Does this sound odd?

[Multigunner]

From a statement on injuries from a Cadet accident.


The next one was another Cadet firing a service rifle on a range without a bolt head. The rifle was hand loaded and fired. The bolt blew and tore off the bottom locking lug but the top lug remained intact.

I've only seen photos from one controled experiment in firing a SMLE with out the bolt head, and from descriptions of damage done plus knowledge of the structure of the Enfield action the above description of bolt damage does not sound right to me.

In the controled experiment the case seperated and the case head with some mangled case wall ended up wadded up around the firing pin which had ended up centered in the primer pocket and flash hole.

Seems to me the following would apply.
For a blow out to tear off a locking lug there would have had to be resistence to the chamber pressure by the bolt, and that would not be possible if there were no bolthead in place at time of firing.
For the "bottom locking lug", which would be the lefthand lug when action was locked, to be broken off without there being any damage to the Top (guide rib) lug, there would have had to be severe flexing of the action body, or no contact by the guide rib lug for some other reason.

IIRC couple of descriptions of known action failures dure to bore obstruction have mentioned the bolt head not being present when the action was examined, but in these cases it was known that the bolt head had shattered.
While you'd expect remnants of the threaded shaft of the bolt head should remain in the bolt body, this may not always be the case, and broken up pieces of the shaft may have simply fallen out when the bolt was opened, or when remnants of the case were pried out.

The following sounds feasible.


At the time, the RAF still retained their own Ordnance system for Cadets and this rifle was a DP rifle. The RAF method of DP'ing was to bore a xxxxing big 3/8" hole down, through the top handguard, through the barrel and through the fore-end and had the letters DP stamped in equally xxxxing big letters all over the rifle. However, they weren't marked with white bands like the Army versions. Anyway a Cadet, under supervision (?) on a range, fired this rifle and naturally, it didn't go bang because the bolt was welded up and the striker was short. So the supervisor, put another bolt in and this time it DID go bang ....., in a big way which took a couple of fingers off.

It was said that he looked at the fore-end when the rifle was in the rack but there was no hole visible. They didn't find sufficient wood after it blew to state with any certainty that it DID have a xxxxing big hole. Mind you, it certainly DID have a xxxxing big hole after the event!


Except according to Captain Mainwaring no accidents ever occured involving the RAF Drill Rifle while in RAF Cadet service.
http://www.rifleman.org.uk/L59A1_and_A2_DP_Rifles.htm
Captain Mainwaring was senior armorer in charge of specifications for deactivation of No.4 rifles for use as drill rifles.

There was a similar accident, reported on another board, involving one of these rifles that had been restocked with a fore end that covered the hole in the barrel, but this was a recent accident and the rifle was in civilian hands having been bought at a gunshop.

[Mk42gunner]

Definitely sounds odd to me.

My small arms experience (as both an Armorer and Rangemaster) in the US Navy makes me seriously wonder about a "supervisor" blindly installing another bolt in a rifle that wouldn't fire.

I am not familiar with the No.4, but looking at the bolt in my 2A1 makes me wonder about what happened to the shooter when all the gas came back, if there was in fact no bolthead.

Robert

[Multigunner]

Definitely sounds odd to me.

My small arms experience (as both an Armorer and Rangemaster) in the US Navy makes me seriously wonder about a "supervisor" blindly installing another bolt in a rifle that wouldn't fire.

I am not familiar with the No.4, but looking at the bolt in my 2A1 makes me wonder about what happened to the shooter when all the gas came back, if there was in fact no bolthead.

Robert

The man who did the controlled test draped sand bags around and over the rifle, to avoid gas and fragments spewing out, he also remote fired from a safe distance.
In records of Lee Enfield action failures on ranges in Canada before 1908 and in the field, injuries due to fragments of the bolt head are sometimes mentioned (including one death and very serious injury that came within a hair of being fatal).
An article on voluntary re-calls of ammunition by manufacturers written by Forensic investigator James Crosman tells of the broken away extractor and part of the bolt head causing a fatal wound to a hunter. Federal cartridge compamy recalled its .303 hunting ammo till the cause of the breech blowout could be determined, and then took steps to adjust the loading so as to take into acount eroded and rough bores.


I think we both would agree that putting the bolt from one rifle into the action of another rifle without even making a through examination to be certain that its lugs engaged properly is bad enough, not even looking down the bore is another stupid mistake.

[Bret4207]

I have no idea what's strange or not strange anymore. I've read accounts of accidents from supposedly qualified people that made no sense at all and have personally seen people misidentify a number of problems related to some fairly dangerous issues with guns, people that were certainly not stupid and should have observed the obvious. These days I tend to take all reports with a grain of salt. I don't know if it's people with an agenda or preconceived notion or what, but I tend to remain skeptical without seeing things first hand.

There! That was a lot of help, wasn't it?

[Multigunner]

There! That was a lot of help, wasn't it?
A good honest opinion always counts.


Added update
The mystery deepens.
Both Mainwaring and Laidler are the same person.
As Laidler, apparently his real name, he made the claim that an RAF Drill rifle had been fitted with a operational bolt and fired causing serious injury. Under the pen name Captain Mainwaring ( a fictional character in a BBC series) he states that to his knowledge no such accident had occured.

I think some one had a senior moment somewhere along the way.

[1Shirt]

Yep, sounds odd to me!
1Shirt!

[303Guy]

From what I've seen of 'qualified, skilled and responsible' people and some military personnel, it sounds quite likely. I worked with an ex-army guy who was quite happy to send a young apprentice up on a forklift with a home made man cage with a pallet on the flimsy hand rail with a safety harness attached to the crane with the rope looping down to the ground and back up to the youngster! The fact that he was ex-army was coincidental of course. His stupidity didn't stop there. Yet he was a foreman. The kid eventually left to join the army. He'd be safer there.;)

[Multigunner]

I've seen a few claim that there is no documented evidence of any Lee Enfield action having failed other than due to defective handloads.
The page here puts that myth to rest.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=iSlOAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA8986&lpg=RA2-PA8986&dq=debates+canada+house+of+commons+lee+enfield+bol thead&source=bl&ots=zu4eU4kAg5&sig=9oi10G86UAJZDZIBtQa9izgGwpo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L6ooUMqcO4W49QS19ICYCw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg

Those who wish to propogate such myths often use the same tactics as those who want people to believe that the wolf has never attacked a human on this continent. No level of documentation will convince them.

[303Guy]

That link led me to a hard to see bit about a straight pull rifle and lot's of Canadian parliamentary documents.

I am very curious about Lee Enfield failures, being a fan as I am. I am pretty well aware of the shortcomings of the action (I've mentioned before my distrust of the safeties and how the rifle can be fired by closing the bolt on a loaded round with the trigger depressed. It is not a fool proof action! But it is pretty cool and it does have a lot of history. But we don't actually hear a lot about failures with the Brit. And it is hard to fathom how the Brit can fail under normal conditions but normal conditions have a bad habit of skipping a beat from time to time!:roll:

[Multigunner]

That link led me to a hard to see bit about a straight pull rifle and lot's of Canadian parliamentary documents.

I am very curious about Lee Enfield failures, being a fan as I am. I am pretty well aware of the shortcomings of the action (I've mentioned before my distrust of the safeties and how the rifle can be fired by closing the bolt on a loaded round with the trigger depressed. It is not a fool proof action! But it is pretty cool and it does have a lot of history. But we don't actually hear a lot about failures with the Brit. And it is hard to fathom how the Brit can fail under normal conditions but normal conditions have a bad habit of skipping a beat from time to time!:roll:

The list of blown out Enfield actions and barrels is on page 8986.

The point is not that an Enfield in good condition and using quality ammo might fail theres little chance of that, (though I've been told of a fresh from the mummy wrap No.4 suffering a shattered bolt head when remote testfired in a booth by a gunsmith), but rather that there are circumstances that can lead to an action failure that are not the fault of the ammunition.
I strongly believe in a close examination of the bore of any older milsurp rifle before firing, and in remote test firing before firing from the shoulder.

Some would have you believe that no amount of erosion can make a barrel unsafe.

In studying the subject I found some unusual facts.
A ring of raised alligator heat checking with edges packed with a agregate of jacket fouling, carbon, and uncomsumed residue of additives, can form beyond the throat after many thousands of rounds, the hotter the propellant the more checking and the more the bore could become constricted. The ring may be a inch or several inches or more beyond the throat and difficult to detect without a very sensitive stargauge.
When a fired bullet passes through the constricted portion it is sized down slightly, allowing hot gases to blow by and heat up the jacket and loosening the core. When (or if) The now overheated bullet reaches a roughened seaction of bore the jacket can seize up and the core be blown through, even a closed base jacket can be blown through.
The effect is dependent on many factors, and not predictable.
When the ring is far enough up the bore it can be beyond the limit for continued acceleration to bump the bullet back up to fit the bore.
This was a recognized potential hazard as early as 1904 when U S Army Ordnance found this to be the cause of blown through and tightly stuck bullet jackets when the original 1903 .30 Springfield cartridge was loaded using a high nitroglycerin content double base powder. That cartridge did not use an over the charge card wad as used by the .303 so the effect was exacerbated.
A hunter here in the USA was killed by just such an accident when the seized bullet of factory ammo allowed enough pressure to build before the core blew through to cause the bolthead to shatter. The case blow out that gas cut and shattered the bolt was in large part due to the already generously sized milspec chamber being out of the round due to wear from use of the pullthrough.

The point there being that when a bore is that bad it may still be fired hundreds of times without damage to the breech, but one day luck will run out.
Another point is that just because someone claims to have studied all known cases of Enfield action failures it does not mean they are telling the truth, though if they are that full of it they may actually believe they are telling the truth.

The article written by James Crosman in the 1980's stated the accident had happened more than a dozen years earlier, I'd read another article about the incident much closer in time to the event.
If no one is killed or seriously injured there may never be a detailed study of the cause, and if there is an official inquiry the details may not be made public for many years if ever.

Erosion and thermal cracking can lead to a very dangerous bore condition, even if enough of the deep Enfield rifling remains that the bore appears serviceable to a naked eye inspection.

A receiver ring need not be blown apart for an action failure to prove fatal or disfiguring. A blown bolthead is just as much an action failure as a burst receiver ring or shattered bolt of a Mauser.

Ordinarily at this point someone will show up and start whining about the misunderstood Enfield and posting about blown up Low Number Springfields.