Inherent Weakness ?

[ireload2]

Ireload2 has used the old rhetorical trick of forming a hypothetical question that is completely off the track of the discussion, which concerned the time leading up to the FIRST world war. So while "American Gunsmith" was shooting his mouth off, the British, being inadequately provided with Lee Enfields and aware of possible improvements, turned to American private enterprise for adequate production of the P14. Meanwhile, for three years the US authorities appear to have taken a "doesn't concern us" attitude to WW1 and Springfield was producing rifles at a rate that would have matched the later M1917 production by about 1940, if the troops could have waited long enough. They could not. So the US in it's turn had to be saved by the same private enterprise production in a brilliant piece of pragmatic planning and production ramp-up by converting the P14 to a 30-06 version and producing the M1917 in quantities that made Springfield look like a garage operation. If the British firearms planning was completely inadequate, then the US planning while the war was already engulfing the world could be described as criminal negligence on a national scale. In both countries, the officials could be described as "minutemen" because that appears to have been their major activity - writing minutes.

Does that mean the Brits got themselves into a war they were not prepared for and expected the US to get into the same war blindly?

Regardless it is easy to perform engineering analysis on the various bolt actions and show which ones are weak in comparison to the others as far as action strength goes. If you favorite does not fare well in this comparison it is just a trade off that you live with. Spend significant time shooting all of the battle rifles and some of your prejudices may be changed.

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