Mystery of the Missing Wartime Long Branch Snipers

[Lee Enfield]

FOUND THIS AT Highwood Classic Arms WEB PAGE https://www.highwoodclassicarms.co.u...e%20report.pdfAttachment 117139

Well the photo is a No4MkI rather than MkI*

Stock photo perhaps?

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Roy W]

The front page shows that 71L0374 is/was in the UK.

If the owner is on here please contact me, I may have some good news for you.

For the record I have 71L0373.

[Simon P]

I had 1943 dated serial 39L7716 recently

[muffett.2008]

I had 1943 dated serial 39L7716 recently

I've got 39L3922

[boltaction]

Is it also possible that many just met the same fate as many "non-sniper" rifles? They were sold as surplus, picked up by hunters and sportsmen, and sporterized? True that one does not see many of them showing up like that at shows and such, but the attrition on the Bubba specials was very high. They were cheap, used hard, and abused much. I worked at a sporting goods store in Saskatoon in the 1980's and part owned one in the '90's, and I can't even tell you how many sporterized Enfields came and went. By that stage, no one was buying full wood Enfields and sporterizing them fresh, because that was in the days before the last releases of full wood Lee Enfields came out, so the full wood ones were very scarce. However, the damage had already been done; some of the older shooters recalled being able to buy them by the barrel full in the 1960's and they were cut down left right and centre. I was only interested in the full wood ones, so really never gave the sporter ones a second glance; one abused Lee-Enfield looked much like another. I do recall one coming in with a #32 scope on it, and it was probably originally a sniper unit. Couldn't say whether it was Brit or Canadian made, but since it had a chopped barrel and was beat up pretty good it didn't matter.

Ed

Ed

[Seaspriter]

They were cheap, used hard, and abused much. I worked at a sporting goods store

I remember those days. I was 12 years old in 1959. My father bought me a new baseball glove (outgrew the old one) for $12.95 USD. He saw a barrel with guns in it, poked around and pulled out a full wood Enfield for the same price as the baseball glove. I didn't know any better at the time, but I knew my father -- if the barrel had sporterized versions, he would have rejected every one of them and only selected the original military version. I have ads from gun magazines of the time with the old Enfields being peddled on the cheap.

[Peter Laidler]

I have 74L0022/tele 4419S and a second tele 4430S that came to the UK as a spare tele with a rifle used for trials.

The wartime attrition rate for small arms losses at sea generally was approx 5.5%

[Simon]

I think I've got a loose TP scope somewhere in the Gunroom. I'll see if I can track it down and check the number.

[tiriaq]

I recall seeing one of the 74L 32TP scopes with its rings at an ORA shoot at Base Borden. This was from one of the scrapped Netherlands rifles.
It has been a long time since the CF sold any weapons off as surplus. Any No. 4Ts that were held in stores have likely been scrapped.
I do recall that there were 3 LB 4Ts w/32TP scopes that were made available for issue to the Canadian Rangers. As far as I know they went to the Yukon. This would have been in the late '80s, early '90s, just do not recall exactly when.

[stencollector]

I recall seeing one of the 74L 32TP scopes with its rings at an ORA shoot at Base Borden. This was from one of the scrapped Netherlands rifles.
It has been a long time since the CF sold any weapons off as surplus. Any No. 4Ts that were held in stores have likely been scrapped.
I do recall that there were 3 LB 4Ts w/32TP scopes that were made available for issue to the Canadian Rangers. As far as I know they went to the Yukon. This would have been in the late '80s, early '90s, just do not recall exactly when.

Back in the mid 90s, a retired weapons tech who lived in the area related to me that he had been tasked with tearing down sniper rifles back in the 60s while working at 202 depot. The rifles were still in their chests, but the scopes had all been removed by that point. One still had the scope, which he reported to his Sgt. The Sgt merely said: "there are no scopes". So he retained the scope and brackets (I can't remember if it was a 69 or a 32TP) and built up a sniper using an unserialised receiver to which he added his SIN number as a serial. I had seen that rifle with his son.

So the answer to some of the missing Canadian rifles could be as simple as they were destroyed by the CF upon disposal.

There were a couple languishing in the depots around the year 2000. I talked with the retired Life Cycle Manager, who made the decision to give them to the Rangers to use rather than see them destroyed. They could have been put up for distribution to CF museums, and if they survive their time with the Rangers, may eventually be.

Here is a shot of a serial number from one of two chests I found at a surplus yard about a decade back. The owner of the yard could not recall when he got them, and they were mixed in with dozens of regular Cno7 chests. Most likely that rifle ended up in the smelter.