brass grenade sight disc

[technova]

I looked at an SMLE that had an odd shaped brass disc in the left front stock.
It appears to me to be angles and yardages for a grenade launcher.
How common is this piece, it's the first I have seen but then I'm not a big Enfield guy.

Information

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[Thunderbox]

You were probably looking at a rifle that still had its "volley sights".

These were auxiliary sights that enabled the rifle to be fired at targets up to 2,800 yards away. As most shooters cannot see a man-size target at much over 1,000 yards, the volley sight system allowed a body of soldiers (eg 150 men in a rifle company) to exploit the 2,800 yard effective range of the rifle by firing en masse - giving a result at the target end something similar to machine gun fire's "beaten zone". (Machine guns at company level and below made volley sights obsolete).

The killing range of .303" is about 3,400 yards, but experimentation came up with a limit of 2,800 yards for "effective density" of volley fire. This was all tested at Hythe ranges in Britain.


Most No1 MkIII rifles were originally built with volley sights, but the majority were removed when replacement forends were fitted during WW1. Consequently, a rifle with volley sights is fairly rare, and much sought after by collectors - typically fetching 2 to 3 times the price of an identical rifle without the sights.

[Badger]

You might want to try our Google CSE custom search engine located in the top right corner below the words "Advanced Search". It only searches our site using Google techniques and can be quite efficient. For example, in your case, type in the words enfield volley sight or just volley sight and see what happens ..

There's a lot of old discussion threads and pics on the subject.

Regards,
Doug

[technova]

It looks like the part in the lower left in Thunderbox's second picture. The bun I looked at did not have the little lever deal on it. I can see the disc behind the lever in your pic. too bad the one I looked at is incomplete.

I will do some searching now that I know what it is called.

[RCS]

Sometimes the stud in the center was milled off during upgrading, such as this example on a Mark I** upgraded to Mark III during WW1 in India. Also note the dial sight plate is an early variation Attachment 43898Attachment 43899Attachment 43900

[RCS]

Sometimes the stud in the center was milled off during upgrading, such as this example on a Mark I** upgraded to Mark III during WW1 in India. Also note the dial sight plate is an early variation Attachment 43898Attachment 43899Attachment 43900

[Badger]

MKL article ...

Enfield Dial Sights (Variations)

Regards,
Doug

[Warren]

This is one model of a grenade launching sight.
This is the SMLE pendulum model and is a rather rare bit of kit.Attachment 43920