Channel email; shanahanmilitaria1945@outlook.com
Amazon wish list:www.amazon.co....
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. The design of the handguards and the magazine were also improved and the chamber was adapted to fire the new Mk VII high velocity spitzer .303 ammunition. Many early models, Magazine Lee-Enfields (MLEs), Magazine Lee-Metfords (MLMs) and SMLEs, were rebuilt to the Mk III standard. These are called "Mk IV Cond.", with various asterisks denoting subtypes. Another feature present on the No. 1 Mk III as well as many other models of the SMLE was a field cleaning kit enclosed behind a trapdoor in the buttstock which included a barrel pull through with various cloths and an oil bottle enclosed deeper within the compartment.
A member of the Home Guard operating an SMLE No. 1 Mk III Rifle equipped with a grenade launcher cup loaded with an Anti-Tank Grenade of the era.
During the First World War, the SMLE Mk III was found to be too complicated to manufacture (an SMLE Mk III rifle cost the British government £3/15/- = £3.75[when?]), and demand outstripped supply; in late 1915 the Mk III* was introduced incorporating several changes, the most prominent of which were the deletion of the magazine cut-off mechanism, which when engaged permits the feeding and extraction of single cartridges only while keeping the cartridges in the magazine in reserve, and the long-range volley sights. The windage adjustment of the rear sight was also dispensed with, and the cocking piece was changed from a round knob to a serrated slab. Rifles with some or all of these features present are found, as the changes were implemented at different times in different factories and as stocks of parts were depleted. The magazine cut-off was reinstated after the First World War ended, and not entirely dispensed with in manufacturing until 1933; some rifles with cut-offs remained into the 1960s. One notable later use of the rifles were rifle grenade launcher conversions which involved the attachment of a removable grenade cup which would use the pressure of a blank round to launch a single modified Mills Bomb which had a launching range of about 10 to 200 yards.
The inability of the principal manufacturers (RSAF Enfield, the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited and London Small Arms Co. Ltd) to meet military production demands led to the development of the "peddled scheme", which contracted out the production of whole rifles and rifle components to several shell companies. As a result, the production was quadrupled in the first year of the war from slightly over 100 thousands annually before the war.
5 сен 2024
