Pattern 1913 Enfield Trials Rifle

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm in I am here today at the Rock Island auction company I'm taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be selling in their upcoming April of 2016 premier auction and I have this particular rifle here today to show you and to properly explain this rifles history really what we need to do is go back in time to about 1899 the beginning of the second Boer War so the British have sent troops in - well their colony in South Africa which borders on a couple of somewhat rebellious states that the British wanted to bring under its own crown control and these states didn't really want to do that the Orange Free State the Transvaal and the British go to war and the general simplified view of this war is that you have these though the local Berger's who are who grew up in the saddle shooting game and they're excellent rifle shots and they just shoot the British infantry to pieces and in some way that there were some occasions when that was an absolutely accurate depiction of how the war went ultimately British organization British logistics win the day and the colonies are subdued and come under British control however the British really did notice that their troops were at a substantial disadvantage in firepower - the Boers the Boers were that the ones who had the best equipment we're using these cool new generally seven millimeter Mauser 1893 pattern rifles there were good rifles they were quite modern they shot fast they were accurate they used rimless ammunition that was modern and effective and the British of the the best thing the British had were fairly new Lee Enfield rifles and carbines lee-metford rifles and carbines and they had some issues so the British came out of this war thinking that you know maybe we ought to replace these leaves with something a little bit better the Lee had been the very first British bolt-action repeating rifle they went from the martini to the Lee and they started experimenting and by 1912 they had come up with a design for a much-improved rifle that that they wanted the theory was ultimately would replace the lis in British military service now they did some tweaking they ultimately produced depending on who you read between thousand and about twelve hundred and fifty of these rifles they were designated the pattern of nineteen thirteen rifle because they were ultimately put into production in 1913 and the idea with with this thousand or so guns with it was that they were test trials guns will will give them to a batch of troops several hundred went to some infantry units several hundred went to some cavalry units a couple hundred went to various musketry schools in the UK will spread them out their test them in field conditions and see what people like and what they don't and any problems that come up that we didn't anticipate so these new rifles really had a lot of advantages over the league in fact I think this would work better if we brought the camera in a little closer and I can show you what some of these advantages are up close so what the British did with this design is basically adopt a Mauser these have a Mauser style bolt two big locking lugs up the front big extractor along the length of the bolt we've got a cocking piece and striker assembly back here it's got a dogleg bolt handle which looks a little different but isn't really functionally relevant and the safety lug on these is actually the stem of the bolt handle which locks into the receiver when the bolt handle comes down so in comparison the lee-enfield or lis rifles have a pair of locking lugs at the back which really isn't as good locking up at the front is a better more efficient mechanical system you can see in the magazine well here that there isn't a big lever on the side there isn't a selector on the side here they got rid of the magazine cut off they realized that this wasn't a relevant or feasible or practical thing that needed to be on the rifles anymore so ditch that which soldiers were happy to be rid of and they went to a Mauser style fixed magazine all inside the action this holds five rounds and the biggest change that they made or the most significant the most relevant change was that they went they adopted a new cartridge which was designed in conjunction with this rifle that is the 276 Enfield cartridge this is a rimless seven millimeter cartridge and this would replace the somewhat obsolete 303 British cartridge the 303 is has a big rim on it which made sense early on but makes it difficult to adapt the cartridges to magazines and to self-loading rifles because those rims tend to Jam against each other and so moving to a rimless cartridge would have been a significant improvement now the 276 which again is a 7 millimeter cartridge was it was a pretty potent round it was in always equal to the 30.6 was actually pretty similar to the 7 millimeter Remington Magnum only about a hundred feet per second slower than than what we use today for the Remington mag specifically it was 165 grain bullet traveling at 20 785 feet per second at the muzzle now that cartridge really was the main problem with this rifle as well it was what the troops liked was that this rifle was more accurate than the Lee Enfield they thought that it handled well it balanced well and they really liked the sights so if we take a look at the sights here we have these big wings protecting the rear sight as you can see right here we have a nice aperture sight so an aperture sight mounted way on the back of the receiver instead of the Li the number one mark 3 which had a notch tangent sight mounted up here in front of the action the front sight on the pattern 1913 is is actually pretty typical it's a a squared off post a couple of nice protecting wings to it it's a good front sight but what really was was significant to this design was this really good rear sight you can elevate and depress this for long-range shooting drops down for your battle sight 0 these did also have volley sites on so this is your volley rear sight and then this guy is your volley front sight which acts as a little front post now interestingly on these guns because they were still experimental they never did get around to actually marking range notches on this volley front sight it just wasn't that important at the time so the mechanics are there but they aren't graduated anyway troops like this this new sight it was more effective it was more accurate for them it's a great sight really so most of the problems with the pattern 1913 were actually based on the cartridge they had problems with getting excessive copper deposits in the barrel metal fouling they had problems with the bore eroding they had some extraction problems one of the rifles actually blew up in testing troops complained a bit about the recoil and in general it was just a little bit too hot of a cartridge for what they needed because it's not just the the muzzle velocity in the bullet weight this was of course a coordinate based cartridge and chordates kind of a harsh propellant burns at very high temperatures they were complaining about bore erosion with as little as a thousand rounds through the gun and that's not not a good thing so after substantial testing in in the UK and Ireland and South Africa and Egypt guns came back like I said there were some issues with the cartridge there were generally pretty popular guns with the troops because of the balance and handling the single piece stock was a more efficient easier thing to produce just in a lot of ways this is a better rifle than the smle troops like them I should point out they'd actually didn't like these distinctive gripping cutouts that was one of the other complaints that they had although it's interesting these are distinct to the pattern 1913 and they're an easy visual way to identify this particular rifle anyway this almost certainly would have gone through a bit more testing and ended up as the British standard service weapon except that World War one broke out so the last batch of testing of these things was literally happening in the spring and the summer of 1914 right before World War one when the war breaks out it's pretty clear that for all the potential advantages of these rifles switching to a new cartridge right as you're trying to mobilize you know a massive new army for a global war or what becomes a global war not a great idea so the whole 276 Enfield cartridge gets tabled they stick to the smle and the lee-enfield they do decide to adopt this in the guise of the pattern of 1914 rifle which is kind of a quickly adapted version of this exact rifle in 303 British a couple British plants like BSA are set to tool up to manufacture these guns the pattern 1914 in 303 and for some technical reasons they're really they're not able to they're too busy trying to make other guns and fields largely and the plan to make these as well fizzles and what the UK actually ends up doing is subcontracting that out to the United States there are Remington and the Winchester companies Remington also running their Eddystone factory where ultimately over a million of these rifles as the pattern of 1914 in 303 were manufactured and the u.s. also adopted this rifle as the the m1917 enfield again adapted to 36 caliber so the P 14 which is just this gun in 303 British it's interesting it doesn't get a whole lot of recognition often for its its place in world war 1 but in in the words of or in the opinion of someone who would probably know general Julian Hatcher who you might recognize from Hatcher's notebook arms designer and a very significant figure in u.s. ordnance department he actually judged this rifle to be the best bolt-action rifle of World War one and I don't think he's wrong these are fantastic if if the British had had had the extra time and not had a War break out when they're in the middle of the adoption process this very well may have replaced the smle fairly quickly so that's the pattern of 1913 rifle story pretty much ends at the beginning of World War one there were a couple last-minute kind of last-ditch uses for these rifles the German sniping program in World War one started out actually making fairly heavy use of Steel sniper shields and the British response to this was to try and find some rifles that could shoot through them and one of the options that was considered was actually rebelling some of these pattern 1913 guns because they are a very strong action compared to the the 303 they they considered retain burring these for some larger like 454 70 caliber hunting cartridges to use against German sniping shields I believe one rifle was actually converted in that way and sent to the front and that that idea fizzled out into nothing ultimately these were sold off a surplus most of them came to the United States and sadly because they were in a cartridge that was totally unavailable though this cartridge was an experimental British round and never never did get developed beyond that most of them were sporter eyes door used the actions and the bolts were used as the basis for other custom rifles so most of them don't exist anymore in their stock military form it's really cool to find one like this that is not just intact but in really outstanding looking condition now if you'd like to own this one yourself you know one of only about a thousand ever made it is of course coming up for sale here at Rock Island if you take a look at the description text below you'll find a link to Colin's catalog page on this rifle take a look at their pictures in their description and if you like it place a bit right there through the website thanks for watching

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 210,139

Keywords: enfield, p13, 1913, pattern 1913, pattern 13, pattern 14, pattern 1914, p14, m1917, p17, bolt action, .276, 276 enfield, trial, trials, experimental, prototype, history, ww1, wwi, world war one, world war 1, great war, dogleg, mauser, test, testing, development, 303, .303 British, england, english, britain, british, commonwealth

Id: KHQvKCPgmWM

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016