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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-13-15, 06:39 PM (EDT)
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"Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Mar-30-16 AT 11:39 PM (EDT)
 
This week on Gun of the Week, it's one of the longest-serving and most widely employed military service rifles of the 20th century, the British Lee-Enfield.

Specifically, the example we'll be discussing here today is a .303-Calibre Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield Mark III*, later retroactively redesignated Rifle No. 1 Mk III*. (As we have previously discussed, the asterisk is a revision indicator, denoting that this is an improved version of the Mk III, but not so improved that it was deemed different enough to be designated Mk IV.)

If we take apart the long-winded British ordnance designation, some of the details of this rifle's design and evolution come into focus. Starting at the end, Enfield indicates that the design originated at the Royal Small Arms Factory in the London borough of Enfield (in official parlance, RSAF Enfield Lock, after the nearby lock on the River Lee canal), while Lee has nothing to do with the river, but is in fact the name of the action's designer, James Paris Lee (1831-1904). Lee was a Canadian arms designer who invented the detachable box magazine, the system by which virtually all semi- and fully automatic small arms are supplied with ammunition nowadays. In the late 1800s this was still a noteworthy innovation, which is why the British government felt it necessary to specify that the Lee-Enfield is a Magazine rifle. More on this later.

The Short comes from the fact that the SMLE's 25-inch barrel is five inches shorter than the one fitted to the original Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle. Military rifles had a tendency to get shorter and shorter over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as infantry tactics evolved and people began to realize that the common soldier's rifle really did not need to be long enough to function as a full-length pike with its bayonet fitted. (That was the original purpose of the bayonet; before that, riflemen were protected from charging cavalry by other men standing next to them with pikes.) The usual practice was for arsenals to produce two versions of a given service rifle: a very long one for the infantry and a very short one for use as a cavalry carbine. The SMLE, introduced in 1904, was an attempt to split the difference: it's about halfway between the original long MLE and the 21-inch carbine version. This simplifies logistics, as your army now can standardize on the one rifle for everyone; the British were not the only ones to do this at around this same time.

The heart of the SMLE, the Lee bolt action, originally debuted in 1888 on the Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Metford. This was the last British army rifle designed for black powder (the original form of gunpowder), and featured a cleverly designed rifling system intended to reduce fouling from powder residue (developed by one William Metford, hence Lee-Metford). The MLM had a short service life, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because the much-improved nitrocellulose-based "smokeless" propellants were developed almost as soon as it entered service. These much cleaner-burning, much more powerful propellants made Metford's fancy anti-fouling rifling unnecessary, and in fact smokeless .303 cartridges didn't work well with it; their much higher velocities wore out MLM barrels in extremely short order.

Thus, in 1895 the Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Enfield took its place. This had essentially the same action, but with a barrel designed to play to the strengths of the new smokeless cartridge. The Short MLE came along in 1904, not long before James Lee died, and the definitive Mk III version followed in 1907. The Mk III* was developed during World War I to simplify and speed up production for wartime use, and was adopted in 1915. Hordes and hordes of these were made, not only for the British army, but also for Commonwealth armies in Australia, New Zealand, India, and (once the débâcle of the Ross rifle played itself out in 1916) Canada. Further revisions of the basic design would be developed over the next few decades. The official standard British rifle for most of World War II was the Lee-Enfield No. 4 (the SMLE having been retroactively designated No. 1 in 1926), which was basically the No. 1 Mk III* with still further manufacturing simplifications, but the Mk III* remained the standard rifle in Commonwealth forces until the FN FAL (L1A1) battle rifle came along in the late '50s. Lee-Enfields in various guises can still be found all over the world, many of them in official inventories of one kind or another.

So much for the history lesson; let's take a closer look at this particular one. My SMLE is one of a pair that my grandfather had; he had one in the original .303 British caliber, and one that had been converted after World War II to 7.62x51mm NATO (which is roughly the same cartridge as .308 Winchester). A few years ago, he gave me the .303 one, which is the one we're looking at here.

In the overall picture at the top of this article, you'll notice that the rifle is wearing an action cover. This is a genuine surplus item a friend tracked down online for me:

Notice the tarnish on the snaps. This sat in an arsenal for decades, unremarked, before being bought up by some surplus company somewhere and eventually made available on the Internet. Obviously you can't operate the rifle with the cover in place; it's meant to protect the action on, for example, long marches, or during other out-of-combat transit.

Underneath that cover, the action looks like this.

The SMLE is a bolt-action rifle, meaning that to operate it, you have to rotate the bolt by turning that ball-ended handle upward, then pull it back to open the action and extract/eject the spent cartridge case.

Of note is that the Lee action is a cock-on-close system, meaning that the spring-loaded striker is cocked for firing by the act of pushing the bolt shut (which strips the next round out of the magazine and chambers it) and locking it. This is as opposed to a cock-on-open system, where the act of unlocking the bolt and pulling it back does the work of cocking the striker. The Lee-Enfield's contemporaries, the German Mauser Gw 98 and Russian Mosin-Nagant, are both cock-on-open designs. Basically, the operational difference comes down to which of the operations requires more force than the other (and how much engineering has to be applied to minimize the difference). Some shooters prefer the cock-on-close system because it makes the opening operation faster and smoother, and they feel that applying more force to close the bolt than to open it is more natural and intuitive. There is also a long-standing belief in some circles that the Lee-Enfield action is faster than its competitors specifically because it's cock-on-close.

It should also be noted here that, in well-trained hands, the Lee-Enfield is a shockingly rapid-firing bolt-action rifle. There are accounts of German troops early in World War I who believed that they had come under machine gun attack, when in fact it was just that the British units opposing them were laying down that great a volume of coordinated rifle fire. British doctrine at the time put very heavy stress on marksmanship and coordination; though small by the standards of the day, the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the war was by far the best-trained, best-equipped army in the world. For all that the Germans are stereotyped as professional soldiers, their army was mostly generically-trained conscripts; not so the BEF in 1914.

As an aside, you'll note that there's a set of markings on the right side of the rifle's wrist band, revealed when the bolt handle is lifted out of the way. One nice thing about military weapons, particularly from the early 20th century, is that they tend to have unambiguous markings:

No uncertainty here. This is a Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III*, manufactured for His Majesty George V's armies (G.R. = Georgius Rex, Latin for King George) in 1918, the final year of the Great War. It doesn't specify where it was made, which I thought meant it came from Enfield Lock and not one of the other arsenals and private companies (RSAF Sparkbrook, Birmingham Small Arms Ltd., et al.) that were contracted to augment Enfield's production capacity during the war, but turns out to be something a bit more complicated. Since this item was originally released, information has come to light indicating that SMLEs marked in this way were assembled at Enfield Lock, but from parts made by a variety of subcontractors. This one's receiver seems to have come from the Standard Small Arms Factory in Birmingham. Caliber is not specified here because at the time, all British service rifles were in .303, so it was not considered necessary to say so.

Also visible in the right-side shots above are the importer's markings, on the right side of the receiver just in front of the wrist band. These are somewhat less grand than the original manufacture markings.

Remember I mentioned in an earlier item that, after 1968, dealers importing firearms from abroad have been required by U.S. federal law to deface them? This is the kind of thing I meant. It does contain all the information required by law, more or less—if you know what you're looking for, as a federal inspector presumably would, you can see from here that this rifle was imported by the Century Arms International company (sometimes also referred to, by itself, as Century International Arms or just Century Arms) of St. Albans, Vermont; that it is chambered for .303 British; and that it was originally made in the United Kingdom.

In fairness, I should say that CAI/CIA/CA has gotten better at marking at least some of its imports since these days, and that this is actually not the most half-assed-looking set of importer's marks I've seen from this particular importer. The CZ 82 pistol I used to have, which was also a CAI import of a surplused European military firearm, looked like its importer's marks were applied with an automated version one of those "tattoo gun converted to mark metal" things. Dot-matrix printing by peening up the surface of the metal. Truly tragic. These were at least made with a real set of letter/number stamps, even if they were just kind of crammed in wherever on the chosen surface they would fit.

While we're on the subject of markings, this SMLE also has a brass unit disc on the buttstock, which was a traditional British thing up until the end of World War I, but I have so far been unable to identify what unit it denotes.

Anyway, let's take a look at the other side of the SMLE action.

Not as much to see over here, since most of the detail is going on over on the righthand side. Most notable on the left side is the safety lever, which can be seen in the upper right (marked III* just for good measure). Forward (as shown) is Fire, back and down is Safe. If you look carefully you can just see the ridge in the wristband where the lever stops when it's all the way back. The slotted metal tab visible at the right is the cocking knob. This is cocked automatically when the action is worked, as described above, but can also be grasped and pulled back manually if, for instance, you have a dud round and you want to give it another whack with the striker rather than immediately discard it and move on to the next one. (You can also grab it with one hand and pull the trigger with the other to let it down gently rather than dry-fire, but should not attempt to decock the rifle this way with a chambered round, for obvious reasons.)

That structure you can see at the top is not the rear sight, it's just part of the action. The rear sight is actually mounted in front of the action and is not visible in this shot, but let's have a closer look at that because it's interesting.

Here are two views of the SMLE's rear sight, seen from above. This is a form of rear sight that was very common on military firearms of the period, called a tangent sight. It's hard to see in these photos, for which I apologize, but it's marked in range increments; in this case, the markings show ranges in increments of 100 yards, from 200 out to 2,000(!). You can see in these photos that there is an adjustable slider on the sight; you press the button on the left side and can then move it backward and forward. What that does is not immediately apparent in the top view, but you can see it clearly from the side:

As you see here, moving the sight adjuster forward (i.e., setting it to a longer range) moves the rear sight upward. This forces the shooter to raise the muzzle in order to maintain the correct sight picture on the target, and that—if the shooter has correctly estimated the range, and if the rifle is properly zeroed—compensates for the natural, gravity-induced drop of the bullet at longer ranges.

If the maximum range to which this particular tangent sight can be set strikes you as ludicrously optimistic, that's because it is. Early-20th-century range-adjustable sights often are, in much the same way that the analog speedometers in most automobiles can show speeds which the cars to which they're fitted obviously can't possibly achieve. Even soldiers rigorously drilled in marksmanship, like the BEF early in World War I, cannot realistically be expected to hit a man-sized target with an open-sighted rifle at two thousand yards—that's more than a mile. Most people, I'll wager, can't even see a man-sized target at two thousand yards. It represents more of a Platonic ideal than a realistic expectation.

(As noted in the article about the StG 44 reproduction, most infantry soldiers don't even need a rifle that can shoot anything like as far as that, which was not something that was really taken on board by military strategists and planners until after World War II; in some cases, long after World War II. But that's another show.)

Also of interest in these photos is the marking on the left side of the rear sight's guard (the upright tab visible at the right of the photo). That's an inspector's mark, an indication that the rifle has been tested and accepted for military service. The triangular bit at the top is the "broad arrow", the traditional British service acceptance mark, and the markings below it denote which inspector gave it the OK and where. It's the military rifle equivalent of INSPECTED BY 23.

Taking a close look at an SMLE provides an excellent opportunity to talk about a commonly mistaken bit of firearms terminology, the technical difference between a magazine and a clip. This is because, unusually, the SMLE uses both at the same time.

In small-arms terms, magazine simply refers to the part of a repeating firearm that holds the ammunition before it's chambered. (Incidentally, this is why revolvers don't have magazines even though they're repeaters; each round in a revolver is in its own separate chamber, and is fired from there, not moved into position from a separate holding area.) As mentioned above, James Paris Lee was the inventor of the detachable box magazine, so it's no surprise that the Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle has one:

Press upward on that tab inside the trigger guard, in front of the trigger, and out it comes. From the modern perspective, what happens next is obvious: You put however many rounds the magazine holds (in this case, 10) into it, pop it back into the rifle, close the bolt to chamber your first round, and you're off. When you run out, take the magazine out, slap another loaded on in, and carry on. Right?

Wrong!

That was Lee's idea, but the British military authorities had other plans. To understand why requires some knowledge of the typical British officer's attitude toward the common soldiers under his command around the turn of the 20th century. At that time, and for a very long time before then, British army officers tended to regard their men as not much smarter than dogs, and a good deal less trustworthy. Class distinctions in British society at the time operated on a level that isn't easy to picture nowadays, and in those days, officers were gentlemen and common soldiers were... well, not quite entirely human.

As such, they were certainly not fit to be trusted with anything more than they absolutely had to be given in order to function. It was bad enough the army lavished these expensive rifles, bayonets, uniforms and so forth on them, but there was no way the army was ever going to trust them to keep track of more than one magazine. They were surprisingly valuable back then, because they were non-trivially complicated to manufacture and had to be made to fairly exacting standards in order to work properly. If you gave the ordinary soldier more than one of these things, the logic at the time went, he would just lose it. Or sell it, trade it for whores and/or drink, or what have you. So each MLE and SMLE was issued with one (1) and only one (1) magazine, completely negating Lee's point in developing the damn things in the first place.

So how do you load an SMLE? Are you expected to take the magazine out of it and thumb the rounds into it one at a time, as you would to prepare your mags for the day's work back in the rear if you had more than one, only you have to do it under fire? No, absolutely not. For one thing, you're expressly forbidden to remove the magazine from the rifle unless you have to in order to clean it. For another, not even a British general was quite so disconnected from reality as to expect that that would ever work in practice.

Instead, you do exactly the same as the guys are doing on the other side of no man's land—the Boche, whose Mauser rifles are equipped with the system James Paris Lee invented the box magazine to replace. You use clips.

Here is a clip, or "charger", of five .303 British rounds, ready to be loaded into a Lee-Enfield rifle. The clip is just a bit of particularly bent sheet metal, designed to hold the cartridges in place relative to each other, so they can be more speedily applied. As you can see, it's not symmetrical, but that's just an artifact of the way they're manufactured; in practice, if you load them correctly (and in service, they would have come loaded from the arsenal; on the front line, you would be issued clips already loaded, just taken out of the box they came in by the quartermaster and handed out), they can be put into the gun either way up.

What you do, then, is open the bolt (in action, it most likely will already be open from when you ejected the last empty from the previous contingent), line up the clip with a guide machined into the action, and slot it into the rifle, like this:

Then you get your thumb onto the top round and shove 'em all down in there. (This is referred to as stripping the clip, and is why this kind of charger is often called a stripper clip.) The clip stays where it is, sticking out of the guide, and when all the rounds are in the magazine, you take it out and throw it away. The SMLE holds 10 rounds, and to keep the clips manageable, they only hold five, so to fully reload you do that twice. The second time, you don't even have to take the empty clip out if you don't feel like it. The act of closing the bolt to chamber your first round will pop it out of the guide and toss it aside.

This system (sometimes called the "Mannlicher style" after its developer, Austrian arms designer Ferdinand Mannlicher) was quite common at the time, and remained in use for quite a while afterward. As noted above, the German Gewehr 98 and its variants all used it; so did the Mosin-Nagant, and the Italian Carcano rifle. A number of early semiautomatic handguns were similarly charged, including the Mauser C96 Broomhandle and the Austrian Roth-Steyr and 1912 Steyr (the so-called "Steyr Hahn") pistols. The Remington Model 8, an early commercial semiauto rifle designed by John Browning, used stripper clips, and because they were considered disposable they are ridiculously hard to find now, though the rifles themselves remain popular with sportsmen.

Even after the British attitude toward ordinary soldiers thawed a bit between the World Wars, the SMLE remained primarily stripper-charged, simply because by then the training and logistics for running them that way were fully entrenched. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn, however, that some British riflemen made a habit of scavenging extra magazines whenever possible and stashing them away for a rainy day, because what a pain in the ass.

Let's see, what else... oh yes, the bayonet. Mine is a 12-inch Pattern 1903 bayonet, the first type developed for the SMLE (to replace the great honking sword bayonet issued with the long MLE). Actually, it's a cheap modern repro of a Pattern 1903, not the genuine article, but it serves the purpose. Here's a closeup of the left side of the rifle's bayonet mount, which is where the action is (no pun intended).

There are two lugs, the main one for mounting underneath and the round one at the front to align the blade parallel to the bore. (That's not the muzzle; the barrel is above it and does not protrude past the nose cap. Also note the big protective flange on the front sight, which helps keep the sight blade from getting bent in the field.)

Here you see how it works: The bayonet has a slot machined into its butt and a spring-loaded lock button, and the crossguard has a ring that slips over the alignment lug at the front.

Funnily enough, the Pattern 1903 bayonet was considered too short when it debuted, because military thinkers still assumed that the combined length of rifle and bayonet needed to be long enough to engage a cavalryman. It was therefore replaced by the Pattern 1907, which was similar but had a 17-inch blade instead of the 1903's 12-incher. This is mildly ironic given that cavalry were pretty conclusively shown to be of no military value in WWI, and so functionally speaking, the 1903 bayonet would have been fine for any practical purpose; but that's hindsight talking.

Another unusual thing that can be seen in this photo is that bit of swivel-mounted bent wire just behind the bayonet lug. That's not a sling swivel; they're mounted farther back on the SMLE, and are closed loops. The open one at the very front is a stacking hook. The idea was that if you and two other guys stood your SMLEs butt-down on the ground and leaned them toward each other, you could interlock those hooks on your three rifles and they would form a tripod, mutually keeping each other from falling over and getting mud in their actions. This was considered handy, for instance, at mealtimes, or when sleeping.

In practice, though, it was tricky to unhook them in a hurry, which soldiers found they often had to do, and other ways were found to try and keep the rifles clean. Stacking hooks were phased out of production toward the end of World War I; after the war, they were eliminated altogether, and in fact British armorers were instructed to remove the hooks from existing rifles when they came in for repair or to be placed in storage. The fact that this 1918 rifle a) was still fitted with one and b) didn't lose it after the war is interesting, at least to me.

One more interesting detail: this rifle's buttstock still has its original brass butt plate, and in that plate is a very finely machined little spring-loaded hatch.

I'm not 100% certain what goes in there. Many older muzzleloading rifles had a similar thing called a patch box, which, as the name suggests, was where you kept a supply of cloth patches to put between powder and ball. I think it may be intended to house a small bottle of oil for maintenance purposes; other British military rifles of my knowledge (such as the Boys anti-tank rifle, of Strike Witches fame) are so equipped. As you can see, mine doesn't have anything in it.

So there we are; another week, another Gun of the Week. I've only scratched the surface of the history and variation of this long-serving rifle; like the Gw 98 and the Mosin-Nagant, the Lee-Enfield action entered service in the 1890s, served major armies through both World Wars, and is still in widespread second- and third-level service today, as well as being widely used and popular on the civilian market. I have a Mosin-Nagant that will probably turn up in its own article at some point; no Mauser, as yet, but that may change.

Next time: something completely different.

--G.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Sofaspud Dec-14-15 1
     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Dec-14-15 2
         RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* ratinoxteam Dec-14-15 3
         RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Sofaspud Dec-15-15 7
             RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Dec-15-15 8
                 RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Sofaspud Dec-16-15 9
                     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Offsides Dec-16-15 10
                     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Dec-16-15 11
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Tabasco Dec-14-15 4
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* rwpikul Dec-15-15 5
     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Dec-15-15 6
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* ejheckathorn Mar-29-16 12
     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* mdg1 Mar-30-16 13
         RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Mar-30-16 14
     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* SneakyPete Mar-21-20 17
         RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Mar-21-20 19
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* VoidRandom Oct-30-16 15
  ceci n'est pas un SMLE (sort of) Gryphonadmin Mar-19-20 16
  RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* SneakyPete Mar-21-20 18
     RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III* Gryphonadmin Mar-21-20 20

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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
292 posts
Dec-14-15, 04:30 PM (EDT)
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1. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   This was an especially entertaining read, because this (in .22, so likely a replica I assume) was the rifle I was taught to shoot with, by my mother some time in the 80's.

She was rated Expert with her service pistol, but was still a mean shot with rifles. I ended up using what I learned to later teach rifle safety in the Boy Scouts.

All the historically interesting bits aside... I thought the SMLE was a helluva lot of fun to shoot. I'd like to try it again and see if it's still as fun as I thought it was back then. :)

--sofaspud
--


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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-14-15, 05:25 PM (EDT)
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2. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #1
 
   >This was an especially entertaining read, because this (in .22, so
>likely a replica I assume) was the rifle I was taught to shoot with,
>by my mother some time in the 80's.

Not necessarily a replica—there were several official .22 rimfire training versions of the Lee-Enfield over the years. The earliest versions were conversions of worn-out .303 rifles; later models were produced in .22 from the start. Most of them, particularly the WWI-vintage SMLE conversions (later redesignated Rifle No. 2 Mk IV, in the same way that the .303 SMLE retroactively became Rifle No. 1), were externally indistinguishable from the .303 version apart from some markings and the bore diameter, specifically so that they would provide the most seamless possible training experience.

I've never seen one of those in person, but I can only assume that they make great .22s, because I have to think that a rifle as big and heavy as an SMLE, originally designed for .303, would essentially have no recoil at all firing .22 rimfire. From what I see here, it seems like your experience was pretty positive too. I might have to try and round one of those up sometime.

(That is the one thing about the SMLE I'm not a big fan of: .303 British kicks like a mule. But then all the full-power service rifle cartridges of WWI did. The Lee-Enfield .308 conversion Gramp also had was much milder on the shoulder, but the .303 had the history, so that's the one I went with.)

>She was rated Expert with her service pistol, but was still a mean
>shot with rifles. I ended up using what I learned to later teach
>rifle safety in the Boy Scouts.

Well, that's pretty badass. Was she a cop or something? (Apologies if this has come up before and I've just forgotten about it; I'm old and crap. :)

--G.
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ratinoxteam
Member since Jun-6-05
222 posts
Dec-14-15, 06:58 PM (EDT)
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3. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #2
 
   >I've never seen one of those in person, but I can only assume that
>they make great .22s, because I have to think that a rifle as
>big and heavy as an SMLE, originally designed for .303, would
>essentially have no recoil at all firing .22 rimfire. From what I see
>here, it seems like your experience was pretty positive too. I might
>have to try and round one of those up sometime.

I learned to shoot with a couple of Mossberg Model 44 rifles (I'm pretty sure they were Model 44s). They were a little heavier than the SMLE and no, they didn't kick much at all.

--
Rat
That and five bucks will get you a small coffee at Starbucks


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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
292 posts
Dec-15-15, 09:44 PM (EDT)
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7. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #2
 
   LAST EDITED ON Dec-15-15 AT 09:46 PM (EST)
 
>I've never seen one of those in person, but I can only assume that
>they make great .22s, because I have to think that a rifle as
>big and heavy as an SMLE, originally designed for .303, would
>essentially have no recoil at all firing .22 rimfire. From what I see
>here, it seems like your experience was pretty positive too. I might
>have to try and round one of those up sometime.

If there was recoil, my single-digit-years self couldn't feel it. I think I was... 7 or 8, at the time. Knowing what I do now, and having shot several other rifles since, I can state that it -- or quite probably, I -- wasn't particularly accurate with it, but it didn't kick at all. Just, POP, and the target downrange sprouts another hole.

I do remember one issue with it. If you worked the bolt slowly, you had to pry the spent casing out with your fingernails. If you worked it too quickly, on the other hand, you'd end up jamming the casing vertically, between the back of the receiver and the next cartridge. You had to work it juuuust right to make the spent casing pop out neatly and fly past your shoulder.

The other bit that springs to mind is that I had a surprising wake-up call when I fired my first .30-06, after learning on the recoil-less SMLE.

>Well, that's pretty badass. Was she a cop or something? (Apologies
>if this has come up before and I've just forgotten about it; I'm old
>and crap. :)

I don't think it's come up before, no. My mother was a sheriff in Arizona prior to, well, me. She changed careers to become a computer programmer* after I was born. Between her, my grandparents (both WW2 veterans), and my uncles (Vietnam and police, respectively), family dinners had interesting conversation.

(* this is something of a tradition in my family, apparently; my grandfather, then my mother, then both my uncles, and recently a couple of cousins. I bypassed the military-or-police thing and went straight to programming, so I don't count.)

--sofaspud
--


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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-15-15, 10:47 PM (EDT)
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8. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #7
 
   LAST EDITED ON Dec-15-15 AT 10:49 PM (EST)
 
>If there was recoil, my single-digit-years self couldn't feel it. I
>think I was... 7 or 8, at the time. Knowing what I do now, and having
>shot several other rifles since, I can state that it -- or quite
>probably, I -- wasn't particularly accurate with it, but it didn't
>kick at all. Just, POP, and the target downrange sprouts another
>hole.

Well, if you were 7 or 8, it's not a real surprise that you weren't a great shot with a full-size 19th-century military rifle. The surprise is that you could hold it up. :)

>I do remember one issue with it. If you worked the bolt slowly, you
>had to pry the spent casing out with your fingernails. If you worked
>it too quickly, on the other hand, you'd end up jamming the casing
>vertically, between the back of the receiver and the next cartridge.
>You had to work it juuuust right to make the spent casing pop out
>neatly and fly past your shoulder.

Oh, it actually had a magazine? That's cool. Most of the .22-caliber training Lee-Enfield versions I've read about are single-shot (presumably because rimfire magazine conversions are more of a hassle than replacing the barrel and bolt head). The kiddie-sized rifle I learned on was like that; it had a bolt action, but no magazine, so once you opened it and ejected the empty, you had to chamber another round by hand.

>The other bit that springs to mind is that I had a surprising wake-up
>call when I fired my first .30-06, after learning on the recoil-less
>SMLE.

Heh, I worked my way up to .30-'06 by way of .22 Magnum and .30-30, the latter of which is kind of in my sweet spot for centerfire rifle cartridges (in terms of how they feel to shoot, not necessarily performance on target). I'm still not a big fan of any of the full-power circa-1900 service rifle cartridges I've experienced—particularly 7.62x54mmR. That impression is, I'm sure, not helped by my Mosin-Nagant being one of the carbine (short-barreled) models, which tends to exaggerate the recoil, but dang, yo.

Which reminds me, I should get the Winchester 94 back from Dad sometime and do a Gun of the Week on it. Good ol' cowboy carbine, the Winchester 94.

My own personal first holy-crap-what-the-hey moment was the first time Gramp decided I was ready to shoot a .44 Magnum round from the Super Blackhawk. We'd been shooting .44 Special, which is significantly less powerful, and the next time he loaded it he put one .44 Magnum round in it. The catch was that I didn't know which one it was. Until I got to it, of course. I, uh, I noticed then.

(This wasn't just Gramp being random, btw, it was a drill to see if I could keep myself from anticipating the blast and flinching. A similar training trick involves leaving one or more chambers of a revolver empty but not knowing which ones; if you flinch when you pull the trigger and it's a dry fire, it's really obvious.)

That was the first, but not the best, I'm-not-sure-what-just-happened-but-it-was-impressive moment in my early firearms education, though. That was the first time I fired a replica Remington US Model 1863 "Zouave" rifle. This is a .58-caliber muzzleloading rifle with percussion ignition, and boy howdy, black powder or not, that is a big damn bullet and requires a sizeable charge behind it. Black powder is less powerful than its modern successors, but it makes a louder, deeper noise and a massive cloud of smoke (which is why modern powders are called "smokeless" even though they aren't really—it's all relative). Also, if you're left-handed like me and you fire a side-lock percussion rifle with your hands in the usual positions, the detonating percussion cap sprays fire and little bits of molten metal all down the inside of your right forearm. That isn't massively painful, and it's easily avoided with a long-sleeved shirt and/or a long enough glove, but it's certainly... arresting... the first time it happens.

>I don't think it's come up before, no. My mother was a sheriff in
>Arizona prior to, well, me.

Huh. Nifty.

>She changed careers to become a computer
>programmer* after I was born.

"Worse pay; better hours."

(Actually, I would guess better pay, better hours, but a quote is a quote. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
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Dec-16-15, 01:26 PM (EDT)
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9. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #8
 
   >Well, if you were 7 or 8, it's not a real surprise that you weren't a
>great shot with a full-size 19th-century military rifle. The surprise
>is that you could hold it up. :)

Hah! Well, I recall it was prone rest and seated firing positions, for the most part -- I forget the 'proper' name for the stance, but you plop down on the ground, one leg tucked under, the other bent with the foot resting on the ground, and prop the rifle across your upraised knee.

I did learn standing as well, but only after I was familiar with the thing. But I've always been a big kid, and was routinely mistaken for being in my teens even at that age. I suspect body mass helped a lot.


>Heh, I worked my way up to .30-'06 by way of .22 Magnum and .30-30,
>the latter of which is kind of in my sweet spot for centerfire rifle
>cartridges (in terms of how they feel to shoot, not necessarily
>performance on target). I'm still not a big fan of any of the
>full-power circa-1900 service rifle cartridges I've
>experienced—particularly 7.62x54mmR. That impression is, I'm sure,
>not helped by my Mosin-Nagant being one of the carbine
>(short-barreled) models, which tends to exaggerate the recoil, but
>dang, yo.

I haven't fired a Nagant -- though I want to, someday -- but I have had the fun of squeezing off some rounds from a (Chinese) AK-47, which technically makes it a Type 56 I think. That fires 7.62x... something. 39mm, I think? It was fun but I don't think it was fun enough to want to spend that sort of money on a regular basis. One of my aforementioned uncles had it and we took it out back a few times.

These days, when I manage to go shooting at all, it's with my trusty Marlin .22LR. I can spend a happy hour or two putting 100 rounds through that for $10 -- and not feel like I've been punched in the shoulder, afterwards.


>That was the first, but not the best,
>I'm-not-sure-what-just-happened-but-it-was-impressive moment in my
>early firearms education, though. That was the first time I fired a
>replica Remington US Model 1863 "Zouave" rifle. This is a .58-caliber
>muzzleloading rifle with percussion ignition, and boy howdy, black
>powder or not, that is a big damn bullet and requires a sizeable
>charge behind it.

Hoo boy. Yeah, that would do it.

My son participates in Civil War reenactments, firing Springfield replicas, which also use the .58 caliber round. Of course, during reenactment events they're firing blanks with light powder loads, but we've fired the real thing a couple times as occasion permits.

Kicks like the proverbial mule, and a right bitch to clean. I think black-powder weapons are cool, in the "I'll stand over here and watch" sense, rather than the "I want one!" sense. :)

--sofaspud
--


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Offsides
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Dec-16-15, 01:39 PM (EDT)
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10. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #9
 
   >My son participates in Civil War reenactments, firing Springfield
>replicas, which also use the .58 caliber round. Of course, during
>reenactment events they're firing blanks with light powder loads, but
>we've fired the real thing a couple times as occasion permits.
>
>Kicks like the proverbial mule, and a right bitch to clean. I think
>black-powder weapons are cool, in the "I'll stand over here and watch"
>sense, rather than the "I want one!" sense. :)

When I was a kid, I went to the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington a few times, and while it sure was fun to watch (even if I was bleary-eyed from having to get up at like 4am to be sure to get a spot you can see from), I never really wanted to be right in the middle of those clouds. And that was before I learned (albeit only academically) about what it took to keep those things clean...

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>


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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-16-15, 02:11 PM (EDT)
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11. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #9
 
   >I haven't fired a Nagant -- though I want to, someday -- but I have
>had the fun of squeezing off some rounds from a (Chinese) AK-47, which
>technically makes it a Type 56 I think. That fires 7.62x...
>something. 39mm, I think?

Yeah—the 7.62x39mm cartridge is one of the original "intermediate" rounds, designed to have the same bore diameter as the USSR's full-power rifle cartridge (the 7.62x54mmR), but a smaller powder charge. Same kind of thing as the German 8mm Kurz (as used in the MP/StG 44). In the Soviets' case, they originally developed their intermediate round for a light machine gun during WWII (the RPD), and it was then used in several other projects during and after the war. Since one of those other projects was the AK-47, it's now the most common rifle ammunition in the world.

>It was fun but I don't think it was fun
>enough to want to spend that sort of money on a regular basis. One of
>my aforementioned uncles had it and we took it out back a few times.

I kind of perversely want an AK of one type or another in my collection, partly because of its long and colorful (if often darkly-colored) history and partly just because the damn things are likely to be banned again sooner or later. My inner shitkicker showing through, I suppose. :)

(For more than most people really want to know about the history and implementation about the AK-47, I recommend The Gun by C.J. Chivers, which I believe is still in print.)

>Kicks like the proverbial mule, and a right bitch to clean.

Modern black powder substitutes (Pyrodex et al.) help a lot with regard to the second point. They still require cleaning up after, but they're nowhere near as dirty and nasty as the Colonel's original formula; their cleanup requirements seem to be about equal to what's needed after firing old smokeless ammunition with corrosive primers. Which a lot of surplus military ammo is, so I've got a depressing amount of it in stock for both my SMLE and my Mosin-Nagant.

--G.
-><-
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Tabasco
Member since Dec-4-06
184 posts
Dec-14-15, 10:27 PM (EDT)
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4. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   LAST EDITED ON Dec-14-15 AT 10:30 PM (EST)
 
I think you're right about that compartment in the stock, my Garand has a similar setup to hold a small cleaning kit and grease jar.

Oddly enough the stripper clip hung on a lot longer than I'd have though practical. The Springfield M1A (clone of the M-14) still has a stripper clip guide machined into the receiver. Apparently one of the major gripes about the Garand was it wasn't possible to top off a partially used clip, so the its successor remedied the problem.

Nicely done on this article too, I hadn't known the SMLE had a detachable mag. Though it seems so typical that it was designed in and manufactured without ever being allowed to be used as intended.

--------------------
Space for Rent


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rwpikul
Member since Jun-22-03
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Dec-15-15, 11:50 AM (EDT)
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5. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   >I wouldn't be at all surprised to
>learn, however, that some British riflemen made a habit of scavenging
>extra magazines whenever possible and stashing them away for a rainy
>day, because what a pain in the ass.

For a value of 'some' that boiled down to 'pretty much all'. Some preferred the extra ammunition you could carry if you went with clips but most wanted at least a few quick changes.

> This is mildly ironic given that cavalry were pretty
>conclusively shown to be of no military value in WWI,

The men on both sides of the Kaiserschlacht in 1918 would be surprised by that. The main reason it failed was that almost all of the German cavalry was in the east and it was stopped by the ability of British and Canadian cavalry to quickly deploy.

However, it is true that there was no longer much of a need to have the full anti-cavalry bayonet: By WWI cavalry forces generally dismounted to fight, the horses were primarily for redeployment. Men were still trained for lance and sabre work in case it came up, but it was expected to only occur in the pursuit phase.

--
Chakat Firepaw - Inventor & Scientist (Mad)


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Gryphonadmin
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Dec-15-15, 02:47 PM (EDT)
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6. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #5
 
   LAST EDITED ON Dec-15-15 AT 02:48 PM (EST)
 
>> This is mildly ironic given that cavalry were pretty
>>conclusively shown to be of no military value in WWI,
>
>The men on both sides of the Kaiserschlacht in 1918 would be surprised
>by that. The main reason it failed was that almost all of the German
>cavalry was in the east and it was stopped by the ability of British
>and Canadian cavalry to quickly deploy.
>
>However, it is true that there was no longer much of a need to have
>the full anti-cavalry bayonet: By WWI cavalry forces generally
>dismounted to fight, the horses were primarily for redeployment.

Well, yeah, exactly. By that point, those were cavalry units, but they were no longer fighting as cavalry—that is, from horseback, with saber charges and all the rest of it—because that kind of thing was basically over. They had become, though they would probably have stabbed themselves before they would ever admit it, infantry that moved around between battles on horseback. The way I see it, saying that's cavalry is like conflating airmobile infantry with helicopter gunship pilots. (And yes, I do know that the US Army calls its airmobile infantry "air cavalry"; this to me is terminologically silly, since they don't fight from the helicopters, but don't go by me.)

As an aside, it's a common trope in some circles to use the example of the Polish cavalry at the outbreak of World War II as a shorthand for basically pointing and laughing at the Polish Army. Oh, those noble but stupid Poles, attempting cavalry charges against German tanks, lol. The thing is, as far as I can tell from the current scholarship, that didn't happen. There was a Polish cavalry unit that conducted a full-on, old-school charge, probably the last one ever made, during the German invasion in 1939, but it wasn't against armor; it was against a German infantry unit that they'd found without armored support or heavy machine guns. And because the German infantry didn't have armored support or heavy machine guns, it was a rout. Cavalry always was quite good at that sort of thing. It was only the opportunities to do it that went away.

The habit of Anglo-American historians to diss the Poles in postwar analyses is an interesting one; probably stems from lingering cultural guilt about throwing them under the bus in 1939, and again in 1945. But that's another matter for another time.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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ejheckathorn
Member since Aug-9-13
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Mar-29-16, 09:50 AM (EDT)
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12. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   According to my copy of British Enfield Rifles, Vol. 4, the Pattern 1914 and U.S. Model 1917 Enfield Rifles (Vol 4) by Charles Stratton, the compartment in the buttstock is indeed for a bottle of oil and a pull-through for cleaning purposes. I realize that a P14 is not the same as a SMLE, but as they are both British service rifles of a similar vintage...

Also, I tried doing a little research on the unit disk on your rifle, but didn't have any luck. I did find this reference, however:

The Identification of Buttstock Marking Discs in British Service by Peter Laidler

It seems to only cover unit markings for rifles in British service proper, not Commonwealth service.

Eric J. Heckathorn


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mdg1
Member since Aug-25-04
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Mar-30-16, 11:27 PM (EDT)
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13. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #12
 
   Me neither, but this page suggests Gryph actually has an SSA rifle that was part of the "Peddle-Scheme":

https://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=6&f=14&t=333163

Mario


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Gryphonadmin
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Mar-30-16, 11:40 PM (EDT)
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14. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #13
 
   >Me neither, but this page suggests Gryph actually has an SSA rifle
>that was part of the "Peddle-Scheme":
>
>https://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=6&f=14&t=333163

Hmm, interesting. I was under the impression that the ones not specifying place of manufacture were the Enfield Lock main production run, but upon closer inspection, mine does have the SSA receiver stamp. I have adjusted the main article accordingly.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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SneakyPete
Member since Jun-30-04
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Mar-21-20, 09:25 PM (EDT)
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17. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #12
 
   Here's a look at what appears to be the proper oiler for that weapon: https://www.brpguns.com/smle-mk-iii-brass-oiler/


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Gryphonadmin
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Mar-21-20, 09:47 PM (EDT)
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19. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #17
 
   >Here's a look at what appears to be the proper oiler for that weapon:
>https://www.brpguns.com/smle-mk-iii-brass-oiler/

Huh, neat. I think probably this one is technically correct for this gun (vintage 1918), although the two don't look very different. (I assume the "Mk III" and "Mk IV" are the marks of the oiler itself, not the rifle it goes to, since there was never an SMLE Mk IV—the next version after the SMLE No. 1 Mk III* was Rifle No. 4. British designations are kind of a hodgepodge, but on the other hand, they avoided having an M1 of everything in their inventory that way. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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VoidRandom
Member since Dec-9-02
154 posts
Oct-30-16, 00:07 AM (EDT)
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15. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   Just stumbled across the "Bloke on the Range" youtube channel and came across this video on the SMLE type action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-EdQuAxAII

Other good stuff there too, including an M1 Garand myths episode.

-VR
Actually he is shooting "Frankenrifle", a modified new build Australian rifle with an SMLE action.
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."


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Gryphonadmin
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Mar-19-20, 01:21 AM (EDT)
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16. "ceci n'est pas un SMLE (sort of)"
In response to message #0
 
   I think I've mentioned somewhere that the 1918 SMLE I covered in the original post used to belong to my grandfather. He gave it to me quite a few years ago now, ostensibly because he wanted to thin out his collection a bit; as it turned out, he and my grandmother were preparing to go into assisted living, where such things are Not Allowed, so he wasn't thinning the collection so much as dispersing it. When that time came, a number of the others found their way to me (the Super Blackhawk, for instance, and the Universal Shotgun). The rest ended up at my father's, either for him, or earmarked for my cousins who live out of state.

I mention this because back in the day, Gramp had two Lee-Enfield rifles; he gave me the .303 one, and the other one, which was in .308 Winchester/7.62×51mm NATO, went to Dad's. When Dad came up to work on the seemingly-unending bathroom remodel today (not sure how many more times we're going to be able to do that), he brought a couple of Gramp's old rifles with him, thinking I might be able to sell them and make some operating capital (not sure how I'm meant to do that under the circumstances, but anyway).

One of them was the other Lee-Enfield, and upon closer inspection it turns out to be something more interesting than I thought. Since my .303 Mk III* was a Century Arms import, I assumed that the .308 one had been rebarreled to take that cartridge by the importer. Century has kind of a track record for doing that kind of thing, and it's often not a great idea. In this case, 7.62 NATO is a higher-pressure cartridge than .303 British ever was, so a WWI-vintage SMLE action would be a pretty sketchy thing to put it in—sort of like the old importer practice of "shaving" .455 Webley cylinders to take .45 ACP. It's physically possible, but a questionable idea.

Turns out I needn't have worried, because although this rifle looks very much like an SMLE, it's a somewhat different animal.

Even up close, it sure looks like an SMLE. It even has the standard wristband with model markings. But a still closer look (and a bit of twiddling with the levels in Photoshop) reveals...

It's very much in the same pattern as the markings on British Lee-Enfield rifles, but the device surmounting it isn't the crown, it's the Lion Capital of Ashoka, which is the national emblem of the Republic of India. The text reads:

RIFLE
7.62mm 2A1
R F I
1966

(I think? That last digit might be an 8, I can't quite tell for sure.)

What we have here is a Rifle 7.62mm 2A1, made at Rifle Factory Ishapore (modern spelling Ichhapur) in West Bengal for the Indian Army, and consequently known in collector circles as the Ishapore 2A1. Although it looks virtually identical—in many ways it is virtually identical—to the British SMLE No. 1 Mk III*, vintage 1915, production of Rifle 2A began in 1963.

Post-Colonial India has something of a tradition of this kind of thing. When the British Empire controlled India, there was a great deal of British industrial investment in what was then the Empire's most important colony, and a lot of that continued after Indian independence in 1947. The Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle, for instance, is a design from the early 1930s that was used by both British and Indian forces in World War II. In 1949, the newly independent Indian Army ordered a lot of motorcycles from Royal Enfield, so many that the company opted to build a new factory in India rather than build and ship their order from England. As is sometimes the way of these things, the British Bullet went out of production in 1962 and the British company folded five years later. Meanwhile, in Chennai, they're still building them today. When India gets hold of something that works, they don't mess with it.

Rifle Factory Ishapore was a similar story. Originally set up in the 1700s as a gunpowder factory, it was expanded to rifle production circa 1904 and made Lee-Enfields for the British Indian Army through both World Wars. For some reason, the last version of the Lee-Enfield Ishapore made was the No. 1 Mk III*; the plant never got upgraded to the No. 4 rifle that was the British standard arm in World War II. After independence, the Indian Army kept it running, and kept building SMLE Mk III*s—they had the tooling, the workers there had the skills, and the army needed every rifle it could get.

In 1960, the Indian Army—still keeping step with the British in terms of small arms—adopted Rifle 7.62mm 1A1, an Ishapore-built copy of the 7.62 NATO-chambered L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle (Britain's version of the FN FAL) as a front-line rifle. A couple of years later, Ishapore commenced production of the 2A for second-line and reserve troops, resolving the ammunition mismatch that was caused by those troops still using the .303-caliber SMLE Mk III*.

So the reason the 2A1 looks a lot like an SMLE is because it pretty much is one, made by the same people on the same tooling that had made SMLEs for years—but rather than simply rebarrel the Indian Army's existing SMLEs to 7.62 NATO, which would have been inadvisable, Ishapore produced brand-new rifles, made with more modern steel and capable of withstanding the higher-pressure NATO ammunition.

The action is essentially the same, with the same charger bridge and bolt design; the only difference in those parts is the extractor, which had to be redesigned to work with the extraction groove on the 7.62mm NATO cartridge's rimless case. Note also that the 2A1 magazine is different as well; it's longer and more squared off. They came in 10- or 12-round varieties. As noted, the rifle retains the SMLE's stripper clip bridge; I've read that they used the same five-round clips (adapted to the different cartridge), which must have been really annoying for the guys who got the 12-round magazines.

Same deal over on the left side—the classic SMLE safety lever, and no other features or markings aside from an Indian proof mark on the barrel shank.

The nose cap is also pure SMLE. It's even supposed to take the same bayonets, although my repro Pattern '03 won't quite fit this rifle:

It goes on, but not willingly, and though it's very hard to pull off again because of the tight fit, it won't lock. This may be partly down to the fact that this is an inexpensive repro bayonet, although I note that it fits just fine on my 1918 SMLE.

The 2A entered production in 1963, and almost immediately left production to be replaced by the 2A1. This change didn't take long to implement, since literally the only difference between the two is the rear sight. On the 2A, they re-used the standard SMLE rear sight, with its hilariously optimistic 2,000-yard maximum range. A short way into production, someone realized how ridiculous that was and replaced it with this version:

Which is exactly the same, but only calibrated out to 800 meters (India having gone metric in 1958). You can still adjust it past there, but you are entirely on your own with that nonsense, rifleman.

The only other significant point of interest on this rifle is this stamp on the stock, which presumably indicates either a unit to which it was issued or an armory rack to which it was assigned, or something along those lines.

Also note the butt plate, which is aluminum, I think, rather than the brass/bronze of the WWI-vintage SMLE. That's the same butt plate they used on their Mk IIIs and, uniquely, the 1A1, Ishapore's copy of the L1A1. No other variant of the FAL, to my knowledge, was ever built with a Lee-Enfield trapdoor butt plate on a wooden stock.

(As an aside, I'd really like to do a GotW on the FAL sometime—it's a seriously interesting rifle—but they're quite expensive even in civilian semiauto guise, so that's probably going to have to wait a long while.)

So there you have it, the Ishapore 2A1: the last new-production bolt-action rifle adopted by a standing army, put into production three years after that same army adopted a modern self-loader. They made them until 1974, by which time 250,000 had been produced, and although the Indian Army no longer uses them, police agencies in the country still maintain stocks of them today.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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SneakyPete
Member since Jun-30-04
102 posts
Mar-21-20, 09:34 PM (EDT)
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18. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #0
 
   Something you and others may be interested in seeing, although only tangentially related: Mark Novak has a pair of videos where he converts a damaged Mk 4 to a carbine variant for a customer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMdJBwLRHEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygDjMt6h6w0


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Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
20143 posts
Mar-21-20, 09:48 PM (EDT)
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20. "RE: Gun of the Week: SMLE Mark III*"
In response to message #18
 
   Heh, yeah, I saw those. I enjoyed Mark trolling all the nomenclature nazis in the comments with the video titles—he knows damn well a Rifle No. 4 is not an SMLE, but he called it that anyway. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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