Porter Baldridge Page 4
from rattling. You may ask, "What keeps it from rattling on the butt
plate?" The answer is, most smart soldiers put a piece of rag in on top
of the oiler. It was used to wipe down parts of the rifle, and to prevent
rattles. I have bought rifles set up like this, and I know they were
original, as I had to pry the butt trap open with a screwdriver as it had
not been opened since Tommy Atkins was a Corporal.
Firing pins are interchangeable between all SMLE's, though a special
tool available from SARCO or GPC is needed to remove them. The
square cocking pieces are also interchangeable.
Butt Stocks will interchange with a little work on the butt socket
inletting, but won't be correct as the NO.4 stocks do not have the
deep, rounded safety cutaway the NO.1 stock has. The cutaway on
the NO.4 stock is a small notch running fore and aft.
Stacking swivels may or may not be present, both are correct. The
Brits called them piling hooks. On the NO.1 MKIII, some nosecaps are
not cut for a stacking swivel.
Early NO.1 MKIII Enfields may or may not have the cutoff, both are
correct. This was an on again, and off again thing, as it seems the
powers that were could not make up their mind.
Only NO.1 MKIII Enfields have the regimental disk in the butt stock.
The NO.1 MKIII* had the cutoff deleted, the regimental disk deleted,
and a square cocking piece. All this was done to make WWI
production easier by cutting out expensive and time consuming
machining steps.
There were no NO.1 Jungle Carbines, though some were sold as
such several years ago, by SARCO I believe. The Australians made
some experimentsl carbines on the NO.1 action and called them the
NO.6, this is as close to a NO.1 Jungle Carbine as we come. The
NO.7 carbines, in 308, that Navy Arms is selling are cut down Enfield
2A rifles that Navy Arms has put together. THESE ARE NOT
REAL JUNGLE CARBINES!
Beware of faked Jungle Carbines. The real ones were made by BSA
Shirley, and Fazakerly from September 1944 to early 1946. As I said
before, later carbines were most likely made in the colonies
(Malaysia), or are FTR pieces. FTR stands for Factory Through
Rework. This in American English means arsenal overhaul, or depot
overhaul.
© Porter Baldridge 1996 All rights reserved.