Mid War No. 4 T

[Lance]

Luck has been on my side again! Just purchased and received a very hard to find 1943 BSA with matching 1943 dated Kershaw Mk II scope and 1941 BE Ltd scope can.

For those who do not collect No. 4 T's, most of the T's State side are fitted with Mk III scopes and those rifles who do have Mk II's or I's are mostly mis-matched or have been fooled with.

This rifle is all matching and complete in the eye of the collector, but not BATF. Unfortunately when an armour was restamping the original engraved serial number on the receiver he stamped a 6 instead of an 8 in AM8295. He then, or someone later, repeated the mistake on the magazine. Fortunately the bolt, barrel, forend, hand guards, scope mount and scope can all have the correct AM8295.

Besides being matching it also appears to be an earlier 1943 H&H conversion before all the "textbook" sniper markings were added to the receiver that you find on later BSA '44-45 rifles. I have two other 1943 dated rifles that have all the later markings so I assume this is an earlier assembly.

I have attached pic's for viewing, sorry for the quality, my camera died so I am using my daughters. One day I will stop buying Enfields and maybe get my own camera again..... I hope that these will help the collector out there not worry about missing marks on the earlier T set ups.

This rifle has the "S51" mark on the butt, the "S" on the cutt off, and the "TR" on the receiver as you would find on later rifle's. The Enfield inspectors view mark on the receiver by the bolt channel is absent however, and the "T" on the receiver is of a different font and size. Since the inspector stamped the "T" on the receiver I assume this T was added at a later date.

Information

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[Badger]

Congratulations Lance ...

That is a great find ...

Regards,
Badger (Doug)

[Roger Payne]

Lance, have you had a look on the knox? I have seen a few early rifles with the D6E placed there, although admittedly they were of 1941 mfr. I also have two 43 BSA's with the same style T as yours --- with serif but smaller than the 'standard' T. One came from Milarm in Canada in about 1994 & the other was amongst the big batch we lucked on in 1997. I just presumed there was a very judicious armourer (or more than one but all equipped with the same style stamp!) floating about base workshops!

ATB

[limpetmine]

Very nice find, Lance! A complete kit at that, matching, too. Nice!

[Enfield trader]

Lance and Rodger how tall is the T ?

[218bee]

Interesting.....I have two 1943 BSA T rifles,....One in the AK serial range, and one in the later AV range...The earlier AK serialed rifle has no D6E stamp (although now that you mention it, I will check the knox).....And the AV rifle has the D6E.....The AV rifle has the T stamp, and all other markings, but no TR...Both have the "block" T stamp on underside of barrel...

I guess these 1943 rifles continue to keep us guessing....

Nice rifle, Lance..

218bee

[SpikeDD]

And here I thought Amatikulu had the only pair of crap soled shoes!! Well done Lance, Great find!

[jmoore]

Thanks for sharing! Aside from trials rifles and the occasional Savage, all that ever surfaces around here are 1944 and later conversions. May have missed one or two early rifles over the years because didn't have enough Mk1 eyeball time to be sure what I was looking at was real. Now, its just hard to find one to buy (gotta be in person- still don't do much internet except for this website!)

[Lance]

Checked the knox, nothing there but the BNP stamp visible without taking the forend off again. The "T" stamp is pretty small, right around 2 to 2.5 mm high.

Lucked out and got this girl out of Reno via searching on the net. I was just looking at the right time as I am sure it would not of lasted very long. My luck with Mk II's has not been the best, all my other examples came without numbered scope cans so I was happy with this one. Maybe my luck will hold out and one or two of the scope cans I need will show up on ebay so I can pay a small fortune to reunite them with their rifles!

[PrinzEugen]

I still don't really understand how you lucky septics have got so many no4ts out there - was an enormous batch shipped out at some point, as happened with the L42s? It's impossible to find a matching 4t (scope/rifle) for sale over here in Blighty!