No4 barrel burst.... Peter?

[Son]

I found this snippet the other day and was wondering if it had been discussed here and what the story was- forgive me for not paying attention at the time....

From the UK Liason Office Armament Research...Picatinny Arsenal. 1 In july 1987 a UK MOD ban was placed on the firing of ball rounds from.303 No4 Mk1 fifles in UK service as a result ot 2 explosions which occured in the chamber area of the weapons and resulted in burst barrels. 2 UK MOD investigations found that explosions were as a result of severe "craze cracking of the 2 barrels which were of indepterminate age and life.

thanks...

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[jmoore]

Ya, that's been discussed, but I believe Mr. Laidler was still on the old Jouster forums when he commented on the situation in some detail.

[Thunderbox]

Urban myth, I'm afraid.

[Peter Laidler]

Sort of urban myth due to the fact that the 'burst barrel' was already deliberately burst before hand for a good reason. I'm sure someone will resurrect this thread

[Alan de Enfield]

Sort of urban myth due to the fact that the 'burst barrel' was already deliberately burst before hand for a good reason. I'm sure someone will resurrect this thread

I never kept a copy of that 'story' off the old Jouster - but from memory Peter said that the only 2 'failures' he was aware of was when a couple of cadet No4s were fired without bolt heads.

Ring any bells ?

[Peter Laidler]

It was one fired without the bolt head and the other was an RAF style DP that has a big hole bored down through the top of the rear handguard, the barrel and then right through the fore-end so you can actually see right through the rifle so to speak. This large diameter hole is an inch or so in front of the knox form and is a good clue that all would not be well should the rifle be fired.

All was not well when it was fired.........................!

[louthepou]

I can just imagine the discussion before firing.

"Guys, look what I found.

- What?

- A Swiss-cheese Lee Enfield...

- Interesting. (pause). Hey know what? We could...

- Fire the poor thing?

- Yeah, that's got to do something cool!

- Ok, here we go. He he he..."

*Click - BAM!*

(...)

[Peter Laidler]

The Board of Enquiry after the event found out what happened and it was this. The rifles that were 'live' were taken onto the firing point and a couple of other 'live - serviceable' rifles were at the back of the firing point together with a few DP rifles, used for what we call 'background activity' One of the rifles on the firing point wouldn't fire so the instructor stood behind the firer took it off him, cleared it and shouted to one of the Cadet NCO's at the rear.... 'bring me another rifle over.....' which he did.

What neither of them did was to check that the 'new' rifle was serviceable....., and in this case, it wasn't because it had a xxxxing big hole through the barrel, top to bottom. BUT, the BOLT was serviceable, unlike the bolt in the rifle that had failed to fire. Already, you can see that this isn't a good mix. As we say, it's an accident just waiting to happen. And the first round it fired WAS an accident where the Cadet lost a couple of fingers. They are still in orbit around the sun!

The Board of Enquiry established that prior to the actual shooting, half the group had sat around in a circle and started to clean the rifles and bolts while the other half had filled some Bren magazines and cleaned/oiled the bren guns. Then they changed over and the Bren filling half finished off cleaning and oiling the rifles and asembled them.

Unfortunately, due to 'lack of adult supervision', a DP bolt with a welded up bolt face and therefore no striker protrusion was placed into a service rifle. This rifle wouldn't fire. But because of this, a DP rifle went onto the firing point with a serviceable bolt and fired.

There's two threads to this story 1) think hard before you invade Russia and 2) check your rifle before you shoot it.

Anyway, humour aside, I think they saved the lads badly mangled fingers but they are badly disfigured.

After that an urgent signal went out to rapidly convert the RAF spec DP rifles to the current L59 specification that are safe. I bet you wonder how I know this don't you......................?

[villiers]

So the poor lad´ll now have to keep to left handed action.