No. 4 Rifle; Zeroing Instructions Data Inconsistency?

[Rick]

Well Rick, you're plainly vastly more qualified in this field than I, so we'll have to rely on you to solve the mystery, if there is one!

Plainly, nobody needs to be qualified as a mathematician nor a career in external ballistics to realize that it is quite impossible to have the same bullet, leaving the same rifle with the same sights and sight radius, at the same muzzle velocity, take two completely different paths with 2.5 MOA of variation, from the same point of firing to the same point of impact at the same range.

And only in Canada's rarified range air (and only after 1945), eh!

We can, of course, hopefully think we can dream up some sort of excuse for how that somehow or other is how external ballistics works - again, only in Canada, and only after 1945.

Would like to see any pams for the rifle post 1945 and up to the 1980's version of Shoot To Live. I scoured the online pam library available over the DWAN while instructing at CFB Gag-Town, The Center Of Pestilence. Nothing discoverable going that route.

I suppose a FOIA directed at DND might uncover what the DWAN did not make available to the serving military. I'd like to see any of them, zeroing information or not.

[Rick]

Rick - there is a lot of 'good stuff' on 303 accuracy and sighting in this book 13Mb and 100+ pages (do you have it ?)

I had the paper copy of one of the last versions as well as a .pdf version. I leant the paper copy out and it's gone, and if I still have the .pdf version, it's lost in my maze of .pdf files.

I don't remember Mr. Sweet spending much time on military zeroing (particularly Canadian specifications while living in Australia) as opposed to the civilian marksmanship world where he did so well. As far as the grouping ability of the Lee Enfields, he is/was a bucket of ice water in the face of those who believe they can just take a Lee Enfield and turn it into a 1 - 1 1/2 MOA grouping rifle compliant with Service Rifle rules with some bedding and reloading techniques.

[Alan de Enfield]

(How could anyone NOT have a proper bayonet for their No. 4 rifle? How else could you zero!)

Reading thru the "Techincal Training School REME" Document "Zeroing of Rifles" I note that the use of the bayonet for zeroing is limited the the No4 rifle with the Mk2 rear sight.

No mention of bayonet use for the other Mks of rear sight.

[Alan de Enfield]

I had the paper copy of one of the last versions as well as a .pdf version. I leant the paper copy out and it's gone, and if I still have the .pdf version, it's lost in my maze of .pdf files.

I don't remember Mr. Sweet spending much time on military zeroing (particularly Canadian specifications while living in Australia) as opposed to the civilian marksmanship world where he did so well. As far as the grouping ability of the Lee Enfields, he is/was a bucket of ice water in the face of those who believe they can just take a Lee Enfield and turn it into a 1 - 1 1/2 MOA grouping rifle compliant with Service Rifle rules with some bedding and reloading techniques.

Let see if this works ......................


The forum says "no"

I'll email it to you.

[Rick]

No mention of bayonet use for the other Mks of rear sight.

Thanks Alan; I'm pretty restricted on a loaner laptop, with my computer undergoing triage and hopefully repair since it thundered in about four days ago.

Without access to all my files and saved data, I think all the Brit pams from the war years i.e. the 1940's only specified bayonet fixed for the No. 4 rifle, but also did not specify any differences to what Mk of rear sight might be on the rifles i.e. the other models with an adjustable slide versus that two position sight.

I do know from memory that the second volume of the 1950 Armourers Wing Precis contains the table you see multiple times in related REME documents, where there are two fields for the No. 4 rifle; one with the Mk 2 back sight and another field for when it is one of the other backsights mounted on the rifle.

The zeroing data anomaly aside concerning the Canadian pam, I'm equally as intrigued that the wartime Higher Niner Puzzle Palace decided the best conditions for zeroing the new No. 4 infantryman's weapon would be with bayonet fixed at 300 yards.

Not a lot of contact distance bayonet trench and house clearing going on at 300 yards distance and beyond. Higher Niner believed the rifles grouped better at 300 yards and all ranges beyond with the bayonet affixed, firing from fixed defensive positions?

Or how about fixing bayonets prior to beginning an ordered platoon/company deliberate advance to contact? The doctrine would be to fix bayonets for a deliberate attack that would almost certainly begin well beyond 300 yards from where the enemy positions were likely to be?

But there won't be any deliberate 300+ yard precision rifle fire going on within sections and platoons moving forward attacking in an advance to contact, and after coming under effective enemy fire, fighting through the objective. And after coming under effective fire, the supporting sections providing cover fire for the maneuver sections fighting through the positions would have ample time after moving into firing positions to fix bayonets if that provided more precise fire.

All the questions I could have asked infantry veterans of those years back in the 80's when I got into the same biz, while supporting them at events and ceremonies... but I didn't know back then what I know now to ask questions about.

For those who served careers as Death Techs in the infantry, much of what is seen in these pams (and other pams unrelated to rifles i.e. The Infantry Section In Battle) makes sense as the documentation of lessons hard learned in battle, much of which still survives in the pams of today, 80+ years later.

But some of it does make an infantryman wonder what their predecessors were thinking and/or applying with what they wrote back then?

Those pams were written by wartime Higher Niner with the background of the infantry they were written for fighting and dying in a brutal proving ground at the time.

[Surpmil]

Plainly, nobody needs to be qualified as a mathematician nor a career in external ballistics to realize that it is quite impossible to have the same bullet, leaving the same rifle with the same sights and sight radius, at the same muzzle velocity, take two completely different paths with 2.5 MOA of variation, from the same point of firing to the same point of impact at the same range.

Why in your opinion was a variation of 2 MOA at 100 yards mentioned in STL as acceptable and possible?

Would a similar variation be likely to exist in ammo used for this purpose in the British Army at that time?

[Rick]

Why in your opinion was a variation of 2 MOA at 100 yards mentioned in STL as acceptable and possible?

Right back at you:

Why in your opinion does that variation at 100 yards in the Canadian 1945 Shoot To Live become an explanation for DELIBERATELY sighting in with a 2.5 MOA error at 100 yards - an error that then increases the error of the POI versus POI as the ranges increase after that?

An error, BTW, that wasn't used in sighting in by Canadians BEFORE the 1945 pam was published, if that 2 MOA variation is the explanation.

And also BTW, an error that the Brits chose not to change their zeroing procedures to emulate the Canadian pam after it was introduced?

[Rick]

Being deprived of my computer and data files has been helpful in allowing serendipity to lend a hand.

I was talking with a new acquaintance here who immigrated (well, the US government is immigrating him) from Australia, a P.Eng who has a contract with the Navy's advanced warfare guys on both the west and east coast to build them... something. Flathead Lake met his requirements for deep water for whatever he's doing. He mentioned that his father used to talk and drink about the fighting on the Buna Trail in Papua New Guinea while he was alive.

I got curious because my Uncle Bill flew Beaufighters out of an assortment of dirt strip airfields in the same area and gifted me his Webley revolver and a few other weapons he flew with after being shot down once.

So a web search turned up this (among other less dramatic photos that didn't show the conditions the Aussies were fighting in):

[IMG][/IMG]

That is a No.4 rifle, not a SMLE. Our Aussie members probably already know there was some issue of No. 4 rifles during WWII, but I wasn't aware of it.

I'm not an arms historian; about all I was aware of was that Aussies did make use of the No. 4 rifles during the later Korean War, including during Kapyong, where they fought on a neighboring hillside beside the Canadian PPCLI, stopping the assaulting ChiComs and allowing retreating American forces to escape encirclement.

So, then I went looking for the online Aussie WWII pams. And way in the back of Small Arms Training, Volume I, Pamphlet No. 3 - Rifle, 1943, Australia is APPENDIX III RIFLE No. 4 Mk. I. and I.*





So perhaps in writing the Canadian 1945 Shoot To Live, the author cribbed what he gave as his zeroing information from what the Aussies had written two years earlier for the No. 4 rifle.

And then Lt. Col. Johnston decided the Aussies were also wrong with their wartime version of sighting the No. 4 rifle 8" high at 100 yards with the 300 yard sight setting - and added an additional half inch to make it +8.5" in the zeroing instructions he provided?

[Surpmil]

Right back at you:

Why in your opinion does that variation at 100 yards in the Canadian 1945 Shoot To Live become an explanation for DELIBERATELY sighting in with a 2.5 MOA error at 100 yards - an error that then increases the error of the POI versus POI as the ranges increase after that?

As per my earlier posts, when you have an accepted and stated variation of 2 MOA, an "error" of 0.5 MOA does not appear to be significant, not to me anyway.

An error, BTW, that wasn't used in sighting in by Canadians BEFORE the 1945 pam was published, if that 2 MOA variation is the explanation.

Do you mean an earlier Canadian manual specified the 6.5" POA above POI as per the UK manual, or is that an assumption that the Canadian Army used the 6.5" POA before STL was published?

And also BTW, an error that the Brits chose not to change their zeroing procedures to emulate the Canadian pam after it was introduced?

So we have confirmed from actual range experience that the 6.5" is correct, or at least more correct on average, than the 8.5" option?

One thing is clear I guess: the Australian manual did not adopt the 8" figure from STL, so either it was independently arrived at, copied from an earlier Canadian(?) manual, or the UK manual(s) were erroneous.

Unless actual range testing has proved otherwise?