Inherent Weakness ?

[Dimitri]

The rifles were in nearly new condition, so signs of excessive pressure had to be due to the ammunition. The same 8mm loads if used in a 1888 Commision Rifle would have been very unsafe.

Excessive pressures or bad headspace/chambers. Norma 8mm Mauser ammunition is loaded to roughly match (relatively speaking ballistics wise) WW2 and post-war 8mm Loadings. Or atleast the specific loading that I buy that Norma makes seems to match quite well. I couldnt tell you right now I'm a few thousands of miles away from the ammunition boxes.

Either way downloading ammunition is not a substitute for using the wrong ammunition. There is a reason why there is "8mm Mauser I" (.318 diameter) and "8mm Mauser IS" (.323 diameter) plus the "8mm Mauser IRS" which is a rimmed .323 caliber round for break actions.

Aside from the L42 sniper rifles those 7.62 conversions weren't likely to have seen combat. Non war fighting conditions seem to have been all the L8 was good for

The L8 was a stop gap measure, the British knew they wanted a semi-automatic battle rifle if they were to adopt a new firearm and ammunition, they had trialed the precursor to the FN FAL the FN SAFN49 in 8mm Mauser while Saive was in Britain after the occupation of Belgium. Why the SAFN49 and the 8mm Mauser? Because the arms designer was in the country able to work on his rifle he was developing pre-war, and because the British were already manufacturing 8mm Mauser for use in machine guns that did not feed the 303 British well.

They were not going to spend alot of time on the L8, when they had other firearms in the horizon.

unless unsuitable ammunition was used for any reason, or ammunition that had degraded from long term exposure to temperatures above 125 degrees.

And most ammunition degrades with temperature exposure. It is a standard warning on any ammunition, and its in most if not all firearm field manuals from every country, that over heated ammunition is something to be avoided.

But the whole point of NATO's ammunition interchangability program is that every nation's rifles should be able to digest the ammunition of any other NATO member state.

Yes and no, standard ammunition that can be fired is great. However interchangeability is confused right now with being the same. As long as it can be fired in everyone elses firearms it was good enough performance was another issue. You can see this with the wide variety of manufacturing differences in NATO countries of 7.62x51mm NATO ammunition, as well as the changes many countries did to their ammunition to suit them, even if it means their ammunition is not identical to everyone elses. The closest thing to a standard for performance and function in ammunition is the SS109 ammunition in 5.56x45mm NATO loaded by various countries.

Ignoring criticisms of the Enfield actions strength when those criticisms were made by men noted as authorities on both the rifle and its ammunition in favor of anecdotes and emotional outbursts of a few collectors isn't very wise.

Both Enfield factory conversions like the ones I listed, and the 303 Epps improved rounds used for decades used charges as high as standard 7.62x51mm NATO (or 308Win) and I have yet to hear of one verifiable accident from any of the people I know who own either "conversions".

So I dont honestly see the issue of this "weakness" that is being claimed.

Dimitri