Pre-dispersal SMLEs

[Srahimian24]

Hello everyone, quick question, how common or how high was production of the SMLE in the 1939/1940 era before BSA started making the dispersal rifles? Seems to me like most WWII era english SMLEs are dispersal guns. Were pre dispersal rifles not that common?

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[breakeyp]

Few if any rifles were made just before the war. BSA's rifle tooling was in storage and trained employees were retired according to BSA History book, After the battle. BSA assembled some rifles for civilian use from stored parts. Some sources say that BSA used restored WW1 rifles/parts for the large pre war Siamese contract. I don't know about that but throw it out for discussion.

[Roger Payne]

That's interesting Paul........about ten years ago I went up to Ryton Arms in North Nottinghamshire & had a look through about a thousand rusty, tatty & incomplete SMLE's. They were from what was originally an even larger batch that had contained many WW1 dated rifles as well. The WW1 rifles, being considered more desirable by many deact collectors, had all been deactivated & sold, leaving all of the later rifles. There were essentially two roughly equal sized groups; Ishapore post WW2 rifles, generally dated late 1940's & 1950's; & inter war BSA rifles. I bought about forty of the 'least worst' BSA examples. They were a roughly equal mix of 1926/28ish dated MkIII*'s & 1937 to 1940 dated MkIII's. They bore typical British military contract butt socket markings, & many bore an L prefix serial number. Many, in addition to standard British markings bore Arabic marks, though I've no idea what they mean! The last two digits of the dates on these rifles had been added by hand, & a few of us speculated that they were WW1 left-overs, although the L prefix on the vast majority also made me wonder if they could have been a specific contract. I don't know a lot about SMLE contracts & I don't have the reference books handy, but bat it out there in case it means something to someone......

[Srahimian24]

That's interesting, I read somewhere else I believe on this forum that the last two numbers of the year were possibly hand stamped. BSA using WWI receivers may be the reason why then?

[husk]

This example uses a recycled WWI receiver with the last two digits being hand stamped. Attachment 117619

[husk]

Larger

[Srahimian24]

That's pretty cool, I did not realize a BSA used recycled WWI receivers for their early WWII production, thanks for sharing. How many of these rifles did they try to produce, seems like I see a lot more dispersal rifles compared to these early war date rifles?

[PeterN]

I have a 1940 BSA MkIII SMLE in the L series. I also have a 1942 dispersal marked with just the B in the N series. Both have the last two digits of the date stamped differently to the first two. The 1940 rifle has had the cut off boss ground off, so I can't have a cut off plate. Why or when this was done, I have no idea.
Attachment 117631Attachment 117632Attachment 117633Attachment 117634Attachment 117635
Regards
Peter.

[Srahimian24]

Thanks for the photos, out of curiosity, how often have you come across the pre-dispersal rifles as opposed to the the dispersal made ones? I am trying to get an idea of how common the pre-dispersal rifles were, although the indication right now seems to be they were not super common

[Alan de Enfield]

That's pretty cool, I did not realize a BSA used recycled WWI receivers for their early WWII production,

Although not part of your question, BSA also used re-cycled receivers, wood work, in fact anything, commercial or military to produce their Disperal rifles.


Dispersal Rifles

Up until 1940, BSA made normal high-quality No1 MkIII* on limited military contracts, marked with the usual Crown and BSA&Co, as well as identical rifles just marked "BSA&Co" for commercial sale and export.
With the invasion scare, the Ministry of Supply ordered BSA to make rifles out of whatever parts it could get together. Hence the rifles were made of mixtures of commercial and military parts, mixed walnut and beech wood (or all-beech), later on No4 butts and firing pin/cocking pieces. A second wave of production in 1945 even used recycled and re-dated receivers.
About the same time the emergency rifle production was started, BSA was ordered to disperse its many Birmingham factories away from the bomb-target central area, and also to increase war production by diluting experienced staff with war staff. BSA was a huge engineering group, and this "Dispersal" programme led to 70 seperate factories being set up, moved and/or expanded. Rifle production involved several of these factories (both No1s and No4s), and this type of "all available parts" No1 has become known as a "Dispersal rifle". Technically, even the No4s were Dispersals, as well as motorbikes, bicycles, aircraft parts, machine guns and heavy weaponry...
BSA marked these rifles with just the first "B" of BSA&Co. Presumably this was to dissociate the company from these slightly less-than top quality peacetime rifles!