Musings on Musketry — Part the Second: The Real Meaning of “Military Grade”
Posted By Randy on March 23, 2018
When last we convened in the matter of musketry, I closed with reference to how, “The care and feeding, proper shooting, and maintenance of a wooden stocked rifle, particularly one of this vintage, requires dedication to what it means to be a Marksman.”
As you will know from having read the first installment in this series, my training in Marksmanship and the Hunter’s Art came by way of:
- The Man or Men forever unknown to me, by whose diligent care in the service of their Nation one battle scarred Lee Enfield No.4 Mk.1* rifle made its way, intact and serviceable, to the quiet racks of a surplus store in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia;
- Understanding and supportive parents; and
- A willing and eminently qualified WW2 veteran.
In keeping with our stated purpose here today, let’s go back to the rifle itself, and talk about history. History and decisions actually, because decisions, good and bad, are what history is made of. A warning first that while there are parallels with the efforts of other nations, my focus will be on the Lee Enfield rifle, its various heirs and successors.
Since the inception of center fire ammunition, and the design of standardized repeating rifles for general issue to military forces who would shoot it at each other, old school military rifles issued to British and Commonwealth soldiers were classic examples of the gunsmith’s art. Those built outside periods of open warfare often approach contemporary sporting arms in fit and finish, albeit veering more toward the utilitarian in the latter. Built from forged and milled steel components mounted in precision inlet wooden stocks, much relied on hand fitting by experienced craftsmen so each rifle, while seemingly identical to its brethren, was distressingly unique. As a result, parts interchangeability between rifles absent more skilled hand fitting was a dream for decades, compensated for by demanding that weapons built for soldiers be the very antithesis of fragility.
Notwithstanding the brutish circumstances in which it was meant to be applied, the SMLE (Short Magazine Lee Enfield) Mk.III that saw service in the trenches of World War I (precursor to the No. 4 and No.5 rifles of World War II to which we will return presently) was literally a finely tuned instrument of purpose. Each specimen came from the factory with its own unique marriage of wood, to steel, to ammunition, in order to predictably control harmonics in the barrel during firing. You see, the barrel of a rifle, any rifle, is not so rigid a thing as you might think. Held horizontally in a firing position, it suddenly springs into a sinusoidal “barrel whip” as the bullet travels its length from chamber to muzzle. While not as rubbery a phenomenon as Bob l’éponge demonstrates here, you’ll get the picture if you imagine his arms are the barrel from the moment of firing at stage right until the bullet leaves the barrel stage left.
With that in mind, here is a slow motion representation of how this works in practice.
The rifle, any rifle, is a precision machine designed to permit its operator to deliver a single projectile to a target with repeatable accuracy over a distance specific to the purpose for which it was created (the “effective range”). To accomplish this, the harmonics of the “barrel whip” must be tuned to ensure that the muzzle (the exit hole at the business end, which is, or should be, closest to the target, and the very last place where the fired bullet touches any part of the barrel) is in exactly the same position in the cycle of flex every time a bullet leaves it in favour of contact with nothing more than the open air. Properly set up, it will flawlessly play its own singular “note” every time it is fired.
In the SMLE Mk.III rifle, this tuning is accomplished by supporting tension at a variety of bearing points where steel meets wood within the stock that completely enshrouds the barrel from breech to muzzle. This tension can be affected for adjustment (for good or ill) by changing the tightness of screws securing the rifle’s steel action and barrel to the wooden components of the stock. For this reason, it is not unusual for modern operators of SMLE Mk.III rifles to report that removing the barrelled action from the stock, say for a detailed inspection and/or exterior cleaning, and subsequently reassembling the rifle has resulted in a drastic change in point of impact and group size on a target using the same ammunition as used previous to the removal/reinstallation. Not that this should never be done, but one must bear in mind that many of these rifles may come into one’s possession wearing furniture that was either installed to spec at the factory, or subsequently field tuned by way of a regimental armourer who knew his business. Thus, in honour of the instrument, it behooves he into whose stewardship these rifles may fall to make no move absent due diligence, sober study, and deliberation of necessity.
The misery that was trench warfare in WWI was as hard on equipment as it was the Men who relied on it, highlighting both the superiority of the SMLE Mk.III over competing weapons and the ways it could be improved. This resulted in the “Rifle, No.4 Mk.I” and subsequent variants, “Rifle, No.4 Mk.I*” and “Rifle, No.5 Mk.1”, all of which served The Empire and its Commonwealth throughout WWII alongside no small number of tried and tested SMLE Mk.III rifles that were either still on the job, or newly manufactured Mk.III* in such places as Australia. There are more children in the Lee Enfield family, but those listed are sufficient for our purpose here.
It is quite rightly said that armies in peacetime are continually preoccupied with preparing to fight the last war. For those that were victorious in the latest unpleasantness, there is a compounding issue in that the making of improvements to weapons and equipment that might have been recognized on the field of battle as desirable, now become bogged down in the face of military decision makers and the government purse holders they serve, all of whom will find it hard in the frugality of victory to justify changing anything that, after all, worked so well the last time.
But in peace or war, there are constants. People charged with the equipping of armies will be making their decisions based on a few assumptions, to a greater or lesser degree of respectability depending on who’s making them:
- Battlefield conditions will be hard on weapons, even when the only enemy is the environment — build them tough and indelicate.
- Soldiers, being themselves tough and indelicate, will quickly break anything issued to them unless measures are taken at the outset to ensure a weapon is inherently capable of surviving a soldier even touching it.
- War can be expected to call for weapons to be fired, and potentially fired A LOT, so anything issued that is intended to go bang had better be capable of doing so reliably over the long haul with little beyond user level maintenance.
In the era within which the Lee Enfield and its contemporaries ruled the field, they would also be painfully aware of some realities that will apply most specifically to the acquisition, maintenance, and (Gods forbid) replacement of their nation’s standard service rifle:
- Good rifles are skill and labour intensive to manufacture, and therefore slow to produce.
- As long as unavoidable circumstances like wartime shortages don’t force lesser alternatives, wooden stocks — called “furniture” in the firearms business — must be made from straight grained, high quality woods that are naturally resistant to the kind of changes in dimension that loosen Grandma’s rocking chair so it needs to be reglued every few seasons. Notice I said “resistant”, and not “impervious”, and in this the choice of woods becomes a compromise between domestic availability, cost, and durability.
- An imperial nation with armies deployed around the globe in climates ranging from arctic to equatorial, desert to rain forest, will be finding its sovereign’s soldiers deploying their service rifles where the dimensions of the wooden stock will have every environmental encouragement to change dimensions. Atmospheric humidity is a harsh mistress.
The aspiring Nimrod that was me in 1973 came to the acquisition of one singular No.4 Mk.1* rifle fresh from more than a year of devouring everything he could find about its family. From a hunting perspective, I knew its battlefield efficacy firing the venerable .303 British cartridge had lent it handily to the taking of big game on all continents, and could be relied upon to take the biggest of Nova Scotian big game. I knew that a rifle built to withstand items 1, 2, and 3 above for years on end, and remain effective with as little beyond basic user level maintenance as possible, would not be easily worn out or otherwise buggered up by anything a civilian Marksman would ask of it, even if it already had a lot of miles on its chassis.
As a lad of 16, I had found and understood the original and True meaning of “military grade”.
My Mother used to say you could gauge a person’s maturity by passing them a bright flashlight or a charged garden hose. Similarly, ask a person on the street today to define the term “military grade”, and their answer will expose the level of understanding from which they presume to pontificate. Pro tip: “Extra powerful and deadly” is at the extreme opposite from correct.
I’ll leave you with that to masticate upon until next time.
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