An introduction to British service weapons of the 20^th Century.

The rifle is the most common piece of equipment associated with the soldier and is also one of great interest for a number of reasons. The rifle used in the British army for much of the 20^th century was of a .303 calibre,  the .303 rifle went through a number of changes over the 60 years and more that it was in service, the most well known is the .303 mk111 Lee Enfield bolt action ten round magazine rifle.

The .303 rifle started the 20^th century in two forms, the first and oldest was the .303 drop block actioned Martini Enfield which was a .303 version of the much earlier Martini Henry rifle of 1870s vintage, it had a smaller cartridge than the Henry which was a rather large .45/577 cartridge, and had a newer type of rifling by Enfield which was designed for new ‘Nitro’ propellants which gave greater speed and force than black powder propellants.

At the beginning of the 20^th century the Martini actioned rifle was a reserve weapon, it was issued to colonial troops and was issued to second line troops, there is a picture from 1900 of the .303 martini rifle in use by Artillery units in South Africa during the Boer War, The weapon issued to first line troops was a .303 rifle but with a difference.

During the last decades of the 19^th century the British had experimented with and adopted a bolt action system, the bolt was worked by hand, you pushed the bolt forward and this pushed a cartridge into the breech of the rifle, at the same time pushing the bolt forward also cocked the mechanism, when the cartridge had been fired pulling the bolt back ejected the spent cartridge and you could then reload,

This second type of rifle in service at the beginning of the 20^th century was the Long Lee Enfield; it was a bolt actioned rifle with an 8 or 10 round magazine.

The Long Lee Enfield had several features it had the Lee speed magazine fitted which had an early 8 round capacity, which was soon enlarged to hold ten rounds, it had a cut off plate fitted, the cut off plate was a plate which fitted just above the magazine in the rifle, the purpose of the cut off plate was to keep the magazine out of use until an order was given for the plate to be removed and the ammunition therein to be used,

The rifle was loaded and fired with single rounds manually loaded in a similar fashion to what had gone before with the Martini rifle, the idea being to prevent soldiers wasting ammunition with their increased firepower.

The long Lee of course had a bolt action which allowed quick and easy loading firing and ejection of empty cartridges in a simple backwards and forwards movement,

The new bolt action mechanism was to see a few small changes over the next sixty years but was to remain in its most basic form unchanged.

In 1903 a new type of rifle was being trialled by the government, it was the .303 Short Model Lee Enfield, This rifle was approved for use in 1907 as the Mk111, the mk111 was introduced into the army to replace the Long Lee rifle, it was shorter than the Long Lee which is why it was designated the Short Model, and had a ten round magazine, the idea of the cut off plate had not yet been out moded but the rifle was much debated on other grounds, there were a number of complaints and controversies at the time about the introduction of the rifle, but these arguments were soon superseded by the urgent requirements of World War 1.

The Mk111 was in service officially from 1907 with its introduction until its official replacement by the mk4 in 1943 and the halting of production in Britain, this was not the end of the mk111 however as rifles were valuable and it continued for a good few years after the war, but to return to an early point in time we shall look at the mk111,

There are a number of items on the earlier rifles such as bombardment sights, which could be elevated to extreme ranges for infantry to fire volleys en mass at enemy columns, this idea was soon forgotten in the trenches of WW1, another idea which went out of favour in WW1 was the cut off plate which was deemed no longer necessary and in some cases deemed to be a menace.

With little change the Short Model Lee Enfield Mk111 saw service through two world wars and countless small campaigns within the empire, and proved that despite being a hefty rifle it was most reliable and well designed.

The Mk4 Lee Enfield, the Mk4 was an experimental rifle looked at between the wars as a lighter version of rifle which was easier to manufacture, using less processes and machining, it was still of a .303 calibre, the mk4 was not ready for mass production by the outbreak of war and with the shortage of rifles the mk111 was already in production and remained a priority until after the emergency period, a number of early mk4 rifles were issued to the Homeguard in 1940 which is two years before the official adoption date of 1942.

The mk4 served in the British army until well after The adoption of the SLR in 1957, though mk4 rifles continued in use well into the 1960s not being completely dropped in its final form until the 1980s, the .303 service cartridge had a lifespan of 100 years which is quite a long life span for a cartridge, the Lee Enfield in its various forms saw almost a century of service use which is quite remarkable for a design that was so simple, maybe its simplicity and reliability meant that the .303 rifle and cartridge could be used in almost all conditions with reliability and accuracy.

I shall briefly touch on the SLR rifle or self loading rifle, experiments were carried out after ww1 into self loading rifles, indeed there is an interestingly adopted mk111 Lee Enfield rifle in the Royal Armouries museum at Leeds which was converted into a Self Loading Rifle, the idea was simple, use a small amount of gas to eject the spent cartridge and work the action, this cuts down the amount of time needed to work the mechanism and aim, and made the operation smoother , the design for the Service SLR went through various changes and was being thought about for many years, WW2 had shown the need for a new type of rifle and what was seen to be the way forward was the Belgian FN FAL which with some modification and redesign was introduced into service life as the L1A1 SLR in 7.62mm calibre in 1958.

The .303 cartridge in ball for rifle, armour piercing for use against light armour and tracer, for tracing the arc of fire. 

For examples of some of the weapons mentioned here and to look at a fine weapons collection a visit to the Royal Armouries in Leeds is always advised, but for those who cant make it to Leeds there are many fine collections on display both at shows and at smaller museums around the country, for those on the internet the REME weapons collection online has many interesting pictures and articles and can be found online at:  http://www.rememuseum.org.uk/arms/armindex.htm.