Transit case for Boyes rifle?

[Peter Laidler]

The Mk2 Boys magazine had a strip down the inside front the same as the Bren magazines. This wasn't because of the noses of the rounds fouling up on the wel;ding spatter or just poor welding along the middle seam* but on the Boys magazines, the spring was to act a a spring 'buffer' if you like to prevent the soft noses of the rounds beating against the front inside and deforming due to mushrooming during the fierce recoil as the rounds in the magazine shifted during recoil. This was exaggerated on the Boys due to the fact that the barrel group recoiled separately to the butt slide.

The photographs taken during the trials at Hythe showed this very pronounced mushrooming very clearly especially by the time the bottom rounds were at the top (or the top rounds at the bottom..... the mag ius a top loader don't forget!), ready to be fed into the chamber. The distortion on these rounds caused feed problems.

While the boys magazine was of a thicker material, the bullet noses didn't dent the inside of the magazines as the gun recoiled....., the noses just mushroomed. However, with a Bren, if a round was incorrectly loaded rim behind rim, as soon as the misfed round got to the feed position and immediately hung up on the next round, that NEXT would also be forced forwards by the full feed force of the breech block and this was sufficient to punch a sort of reverse centre punch mark out, into the lower front face of the magazine. The modified Bren magazines prevented this.

So while the Boys and Bren magazines were modified in the same way, the reason was different.

Not a lot of people know that..........