Why Did AU/NZ/India Stick With the old SMLE?

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Cosmoline

Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
23,646
Location
Los Anchorage
I've been doing some shooting with a 1942 Lithgow No. 1 Mk. III* lately, and in reading up on them I was surprised to learn that Australians continued to make and use them through WW2 and into the Korean conflict. Though I know Lithgow was making advanced arms like the Garand, they apparently never went over to the No. 4. And of course the Indians used the old No. 1 Mk. III* as the basis for the Ishapore .308's.

So what's the story here? I've looked in various books and on line but can't find a clear answer to the question. If the No. 4 was easier to make and cheaper, why not convert over to it?
 
I believe that starting from scratch, the No.4 would have been cheaper, but with all of the tooling already bought and paid for, delivered and installed, and everyone in the factory already knowing where to stand and what to do; it would have hindered production during the change-over, right during the war when daily output was everything. After the war, no one wanted to spend the loot.
 
How big was the Aussie army? It's not like there were millions of them needing a rifle. Probably 100,000 at most. 70 years ago there weren't many people down there.
 
That would explain Australia and NZ, but not India. I wonder if the Brits never actually sold them the patterns, or were asking too much money. Who owned the rights to the No. 4 I wonder. Also, the Canadians did adopt the No. 4 and made them at Longbranch.
 
India was still under British control until 1947.

That would explain why they used the same rifle design as England during WWII & Korea.

The Ishapore .308 was manufactured & adopted as a reserve arm by the Indian Armed Forces in 1963.

The regular Indian army had been equipped with a copy of the Belgian FN FAL .308 rifle in the 1950's.

Canada switched to the FN C1 (FAL) in 1955, at about the same time Britain switched to the L1A1 (FAL).

rc
 
Last edited:
The previous posts answered your question but where did you hear or see Garands were made at Lithgow?
 
Well the receivers anyway, but come to think of it those may be well post-war. In any case Lithgow could have retooled for the No. 4. Yet I've found no reference to trials in Australia where they opted to keep the older SMLE design. Even after WW2 when surely they could have opted for something else. At some point someone had to be deciding to stick with the old SMLE's, but I just can't figure out who or when.

\That would explain why they used the same rifle design as England during WWII & Korea.
Click to expand...

Except they used the SMLE No. 1 Mk.III* as the basis for the Ishapore 2A1. Not the more modern No. 4 with its heavier barrel, upgraded sights and easier assembly. It just seems an odd choice to me, which I don't see fully explained. If it's a licensing question then everything makes sense. Maybe the Brits didn't give permission for all the colonies to make the new rifle, preferring to keep the jobs at home? I don't know.
 
Maybe the Brits shipped all their old worn out & excess tooling to India after WWII ended?

rc
 
I'm hardly an expert, but from what I remember hearing from the sidelines is that, yeah, India basically got the old junk England was done with. They wanted the English-based military with the shiny toys.

Plus, the UK probably didn't want to send their newest and best to the country that manage to wrest control back from them twenty years later.
 
the Army in India was given a definite guarantee in the 1930s that manufacture of the No.4 design would not be contemplated in the future.
When war came the decision was reversed, and India was stuck with the older design with no time to retool.
After Independence very little money was spent on the Indian Army, which remained much as the British had left it in 1947. Nehru took the view that India did not need much of an army, except to fight Pakistan, and very little money was spent on it. In 1962 the army had to go to war with the Chinese still driving the antiquated trucks the British had left behind, and the smallarms and uniforms had not changed either.
Australia was hard hit by the Depression and there was no money for new investment in the smallarms factory.
 
A few years ago in Mumbai India, when the terrorist mass-murders were finally stopped some Indian police or soldiers were seen
on tv in front of a hotel holding the LE #4.
 
Sources say that over one million Australians served in WWII. Obviously, not all were in the infantry and not all of those carried rifles, but certainly more that 100k rifles were needed.

Desidog is correct, though. Both India and Australia had factories set up to make the No. 1 Mk III, and changing over to the No. 4 in the middle of a war would have been impossible in terms of time, logistics and the availability of tooling. In fact, England never fully converted its factories; No. 4's were made in England, but also in Canada (Long Branch) and the U.S. (Savage).

After WWII, neither country had any immediate need to adopt the No.4 or No. 5 because it was obvious that the next rifle to be adopted would be a semi-auto, and the FAL was adopted shortly. The Indian Rifles 2 and 2A (the Rifle No. 1 Mk III modified and improved to handle the 7.62 NATO) were made for the police and paramilitary organizations in India; the caliber was adopted for commonality with the Indian Army, which was using the FAL.

Hi, Cosmoline,

Where did you ever get the idea that Lithgow was making the M1 (Garand) rifle during WWII?

Jim
 
Where did you ever get the idea that Lithgow was making the M1 (Garand) rifle during WWII?
Click to expand...

The Garands floating around that say "Lithgow." But I guess that was much more recent. Somewhere I had it in my mind that they were later WW2 or Korean era, though on reflection that makes no sense.

In any case, I have no doubt Lithgow *COLD* have retooled. They weren't in the stone age even down under. It would have been a question of costs no doubt. And maybe a bit of tradition. I know these days the shooters down there view the old SMLE's as a kind of national emblem. It's the one gun even Australia can't ban.
 
Jim K said:
Sources say that over one million Australians served in WWII. Obviously, not all were in the infantry and not all of those carried rifles, but certainly more that 100k rifles were needed.

Desidog is correct, though. Both India and Australia had factories set up to make the No. 1 Mk III, and changing over to the No. 4 in the middle of a war would have been impossible in terms of time, logistics and the availability of tooling. In fact, England never fully converted its factories; No. 4's were made in England, but also in Canada (Long Branch) and the U.S. (Savage).

After WWII, neither country had any immediate need to adopt the No.4 or No. 5 because it was obvious that the next rifle to be adopted would be a semi-auto, and the FAL was adopted shortly. The Indian Rifles 2 and 2A (the Rifle No. 1 Mk III modified and improved to handle the 7.62 NATO) were made for the police and paramilitary organizations in India; the caliber was adopted for commonality with the Indian Army, which was using the FAL.

Hi, Cosmoline,

Where did you ever get the idea that Lithgow was making the M1 (Garand) rifle during WWII?

Jim
Click to expand...
I recall that several years ago Lithgow produced some M-1 receivers, but they were of poor quality & didn't stick around long. If they had trouble upgrading in peacetime, imagine how tough it would have been in wartime when the need was desperate.

:uhoh:
 
It was never quite clear to me whether those M1 receivers were made by the old rifle factory or by someone else and the Lithgow name put on for marketing purposes. (The modern Springfield Armory, Inc. has no connection whatsoever with the U.S. government factory, but they advertise "founded in 1794" and "first in American firearms." Nonsense, of course, but it is apparently legal as the U.S. government never trademarked the name.)

Jim
 
Merle1 said:
I recall that several years ago Lithgow produced some M-1 receivers, but they were of poor quality & didn't stick around long. If they had trouble upgrading in peacetime, imagine how tough it would have been in wartime when the need was desperate.

:uhoh:
Click to expand...

they had no trouble producing L1A1 FN-FAL's when required.
 
Surprising as it is, India's OFB (Ordnance Factory Board) is STILL making a sporter Lee-Enfield on the original machinery, only chambered for the 8x50R Mannlicher cartridge; they consider .303 a military/prohibited calibre for civilian use.
 
Over here in Canada our Rangers still use the SMLE. Me, I've got a no1MkIII*.

Tought as beaver nuts and the trigger mechanism won't freeze up like a modern enclosed design when out on 'patrol'.

Hell, I bet there've been more giant moose and bear harvested in Northern Canada with the old 303 than all other cartridges combined.
 
There was some fairly reasonable concern that Japan might attempt to invade Australia and NZ in WW2. Simply put, as a part of the commonwealth, they benefited from British assistance, but generally it was second tier stuff. When the war started and the concerns were that the Japanese were going to steam roll the south pacific, they churned out as much as they could of whatever they had, namely the SMLE. That also had the benefit of keeping training fairly standardized. The Aussies and the Kiwis were scrambling for small arms which let to some pretty creative designs, such as the Charlton (an attempt to convert old Lee Metford and Long Lee rifles in LMGs). I think they were happy enough to have any rifle and the advantages of the No4 over the SMLE were not worth the extra effort of retooling in the crisis.

After the war, everyone was looking towards the future, so no real point in adopting a marginally better bolt action rifle...efforts were put into finding a better, semi-automatic rifle.
 
idcurrie: The .303 must do really well in the right hands. I have four #4s and two #5s, but haven't hunted.
We have (somewhere) a National Geographic magazine from about '97. The Inuit tribe is in a feature article, and it describes the northern Border Patrol.

One of those guys is in a photo, standing about ten feet from his snowmobile. A polar bear is on his hind legs, maybe 30 yards away.
The article states that the huge polar bear in the photo was killed with a single shot from the guy's Enfield #4.

The photo shows the guy aiming at the chest of the gigantic beast, but how did he sneak up on it with a snowmobile?
 
Last edited:
"The photo shows the guy aiming at the chest of the gigantic beast, but how did he sneak up on it with a snowmobile?"

More than likely, it was the other way around; polar bears are notoriously curious, and always on the look-out for an easy meal, so if they notice anything at all out of the ordinary, they will scout up to it the same way they do on seal breathing holes.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

B
  • Locked
Enfields...couple of questions...
2
Replies
28
Views
2K
DMK
DMK
rswartsell
  • Locked
Old Revolver Guy Comes to the Dark Side
Replies
24
Views
1K
rswartsell
rswartsell
T
  • Locked
Gun control in India.
2
Replies
27
Views
2K
abhijeet
A
Doug Bowser
  • Locked
My Lee Enfield .303 Rifle and the Bear Hunt
Replies
7
Views
2K
loose noose
loose noose
Doug Bowser
  • Locked
My .303 British Rifle and the Bear Hunt
Replies
13
Views
2K
Riomouse911
Riomouse911
Back
Top