1916 Irish Free State SMLE Mk. III*

Hello Gentlemen,


Wanted your thoughts on this Irish Free State SMLE. A friend of mine picked it up today for me, for $250. It has mostly matching serial numbers. It is dated 1916; the barrel, receiver, and bolt match. The original manufacture is BSA. It has the FF marking. The stock is sporterized, causing the sides of the rear sight, the front nose cap, and the barrel band to be separated. I have all of them, but the nose cap is non-matching. The original receiver serial number was scratched out, as is typical for Irish Free State rifles sent by the British during the Irish Civil War. I have read up on Fritz's research over at Gunboards. (Not sure if he is on this forum too.) It was very valuable information and helped me learn quite a bit about this rifle. I've been looking for a WW1, matching, BSA Mk. III* for sometime now. However, my dream rifle has been any rifle used during the Irish Civil War/War for Independence. This rifle fits both of the criteria. Although I know the Irish history of this rifle, I am still confused about certain markings on it. I wanted to see if any of you can try to read the markings and tell me a timeline of what this rifle may have gone through. Also, I want to know what everyone's thoughts are on this rifle and other Irish rifles.


Pictures:

http://prntscr.com/iaphb3
http://prntscr.com/iaphf3
http://prntscr.com/iaphj3 (What confuses me is that it has the '33, which I believe denotes the year it was brought into service. Could this mean that it was sent back to the British after Civil War? Based on Fritz's research, approx 8,000 rifles were sent back to BSA to be refurbished, could that be the case for this one? )
http://prntscr.com/iaphlf
http://prntscr.com/iaphn9
http://prntscr.com/iaphp3 (Fritz's research indicates the the serial numbers were changed when the rifles were sent to Ireland so that the British government could trace any rifles sent to the IRA from the Free State. They were lettered and numbered A-M and approx. 0-27,000 respectfully.)
http://prntscr.com/iaphqp
http://prntscr.com/iaphs7




I am aware that Irish rifles are sought after by many people simply because of an over-all demand, and I feel that many people buy these and under-appreciate their history. However, I simply wanted it because I love the history of Ireland and I can truly appreciate the historical significance of the rifle. I do not care about its monetary value. It is for that reason that I do not care if anyone thinks I over-paid, I would have paid much more just to be able to hold that kind of history.



I only have so many pictures right now, I will upload more when I get the rifle from my friend.


Thank you.

The Irish SMLE story, part 1, 1919 to 1925
By Frederick Richards

"In order to give a detailed answer to the questions asked in this thread, one has to go back to just prior the start of the Irish civil war.

The Free State army was organized on 16 January 1921, after the signing of the peace treaty. Independence was formally declared on 3 May 1921

The first 100 SMLE MK III rifles were sent to Ireland provisional troops in early February of 1921. Shipments halted briefly in March due to IRA seizure of English supplied arms, to be resumed after April 16th. There was also the suspicion (subsequently verified) that Michael Collins was supplying IRA units in Northern Ireland with U.K. supplied arms to use against the RUC and Ulster “Specials”. The UK took a dim view of this. It was after this break that the supplied rifles have new unique serial numbers applied and the old serial numbers lined out. This work was all done, in so far as examination of rifles markings allow, at Enfield Lock.

Between January 16 and June of 1922 England provided the Irish Free State with 11,900 rifles, 4200 revolvers and 79 machine guns.

By June of 1922 the opposing IRA forces had only 6,780 rifles and a small number of machineguns, the remaining arms being made up of shotguns (between 3,000 and 6,000). Of the rifle, only a subset were Enfield rifles, a few Model 71 Mausers and many 98 Mausers being among the arms used by the IRA (as well as Mauser model 95 rifles, Gras and level rifles and pretty much anything that the IRA could smuggle in). A sizeable quantity of GEW 1898 rifles were imported into Waterford in March of 1922. It is likely that there were at 1500 to 2000 Gew 98 rifles based on that incident and arms brought in by returning soldiers from WWI. The source of ant-treaty IRA SMLE rifles were three fold, some were smuggled in between 1918 and 1922, about 3,000 were taken off of retreating British troops (which were told not to provoke any incident) or taken off of newly created free state forces that did not resist in Cork county. The last source was those rifles captured in fighting from either the RIC or the other British forces during the war of independence. The exact numbers of Enfields in the above figures of 6,780 is unknown, but it is likely on the order of 3,500~to just under 4,000 rifles.

Up to September of 1922 England provided The Irish Free State (pro treaty IRA) with 27,400 rifles, 6,606 revolvers and 249 machine guns.

By August of 1922 20,060 of the rifles were distributed to troops, the remainders were in stores. By the end of the 1922, most all stocks of rifles had been issued out. The Free State started asking for more rifles from the UK.

In between the fall of 1922 and the end of 1923 some quantity of arms were turned over to the Free State so it could fight the IRA in the civil war. Numbers of rifles delivered unknown but a review of the pictures of Free state troops, published figures of rifles stocks and serial number studies indicate that about 10,000 SMLE MK I*** rifles were delivered at this time, along with a small stock of SMLE MK III rifles (or the SMLE rifles had been supplied after September of 1922 and before the spring of 1923). All had new serial numbers applied. The deliveries did include 9-18 pounders and limited stocks of shells, as well as numbers of Morris armoured cars. It is most likely that Enfield rifles were in these shipments in or around mid 1923, June of 1923 being the best guess, based on the various parliamentary commentaries that have come to light. It would seem after this event that no further rifles were supplied by Great Britain, as it was seen that the Irish Free State was going to be able to subdue the Anti-treaty faction.

When the IRA went underground in 1924, they told their man to dump or stash their arms, as to be caught with arms by that time was a death sentence. Free State army captured many of the arms used by the IRA by 1925, by digging them up or searching building, tip-offs on the location, or torture to procure the location. Most were in poor condition. After the end of the Irish Civil war large quantities of captured arms were dumped in the Irish Sea. Documented arms were captured pistols and revolvers of non-standard pattern (not .455 cal). Though not documented, the lack of any sales records indicate Mauser rifles and other odd ball arms were destroyed at this time (other than a small numbers retained for various purposes). It would seem that the Irish Free State sought to only retain those arms that were SMLE pattern, though there were small stocks of CLLE and possibly Ross rifles retained.

Of the 27,500 renumbered SMLE rifles supplied to the Irish army, approximately 500 were supplied to the IRA in exchange for unmarked rifles by in July 1922. Of these 500 rifles ~300 to 400 were destroyed in the siege of the Dublin court house. In addition a small number of unmarked SMLE rifles had been provided early in 1921, between 100 and 1000 rifles before the new serial numbers were applied.

In 1925 the Irish Free State Army had 42,500 rifles on hand, of which only 8,000 were considered first line (serviceable). This number includes all of the rifles turned in or captured by the army in the civil war, many of which were not Lee Enfield pattern rifles. Also supposedly used were limited numbers of Ross Mk III rifles, (as it is known that at least 21 were captured by the IRA between 1919 and 1921) though no pictures exist or any surplus sales record.

Given the known facts we can estimate the Irish Free states stock of arms in 1925, as follows:

SMLE MK III/III* with new added serial numbers ~26,800 to 27,200
SMLE MK III with existing serial numbers ~5,600 to 5,900
SMLE MK I***, second line condition: ~9,800 to 9,900
Ross rifles, RIC carbines, Mausers retained ~100 rifles
Total stocks ~42,500

Serial numbers: So now you are wondering, what about the newly applied serial numbers. What were they? Well here is the code, published for the first time:

The new SMLE MK III serial numbers started with N1 , went to the N999, then to O1000 to O1999, then P2000 to P2999 and so on until you get to M25000. Now when they got to M25999, instead of using a new letter they just continued the series up to around M27500. The serial number sampled to date range from N17 to M27489, so there may be some numbers above that have not been found yet. That is the key to identifying an Irish SMLE MKIII or III* that was OFFICALLY supplied to the Irish free state by the British in 1921 to 1923 time frame. Not the FF stamp, which comes later. Some quantities of rifles, between 100 and most likely under 1000 were also supplied with the original serial numbers intact between February of 1921 and March of 1921..."

"...The above is based on published sources and examination of rifles in the data base I have been building. As of today it includes over 1250 arms, with 1124 of them being Enfields. Of that figure, 103 are SMLE MK III, 172 are SMLE MK I*** and 82 are RIC carbines. Other than the theory about the SMLE MKI*** rifles serial number ranges and assignment everything above can be traced back to a written source and is not conjecture.

If folks are interested I can also put down what occurred in the interwar period and the WWII to post war period, through the final disposition of rifles. The research is by no means complete so some of what would be written in this interval would be conjecture based on evidence collected to date."


Citation:

Fritz's FF marked Enfield sticky

Fritz is a dedicated scholar who spends his time to help collectors learn more about their rifles. I am extremely grateful for him taking his time to research.

Not up to speed on FF rifles but the early stuff in good condition is getting harder to find in any guise.
However one thing of concern I feel is the split in the rear bottom wood as it is only pictured on the Rt side we do not get to see the left side of the bottom wood this split can be caused by someone removing the stock bolt in the butt before removing the top and bottom woods from the rifle the square ends of the stock bolt forcing the ears of the lock plate (Skennerton just calls it "Plate") to spread thus splitting the rear of the bottom wood.
You need to get the wood off and have a look to see how to repair the wood as it can be repaired, to leave it like it is will just get worse over time & shooting, to remove the wood remove bands & screws from the top & bottom fore woods then tapping down on top of the rear bottom wood alternate sides remove it, they can be finicky sometimes patience is key, I use a rubber mallet gently does it.
Never ever try to remove it by levering it from the front lest you will wreck the wood beyond repair look up in the search bar for threads on wood removal there is stuff there, but I suggest you get this looked at before shooting it.

Ah I see. Well I was intending to get a new stock set for it anyway and just keep the original preserved as is. I will be using my other Enfields if I want to shoot. Thank you for the input.