.303 Lee Enfield Rifle No.5: "Jungle Carbine"

[Music] hello and welcome to bloke on the range now this you may recognize as a Lee Enfield number five carbine jungle carbine isn't its real name it was just actually technically just the rifle number five not one these were made from late World War two into the late forties port being declared obsolete and we're just going to show a few differences of this from the number four I hadn't talked about one or two myths surrounding it now basically the action is a number four action which has been lightened by cutting out various things like ear it's just this made a little light to the bottom panels being drilled and overall it is a very nice handy little thing nice relatively soft rubber bumper and this was in perfect condition so what I actually do something for once the rear sight is basically a the same as the Mach one Rissa on the number four except it's only scaled up to eight hundred yards instead of thirteen hundred the other difference is the barrel has been shortened it was not particularly being light possibly used a little bit under under here and there's a current light flash hider because cordite is very flashy it takes a different bayonets the number four and most importantly because the barrel has been shortened it is stiffer overall than a number four barrel so this is a free-floating otherwise anyone who's familiar with the number four should be familiar with this they'll know exactly what they are up to now what this video is really about is the the whole wandering zero thing now if you go on the info forums or talk to collectors you often hear people say oh no mine doesn't wander it's a it must be one of the good ones and it turns out that the vast majority of people have one of the good ones so there's a lot of speculation around this I will approach this from two different angles which seem plausible first of all but around the time this was being produced so late warm and there's it was used in the Far East it was used into the into the 50s in up with the correction down in the bottom as usual lots of these we use in a journal so this sort of got the nickname jungle carbine as a result but there were some used in the European theater by the paratroops late in World War two and they were generally well liked because they're very light they're very handy and you spent more time carrying a rifle as a soldier than actually shooting it the recoil is quite missed out but when you're carrying it around it's a good whack lighter we had after the end of the war we had the em2 program which then got mixed in the early 50s and end up with the foul there was a serious suggestion because soldiers liked it so much that they've replaced the number four of which we had several million on hand with this as a standard service rifle so that's the political angle and I think they were looking for any excuse to not adopt a new rifle and spend lots and lots of money when they had a gazillion number fours on hand already the second angle on it is it's free float and there's a suspicion that some civilian gunsmiths were trying to settle them for target shooting and try to reestablish up pressure like on a number for hits on a number four you've got a muzzle bearing on the stock that puts two to six or seven pounds worth of force on the muzzle dampens down the vibrations makes it shoot better than than it would as a free flight and anyone who has free floated one or smaller eyes one should know they don't shoot as well afterwards if the stocking up was correct in the first place but this is something is it's all in the literature it's even from the literature back in the day people started talking about wandering zero but it's one of those things that there's let's talk about oh is it the action flexing because that there was metal removed and or is it the flash hider but causing to ring or or something but given that out of the factory they had to shoot the same accuracy acceptance as a number and smle and argue defeat so four or five shots into a one inch by one and a half inch square and then these if I remember correctly the the percentage that were tested at 600 yards had to shoot their group of seven I think into 36 inches which is worse than an SME that is 600 I mean it's a short little short little thing this 600 squad long long legs for this but there's all these rumors that you would zero them and then do they have to reserve them and to be honest in very few people who own them have actually reported this I had a number four that walked as it warmed up because I left it to to a trusted custom if I trusted who said he knew how to do it and he screwed it up after after it was fixed it was it was fine that was the nozzle pressure than did that and Franken rifle before it was Franken rifle had a wondering 0 according to the myth because it just it just struggled to zero it would not zero basically unless you were going to tolerate it's on a six-inch group at a hundred yards because the breaching up wasn't good the threads weren't well mated and his British out with a locking ring and that wasn't tight so the barrel was always wandering around but let us put a group through this off a bag at it's only fifty meters but it'll do site is down to and see what it does [Applause] not very impressive so let's try some privy and see what it does I've been doing a lot of shooting today not very impressive really not very impressive I wonder if this is one of the bad ones ironically after all of that now actually turns out that we have two different number Five's to test here one friction actually shoots really really badly and the other of which shoots really quite well so we're going to see the difference now the one that shoots really really badly the stop touches in a strange way on the side in fact right now is be shot by its owner it's sort of touching maybe not quite but something's probably interfering when it vibrates the other one actually touches at the bottom which in theory shouldn't do it should free throw but it shoots well the vagaries of these things they're all individuals and it's the same with number forces there's sometimes you come across a rifle that the buy-rite shouldn't shoot well but does and sometimes you come across one that shoots really badly but there's no reason for it and it's pretty much the same for all wife wasn't up to them until the modern era really so fiber and group of each of these have let's start with the bad one but this one way and we're doing 25 meters we do a lot of stuff for 25 meters because this range here there's a hundred meter range over there but it's not really suitable for filming it's too it's too narrow and it's we'll set up for bench rest here's the only place you can do pro and 25 yards was a Barrett range distance so 25 yards 25 meters is close enough for government work that's the reason and you can use 10 meter pistol targets they they present quite a good aiming mark at 25 meters 50 they're too small with iron sights you can't you see the right so that's the reason why we're doing a lot of 25 meters they're lively girls it's compared to the way this we're shooting the first time I was here with it that's actually not that bad but let's patch it out and see what the better wonders sorry just exchange looks with the owners of these rifles now what I'll do is I'll show you a group of what the bad rifle shot before and what it's shot now I mean the p14 that I shot shot about one each group full minute of angle for something this short that's that's an okay group what's that gonna be about five minutes or something like that but in any case the bad rifle it shoots bad groups it doesn't shoot bad groups in different places unless the wandering zero is just okay you've got some rifles that are bad groupers and because statistical clustering the a five-shot group appears to wandering I don't know but it just seems that a certain number of them for whatever reason it in this case it's probably stocking up don't don't shoot that well this one its owner has had it out today in fact I have both them out today at a hundred meters and this one we're shooting now is ten centimeter groups ah we have this rifle shot that group which is okay yes let's that's an inch and a half that's a that's that's a seven minute in a half group it is only a five shot group though and then the other rifle is that it's not broke on the range unless something goes wrong and sometimes something going right there should have gone wrong is also going wrong but yeah in general that one over there shoots groups like that this one here shoes okay that's a that's an exceptional one but shoots the kind of groups that you would expect from a from a rifle with this shorter barrel so there you go also one final point since I filmed the initial segment of this back in November so new evidence has come to light it on the army rumor service in a particular thread about the use of number five carbines in Europe at the end and just off the end of World War two a certain number of mark - in inverted commas number five rifles has come out and they've been known before they've been one or two and people presume that they were sort of gunsmith conversions now the number mock to conversion in the number four not to model instead of having the trigger pivoted on the trigger guard is pivoted on a lug braced on to the arm onto the onto the butt socket he gives a better trigger phone it's less influenced by stock shrinkage drool or anything like that and enough of these have turned up now that it appears that this must have been an official project rather than just gunsmith gunsmith exam I'll put a picture up there up about it and thank you very much 240 as he lets himself be known on the army reservist website for bringing this information to light so there you go hope you enjoyed the videos I've she's taking about four months to produce over time thanks for watching please like and subscribe please consider supporting us on patreon if you haven't already done so and I'll see you again sometime fight you

Channel: Bloke on the Range

Views: 80,253

Keywords: weapons (interest), shooting (sport), milsurp, No.5, number 5, lee, enfield, 303, british, rifle, wandering, zero

Id: j7OHqHQbxyQ

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018