Their origins, at least in terms of Military adoption, are pretty much neck-and-neck. 1936, at that time the M1 was adopted though the gas system was different. A “Gas-trap” system, which would quickly be changed. Back in the early days of semi-auto rifles, the concept of boring a hole into the barrel to redirect gas so as to cycle an action, it was a concern that making such a hole in the barrel would negatively affect accuracy. So to avoid drilling such a hole, designer John Cantius Garand (originally from St. Remi, Quebec) used something like the ‘Bang’ system in which gas port would basically stretch forth to actually encompass the muzzle so as to funnel the expanding gases (controlled explosion) towards the op rod. Such a system was also used on the semi-auto Gewehr 41 (W) used by Nazi Germany, but they would end up copying the gas system of captured Soviet SVT-40 rifles when they redesigned it into the Gewehr 43. The development of that initial Gewehr 41 (The ‘W’ stands for Walther, who’s design won, rather than Mauser’s) is in and of itself deserving of a piece which may just be written at a later date. Back on point.

The SVT on the other hand began in 1936 as the AVS 36. Select-fire for semi or full automatic, it utilized a 15-rnd (15 round) magazine. In automatic, it fired at 800 RPM (rounds per minute). As is generally found in shoulder-fired, standard-sized rifles utilizing full-sized rifle ammunition, in fully automatic it tends to be quite unwieldy especially when standing. When crouched, the lower centre-of-mass makes for better control of automatic fire, but with full-sized rifle rounds it tends to just be too much. The American M14 rifle used heavily in Vietnam was also select-fire, was even a tad heavier than the AVS-36 which helped to control recoil, but soldiers were eventually trained to not use the select-fire switch whatsoever and keep it semi-auto. In fully automatic it was little more than an ammo-wasting, loud-noise-generator.

As the rifle was fielded and used, it was found to have issues. The design allowed dirt and debris to get into the action and it was considered overly-complex, which can be a nuisance for soldiers when maintaining their long-arm. The AVS was designed by Sergei Simonov, and he’d won the mid-’30s trials against Fedor Tokarev’s rifle, however a new trial was to take place between the two. There was much debate by those in charge in the Soviet Union, but ultimately Joseph Stalin chose Tokarev’s platform and thus the AVS-36 made way for the SVT-38. This rifle saw its first use against Finland in the Winter War of 1939–1940, in which legendary sniper Simo Hayha would become known as “White Death” to the invading Communists. It took a shot in the face to take him out of action, however it failed to ultimately kill him.

The SVT-38 had been pretty negatively criticized by the soldiers who wielded them. In particular, the magazine was found to be a bit in-the-way with its 15-rnd length, but more alarmingly, had a tendency to fall out of the mag-well. There is a considerable gap between the front of the trigger guard and the magazine release behind the rifle. It would be all too easy to hit said mag release when taking cover, for instance if you were to rest the rifle on a window sill or something, take a shot, then when the recoil bucks the rifle backwards the front of said sill hits the mag release, thus dropping your magazine on the other side of your cover. It was also reportedly disliked that the cleaning rod was housed in a long indentation on the side of the stock, making the rifle a bit bulkier than necessary, and the stock itself was considered overly complex. So the design was refined into the SVT-40 which simplified the stock, placed the cleaning rod inside the stock beneath the barrel (a standard thing to do for centuries dating back to when it was a ‘ramrod’ used for reloading instead of a cleaning rod) and redesigned the magazine release so that it can be folded out of the way. The mag was also shortened to 10 rounds. Reloading was often done with 5-rnd M91/30 Mosin clips so leaving the magazine in a fixed position was quite fine. To my understanding, generally two magazines would be issued and the rest of the ammo was in clips. For an emergency reload, swap mags. Ideally, get behind cover and reload with clips or loose ammunition. Clips were infinitely cheaper to manufacture and were far less bulky or heavy as the magazines.

Like how Tokarev’s SVT had its competition, namely Simonov’s AVS, the M1 had its competition too. Early on in the 1920s and early 1930s was the Pedersen rifle. It used a top-break action, very much like a Luger P08 pistol except ramped up to be used on a rifle. It used an en bloc clip not unlike the M1 and, according to Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons whom had the lucky opportunity to try shooting one so many decades after the prototypes were produced, had fantastic handling. Although the action technically rises up in the way of the shooter’s eye, obscuring their view between shots, the action is so fast that it wasn’t particularly much of a distraction. Ultimately, due to some issues with slam-fires (the round detonating upon being chambered) and requiring lubricated ammunition, plus a poor trigger pull (which can negatively affect accuracy), a vulnerably open receiver when the bolt is locked open, among other things, Garand’s design came out on top.

The French Canadien’s competition would not end there, however, nor even with official adoption. The M1941 Johnson rifle, which used an entirely different feed system and action. There is some give and take when comparing the M1 to the M1941. The M1941 could hold 10 rounds in the magazine plus it can be reloaded at any time, even with the bolt closed. It can also easily be reloaded with loose rounds of 5-rnd clips, which the M1 was not particularly good at accepting either of those. The rifle’s weight were quite similar, maybe a small advantage of a half-pound (225g) or so to the M1941. A particular down-side is that due to the Johnson’s barrel reciprocating while firing, if you have the added weight of a bayonet on the end of the barrel, it can potentially cause reliability issues. The M1941 was also more complicated that the M1, generally requiring an armorer to perform detailed maintenance on it meanwhile the M1 can be stripped almost completely without the use of any tools. If a problem arises with the bolt or trigger/hammer assembly, or any of the pieces of the magazine, then the soldier himself could remove the assembly or the piece and the armorer can give a replacement so that the soldier can continue his business while said armorer can go ahead and repair or scrap the malfunctioning/broken article.

Ultimately, the M1941 Johnson would indeed see some use during WWI, namely by the USMC. One particular instance in the hands of Captain Robert H Dunlap lead to the winning of a Medal of Honor, the highest possible award in the United States, and Dunlap praised the rifle and credited it with saving his life and the lives of others in the Battle of Iwo Jima. M1941 rifles would also see use in the Chinese Civil War, Indonesian National Revolution, and the Bay of pigs invasion. Clearly, inventor Melvin Johnson was able to sell some of his rifles to other nations in spite of not having US Army Ordnance support, however it would never see the widespread use and decades-long fame of the iconic M1 Rifle.

Alrighty then, I think that catches us up nicely on the quick-and-dirty of the SVT’s and M1’s development. Now, let’s get into the details on their specs, and how they function and operate. The M1’s rotating-bolt actions is shorter than the SVT’s tilting-bolt design, so even though the SVT’s barrel is only 0.6” (1.5cm) longer, its overall length is 4.4” (12.6cm) longer, making it slightly less wieldy in close-quarters situations such as room-to-room engagements. The slightly unwieldy length of the rifle was a complaint back with the SVT-38 as well, but was an aspect that ultimately was not particularly tended to. The M91/30 Mosin rifle that it was seeking to replace had a barrel length of a whopping 29” (73cm), 4.1” (10.5cm) longer than the SVT’s 24.6” (625mm). In spite of this, the Tokarev rifle was virtually the same length as the Mosin rifle; less than 10mm (0.4”) in difference for overall length.

For weight, though, the Tokarev comes out on top of the M1. 8.5lb (3.85kg) unloaded vs around 10lb (4.4kg) for the American rifle, and of course that would increase with the addition of its bayonet which was originally 15.5” in length if memory serves. 150gr M2 Ball .30–06 weighs 1lb (450g) for every 16.7 rounds, and so one of the M1 Rifle’s 8-rnd en bloc clips would add an additional half-pound or roughly 225g to the rifle’s weight. It turns out that Light Ball 7.62x54r weighs 1lb (450g) for every 20.6 rounds, perhaps due to the Russian round being shorter and squatter with its 54mm casing length vs the .30–06’s 63mm casing.

Speaking of which, the feed system of the two rifles are very different. The M1 sported a fixed magazine that could accept an 8-rnd en bloc clip, and this clip was necessary for the magazine to function. An ‘en bloc’ clip went into the rifle itself, unlike standard stripper clips, or charger clips as the British sometimes call them. The Italian Carcano rifle and the old German M1888 Commission Rifle both used en bloc style of clips. The SVT-40 had a 10-rnd detachable box magazine which could be loaded from the top with 5-rnd clips or loose ammunition, although this was nearly impossible to do unless the magazine was empty. There is no bolt hold-open except for the one inside the rifle that was operated by the follower once the bolt is opened after the magazine has been depleted. Even decades after WWII with the M14, as has been mentioned before, ammunition was often given out in both magazines and clips. Then there is the Czech vZ.58 assault rifle which can be reloaded with 10-rnd SKS-style clips as well as detachable 30-rnd magazines. So outfitting soldiers with both mags and clips for firearms that can accept both has been in common practice for some designs in WWII and in the decades that followed WWII. The M1 Rifle can be loaded with loose ammunition from the top, but it is more difficult than with the SVT and it is generally advised to manually eject the partial-clip entirely to replace it with a fresh 8-rnd en bloc clip.

The difference between their use in sniping is quite stark. The SVT quite early on was found to have a common issue with vertical shot displacement, meaning groupings at long distance would be found to have shots going somewhat erratically up and down even though it was good for windage, meaning side to side. The M1 on the other hand, with its M1C and M1D, as well as the USMC MC-1952, would see use well beyond the second world war even reaching into the Vietnam War. So for general accuracy, it would seem as though the M1 would take the cake in this rival of WWII semi-auto war horses.

Ah yes and about boring a hole into the barrel, this would occur after the ‘gas trap’ system was abandoned on the M1. The SVT always had a hole drilled into the barrel, though it’s doubtful that that had anything to do with the vertical shot displacement. Some might point to the tilting bolt, which was also used on the FN FAL platform. A belief sometimes held is that there are inherent issues in accuracy with that bolt design, and that a rotating bolt is generally inherently more accurate. I’ll leave you to be the judge on why the SVT experienced its issues with long-range accuracy. Theories and myths run deep in the firearms world on a variety of issues, another idea for a piece to write in future.

Both the M1 and SVT were produced in huge numbers, with the M1 eventually becoming the first ever standard-issue semi-auto rifle, meaning the standard go-to rifle that the basic infantryman would be given after or even during basic training. The SVT-40, however, came close to taking that title. Over 1,000,000 were produced in the year 1941, and by the end of that year only 429,811 M1 Garands were manufactured in total since 1936. In fact, the one millionth M1 wouldn’t come off the assembly line until November 1942. What’s more, the Soviets were intent on reaching 2,000,000 units produced per year by 1942, however 1942 production had instead only brought about 264,000. Production diminished year by year until it entirely ceased in January 1945. Total production of SVT-38/40 was roughly 1.6 million, of which 51,710 were scoped variants. The M1 surpassed 1.6 million in May 1943, so why did the Soviets slow down and stop producing SVT rifles? They were perfectly serviceable, more than accurate enough for the average WWII engagement distance of 100–300m, quite reliable, and they even had adjustable gas settings so that it could utilize most any type of 7.62x54r ammunition and if the action began to get a bit sticky or grimy, the gas could be opened to improve reliability. The M1 Garand had a fixed gas port, meaning it was limited to certain loadings. Well, the reason production ceased didn’t lie with the SVT-40 itself.

Operation Barbarossa, summer 1941. Though there was a pact of non-aggression between the Nazi Fascists and the Soviet Communists, Adolf Hitler broke that pact with the aim of taking all of the USSR before the end of the year. Well as we know, they failed in that endeavor, however not before incurring great wrath in those first 6 months of the operation that stretched to the end of the year. In those 6 months from summer to winter 1941, the USSR suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, hundreds of thousands of POWs and tens of thousands of vehicles/tanks taken out of commission.*

Anyhow, back on track, those six brutal months hurt the Red Army badly. Land was taken at a rapid pace, and many of those precious Tokarev rifles ended up getting captured, some of them still in crates and unissued, only to then be put into Wehrmacht hands and used against those they were meant for. The need for rifles was great, too great, and the Soviets could produce the simple bolt-action M91/30 Mosin far faster than they could crank out the far higher-quality and more complex SVT Tokarevs. 19.8 million Mosin rifles were produced by the end of WWII**. I assume that this encompasses the standard rifles of the time; M91/30, M38 Carbine, M44 Carbine, and the sniper variants rather than reaching back to the original M1891 “Three Line Rifle.” After all, between 1891–1965, some 37,000,000 were built in Russia/USSR. Production in the early 1930s would have been slower, before the Winter War and the Great Patriotic War as WWII is known in Russia. Back then they had hexagonal receivers, though actually octagonal if I’m not mistaken but they are colloquially referred to as hexagonal. Once they needed more production, they went with simple round receivers that were often still rough, not bothering to smooth down the external surface which would take more time and labour. They needed rifles and they needed them fast, so for the sake of quantity over quality, SVT production declined and Mosin production ramped up.

If Operation Barbarossa had not occurred, then it is entirely likely that SVT production would have reached the goal of two million per year by 1942, meaning over 3,000,000 units would have been available by New Years 1943. At that point, there would be 1,090,310 M1 Rifles, and the three millionth wouldn’t be seen until shortly after D-Day since by the end of June 1944 there were 2.98 million and by the end of July 1944 there were 3.05 million. Meanwhile, at two million rifles per year, with over one million in 1941 and two million in 1942, ’43 and finally another million for the first half of 1944, there would be over six million SVT-40 rifles at the same time that there is three million M1 Garands. At that rate, it seems to me, the SVT-40 was set to become the first ever standard-issue semi-auto infantry rifle. It appears to have taken the bloodiest theatre (Eastern Front) of the bloodiest war of human history (WWII) to keep that from happening. Ultimately, as history would show, the post-war Soviet Union would continue having trials for new firearms to replace the venerable old M91/30 Mosin. They would settle in 1949 on a one-two punch of AK-47 for SMG-style close-up engagements with the enemy while the theoretically more accurate semi-auto SKS-45 (designed by Sergei Simonov) would give supporting cover-fire. Such was the Red Army doctrine of the time, but they would find that the AK was essentially as accurate as the SKS and so they ceased SKS production around 1956. Then in 1959 they perfected the cheaper and lighter stamped receiver of the AKM thus replacing the more heavy and costly milled-receiver AK-47, and the rest is history.

One final point that can be touched on is disassembly for maintenance; stripping the M1 requires removal of the trigger/hammer assembly, the buttstock, various internal bits in the magwell, the op rod spring, the op rod, the bolt, and then a few more pieces on the barrel leaving you with the receiver, the barrel, and a piece of handguard just in front of the trunion. There are a few relatively small parts, the smallest of which likely being the pin in the receiver, perhaps an inch(2.5cm) or so long and perhaps double the width of a typical nail or screw. With the SVT-40, a basic field strip involves removing the magazine, removing the dust cover, the springs and guide rods, the bolt carrier and the bolt inside it. Then to access the gas system which also requires cleaning, you remove the cleaning rod, a couple barrel bands, the wooden and metal top handguards, the short stroke gas piston, the impinging portion of the piston underneath the rear sight along with its corresponding spring, the cap for the gas tube, then the gas tube itself along with the adjustment knob. The trigger/hammer assembly can be quite easily removed with the aid of a cartridge or some other pointed object like a pen. The videogame ‘World of Guns’ on the gaming platform Steam shows in-depth and quite realistic disassembly of the firearms in detail, though there are also a multitude of videos on the internet that show their disassembly process as well.

Which do you prefer? Do the sights and accuracy of the M1 help make up for the weight, or do you prefer the detachable magazine and the simpler tangent notch-and-post sights of the SVT? Do you find it easier to reload from empty with the insertion of an en bloc clip rather than the removal and retention of an empty mag followed by its replacement with a full mag? Personally, I love ’em both and very much enjoyed taking them out to the range with friends. Remember: Safety first! Shoot responsibly!

Norman Matchem
Canadian University Shooting Federation
Can be reached at info@cusf.ca

*Stephen Walsh’s book Stalingrad: The Infernal Cauldron

**David M Glantz’s book When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler

The Lee Enfield Family of Rifles

Two names; Lee and Enfield. For anyone remotely privy to small arms of the World Wars or indeed common and affordable milsurp rifles used for hunting in Canada or Australia or the UK, those names should be abundantly familiar. Lee, from James Paris Lee of Scotland who lived in Canada and the United States for a time, the inventor of the box magazine, had his family name applied to the Lee family of rifles for having designed the action. The 1888 Lee Metford was the beginning of what would become the Lee Enfield, which back then, fired a brand new .303 British cartridge which then used black powder.

That is where the story begins, back when the venerable .303 used a big round-nosed bullet, likely made of pure lead and seated atop a charge of black powder even though the French had invented smokeless powder (Poudre B as they called it) in 1886 for their Lebel rifle. That design revolutionized Military firearms overnight and rendered all other designs of the time obsolete, including the M1873 Springfield Trapdoor from the US and the tried-and-true Martini-Henry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s Military.

So, where does ‘Enfield’ come into it? It comes via the name it replaced, ‘Metford,’ which refers to the style of rifling in the barrel. The Metford rifling was just fine for black powder, but the hot smokeless cordite powder that was developed in the late ‘80s, that is 1880s, proved to be too much. If memory serves, less than 10,000 rounds would see to the Metford rifling being shot out, which is no good for a standard-issue Military rifle. It was replaced with Enfield rifling, which could survive a far greater round count and so in 1895 the Lee Enfield was born. There are various different models of Lee Metford and Lee Enfield that we could get bogged down into with different magazine styles, barrel lengths and so on and so forth so this piece will focus on the more mainstream ones. In 1907 is when we arrive at perhaps the most widely used model, or at least the initial variant of it. Replacing the MLE, “Magazine, Lee Enfield” or colloquially often referred to as the “Long Lee” or “Emily” (M-L-E), comes the SMLE, “Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield” or sometimes colloquially referred to as “Smelly” (S-M-L-E). A bit of a vulgar nickname, but likely generally used with endearment.

The initial SMLE was of the Mk.III (mark three) designation. It had a 25.2” (64cm) barrel which made it overall sufficient for both foot soldiers and cavalry. How things used to be done, the infantry would receive rifles with long barrels of typically 30” (76.2cm) or more and the cavalry would receive carbines that were significantly shorter. Over time, many Armed Forces were standardizing on a mid-sized rifle to improve logistics. Britain’s answer to that was the Mk.III SMLE.

The barrel was fully encased in its wooden stock, a fixed bayonet did not contact the barrel in the slightest which means in theory accuracy would not be affected by the application of a bayonet (though admittedly I have not tested this theory myself) and the rear sight was adjustable for both elevation and windage. Also present, a volley sight on the left-hand side of the stock, meant for volley fire at ranges in excess of 2000yd (1830m+) and a magazine cut-off. A worry of box magazines early on in their widespread use in the Military was that soldiers would recklessly burn through their munition quickly. As such, a magazine cut-off would, as the name implies, cut off access to the ammunition in the magazine thereby rendering the rifle to be a single-shot, requiring a fresh cartridge be inserted for each shot. When the enemy charges, the magazine cut-off can be disengaged and so the soldier (only under the strict orders of their officer in charge) may proceed to begin using the ammunition in the magazine. Then, only under the strict orders of their officer, they may reload their magazine to either utilize again, or engage the magazine cut-off to resume single-shot fire or to cease fire altogether.

In the early 1900s, it was still believed that line-formation and volley fire, as was widely seen throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, would still be the standard of war tactics. As such, soldiers were rigorously trained on how to stand, when to load, when to aim, when to fire, when to reload and so on. A fantastic source of old British uniforms and the orders that British soldiers followed back in the day, as recent as World War Two but also as far back or perhaps even earlier than the mid-19th century, is ‘britishmuzzleloaders’ on YouTube. A Canadian and given his tendency of wearing kilts, likely of Scottish descent. I digress, but again, if you’re interested in the ridged and orderly ways of line formation from well over a century ago, he’s your man. You’ll know you found him when you found the moustache that alone could win a war.

The Mk.III Lee Enfield would see its true trial by fire 7 years after its adoption. Summer 1914, the onset of World War One. The vicious nature of that conflict would change Military tactics forever, but so too did it require changes to the Lee Enfield. Not so much to improve performance, it seemed to perform well, at least well enough that the Australians and Indians would go on to use the platform for decades to come right through World War Two and the Korean War. In 1915, the Mk.III* (mark three star) was developed. For the most part it was a standard Mk.III but without the volley sights, magazine cut-off, and the rear sight had its windage adjustable feature done away with. Some transitional models may have a combination of Mk.III and Mk.III* features, since why waste the Mk.III parts that had already been manufactured? Stop manufacturing them but still use what’s already been made.

The Mk.III* platform, as mentioned, would go on to see use for decades to come. The next big development would be in 1939, though not adopted until 1941. The №4 Mk.I (number four mark one) Lee Enfield. The notch-and-post tangent sights were replaced with long-radius aperture sights, meaning instead of a post in a notch, there was a post that was to be centred within a circle. Initially designed with a flip-up ladder style of sight, with a knob that you can turn to raise or lower the rear aperture, the design was simplified for the sake of mass-production for World War Two. A 300yd (274m) ‘battle sight’ and for longer range engagements, it can be flipped for 600yd (548m). Only two positions, much like many submachine guns at the time though those were generally for 50/100, whether it be in yards or meters. The №4 also utilized a far thicker barrel than the Mk.III which improved accuracy and was also mostly floating in the stock save for the underside of the stock applying a measured amount of pressure on the barrel.

According to ‘EnfieldAccurizing’ on YouTube, the Mk.III was designed to manage 2–4” or 5–10cm at 100yd (91m), which is on par with the U.S. Rifle Rifle, Caliber .30, M1, better known as the M1 Garand. The later №4 Mk.I, with its focus set to improving the accuracy of the Mk.III, was designed to manage within 2” or 5cm from the factory at 100yd (91m). This is skipping a design, but the later №4 Mk.2 (they stopped using Roman numerals for the ‘mark’ designation at some point in the 1940 or ’50s) saw to an alteration being done to the trigger to further improve accuracy. This was done retroactively to many №4 Mk.I Lee Enfields, giving them the designation №4 Mk.I/2. There was also the №4 Mk.I* which, like the Mk.III*, sought to decrease the cost per unit. The №4 Mk.I had a new button-style of removing the rear sight but the Mk.I* reverted to a more Mk.III style of bolt removal which was cheaper and faster. Overall, to my understanding, the №4 is cheaper to produce than the Mk.III* platform.

So, what was the design that I had skipped over in mentioning the №4 Mk.2? It is a design that saw some use at the tail end of World War Two; the №5 Mk.I Lee Enfield, or colloquially known as the “Jungle Carbine.” Very neat nickname, and allegedly invented to improve sales on the commercial market. The №5 (which never saw any variants beyond the Mk.I to my understanding) was produced between 1944–1947. With its shorter barrel of 18.8” (48cm) it weighed nearly 1kg (2.2lb) lighter than the №4 which was itself 4.11kg or 9.06lb, which puts the №5 at around 7lb. Lighter weight means more felt recoil, so the brass buttplate with its trapdoor housing a bottle of oil and a pull-through rope for cleaning the bore with a padded buttplate. It will likely be of little use these days, however. Those pads, allegedly, have hardened significantly over the past 70+ years.

What also comes with a shorter barrel is a larger muzzle flash, since the powder spends less time in the barrel igniting which means there’s more powder going off at the end of it when the bullet escapes. Therefore, a conical muzzle flash was included to help with that matter. One last sort of standard-issue infantry variant of the Lee family of rifles is one comes quite late and originates in India. The Ishapore 2A and 2A1. I’ll take a brief moment to identify some of the most common names for the rifles of different national origins. Longbranch Lee Enfields are from Canada (of which, to my knowledge, there are no Mk.III variants). Savage are from the United States, Lithgow (pronounced lith-go) are Australian, and Ishapore are Indian. Others would be from England, save for commercially-made AIA Lee Enfields in .308 made in Australia.

That last mention leads us nicely into what makes the Ishapore 2A/2A1so fascinating. Not only was it designed so recently in 1962 and in service since 1963, but it’s chambered in 7.62 Nato as per Nato requirements. So the Indians wanted to stick with the venerable Mk.III* style of rifle at least as a platform kept in reserve, but .303 was unacceptable due to Nato standardization, thus they had to make the change. It is allegedly the last bolt-action designed for a Military Force that isn’t specialized for sniping. Produced until 1974, roughly a quarter-million were made. The Indian Army no longer uses them, but they are still in use by the Indian Police.

In terms of the ‘sniping’ role, Lee Enfields have been modified in World War One for such a purpose, but more predominately known is the №4 Mk.I(T). At the top of this piece, the very first image, Sergeant Harold A. Marshall holds that designation of Lee Enfield. Again according to ‘EnfieldAccurizing’ on YouTube, the №4 Mk.I(T) required 5 rounds within 1” (2.5cm) at 30yd (27.4m), 5 rounds within 3” (7.5cm) at 100yd (91m), 7 rounds within 5” (12.5cm) at 200yd (182m), and 6 out of 7 rounds within 10” (25cm) at 400yd (364cm).

Nato standardization enters the fray once again with the L42A1, in which №4 Mk.I(T) rifles were converted to 7.62 Nato, and such conversions were used from 1970 through to roughly the end of the Cold War in 1990.

For a less specialized role it can also be mentioned that the Canadian Rangers, for whom the №4 Lee Enfield appears on their badge/logo, used the №4 Lee Enfield right through to the mid-late 2010s. Perhaps with some even being used by Canadian Rangers a full 130 years after the initial 1888 Lee Metford, in 2018.

Even the L42A1 that was mentioned had seen frontline use, including the in Gulf War, as recently as 1990 or maybe even 1991 over 100 years since the Lee bolt was designed in 1888.

Such concludes much of the history of the Lee family of rifles, from .303 to 7.62 Nato, and believe it or not, there are AIA-manufactured №5 variants made on the commercial market chambered in 7.62x39 and uses AK/Kalashnikov magazines.

This is essentially my first written piece for the Canadian University Shooting Federation and I hope you enjoyed it. You can contact me via the link below where you can direct any comments or criticism.

To reach Norman, contact info@cusf.ca