Irish (?) contract No4 rifles

[Homer]

Yeah I'm curious too Mike. You let off a fair bit of steam in that previous post.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Vincent]

……. So they were still a tactical tool on the battle front , in fact so much so that , supposedly Winchester ramped up a production line to manufacture the 303 ammo………

Yep. That’s a fact. I still have some of that white box .303 ammo the Virginia farm boys were giving it away.

[therno]

Yep. That’s a fact. I still have some of that white box .303 ammo the Virginia farm boys were giving it away.

Here some DOD Winchester Irish .303 for sale. It looks like it is from '81?

Irish Contract .303 Ammo for "Irish Enfields" : Vintage Ammo at GunBroker.com

[Flying10uk]

One of the main reasons for supplying No4 Le-enfields to the Afghans in the early 1980s was because the U.K. and the US.A. were following a policy of "Plausible Deniability" which was no great secret at the time and still isn't. Mike, I don't think that any-one has, in any way, insulted the Irish by attaching Irish to certain words; I for one have only ever used the word for identification purposes so we know what rifles we are talking about. I think that others have done the same. I remember back in the early 1980s, in the Cadets, there being a total lack of any live .303 ammunition for a couple of years or so. I couldn't figure out at the time why.

[Peter Laidler]

It doesn't work on a straight numerical across-the-board basis like that Beery. Each regiment has a dusky red 'SCALES OF ISSUE' list issued to the QM and each regiment has a different ratio of weapons issued that accord with the ORDER OF BATTLE of that unit within the Brigade/Division/Army group. The only sure thing is that if the Regt/Unit has a paper total of, say, 650 men, then there will be 650+ a few weapons allocated. Then there's the other support units such as logistics etc etc might be nominally formed into sections and platoons but not in the same way as an Infantry fighting platoon who will have less LMG's and rifles but more SMG's.............. And on it goes.

[Frederick303]

Well folks have been debating this entire No4 Mk II Irish order for some time now so I suppose it is time to summarize the research data collected to date, the sample of rifles and conclusions reached.

Here are the primary sources and what Information is contained in them (summary form):

1) Letter from the Irish archives to Graham Priest in April 2000 confirming that they purchased 50,000 No4 Mk II rifles between 1954 and 1956 with the following serial ranges:

PF 301548 to PF 405415
UF55 A152 to 55A A21266 (some in this range, not every one)
PF309348 (official start of Irish range) was purchased by Irish Army, sold in 1994
None were supplied in the PF 35x,xxx range

2) In same letter confirmation on No 9 bayonets being used for Karl Gustav M45 submachine guns.

3) Letter from MOD to Irish researcher, shared with me that show the official sales and when they were made. The data is as follows:

1991 5,889 including .22 cal rifles
1993 20,000
1994 8,000
1996/1997 16,000
Total: 49,000 (~889 of the first sale were .22 cal Mk III conversions)

4) Response on request of arms held as of 2004 in Irish Army stocks: Email provided informal survey of arms held in museums in Ireland as well as what remained in army stores as of fall 2003 (including No4 T rifles, Mauser 1871 and SMLE rifles at various museums).

5) Reference in document on adoption of the Karl Gustav M45 submachine gun from 1954 referencing that in addition to the trial submachine guns, 500 No4 Mk II rifles were supplied, makes reference to Indent to British MOD regarding supply of these 500 rifles in summer 1953.

6) Records published on Milsurps regarding MOD sales of No4 MK II rifles to the trade in 1956, which contained the record of one Irish range rifle being sold to Alex Martin in May 1956 (serial number PF 314512)


From importers and folks in the Gun trade

7) Several accounts from former FCA soldiers involved in inventorying and packing the No4 Mk II rifles from Irish stocks in late 1996 to the final shipment in 1997.

8) Verification form Century arms they did import arms directly from Ireland and also the final lot sold in 1996 being imported into Canada.

9) Information from Century arms on the countries they did, and did not import rifle from. Verification From Century employee that no Enfield’s were imported from Burma (reason for this will be clear later)

10) Email from Former FCA member as to marking of and use of DP No4 MK II rifles and their disposition (none were sold, all were dumped in Irish sea)

11) Discussion with Charles Stein of SARCO on the final sale of Irish guns from Century imports in 2002, lack of parts sales from Ireland, with the possible exception of No 4 MkII Forends.

12) Correspondence with agents in UK familiar with the initial offering of Irish No4 MK II rifles from 1989 to 1990. That confirmed how it came to be that Century got the entire order. Also continued information of the surplus sales coming out of Donnington in the 1989 to 1998 time period. Part of the problem with identifying a Irish No 4 Mk II rifles is that at the same time these arms were being sold off by the UK.

13) Information provided by German collectors on the 2 lots of Irish rifles that ended up at Franconia (one of SMLE and one of No 4 Mk II). These rifles show up in Germany and Austria as identified by proof marks.

14) Correspondence with fellows involved in the export of Irish rifles from Century purchased stocks to Australia in early mid 1990s. Explained why some of these rifles show up in New Zealand and Australia. As a side benefit an insight into the decline of Interarms in the early to mid 1990s

Collected Rifle Data summary:

As of 7 August 2015 a total of 930 No4 MK II rifles that fall in the suspected Irish lots are in the database, along with another 128 guns that fall near too, but are not likely to have been in that lot. All observations on identifying an actual Irish issued rifle are based on examination of these rifles and unique features they seem to have. ) Survey of all rifles coming up for sale in USA, some overseas, posted on-line and seen at collector shows that Irish guns seem to come in 5 main blocks.

Here is the summary of Irish No4 MK II issue:

The Irish army sometime in 1953/54 obtained 500 No 4 MKII rifles from the British. Exactly what was done with them and from what serial number range is not published. In 1954 a large quantity of rifles were received, followed by another lot in post August 1955 or early 1956. The rifles were first issued to the Irish army in early 1956, followed by the FCA in either late 1956 or early 1957. The only combat use was in the Congo in 1960/61. The regular army started the transition to the Belgium made FAL in 1961, the FCA did not make the transition to the FAL until the regular army was re-equipped with the Steyr Aug in 1988/89. With the full replacement of the Enfield in 1989, the first lot of used rifles was set up for sale in 1990, Of the 5889 rifles, 5000 were likely No4 MK II and 889 (or 989) were of the .22 cal No 1 MK III conversions (AM marked).

The second sale of 20,000 in 1993 included both used and new rifles. Of this lot some rifles were sold/transferred to Franconia in Germany. Most of the 3rd lot in 1994 and all of the 1996/97 were still in New-In-Wrap.

The rifles still in wrap were packed as follows when examined by Irish soldiers doing the inventory in 1996. 5 rifles were packed to a wooden case, each one enclosed in a sealed paper wrap, along with a Enfield 1954 No 9 bayonet and scabbard. Metal parts were coated with grease. In the inventory, part of the process was to verify each and every one of the serial numbers. As such each rifle was pulled from its case and the paper slit open over the action body so the serial number could be verified.

The final 16,000 were sent to Canada in 1997. After 5 years most if not all were transferred to the US, where they were announced in 2002 as being for sale.

Serial Numbered Bayonets:

There have been some questions as to if the bayonets were serialed to the rifles in the UK or Ireland. Based on the evidence collected the answer is Ireland. The reasons are as follows:

1) The UK did not serial rifles to bayonets at that time.
2) The Irish most certainly did, as evidence by the serialed No9 bayonets that have Karl Gustav serial numbers applied, all of which are Enfield locke No9 bayonets from 1953 or 1954 (3 samples examined out of 600). The stamp lettering/numbers are identical to those that appear on the Irish rifles. FCA personnel confirmed the bayonets had rifle serial numbers.

3) A number of serial numbers rifles that look identical in wear to the known Irish contract but in other ranges show up with the exact same serial pattern marked Enfield 1953 and Enfield 1954 bayonets. In particular a number of these rifles fall in the Burma contract numbers, and yet have identical Century Arms import markings. Because of this folks have thought that the markings on the bayonets must have been done prior to shipment overseas. A source within Century verbally indicated to me that no imports of Burma No4 Mk II rifles occurred post 1968.

4) A small number of the bayonets seem to show up with later serialed numbers, which can be determined by the fact that the stamps are of a different model.

What were the Irish No4 MK II serial ranges?
From the Irish Ministry of defense:
PF 301548 to PF 405415
UF55 A152 to 55A A21266 (some in this range, not every example)
PF309348 (official start of Irish range) was purchased by Irish Army, sold in 1994
None were supplied in the PF 35x,xxx range

So from the Irish Archives we end up with a range of 93,867 serial numbers in the PF range and 21,114 serial numbers in the UF55 A range for a total range of 114,981 of which 50,000 were accepted out of this range. The question then becomes, can that range be narrowed down?

So starting a number of years ago I stated collecting serial numbers of rifles that fell in those ranges. After a bit of time a pattern appeared and the following ranges of serial numbers seemed to show up:

Serial start Serial stop Action dates Interval Sample size
PF 309113 PF 309210 6/53 97 5
PF 301548 PF 302637 8/53 1,089 6
PF309031 -- Bayonet only 1 1
PF 361698 PF 370458 9/53 to 10/53 8,760 44
PF 37209x PF 374366 10/53 to 11/53 2,275 7
PF 309348 PF 326296 11/53 to 3/54 16,948 203
PF376084 PF 377307 4/54 1223 3
PF309911 -- 5/54 1 1
PF 336425 -- 10/54 1 1
PF 405396 PF 405415 3/54 to 11/54 20 1
PF 326606 PF340900 11/54 to 1/55 14,294 215
UF55 A152 UF55 A21266 1955 21,114 443
Totals: 65,823 930

One of the primary means used to verify a rifle in a range was Irish issued was the presence of a serialed bayonet, as long as that bayonet had the same font and stamp type as all others. In a few examples, it was apparent someone had stamped the bayonet to the rifle with a different pattern stamp. Those samples were ignored.

In any case the above allows the 50,000 accepted block to be bracketed into a ~65,000 range. From the above date we can arrange the serial number blocks into 5 ranges (see table below). With 930 rifles from a returned base of 49,000 we have a 1.89% sample, more or less. That is a sufficiently large sample to be able to make some assumptions on the number of rifles from each block.

Serial range Number of rifles Samples found percentage
PF 3015498 to PF 302673 1089 6 0.55%
PF 361698 to PF 377307 12,258 54 0.44%
PF 309113 to PF 340900 31,339 426 1.36%
PF 405396 to PF 405415 20 1 5.0%
UF55 A152 to A 21266 21,114 443 2.1%
Overall sampling Figure (of 49,000 sold) 1.89%

The first thing that jumps out is the UF55A rifles seem to be over represented. This makes sense for a few reasons:

1) Century bought rifles of this same serial number range from Donnington

2) There is a thread on Gunboards devoted to these serials; over 100 of them in the range of interest have been posted.

3) Higher value guns show up on Gunbroker more, giving the very high price these like new guns achieve on gunbroker, they seem to be over represented.

4) This affects all the rifles, the more unissued ones in a range, the more likely it is to be put up on gunbroker rather than sold locally.

As such the UF55 A series was ignored and the analysis done on the other rifles. Based on that the general expected distribution looks like this:

Rifle serial range Expected # out of 50,000 Expected # of 49,000 % of 49,000
PF 3015498 to PF 302673 ~500 ~490 1.22%
PF 361698 to PF 377307 ~4,500 ~4,410 1.22%
PF 309348 to PF 340900 ~31,150 ~30,530 1.37%
PF 405396 to PF 405415 ~20 ~20 5.0%
UF55 A152 to A 21266 ~13,830 ~13,550 2.1%
Total expected figure 50,000 ~49,000 1.89%

There are limits to the above analysis and these must be born in mind: Between serial number PF309348 and serial number PF 340900 almost all of the rifles in this block were sent to Ireland. Of a sample size of 418 rifles, only 4 of them seem to have been not in Irish service. One was sent to India, 2 was worked over by Parker hale and did not leave the UK. One imported from UK by an importer other than Century. So of the 31,552 rifles that fall in this block, around something like 31,150 ended up in Ireland. But much more than that cannot be projected

Final note:

Based on the above, most collectors want to know if there rifle has been or is likely to have been sent to Ireland or not: here are a few signs that a rifles has almost certainly been to Ireland:

1) The rifle is used and has an attached bayonet that has the serial number of the rifle, including the prefix attached. The only caveat to that is the serial number must be of the correct stamping font, which the interested user can research on line by looking at PF marked bayonets.

2) If sealed in wrap, then the following is required:

1) There must be a cut over the action body so that the serial number can be read
2) There should be a D-54 No 9 bayonet in an identical wrap included in with the rifle.

The bayonet will be wrapped in grease in an identical manner. The blade will be bright, not parked. The packing date on the rifle will be no later than August 1955. The bayonet may well be missing, as the bayonets while packed with the rifles, were not attached to the wrapped rifles.

As such the most difficult rifle to make a positive ID as Irish is any of the UF55 A152 to A21266 rifles.


Anyway that is the relevant research and results to date on these rifles. There are a small number of anomalies that I do not know quite how to quantify, such as the PF 309031 to PF309210 rifles (at least one in this range was Irish). The serial numbers also contain some anomalies such as out of sequence dating and rifles that seem to have not been ever to Ireland based on work done to them. I have a bit more data on the rifles such as expected odds of being issued from any given range, but as this post is a wee bit unwieldy I thought I would leave it at that.

Cheers

Frederick

[Frederick303]

Anyone know how to get a table in or correct the formatting for columns?

[Mk VII]

Try taking a .jpg of the page using Scannit or a similar program, or scanning a paper page as a jpg.

[Flying10uk]

Mike, if I understand your last post correctly, you believe that you own one of the 50,000 "Irish contract" rifles? If so are you aware of any markings on the rifle that are peculiar to the Irish Defence Force that are not found on rifles that have seen service only with other armies? It has been suggested by others that sometimes Irish army equipment is marked, if I remember correctly, with an FF stamp??? Does the rifle have any broad arrow markings as well? Other than the serial number there seems to be very little to go on in trying to decide if a rifle has seen Irish service or not. Do any forum members living in the Irish republic know of any No4 mk2 Le-enfield rifles on public display in museums etc within the boundaries of the Irish republic? If so any-photos that can be put on this forum would be very welcome, please. What would be great is a picture of the entire rifle and a close up of the serial number and also the location of the museum, please.

[Frederick303]

Just a few comments:

I am not sure why a letter from the Irish Army archives would not be considered a primary source, but checking the Irish Parliament debates might be worth while. That said on many of the WWII known Irish spares indents, the debate is over the sums of money, not each individual item on the desired procurement list.

As to special markings, the No4 Mk II rifles have no special markings. None are marked with the FF marking (to my knowledge). As stated above, the most likely indication of Irish service outside of the known contract range is a matching bayonet serialed to the rifle, in the correct font. As it would appear that virtually none of the UF55 A series were ever issued, only two rifles can be absolutely identified as being Irish that is Serial number A152 and serial number A21266.

In the list of rifles on display there is one No4 T rifle (deactivated) and one No 4 Mk II rifle at one museum, and one No 4 MK II was recently presented to I forget what organization ( I am away from home as I write this). As of the fall of 2003, the numbers of rifles left in stock were:

740 No4 MkII,
100 No4 MkII equipped with AJ parker TZ sights
49 No4 (T)

Since that time there is evidence at least some of the No 4 (T) rifles were broken up, as a number of the scopes have been put up for sale (~25) about 18 months ago.

In 2003 the Irish government had never sold any of the 1907 bayonets they had, some of which were rather rare models (all WWI pattern). I believe since then they were sold, but do not have confirmation on that.

At the time of the sale of the last sale of rifles in 1996, it was not legal for any center fire caliber above a .270 to be owned in the Irish republic on a firearm permit (not sure if they had a MOD permit). In any case the Irish soldiers involved in the inventory indicated in 1996 that none of the rifles were sold to soldiers who asked if they could purchase one.

In 2004 the Irish Free state allowed permitting of full bore rifles over .270 cal. If any of this remaining stock were sold after that to Irish I know not, but as Ireland is part of the UN arms treaty, the likelihood is rather suspect.

I hope to resolve a lot of the open issues on a trip to the archives this fall, and the results will be reported then. That is assuming the trip actually happens, as allowed by work schedule.

As regards the comments of Capt. Laidler: While the official records do not agree with his opinion, I do not disregard his opinion or say it is wrong. Far from it, I put down what records have turned up so he and others could poke holes in it. As stated previously, he has been at the center of the ordnance system since just after Lord Protector Cromwell, through the restoration, through the great fire of London in 1666, through the Napoleonic wars, through the Tower fire of 1839, The Sepoy rebellion, through all the rest since. He literally wrote the book on the Bren, the Sterling, The No4 T and the No 32 scope. To disregard his opinion would be very foolish indeed. He has forgotten more on these weapons than most of us will every know.

Correction: Capt. Laidler was an apprentice in 1963, not 1663. In any case the minor second digit error does not affect the validity of the argument.