Loose front pad ona 1945 #4T

[Peter Laidler]

We used to test-fire the rifles after major workshop repair with the telescopes attached, in a test called 'hold fastness' or just 'the fast test' for short. The Enfiield layer recoil would be set to xxxxing hard. This would shake the xxxt out of the telescope/erector system and the anti-rotation of the tele and bracket would severely test the front pad security. A good test was to try to wiggle the tele and bracket and look for any oil squeeze between the body and the pad. Any oil squeeze - and back it'd go for 'failed fastness test'. As I mentioned sometime earlier, occasionally an L42 would shear the threaded spigot off the pad.

In real life,by the early 80's, the L42 had passed its shelf life and it was easier to Z/BER the rifle

I used to take my son in occasionally if there were varied things to shoot. He'd put the rifles and MG's into the layer and fire the trigger. We had to stop him because with Brens, L4's and L7 GPMG's he seemed incapable of letting go of the trigger. So several 'short bursts' used to tuen into a full magazine or 20 round belt! SMG's were something else!