A 250m effective range is optimistic, to put it mildly. It would certainly kill at that range, but the trajectory of the low-velocity bullet would be so curved that aiming would be little more than guesswork.
Yea, probably between 50 or 100 meters were the most used shooting distances.
Hi guys I read in a book the lee enfeild .303 was used by soilders in WW1 and they used the lee enfeild for mass firing at 1000m and by snipers with scopes at 2000m. I want to get a lee enfeild as my first deer gun and I am wondering about the kick whats it like? I have got a u&o shotgun and a semi auto shotgun I can handle them with ease I know how to shoot rifles having a .22 and joining a rifle club for a few years. Also how much does the ammo cost? Like a packet of 50 rounds?
No, they didn’t use sniper rifles at 2000 m.
ok but did they use it for mass firing at 1000m?
The professional BEF at the start of the war did indeed use it for mass firing at 1000 yards and beyond.
During the retreat in 1914 there was even a counter-attack over 1000 yards of open ground, classic fire-and-manoeuvre stuff, and the musketry was so fast and so accurate that the Germans hardly got a shot in return, since whenever one of them stuck their head up they caught one.
The pre-1917 SMLE had an auxiliary set of sights for massed firing at even longer ranges, up to, if I remember correctly, 3600 yards. of course no real accuracy can be expected at this sort of range, especially given the nature of the auxiliary sight, but it was there. Post-1917 it was deleted because it was useless for the type of warfare they were doing at that point, and for conscript troops.
the Mk 5 jungle carbines were an absalute beast, with the sights continue to wander off, as the wood did not allow it to shoot straight, when the barrel heated up, the weight was aquivalent to that of a M-92 mauser, but alot shorter, and the kick was abtrusivly large and kind of hellish to shoot, so the british army opted for the 150 grain FMJ instead of the 174 FMJ. but the Mk I* and the MkIII*, are my favorite to shoot, and both extremly accurite for their age and use.
??? I have comprehensive references on the military .303 cartridge and there is no mention of a 150 grain ball load in any of them. The two final ball loadings were the flat-based 174 grain Mk VII (in service from just before WW1 until the .303 was withdrawn) and the high-pressure, boat-tailed Mk VIII for the Vickers MG.
Anyone who refers to the No.5 as the “Mk 5” is already off to a bad start…
The “wandering zero” thing most likely came about by civilian armourers, post-war, setting the beddings up incorrectly , attempting to get six pounds muzzle pressure like the No.4 instead of free float.
Remind me again, which is the “M-92” Mauser?
Just to demonstrate my ignorance, why did the wood overcome and misdirect the metal when the barrel heated up?
What heat was required, caused by how many rounds in what time in jungle warfare?
If the heated barrel was sufficiently soft to be moved by the wood, wouldn’t it be drooping anyway and inaccurate in another plane over the foresight?
Also, given that jungle carbines were, in jungle, generally used at ranges from about five to twenty five yards, where sighting along the barrel was reasonably adequate, how did the claimed effects on the sights from heating the barrels interfere with day to day infantry use?
Since I know what I’m talking about, I will respond to those questions.
The bedding, i.e. the relationship between the metal and the wood, is the single most important aspect of rifle design. the barrel gets a fair deal longer during firing, more than you might expect. Wood, under heating, also expands and sometimes twists.
A badly bedded rifle results in inconsistent contact and pressure between barrel and woodwork.
Barrels also vibrate an awful lot while firing: essentially, they act as a tuning fork. As the bullet travels along the barrel, the barrel is vibrating, and at some point spits the bullet out. If the vibrations are constant from shot to shot, the bullet will always leave the barrel at the same point – result: accuracy. if the vibrations are not constant from shot to shot, then the muzzle portion of the barrel will be pointing in a different direction each time – result: crap accuracy.
In the vast majority of rifles, optimum accuracy is achieved with a free floated barrel, i.e. the barrel does not touch the woodwork at all. Military rifle barrels tend to be a little light and whippy for this, so they are often bedded either along the whole length (which is dire, and probably the most common), or to contact limited places with a controlled force. The number 4 rifle had the most advanced bedding of its day, with a six pound downwards muzzle pressure on about 2 inches of barrel at the very end of the woodwork. This successfully damped vibrations adequately and if done correctly was unaffected by barrel heating. I once had a number 4 rifle which was badly bedded, and the point of impact would change remarkably from shot to shot, and the shots would string vertically (on a bad day over about 10-12 inches at 100 yards!) I had it re-bedded correctly, after which it shot very well.
Now, in the case of the number 5, the shorter barrel was stiff enough to be free floated, and it shot very well like that. Civilian gunsmiths would try to bed it like a number 4, at which point it would not shoot consistently and you ended up with “wandering zero”, which was entirely a range problem and was never complained about in the field, as far as I’m aware . This was one of the BS reasons why it was made obsolescent. They should have just admitted “we have about 4 million number 4 rifle is in charge, we’re not going to standardise again on a different bolt action rifle when we will probably be adopting a self-loading rifle in the near future anyway”.
Thanks for that.
Brings back some completely forgotten stuff from about 40 years ago when I used to read a bit on such things, at a very amateur, and largely uncomprehending, level. You’ve explained it very clearly.
How did they manage to get consistency in wood? I know a little about that as an amateur woodworker. No two pieces of wood are identical and there’s a whole range of problems with wood changing its dimensions dependent upon humidity, heat, cold and so on, and other factors such as how and how long it’s been dried before use. The barrel still ends up being attached to the wood, free floating or not. Or was it just the heat of firing that mattered?
Would it be a case of some rifles just being sweeter because of a nice piece of wood and some not?
Re the downward pressure on the end of the barrel, it’s decades since I’ve seen a .303 but I recall that there’s a metal band near the end of the forestock? Which I assumed was just to hold them together. Is that the part that’s engineered to apply the pressure?
I’m just reading about this now. I guess the Germans often thought that the British had far more automatic weapons available than the did, due to the accurate and sustained fire of the professional British Army in the BEF toting Lee Enfields, that had a higher rate of bolt action fire that the Mauser. Keegan states that the British troops frequently practiced on the range, much more so than any other army, and that soldiers were given incentives for marksmanship on top of the normal ones of promotion and bragging rights; decisively allowing their survival against the advancing German mass which was often shocked and panicky when faced with such determined accurate fire…
The action in contact with the wood is far less critical than the barrel itself. But yes, good quality timber properly seasoned is a pre-requisite for good and consistent accuracy, particularly over long periods of time. Free-floating minimises this, and free-floating with a glass bedding more or less eliminates problems due to timber (glass bedding is a post-war development, and only really worthwhile on rifles with a slightly stiffer barrel than would be normal on a Second World War rifle.) The bedding design on the number 4 is designed to give the best results with what they could do at the time. There is a later technique for the number 4 called “centre bedding”, where the bedding is set up differently (free at the muzzle and in contact around the middle band), but it requires epoxy/glass bedding and was developed later. .
As for the wood, yes, they had great difficulty with it. They had to develop whole new techniques of kiln drying, but the wood on a wartime rifle is typically not as good as pre-/post-war. Basically, they allowed standards to slip. Quite understandably.
Some rifles are just sweeter per se, but you are right, a nice piece of wood really helps matters. (sweet metalwork in crap woodwork equals crap shooting, crap metalwork in sweet woodwork equals crap shooting, crap metalwork in crap woodwork equals really really bad shooting. The first two are generally acceptable for service use!)
Downward pressure: no, the band is just there to keep the front top handguard on. Getting the pressure right is a nontrivial job and relies on adding/removing wood around the front of the action/Knox form of the barrel where it is in contact. centre bedding involves building that area up with epoxy and making an extra bedding of about 2 inches out of epoxy under the front band, leaving the barrel clear at the muzzle.
alright, i was educated that the No. 5 used a 150 Grain Pill instead of the common 174 Grain Bullet.
I only know the No. 5’s as the Mk. 5, as i have had relitives fight on the Kakoda Trail during the war, and they have always refered to them as the Mk. 5 not the No. 5. but the round used before the barrel heating up varied from rifle to rifle. as thousands went down them anyway, the barrels tended to droop and flick around as the rounds went down the barrel. but the common distance was maxed out at 100 yards anyway with Jungle Warefare. and as common soldiers didn’t know and didn’t mind this as they brought down the enemy anyway.
I’ll happily be corrected by the gun experts here, but my understanding is that the No. 5 wasn’t available until around mid-1944. If so, nobody used it on Kokoda.
The Kokoda Track (Trail is the American term, which has been adopted by a lot of, perhaps most, Australians as part of our general adoption of American culture in preference to our own) campaign was finished by the end of 1942, with Kokoda being recaptured in early November 1942. The Buna - Gona - Sanananda beachheads which were the start and end of the Japanese advance and retreat along the Kokoda Track to capture Port Moresby, and which was the larger campaign, were recaptured in January 1943.
Rarely on Kokoda. Try about a quarter or less of 100 yards for a lot of encounters.
This raises some interesting questions about sourcing and manufacturing the wooden components. You might know the answers to some of these questions.
Was only one species of wood used in WWII?
Do you know what it was, or which they were?
Overall during the SMLE’s life, were different species of wood used and is one regarded as the best? Why?
With the wartime demands, I’d imagine that it’d put pressure on forests to get trees of a suitable age for the best wood if they all came from England, with most European sources largely closed.
It’s asking a lot of relatively small pieces of timber with some fairly thin sections to perform consistently from just below the Arctic to the Equator. Do you know if there were problems with the wood in Middle East / Asian / Pacific service that weren’t encountered in Europe? I’d expect the humidity to cause the wood to swell, while dry heat could dry it out, with both altering the dimensions and shape of the wood.
Was anything done to try to protect the wood from climatic influences, such as factory treatment or standard field service of the wood?
The British used lots of different types of wood during the war. Off the top of my head, and certainly amongst others, walnut, beech, various Canadian hardwoods including maple. the Australians also used boxwood and various other Antipodean hardwoods. Laminates were also tried, but deemed unsuccessful since they de-laminated readily in the tropics. The Germans, not terribly bothered by the tropics, used laminate as standard.
Walnut has always been preferred, since it is the most resistant to distortion, and is nice and hard . as protection, it was typically impregnated with linseed oil. I would imagine that in desert and tropical service they did not perform as well as it more temperate climes.
Thanks for that.
Sounds like a bit of a mish mash, but there was a great deal of knowledge in those days about natural wood so they probably didn’t do too badly, with what they had.
I’m just old enough to remember using boiled linseed oil on wood. Talk about a waste of time compared with anything in the last thirty years!
The Russians used a lot of shellacked, grease impregnated Arctic Birch. The wood was terrible, and very soft, but shellac gives a good sturdy finish. you see a lot without any shellac on though.
Nothing comes close to the beauty of a well executed Tru-Oil finish though.