Lee–Enfield

It featured a ten-round box magazine which was loaded with the .303 British cartridge manually from the top, either one round at a time or by means of five-round chargers.Several First World War accounts tell of British troops repelling German attackers who subsequently reported that they had encountered machine guns, when in fact it was simply a group of well-trained riflemen armed with SMLE Mk III rifles.[9] Replacing this with a new square-shaped rifling system designed at the Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) Enfield solved the problem, and the Lee–Enfield was born.[24] The best-known Lee–Enfield rifle, the SMLE Mk III, was introduced on 26 January 1907, along with a Pattern 1907 bayonet and featured a simplified rear sight arrangement and a fixed, rather than a bolt-head-mounted sliding, charger guide.Although the .276 Enfield had better ballistics, trials by British Army soldiers in 1913 revealed problems including excessive recoil, muzzle flash, barrel wear and overheating.In the 1920s, a series of experiments were carried out to help with these problems, resulting in design changes which reduced the number of complex parts and refining manufacturing processes.1 Mk III* it lacked a volley sight and had the wire loop in place of the sling swivel at the front of the magazine well along with the simplified cocking piece.Other distinctive features include a nose cap screw was slotted for the width of a coin for easy removal, a safety lever on the left side of the receiver was slightly modified with a unique angular groove pattern, and the two-piece hand guard being extended from the nose cap to the receiver, omitting the barrel mounted leaf sight.The design was found to be even more complicated and expensive to manufacture than the Mk III and was not developed or issued, beyond a trial production of about 20,000 rifles between 1922 and 1924 at RSAF Enfield all of which marked with a "V".4 rifle with the trigger hung forward from the butt collar and not from the trigger guard, beech wood stocks (with the original reinforcing strap and centre piece of wood in the rear of the forestock on the No.4 Mk I/Mk I* being removed in favour of a tie screw and nut) and brass "gunmetal" buttplates (during the war the British, Americans and Canadians replaced the brass buttplates on the No.4 rifles with a zinc alloy (Zamak) type to reduce costs and speed production).[49] With a cut-down stock, a prominent flash hider, and a "lightening-cut" receiver machined to remove all unnecessary metal, reduced barrel length of 18.8 in (478 mm) the No.[49] A "shortened and lightened" version of the SMLE Mk III* rifle was also tested by the Australian military and a very small number were manufactured at SAF Lithgow during the course of the Second World War.It was never an official military designation but British and Commonwealth troops serving in the Burmese and Pacific theatres during World War II had been known to unofficially refer to the No.III* rifles by adding a heavy target barrel, cheek-piece, and a World War I era Pattern 1918 telescope, creating the SMLE No.(HT standing for "heavy barrel, telescopic sight),[13] which saw service in the Second World War, Korea, and Malaya and was used for sniper training through to the late 1970s.4 rifles, selected for their accuracy during factory tests, were modified by the addition of a wooden cheek rising-piece, and telescopic sight mounts designed to accept a No.[76] Post-Second World War, SAF Lithgow converted a number of SMLE rifles to commercial sporting rifles- notably the .22 Hornet model- under the "Slazenger" brand.1 rifles to L59A2 drill purpose was also prepared but was abandoned due to the greater difficulty of machining involved and the negligible numbers still in the hands of cadet units.Previous conversions to drill purpose (DP) of otherwise serviceable rifles were[79] not considered to be sufficiently incapable of restoration to fireable state and were a potential source of reconversion spares.The commando units of the British military requested a suppressed rifle for killing sentries, guard dogs and other clandestine operational uses during the Second World War.The resulting weapon, designed by Godfray de Lisle, was effectively an SMLE Mk III* receiver redesigned to take a .45 ACP cartridge and associated magazine, with a barrel from a Thompson submachine gun and an integrated suppressor.[81] It fired in semi-automatic only and suffered some feeding and extraction problems and, despite meeting accuracy and soundness of design concept, never made it past the prototype stage.Long-stroke piston tilting bolt semi automatic conversion developed by Turner Russel, proposed for the Canadian government in 1941 but was rejected.4 in order to avoid the expense of rearming those units with the L1A1 as well, Britain's commitments as a NATO member meant that the .303in cartridge could no longer be used; thus, the early 1960s saw the approval of a plan to convert the Lee–Enfield No.Sterling Armaments of Dagenham, Essex, produced a conversion kit comprising a new 7.62 mm barrel, magazine, extractor and ejector for commercial sale.GRI stands for "Georgius Rex, Imperator" (Latin for 'King George, Emperor (of India)', denoting a rifle made during the British Raj.No Savage Lee–Enfields were ever issued to the US military; the markings existed solely to maintain the pretense that American equipment was being lent to the UK rather than permanently sold to them.However, the Lee–Enfield was mainly replaced in main-line service in the Pakistani Police in the mid-1980s by the AK 47, in response to increasing proliferation of the Kalashnikov in the black market and civilian use.CIA officer Gust Avrakotos later arranged for the Egyptian Ministry of Defence to set up production lines of Enfield .303 ammunition specifically for the conflict.Later on when Avrakotos asked Michael Vickers to revamp their strategy, he stopped the Enfield system and, with the large amounts of money available thanks to Charlie Wilson, replaced them with a mix of modern weapons like AK-47s and mortars.