprietary .22 Winchester Automatic cartridge, a smokeless-powder rimfire round created specifically for the rifle. It fed from a ten-round tubular magazine housed in the buttstock and used a takedown design. The Model 1903 was later redesigned to fire the .22 Long Rifle cartridge and reintroduced as the Winchester Model 63.

The Model 1903 was Winchester's answer to the emerging self-loading market and was engineered by John Browning's protege Thomas Crossley Johnson. Its dedicated .22 Winchester Automatic cartridge was deliberately incompatible with ordinary .22 rimfire rounds, ensuring only clean smokeless ammunition was used in the delicate blowback action.

Winchester Model 1903 specifications

The first roughly 5,000 rifles were made without a manual safety; a cross-bolt safety was added thereafter. The .22 Winchester Automatic cartridge was proprietary and would not chamber standard .22 Long Rifle ammunition, which prevented the smokeless-only action from being damaged by early corrosive or black-powder .22 loads.