No. 4 "Carbine"

[Peter Laidler]

More on the No4 carbine. When I was an Armourer (among many….) at the main Northern District Ordnance Depot at Ngariawahia in New Zealand, in the mid 60’s we had loads of No4 rifles (the HUGE Ordnance Depot had THOUSANDS of them…………) and a few ex Malaya/Fiji No5 rifles. I was chatting to my boss WO2 Jock Annandale and he told me that in 1944/45 New Zealand was expected/required to prepare and train her quota of troops for the forthcoming invasion of the islands, Singapore and Malaya. Oz and NZ were to invade from the South Britain and India from the west.

Australia had already made, trialed and set aside plans for a lightweight rifle, Canada had done the same and Britain had done the same too. NZ had a surplus of No4 rifles from the US/Canada and so looked into the speedy conversion of making lightweight No4 rifles that would not take up vast capacity that she didn’t have. So simplicity was the essence and lightness the aim.

NZ produced several short barreled No4 rifles that in short, looked like the front end of a No4 that finished at or about the lower band. The drawings and the prototypes were laid up and he showed me a set of the old blueprints that were in the technical library at the Ordnance Depot. The rifles were stored at (I seem to recall, but tell me if I’m wrong some of you Kiwi’s at the Ordnance Depot at Palmerston North) but by the 50’s, along with a lot of lend lease stuff had been destroyed or purchased or returned.

As for the project, I suppose that like the Canadian lightweight and the Australian No6, once the bomb had done its work, there was no need for rifles and the projects died a natural death. Minds were concentrated elsewhere as they say. Mind you, atomic bombs do appear to have that effect on people.

But that’s not all………. Bruce Gorton from Invercargill had his teeth into some parts of this project/story for many years before his death (not due to the bomb incidentally……) and was interested in what I’d said and even contacted WO2 Annandale but he’d also died and the Ordnance Depot had closed. But he did unearth documentation at the wherever you Kiwis keep old documents. He converted a barrel from a standard one based on memory from one I saw at Ngaruawahia (that started the whole conversation with ‘Jock’ Annandale off………). I turned one up too and made a fore-end based on guestimated guesswork. Apparently the RCNZ were gearing up to do the work after completing their Sten Gun contracts. Gorton even had some of the contract paperwork from them too.

So there have been No4 carbines, but not like the one that started this thread Jim (sorry to you trekkies.....) too

Have any of you Kiwis ever had a mention or sniff of this short lived project?