ARMOURY: S&T LEE ENFIELD

OLD SKOOL COOL

WE’RE ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED THIS MONTH TO BE ABLE TO BRING YOU BILL’S FULL OVERVIEW ON THE VERY LATEST SPRING RIFLE TO COME FROM S&T, A MODEL THAT’S BEEN CAUSING QUITE A STIR AMONGST AIRSOFTERS AND COLLECTORS ALIKE, AND OF COURSE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE LEE ENFIELD NO.1 MKIII*! TIME FOR HIM TO TAKE ANOTHER TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE…

My personal relationship with the Short Magazine Lee Enfield, SMLE, “the smelly” or simply “the 303”, goes back a LONG way, and you’ll have to excuse me if a certain amount of misty-eyed memory comes into play in my overview and review. I first set my hands on a Lee Enfield over 45 years ago (where does that time go???) when I joined my school CCF, and it was with this rifle that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces taught me the principles of marksmanship. Many happy days were spent in the sun (and some not so happy in the rain!) on Hythe and Lydd Ranges learning the intricacies of the “shooters art” and, whilst on “Summer Camps” around the UK and overseas, a Lee Enfield was never far from my hands.

As a somewhat chubby, 1.5m, 63kg 12 year old the “Rifle,No.4 Mark 1” at 1129mm long and weighing in at 4110g rifle was a bit of a handful to say the least, and hauling it around on exercise was a challenge whilst we learned all the skills of the basic infantryman! By the time I was 17 though, I’d shot up to 1.89m and 83kg and the Lee Enfield had become an old and trusted friend, one that I carried with great joy and shot to competition level at Bisley. Eventually of course, being a big lad I ended up lugging the section BREN, and then the L1A1 SLR took over, but that’s a whole different story!

My memories of the Lee Enfield, like the memories of other cadets in the late 70’s and early 80’s, are firmly etched in place; whilst not in any way a “gun bunny” my immediate neighbour was an Air Cadet at a similar time, and we often laugh about the fact that as youngsters we would scrunch up our berets under our battledress jackets (yes, we were still to be issued DPM when I first joined!) to try and mitigate the recoil of the “303”, and how we learnt very quickly to mount the rifle correctly so as not to return home after a range day with a bruised shoulder! We also smile fondly about the time “pulling through” after shooting, and the mantra of “I have no live rounds, empty cases, or pyrotechnics in my possession, SAH!” that we intoned at the end of every shooting session! To us the Lee Enfield was not just a rifle, but a part of our journey into adulthood.

It was, and is, a superlative rifle, and in the hands of a skilled and drilled marksman it proved to be deadly on many, many battlefields, and under

different marques one that had a lengthy service life in frontline use as it was officially adopted in 1895 and was issued until 1957, and in some cases far beyond that!

NEW WORLD ORDER

In 1888 the British Army adopted the Lee Metford rifle, a bolt-action, magazine-fed rifle that replaced the breech-loading Martini-Henry, but was still a “black powder rifle” in essence. The Lee Metford (or MLM, Magazine Lee Metford) though illustrated a new design in modern infantry rifles as it combined mechanisms from James Paris Lee and William Ellis Metford to create a rifle that offered the soldier a eight or ten round detachable magazine that superseded the smaller non-detachable internal magazines of previous rifles. This of course meant that even the humble infantryman could now accomplish a devastating rate of fire by simply working the bolt and replacing spent magazines with pre-filled charger replacements, meaning again of course that they could lay down fire just as fast as they could cycle the bolt and ammunition was available!

Lee’s rear-locking bolt system was carried forward into a new rifle design pretty quickly though, and in 1895 the British Army adopted the Lee Enfield, so named from the designer of the rifle’s bolt system and the factory in which it was designed, the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield. The Lee Enfield featured a ten-round box magazine which was loaded with the excellent .303 British cartridge manually from the top, either one round at a time or by means of fiveround chargers, of which many could be carried; this enabled a well-trained infantry soldier to perform the “mad minute”, firing 20 to 30 aimed rounds in 60 seconds, making the Lee Enfield “the fastest military bolt-action rifle of the day”. It may interest you to know that the current world record for aimed boltaction fire was set in 1914 by a musketry instructor in the British Army, Sergeant Instructor Snoxall, who placed 38 rounds into a 12-inch-wide (300mm) target at 300 yards (270m) in one minute… now that’s a LOT of “effective rounds down” even by modern day semi-auto standards!

Online sources tell me that the Lee Enfield “was the standard issue weapon to rifle companies of the British Army, colonial armies (such as India and parts of Africa), and other Commonwealth nations in both the First and Second World Wars (such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada)”. It’s also true that the Lee Enfield was carried by British and commonwealth troops into Korea and Malaya, and although not officially issued there are even images of the No 4 Mk I (T) sniper-variant in use with early US “advisers” in Vietnam! Replaced in the UK with the L1A1 SLR in 1957, the venerable Lee Enfield stayed in British service until the mid-60s and the 7.62 mm L42A1 sniper variant remained in service well into the 90s.

MKIII

Of course my direct experience with the Lee Enfield is of the “Rifle, No 4 Mk I”, and also of course, this is not the rifle that S&T have endeavoured to replicate, and this is cool as you might say that the model that they have chosen in the No.1 Mk III* actually has a much greater importance in global terms.

The key word in the SMLE’s designation is ‘Short’, which actually has nothing to do with the length of the magazine, but instead refers to the overall length of the rifle as compared to the issued models that had gone before. Due to the more efficient .303 cartridge it was possible to have an overall shorter rifle without any loss of range or accuracy, and WWI proved this point as the SMLE showed plainly that it was a most effective rifle in use in the harsh, trench-warfare conditions, being acknowledged by all as reliable and hard-hitting, although potentially not as accurate as the Mauser Gewehr 98 it faced across No Man’s Land all too often. The SMLE Mk III was distinctive in outline, featuring a full stock with a hand recess, along with a distinctive muzzle cap and the sight-protecting “dog ears”. The Mk III* came about as an attempt to increase production during WWI and because of this it did away with the long-range sights and magazine cut-off which the Mk III featured. In 1926 the SMLE was re-designated ‘Rifle No 1 Mark III (or III*)’, and production continued until 1939 by Birmingham Small Arms Ltd.

However, during WWII Australia reproduced various British weapons to arm its own forces, and Australian forces joined the fight in Europe and the Western Desert, as well as playing a key role in the Pacific War with US forces, and where they went, the Lithgow SMLE No1 MKIII* went with them. And the same could be said for the majority of the commonwealth forces who answered the “Old Country’s” call, and this led to some strange concoctions indeed, such as the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mark III bolt-action rifles that were converted by New Zealand engineer Philip Charlton into effectively what we would know now as an LMG with a minimum of redesign! And you may well be thinking that WWII was the “swansong” of the Mark III, but you’d be oh, so wrong, as in the 1960’s the Rifle Factory Ishapore in India began producing a rifle known as the “Rifle, 7.62mm 2A”, which was based on the SMLE Mk III* and was redesigned to chamber the 7.62×51mm NATO round. Externally the new rifle was very similar to the classic Mk III*, but had a “square” magazine to carry twelve rounds instead of ten!

REPLICATING A CLASSIC

So, have S&T done a worthy job of replicating a classic battle rifle that has importance to many commonwealth countries? I’d have to say an overwhelming “YES”!

Coming in at 3640g and with an overall length of 1130mm the S&T Mk III* “feels” very right to me, and it’s amazing how quickly the old rifle drills fall back into place… as I’ve always said, “training leads to perfection” and having the Lee Enfield in my hands just makes me realise just how very good the training given to my fellow cadets and I was, and how well it was ingrained into our very psyches… but then I was once Right Marker for a Cadet Royal Guard of Honour!

In terms of materials and finish the S&T is impeccable, and if anything it’s just too darn good! The stock is made of high-quality real wood, and the main parts such as the barrel, bolt, receiver, sights, magazine housing, trigger and trigger guard are made of high-grade metal alloys with a steel bolt, and everything hangs together beautifully! However, the finish of the alloy parts all benefit from an innovative Black Oxide finishing process that makes it look new yet aged, whilst the reddish woodwork in just WAY too unblemished; it certainly looks like no Lee Enfield I ever had my hands on and I can see now that prospective owners will be stripping the woodwork down and re-staining it! This is not a criticism in any way, as once upon a time every Lee Enfield must have been “factory fresh”! Although the buttplate is

metal, and finished “brass effect”, sadly it’s not real brass, and again I can see owners replacing this with a real one; it looks good though and does feature the hinged cap for the oil bottle compartment, so merely an observation, not a criticism.

Internally I understand that the Mk III* features an inner barrel, hop and hop bucking fully compatible with the ever-popular VSR10 system, and has a steel cylinder (24mm x 174mm) and 90 degree metal trigger group assembly so I expect to see proud owners tweaking these to the max! What I KNOW though is that this is ultimately a spring-gun (albeit a very fancy one!) with very little to go wrong, and that the hop is easily set with a sliding lever just behind the “dog-ear” on the right of the body; simple, easily maintained, and easy to adjust… WIN!

The magazines themselves are chunky full-metal affairs, each holding 30 BBs, and are easy and quick to fill with a speedloader. So, without further ado it was off to chrono and shoot! Drawing the bolt smoothly (oh so smoothly!) to the rear, then back into battery perfectly I was good to go. Initially I carried out the chrono with .20g BBs, and the first BB downrange went off with a satisfying crack at 1.35 Joule/382fps, and this proved to be insanely consistent; S&T quote 400fps as a mean, and once the rifle has properly bedded in I can see that this is more than possible. Moving to the range I filled one magazine with .20g and then with .30g; once the hop was set the BBs were flying straight and true out to 50m plus, and even moving to the heavier weight was still giving me a good 40m with almost pinpoint accuracy. This is a rifle which will definitely hold its own in the right game situation.

Overall I have been extremely impressed, not only by the Lee Enfield itself, but by the approach of S&T themselves, as all the representation online in marketing this new rifle has been almost reverent. For the dedicated WWI or WWII airsoft player this is most definitely a rifle that will find a hard-earned space in any collection, and in a themed “Aghan” skirmish it’s going to work very well indeed for any players representing “mujahideen”. At your local airsoft “Sunday Skirmish” you’re probably only going to use this is “sniper mode” due to the low magazine capacity, but it’s certainly a model that would work well in that role, and indeed it’s another project that I shall return to as Dave’s Custom Airsoft have already reproduced the No.1 MKIII* H.T. Sniper Rifle variant with some genuine parts and a WWI Era Scope, and it looks AMAZING!

ON A PERSONAL NOTE

To conclude this month, you may well have noticed that for this review I have purposely left out our nowusual “cross page with the gun” image, and this I have done as a conscious choice. I am not a WWI or WWII living historian, and have no wish to pretend to be, although I have the very greatest respect for those that do it well. Yes, I have played WWII airsoft games, but in my period USMC gear, “Pacific” style. The fact is that WWII (Europe) is in many ways still too close for me, as my father landed and fought in Normandy on D-Day, and I guess the thought of “playing war” as a British squaddie of that era is just a little too close to home for me.

What I do know is that my father carried a Lee Enfield into battle, and that after being badly wounded in action and seconded to “base duties”, taught other soldiers to use their own Lee Enfield’s, and to stay alive, as an Infantry Instructor. I have instead found some wonderful images in the public domain of other soldiers, from many nations and timelines, with their own Lee Enfield’s in hand. This to me is the legacy of a fine service rifle, as a tool that helped brave young men stay alive in the face of tyranny, and helped them to defend the freedoms that we so easily take for granted today. Thank you S&T for creating a superb replica of the Lee Enfield No.1 MkIII*, one that we can certainly use today to play airsoft with, whilst remembering all those that shouldered a Lee Enfield in countless battles as we do so. My sincere thanks go to the guys at www. iwholesales.co.uk for entrusting me with one of a very few samples of the S&T Lee Enfield No.1 MkIII* that they had in their initial delivery, so please do take time to check out what they have on offer from S&T and all the other fabulous brands that they represent. AA