L4A1 Development

[Lee Enfield]

Peter L referred to the South Africans following the "fragile" L4A1 development family rather than the "tough" L4A2/3.

Does that mean that the 2 were concurrent and competing developments, or was the L4A2 a follow on of the L4A1?

The question being precipitated by my viewing an X3E1 magazine the other day...

Information

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[Peter Laidler]

The L4A1 was developedd alongside the mid to late50's UK/Canadian/Australian trials of the FN rifle. It wasdesigned to take the FN magazines but the FN was developed further and became eventually the L1A1 with a different magazine attachment idea. As a result of this and lessons learned from the original L4A1 Bren, it was alsofurther developed and the L4A2 emerged that took the L1A1 magazines. It wasn't quitethat simple and there were major headaches and gnashing of teeth but they got there in the end. What emerged was the best ofthe best.

As for the L4A1's, well, they couldn't be converted to L4A2 spec for many reasons so they stayed around for many years with rear echelon and training roles. In fact, until the early 80's or so until the A1 spares and magazines dried up. But the L4A2 (and 4) stayed the course until 2002

That's a very simplified version of events. I have written the whole warts an' all story for a HUGE Bren book that is soon(?) to be published by Small Arms Review. So I won't give too many secrets away!

[Brit plumber]

Did Enfield keep the rights to the L4A1 like they did with the L4A2/4? If they didn't, could that be why the South Africans went that route, rather than pay Enfield royalties?

[Peter Laidler]

I'm sure that they would have kept the property rights to the conversion. But to be honest, at about that time, the Sterling company were pursuing Enfield in the High Court (and won, plus damages AND costs) for breeching Sterlings propery rights. So they weren't really in any fit state to take SAfrica on for doing the same. It's a funny world isn't it?

[Kev G]

South Africa never used the commonwealth locking lug and continued using the FAL magazine for rifles so no point in changing over design for the LMG.
The SA ejector block although similar to the L4A1 is not a pattern copy so I think Enfield woud have had a hard job to make a case.

Looking for a SA plastic MKI Bren butt if anyone has one spare :-)

ATB KG

[Brian Dick]

Kevin, Try Alistair at Worthing Guns in West Sussex. I helped deact five last Summer with Terry Abrams and all were equipped with the plastic butts and grips. He may have more since or possibly spares. Brian

[Kev G]

Brian I like to go and see Alistair when they first come in.... before Terry gets his hands on them !
No MKI plastic butts though.

At least I now know who Terry's friend was :-)

ATB Kevin

[Brian Dick]

Yeah, he tasked me with disassembly and assembly with him doing the required butchery in between. The barrels were in pretty bad shape but I still had to wrap my mind around the whole deactivation thing. At least they're still historically significant and not cast into manhole covers! There were Finnish issue Stens that were quite nice along with many other trypes of weapons. Here in the U.S. , the receivers have to be torched in three places before they allow importation so your deactivation standards in the UK are much less stringent.

[Lee Enfield]

So is it possible to utilize a "metric" barrel on an "inch" receiver and vice versa?

[Brian Dick]

I'm sure the South African barrels would interchange as long as the headspace was checked properly. The receivers used for the conversions were British and Canadian so there's no "metric" issue there.