Why do I like the SMLE No.1 MKIII?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The British Lee rifles were never intended for any round other than .303. A .402 round was designed exclusively for the new MkIV Martini-Henry, but never issued when it was discovered to be, although about the best of its kind, obsolete following the development of "chemical powder" by the French. This instantly killed off the impracticality of much smaller calibres, of which the advantages were well known.

The .303 was never intended as a black powder rifle. An Explosives Committee already had samples of the French Poudre B and Nobel's Ballistite, but considered improvement to be required in either case. The black powder pellet, long since found inadequately accurate in the ..577 Snider, was only a stopgap, and the issue Lee-Metford sights were calibrated for a slightly higher velocity than it would produce.

The British government's powder, which appeared in only two or three years, was cordite, and another myth is that the rounded rifling o the Lee-Metford was unsuitable for smokeless powder. It was true of the original cordite, with a 58% nitroglycerin content, such as nowadays is found only in solid fuel rocket propellants, since you don't get your nozzle back after their single flight. The segmental Lee-Enfield rifling was a very incomplete solution, and very early in the twentieth century it was reduced to 30%, which itself is more than modern double based rifle powders. Moderate use of smokeless in an original Lee-Metford is about as acceptable as in any collectible rifle.

There were indeed plenty of .45-70 Lee rifles in the United States, including sporting Remington-Lees, although no bolt action became really popular at the time. James Paris Lee's favourite cartridge, at least before smokeless, was the .43 Spanish. It was New Zealand that withdrew 500 rifles amid some acrimony after case separations and breech explosions, although the fault probably lay with the ammunition, assembled by a local contractor from unstamped cases and powder from a manufacturer more used to blasting powder.

There was nothing very original about Lee's bolt, and although the British benefited very greatly from the rear-mounted handle which came after the US Navy Lee, he probably copied that from von Mannlicher. What the British really paid for was the use of the box magazine, although the first use of the double-column magazine was their work. They also dropped his intention to use interchangeable magazines for loading, although this worked out all right when charger loading was introduced.

People do make the .45-70 and the .405 Winchester work in the Lee-Enfield action, although I am not sure if they achieve a totally reliable feed, or with how much trouble. There is a lot to be said, and very little to lose, in choosing one of the .35 or .375 cartridges based on the .303 or .30-40 Krag cases. The .375x2½ Nitro-Express was used in original Lee sporting rifles, sometimes termed the Lee-Speed after the man who developed most of the British improvements, but you would need .405 Winchester cases to make really good brass. This problem doesn't apply with more recent wildcat rounds.

Here are a couple of very good threads on .303 sporting conversions.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...le-(and-friend)

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...Sporting-rifle

[gew98]

Great reply,complete rubbish but yeh. Pat

I concur pat. Noticed he did'nt mention that awesome stock mounted hand grenade called the springy-field..... or that obsolescent Krag thing along with the trapdoor thingy the US goobermint saddled it's troops with for way too long. In 1888 many countries in europe had centerfire bolt action repeating magazine fed rifles...what did the USA have... blackpowder singleshot flappydoors , no contest.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Sure it had problems. They had to keep changing it, gave it a huge chamber because it easily got full of mud, the magazine was not readily adaptable to a more modern cartridge, it was a transition design between black power and smokless and it was not very rigid.
Sure it was used all over. But so was that crummy Brodie helmet. The Brits were too poor and too cheap to adopt a better rifle.
The US was using the M1 Garand rifle while the tommies were dragging the old bolt guns around.

BTW the Brits got their pants shot off by the Boer farmers and started looking for another rifle when they were interrupted by WWI.

People seek their self-esteem in some unlikely ways, and the above seems to be about something other than the rifle. The Lee-Enfield didn't attract mud in its direction more than any other rifle, and for several reasons besides the chamber, coped with it with far fewer malfunctions than the others. Unlike the early Springfields it didn't have a tendency to disintegrate, nor the jamming problem of the M16 in its early service. The Garand may have been the first rifle (though I'm not sure it did) to give the ordinary American soldier a standard in rapid fire which would have allowed a man to remain a combat infantrymen in the British army of 1914. Later the British were the first to put a good aperture sight on a military rifle, which must be reckoned a great improvement. General Hatcher certainly said so.

Britain did indeed suffer serious defeats in the Boer War, and nearly sixth of the combat deaths of the USA in Vietnam was far too many. But the rifle worked fine, and by the end the army was out-boering the Boers in fine style, and learning lessons which, while far from ideal for trench warfare, were quite priceless for the legendary forty days in 1914. Perhaps even more puzzling for you, the war turned the Boers into immensely valuable allies in more vital conflicts, and economic contributors to the Empire. It happened that way because the British paid for reconstruction, and because both parties for the most part liked and respected each other, and trusted each other's conduct in the field. I forbear to mention comparisons.

[Multigunner]

"The Garand may have been the first rifle (though I'm not sure it did) to give the ordinary American soldier a standard in rapid fire which would have allowed a man to remain a combat infantrymen in the British army of 1914."
The Krag is as fast to operate as the SMLE, but with fewer rounds in its magazine. You can reload a Krag very quickly with loose cartridges, faster than you can reload a LE with loose cartridges, but the Charger of the SMLE makes all the difference when reloading under stress conditions.
When the Krag Carbine first came out it was a hair faster in a fight than the Lee Metford Carbine with the early six round magazine and no charger guides.

[Multigunner]

PS
While US troops were told to limit rapid fire to 25 shots per minute to avoid eroding the bore any experienced Grand user can fire 60 rounds per minute with a little practice. IIRC the record is 90 rounds per minute.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Pending the next one-day war, that sounds like a lot of missing is intended.

[Multigunner]

The Mad Minutes and Reconnaissance by fire exercises were expected to produce casualties with every round fired.
The British would open up on advancing German troops at extreme ranges dropping men more by guess and by golly till they closed to 300 yards or less. The USMC was taught to open up on advancing Chinese troops at 800 yards. During later stages of WW2 the US Army probed likely ambush sites with massed rifle and MG fire to neutralize unseen enemies.
No one shoots as accurately under high stress situations as they do on the range, except the master snipers who fire relatively few rounds and almost never in rapid fire.

BTW
The old saying about Germans thinking the British had many machineguns due to the rapid fire of the British rifle was in fact first said about the USMC when using the Winchester Lee Straight pull rifle in Cuba.

The two most amazing feats of rapid fire against advancing troops, before the adoption od autoloaders, were the Turks using 1866 Winchester rifles against Russian infantry at Sevastapol and US Marines using Winchester pump action shotguns against Germans during WW1.

[Multigunner]

Excuse me I meant Were not Expected to produce casualties with every round fired.
For some reason I can't edit my posts.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The old saying about Germans thinking the British had many machineguns due to the rapid fire of the British rifle was in fact first said about the USMC when using the Winchester Lee Straight pull rifle in Cuba.

That part of what you say may well be true, but in 1964 I heard a former German soldier being interviewed on TV, who still believed it was true in 1914. In fact British and German battalions had the same rather meager allowance of machine-guns, but the Germans had a lot more battalions.

[Multigunner]

The SPANAM website has quotes from a letter written by a Spanish officer accused of cowardice because he called for a retreat rather than press an attack on a badly out numbered group of Marines who were cutting his men down in droves with their Winchester Lee Straightpull rifles. He claimed they had many machineguns.

The Winchester Lee was a prime example of the limitations of rapid fire when using high Nitroglycerin content propellants. Rapid fire could burn out the barrel of one of the 6mm Lee Navy rifles very quickly because of the high temperature of the propellant.
The USMC still had a few Colt 1895 potato digger MGs during WW1. These proved highly effective out to 600 yards though less powerful than other MGs in use a the time. These may have inspired experiments with the 6mm SAW cartridge in later years.
With the SMGs being used in large numbers by all combatants and autoloading rifles in limited use by Germany and Russia the importance of rapid fire of the Lee Enfields was losing ground, but the SMLE and No.4 were still far more reliable than most autoloaders in rough conditions.
By mid WW2 the British squad was built around the BREN Gun, with riflemen carrying extra ammo for the BREN just as the Germans built their squads around the MG34 and MG42.

[GabbyM]

Springfield was and is a lot better rifle. Problem it had was back when it first started out in 1906 our Grandfathers still were willing to sacrifice lives for money. Compared to things like coal mines and the rail road industry. Military had it easy. Then the USA developed this Union problem where a workers life started to matter.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The SPANAM website has quotes from a letter written by a Spanish officer accused of cowardice because he called for a retreat rather than press an attack on a badly out numbered group of Marines who were cutting his men down in droves with their Winchester Lee Straightpull rifles. He claimed they had many machineguns.

The Winchester Lee was a prime example of the limitations of rapid fire when using high Nitroglycerin content propellants. Rapid fire could burn out the barrel of one of the 6mm Lee Navy rifles very quickly because of the high temperature of the propellant.
The USMC still had a few Colt 1895 potato digger MGs during WW1. These proved highly effective out to 600 yards though less powerful than other MGs in use a the time. These may have inspired experiments with the 6mm SAW cartridge in later years.
With the SMGs being used in large numbers by all combatants and autoloading rifles in limited use by Germany and Russia the importance of rapid fire of the Lee Enfields was losing ground, but the SMLE and No.4 were still far more reliable than most autoloaders in rough conditions.
By mid WW2 the British squad was built around the BREN Gun, with riflemen carrying extra ammo for the BREN just as the Germans built their squads around the MG34 and MG42.

The Winchester-Lee certainly was vulnerable to erosion, which is a pity, as subsequent developments could have turned it into about as good a cartridge for a selective-fire military rifle as any existing today. The rifles still extant today though (including mine) more often have barrels damaged by pitting than by erosion. Besides the powder it was vulnerable to the corrosive primer, and I suspect more difficult to clean well than even a .30.

The real lesson of the Spanish-American war came from the 7x57 Mauser. The Spanish troops at San Juan were mostly conscripts and outnumbered more than ten to one, but inflicted disproportionate casualties. The Krag wasn't a bad rifle, and it is hard to think of any action in which a clip-loading or interchangeable-magazine adaptation and better sights wouldn't have made it just as good as the M1903. But the Army's verdict at the time was that the Krag magazine was too slow to recharge.

The problematic heat-treatment of the M1903 lasted until the First World War, but can't fairly be blamed on a desire to save money. Refusing to take a loss on the recently-purchased Krags would have been extremely cheap, and the defective heat treatment was neither a money-saver nor suspected in the rifle's early years. They simply built the best rifle they could.

There may also have been design faults, although improved metallurgy eventually eliminated them. It would be very unusual for a Mauser 98, in good mild steel deeply case-hardened, to disintegrate the way some M1903s did. The Army dissected 93 Mausers captured in the war, but there are no design traits whatever to suggest that they knew a 98 Mauser had come along in the meantime. There is more metal in the 98 receiver ring, and in particular the internal stop-ring which encloses the front of the bolt.

In Lee's early turnbolt rifles a concave guide for the bullet nose merges into an internal web, which does duty as such a strengthening stop-ring, and was later used in most Mannlichers and the Mauser 98. During the First World War American propagandists made much of how a Herr Mauser worked in the Remington plant, observed the Leeaction, and decamped to Germany with his pirated design. This is no more than close to baseless, for Franz Mauser, an elder brother of Paul and Wilhelm, did work there when the Remington-Lee was in production, and may have facilitated the interchange of ideas which characterizes this industry. But there was nothing secret about the identity of Franz, who remained with Remington until his death five years before 1898, a highly esteemed citizen. His brothers had made bolt actions comparable with Lee's, apart from the magazine, since the early seventies. It would have been easier to buy a copy of Lee's German patent, as they no doubt did.

[Multigunner]

Paul Mauser bought up a slew of firearms patents from gunmakers and gunsmiths just on the off chance that his designs might infringe on theirs.
Awhile back I found an early Mauser patent with a drawing of a rear locking bolt action rifle action that appeared to be identical to that of the French MAS 36 RIFLE. I suspect the French copied that earlier unused Mauser design.
That would be tit for tat since Spandau reverse engineered a stolen Lebel to create the Gew88 action.

[PAT303]

I find the history of rifles and the information brought forward on these types of threads far more interesting than the tit for tat bickering threads they normally end up turning into.On the Lee erosion,the small calibre,less than ideal steel,hot powder and quick firing all contributed. Pat

[gew98]

Springfield was and is a lot better rifle. Problem it had was back when it first started out in 1906 our Grandfathers still were willing to sacrifice lives for money. Compared to things like coal mines and the rail road industry. Military had it easy. Then the USA developed this Union problem where a workers life started to matter.

I beg to differ..... toss an enfield to th eground hard..and you still have a rifle to pick up and go on with. Do the same with a springy field and you almost certainly will break something...rear sight , front sight ...handguards.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

They didn't buy any from James Paris Lee, for he sued them and lost, under German law, over the central box magazine, which was effectively protected elsewhere. Conversely Mauser won a large settlement in the US for the Springfield. Von Mannlicher designed a family of three rifles in 1881-82 which suggest interesting doubts about patent rights. The first was a plain Lee-inspired rifle with detachable central box-magazine. But it was followed by almost the same thing with a tube-magazine under the barrel, superior to most bolt-actions of that type only in that it had a loading-gate, so the rifle wasn't immobilized while the magazine was being topped up. The other 1882 Mannlicher had a large gravity-fed magazine rising diagonally from the receiver, and surely only patent law could possibly drive anyone to that. But they were probably where Lee got the rear bolt handle, which Mannlicher never used in large-scale turnbolt production.

Front locking lugs in the Lebel were probably unpatentable, and there is very little of its design in the German Commission 88. An Alsatian deserter is indeed said to have decamp for Germany with his Lebel and ammunition, or at least the story is told. But the German ministry of war told him to go away and not be so silly, as the rifle was scarcely any improvement over the well-known Kropatschek or 71/84 Mauser,and everybody knew an 8mm. rifle would work exceedingly well at first, but then badly through fouling. He then knocked on the door of Bismarck's home, and Bismarck realized that it was the powder that urgently needed to be copied. It is a story so good as to be suspect.

Steyr in Austria-Hungary raised a claim for unauthorized use of the magazine and clip system designed by their employee, Mannlicher, and as part of the settlement got a production contract and free use of its Schlegelmilch bolt, which is best known in the 6.5mm. Mannlichers. Schlegelmilch's principle contribution was the separate, non-rotating bolt-head, quite different from that of Lee, which probably inspired it.

The above just scratches the surface of how much technological inbreeding went on at the time.

[Multigunner]

Anyone who's never run across a SMLE with split handguards or fore end battered till the whole shebang twists about hasn't seen that many SMLEs.
The early style butt stocks sometimes split full length due to the amount of material drilled away for the stock bolt.

No rifle of the day was immune to battle damage or ham handed recruits.

The Springfield front sight was not well protected, so they issued detachable front sight guards. The Marine Corp front sight hood is very sturdy and meant to be left in place. The ladder style rear sight was no more likely to break than the similar sights used on the LE and 93 Mauser. The same basic sight had been in use since the Indian Wars with few if any complaints.
The Springfield 1903 and 03A3 are highly unlikely to break if you simply toss it to the ground. The only 1903 I've seen with a broken stock was one that a horse rolled over on. It had a break at the magazine well on one side and otherwise was undamaged. It was still usable as it was, though I suspect bedding was affected.

[PAT303]

Well I believe after today that the British know how to build a rifle.I've been playing with my No.4 for months,I've tried Queens bedding,Canadian,Sweet,Parker Hale,Fultons and today Bisley,the best was Bisley,4'' groups at 100 with 5 different loads,standard British bedding it does 1 1/2''.4 months and 500 rounds later I'm never going to question the ability of British gun makers. Pat

[gew98]

My main criticism of the Enfield - well early examples was the magazine cutoff and volley sights. The volleys outlived their usefullness pretty much before they were incorporated into the design. The cutoff...marginal at best and easily engaged when not wanted. Otherwise the SMLE is a beautiful rifle and accurate. The "kitchener's mob" of 1914 was unequaled in it's expert use of the enfield rifle in blunting the german advance. They paid the price for standing their ground and the fighting retreat...but the old contempable's accuracy and rate of fire could not have been done with any other rifle of the day