Britsh Lee Enfield 303

[tark]

Also, some may not know it but there is no need to pull the stripper clip out of the receiver, closing the bolt will automatically eject the clip.

I think half the planet doesn't know this. Same for Mausers and Springfield 03s and just about every other stripper clip loaded bolt action I have ever fired.

 

[NIGHTLORD40K]

I think half the planet doesn't know this. Same for Mausers and Springfield 03s and just about every other stripper clip loaded bolt action I have ever fired.

Whaaaaaaaatttt??? Ok, now I gotta try this.....

 

[lysanderxiii]

I think half the planet doesn't know this. Same for Mausers and Springfield 03s and just about every other stripper clip loaded bolt action I have ever fired.

US rifles don't do it as well as the Mausers and Enfields.

 

[Danger Mouse]

I'm kind of curious about the Enfield 303 rifle. I've never seen one in person. I have heard ammo can be hard to get etc. I'm curious how these rifles do for accuracy etc. I do reload but the way components are it would probably be a while until I could find supplies to reload if I had one. I know someone that does have one that I could aquire if I absolutely wanted it. Not saying I'm going to make him an offer or anything. But I am kind of curious about them.

I'm just curious for the sake of being curious. What would be a decent price to pay for a non collector? How good of a rifle are they? I know they have been around forever but how do they stack up to say a German 8mm Mauser? How hard is it to get ammunition/reloading components in normal times?

I definitely don't want one so bad I would pay stupid prices or anything. I'm not a collector but I do have some old milsurp rifles from the WW2 era.

I remember being a kid visiting my grandparents every Sunday and looking through the news paper. I would always look through the big 5 ad and remember seeing the Enfield's, Mausers,nagants and a lot of rifles for cheap that are now collectors.

Like I said just curious is all. I probably won't act on it unless it's a smoking good deal.

2 moa rifle or so says the manual. Reality is a good one can do 25mm group at 100m. Ammo is easy enough to find, so is reloading components. There are all sorts of different conditions of these, ranging from almost free to $2000 NZD for a no4 mk2 still in grease paper, (about $1600USD).

If you look for a legit no4 T, your getting into many thousands of dollars.

Similar performance to the mauser. Action is a lot faster and has a bigger magazine.

 

[tark]

US rifles don't do it as well as the Mausers and Enfields.

The 03s I have owned seemed to work well, the 03A3s not so much.

 

[tark]

I think too much emphasis is placed on the Enfields ten round magazine vs. everybody else's five. Remember, when it's empty it takes twice as long to reload it.

 

[eastbank]

i think the brits in ww-1.ww-2 carried several already loaded magizines, and could swap out 10 round mags quicker than reloading with stripper clips. extra magizines were easy to pick up off the battlefield.

 

[Mosin77]

If you haven’t handled either……


The Enfield feels slicker. It also looks a little more curious, antiquated, or 19th century. They’re good rifles. Not good for hot rodding or rechambering but as a military rifle they’re fantastic for their era.

The Mauser is not as slick as the Enfield but feels more satisfying somehow. Working the action feels more purposeful and precise, and the construction will impress you with the evident quality of machining and workmanship. The Mauser is probably a better overall rifle, but that’s splitting hairs if we are picking milsurp bolt action battle rifles. A Mauser is also very similar to most of today’s commercial hunting rifles so can seem a bit ho hum compared to the more exotic actions. There are tons of Mausers from dozens of countries so lots of history and variants to collect.

 

[lysanderxiii]

i think the brits in ww-1.ww-2 carried several already loaded magizines, and could swap out 10 round mags quicker than reloading with stripper clips. extra magizines were easy to pick up off the battlefield.

Nope.

Enfield magazine are not reliable at retaining rounds outside the rifle. And, you can charge an Enfield faster than you can change magazines.

 

[Waterboy3313]

I do have a 1944 k98 Mauser. I've shot very few times since owning it since 1999 or 2000. It seems pretty accurate but for me to tell you how well the action feels etc I would be lying. It's been probably 5 years since I last shot it maybe put 5-10 rounds through it. I ordered some decent ammunition for it for over a $1.00 a round and still have all of it. My little brother reloads for his and honestly I don't even know why he has one.

Just a thought anyway. Not sure it really drives me. I'm trying to rotate some stock around and dump some of the old stuff I don't shoot anymore. I need to make some room in my safe for the last of the few guns I really want. I'm trying to get a couple more rifles for my lifelong collection as well as a couple more pistols that I really want. In the big scheme of things I really need to find another hobby.

With summer time here and forecasts pushing 115* I'm sure my range time is pretty much over for a while. If I can find a decent project I can't pass up I'm sure it will end up in my collection. Right now the price had better be right or I will easily pass it over. I'm actually surprised I haven't heard from the guy with this rifle by now today.

 

[Space Ghost]

I'm a fan of the Lee Enfield action. It's very simple, and very fast to operate. Your hand has momentum as it's stripping off the next round, and you can close the bolt against the cocking spring quite easily, and quickly. More so, than with the lifting action of cock on open designs. This, combined with the locking lugs being on the rear (giving it a shorter stroke than other actions) is what gives you the speed the Lee Enfield is famous for. Along with the speed of the Lee Enfield action, comes it's 10 round magazine, making it the perfect bolt action battle rifle. Everything else about it, size, weight, cartridge... is pretty comparable to all its contemporaries.

Starting out with 10 rounds is a big advantage, and it doesn't really take longer to reload if you just load 5 like you would in all the others, but if you do, you're back to having twice as many again... Also, you could just throw a single in, and shoot it if need be. That's something a controlled round feed Mauser can't do.

I only have one Lee Enfield, A No 4 Mk 1* that was made in Canada at the Longbranch facility during WWII. It was pretty rough when I got it, and has screw holes in it from a scope mount so I decided to modify it to my own tastes rather than restore it. It's a "tanker" or "scout" rifle now, but I wouldn't hesitate taking it to combat if I had to use a bolt gun. The shortened 16.5" barrel makes it a lot more handy, and the red dot makes me a lot faster on target.
On the plus side, I have a unique rifle nobody else has.

 

[eastbank]

i have carried a spare loaded magizine on hunting trips in a coat pocket all day going up and down mountains and never lost a shell or had any come out of the magizine, and i have tried changing magizines and also loading with 5 round stripper clips. loading the magizine with two stripper clips(the second one has to be pulled out and inserted) takes longer than a magizine swap. with one about the same and with the stripper clip loading your gun can,t be fired, untill you rack the bolt. while a magizine can be replaced with a shell in the chamber and ready to fire in a seconds notice. this also doesn,t take into account maybe the fumbling with twice the movement to reload with the stripper clips.

 

[GBExpat]

I think half the planet doesn't know this. Same for Mausers and Springfield 03s and just about every other stripper clip loaded bolt action I have ever fired.

Ayup ...

I put that in the same category as the now-mostly-unknown solution to safely recocking your Mauser bolt on a loaded chamber:



The thumb-saving takedown feature designed into the SVT-40:



The fact that the strange hollow "rivet" thru the middle of some early(ier) Mauser K98 buttsocks (and the odd little sidehole in cupped buttplates of later K98ks) were added to faciltiate the takedown of the bolt assemblies ...

Just 3 more of the same vein ....

=======

Hmmm ... that might make an good Sticky Thread for Rifle Country forum. Something like, Forgotten Helpful Design Features.

 

[GBExpat]

In my images fold I found an important Lee-Enfield tip ... how to properly arrange/overlap the rims in the charger to avoid issues:

 

[GunnyUSMC]

i have carried a spare loaded magizine on hunting trips in a coat pocket all day going up and down mountains and never lost a shell or had any come out of the magizine, and i have tried changing magizines and also loading with 5 round stripper clips. loading the magizine with two stripper clips(the second one has to be pulled out and inserted) takes longer than a magizine swap. with one about the same and with the stripper clip loading your gun can,t be fired, untill you rack the bolt. while a magizine can be replaced with a shell in the chamber and ready to fire in a seconds notice. this also doesn,t take into account maybe the fumbling with twice the movement to reload with the stripper clips.

Magazines are interchangeable, and will work 99% of the time. But rifles were issued with only one magazine and spare magazines were not issued. The magazine was fitted to the rifle at the factory and then the rifle’s SN# was stamped on the magazine.

 

[GunnyUSMC]

In my images fold I found an important Lee-Enfield tip ... how to properly arrange/overlap the rims in the charger to avoid issues:

View attachment 1010414

That’s funny.

 

[CapnMac]

Rob at BritishMuzzleloaders has a lot of content on the Lee-Enfields.
As does Bloke on the Range (who has some "mad minute" videos showing just how fast these rifle, at current age, can be).
The lads from DSAR show how much Oz loves the LE, especially when they can get Mk7 ammo for it.

how to properly arrange/overlap the rims in the charger

Some .303 ammo has a radiused rim that will ignore rimlock (and the No 4 rifles are better at shrugging rimlock off).
Some .303 ammo rims are very square, and will decidedly lock right up. Thus the "stepped" method of loading the clips.

Springfield 03s and just about every other stripper clip loaded bolt action I have ever fired.

This depends upon the clip used. A clip with the nub in the correct position will nicely pop right out when smacked by the bolt head.
US stripper clips come in two varieties--original cal..30 (.30-06) with four nubs; and cal..308 (7.62nato) with only the two center nubs. Both will fit in a 1903 clip slot. But, the .308 clips go too deep to be popped out by the bolt. The .30-06 clips do not fit very well in M-14 magazine loaders.

Bloke on the Range actually has a series of short videos on how well alternate stripper clips operate in a number of rifles.

 

[CapnMac]

As Gunny well demonstrates, collecting Lee Enfileds can be addictive.
The number of just No 4 variants is middling staggering.

 

[AlexanderA]

Magazines are interchangeable, and will work 99% of the time. But rifles were issued with only one magazine and spare magazines were not issued. The magazine was fitted to the rifle at the factory and then the rifle’s SN# was stamped on the magazine.

I would guess that among original-condition Enfields found today, less than half have their magazines serial numbered to the gun. This means that many of the magazines were replaced outside the factories / repair depots.

As a collector, I don't feel that a numbered magazine is important. At least, it's nowhere near as important as a matching numbered bolt.

It's worth noting that the web gear sets for use with the Enfields -- P08 and P37 -- were not designed to carry pre-loaded magazines. It was all about carrying ammo on stripper clips. (It's true that the universal pouches for the P37 set could carry loaded magazines -- but those were loaded Bren magazines.)

 

[Swampman]

It's also worth noting that the British Army was so dissatisfied with both the Lee Enfield rifle and the .303 cartridge that they started trying to replace both of them in 1910. If World War One hadn't started in 1914 and ended the program, Britain would have dumped the Enfield in favor of a Mauser type rifle firing a high velocity, rimless 7mm round.

The Lee Enfield and .303 would have been remembered only as massive failures, far inferior to the M1893/95 Mauser rifles and 7x57 cartridge that had killed so many British soldiers in the second Boer War.

 

[eastbank]

the way the boers carried on their hit and run war(most of the time) was the main reason so many british soldiers were killed, even with the rifles being reversed i think the numbers of british soldiers killed would have been great.

 

[AlexanderA]

The Italian Navy was supplied with quantities of No. 4 Enfield rifles in the period immediately following WW2. In connection with their use of these rifles, the Italians produced at least 2 ammo-related items: (1) charger clips, and (2) 3-pocket patrol pouches for the P37 web equipment. (The British used 2-pocket patrol pouches, primarily relying on the large universal pouches instead. The 3-pocket pouches were an excellent idea if the universal pouches were not to be used. That's a difference of carrying a total of 60 rounds versus 40 rounds.)

The Italian production of charger clips, on the other hand, was not such a good idea. For some unknown reason, they chose to produce the earlier Mark III design of clip rather than the then-current Mark IV. (The Mark III had been deemed to be unsatisfactory by the British.) Then, to compound things, they gave the clips a heavy and rough Parkerized finish. Bottom line: it was quite difficult to strip rounds out of these clips.

https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/the-lee-enfield-0-303-mk-iii-charger/39290

If you find Enfield stripper clips for sale online, the chances are good that they are these Italian Mark III clips. The reason they are available (and usually in excellent condition) is that nobody wants them, once they realize what they are. Make sure you're getting Mark IV clips. BP (British Pens) is a good maker.

 

[Terry G]

I have nothing to add except that with practice either Rifle can be operated very rapidly and get surprising accuracy, My two came with very good bores which is somewhat unusual I understand,

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Given the Lee-Enfield's long service life and production run, I recommend reading up on it-Ian Skennerton's The Lee Enfield Story is the place to start, there are several other good books.

 

[desidog]

One detail that hasn't been mentioned here is that Enfields (and 03A3's) were made with 2-groove, 4-groove, and 5-groove barrels. The two groove barrels won't stabilize a boat-tail bullet.