N° 8 Mk I trainer fitted with an A. J. Parker 8/53 sight attachment

[Alan de Enfield]

The body will always retain its number, unless it's been obliterated and its not possible to recover it. There is no reason to do otherwise.

Fazakerley markings were always extremely poorly executed and could often not be read, and were regularly renumbered. Peter Laidler wrote about the ID problems as an adendum to a long article on the 1950's Fazakerley FTR programme :

Extract :


As for the markings, well, as I have said before, the shallow, almost invisible pantograph scratch markings caused all sorts of headaches for Armourers and thousands of these almost invisible Fazakerley re-numbered rifles were later re-numbered with the 'lost' number format of SA60 A1234 and so on. One seen only last week reads SA63-A2253 indicating Small Arms, 1963 with the sequential number A-2253 while underneath a number that reads something like 53P xxxxx follows!"

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[Didier]

Fazakerley markings were always extremely poorly executed and could often not be read, and were regularly renumbered. Peter Laidler wrote about the ID problems as an adendum to a long article on the 1950's Fazakerley FTR programme :

Extract :


As for the markings, well, as I have said before, the shallow, almost invisible pantograph scratch markings caused all sorts of headaches for Armourers and thousands of these almost invisible Fazakerley re-numbered rifles were later re-numbered with the 'lost' number format of SA60 A1234 and so on. One seen only last week reads SA63-A2253 indicating Small Arms, 1963 with the sequential number A-2253 while underneath a number that reads something like 53P xxxxx follows!"

That is very interesting indeed. I cannot tell for sure whether mine has been renumbered but I was surprised to see that the other such instance of a 1966 Enfield FTR'd No. 8 rifle I could find was roughly in the same range as mine as far as its serial number was concerned. I would have to find other examples of rifles from that same batch to get some conclusive evidence of renumbering, though.