Essay on British army new sniper rifle ....

[Ngib]

In seventy two we had a couple of Small Arm Schools guys on ops. They were designated to run the course for the army. Their course started with the L42. The Royal Marines ran the last 303 course around 68. The last army sniper course with the No 4 was pre-SLR days. In fact the last training pamphlet was dated 1957. With the Devon and Dorset regiment they had their depot in Exeter a few miles from the Royal Marines Training center. A few came on the Marine courses after the Marines put the sniping concept to use in NI. This Devons training was arranged by a former Marine who had transferred and was commissioned into the D&D. meaning it was semi-official? They used the L42.
With the L42 the weapons were made from No.4 Mk1 (T) however they were first sold by the MOD to a private company owned by an ex-officer who resold them to Enfield. The Bulk of the no4 had been backlogged years before and up until 70 there were sixty available for operations.
However by this time the whole concept of sniping was changing and heading in two directions and leaving behind WW2 tactics. The field concept had also changed to deal with insurgencies. The other was for major incident CT. Not to be confused with NI or police duties. This came about after the Munich Olympics and the need for a dedicated national CT team.