100 years ago The Canadians preferred the Enfield

[Alan de Enfield]

When soldiers in the throes of battle discard their rifles and pluck a different weapon from the hands of dead allies, there's clearly a serious problem.

So it was with the Ross rifle, the weapon that Canadian soldiers took with them to the start of the First World War a century ago.


Read more: 100 years ago, Ross rifle failed Canadian First World War soldiers | CTV News

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.

[Surpmil]

There was a serious problem: rubbish ammo from incompetent manufacturers. Compounding the problem was the fact that the high grade Canadian ammo was kept in England by ... ?

[Ridolpho]

There was a serious problem: rubbish ammo from incompetent manufacturers. Compounding the problem was the fact that the high grade Canadian ammo was kept in England by ... ?

I would re-state this as- there was a serious problem: during desperate war-time conditions, Canada chose to field a rifle that required "high grade ammunition". I get a kick out of this constantly re-surfacing mythology of the great Ross rifle. I own a MkIII in excellent mechanical condition and can't see much great about it. Like my Mannlicher M95 it lacks positive extraction power and to be able to assemble the bolt in two modes (one safe and one definitely not) is poor engineering.

Ridolpho

[ssj]

There was a serious problem: rubbish ammo from incompetent manufacturers. Compounding the problem was the fact that the high grade Canadian ammo was kept in England by ... ?

Um, no. Everything I have read says it was tight clearances of the Ross mechanism not bad ammo. The ross complex mechanism simply didnt stand up to the mud and dust in the trenches of WW1. Even if that was the case that the ammo was bad (and yes Im sure it wasnt as good as pre and post war) the Enfield's had no problem and hence were suited to being a battle rifle.

Now if you can provide some real evidence that the Ross rifle suffered directly from poorly made ammo, I'd love to review it. What I have read is snipers kept to batches of ammo and had to re-zero when they got a new batch but that is an accuracy thing and not functional. In any case the rifle had to meet the conditions that there were, having a prima donna rifle you cant shoot as you have no ammo is a quick way to end up dead IMHO, kind of like the early M16 A1s in Nam never needing cleaning.

---------- Post added at 12:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------

Have you ever shot any of the Swiss straight pulls?

No not shot, but I have handled empty ones (and Ross's) as I consdered buy good examples. They may well have been a straight pulls but frankly they didnt impress me over a No4 in terms of ease and speed of use. and then there was the complexity and keeping it clean so it worked.

[Surpmil]

Um, no. Everything I have read says it was tight clearances of the Ross mechanism not bad ammo. The ross complex mechanism simply didnt stand up to the mud and dust in the trenches of WW1. Even if that was the case that the ammo was bad (and yes Im sure it wasnt as good as pre and post war) the Enfield's had no problem and hence were suited to being a battle rifle.

Now if you can provide some real evidence that the Ross rifle suffered directly from poorly made ammo, I'd love to review it. What I have read is snipers kept to batches of ammo and had to re-zero when they got a new batch but that is an accuracy thing and not functional. In any case the rifle had to meet the conditions that there were, having a prima donna rifle you cant shoot as you have no ammo is a quick way to end up dead IMHO, kind of like the early M16 A1s in Nam never needing cleaning.

---------- Post added at 12:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------



No not shot, but I have handled empty ones (and Ross's) as I consdered buy good examples. They may well have been a straight pulls but frankly they didnt impress me over a No4 in terms of ease and speed of use. and then there was the complexity and keeping it clean so it worked.

Lots of detailed information to be found on other forums: reports and accounts written at the time by people in authority and by men who actually used the MkIII in the trenches, rather than just talking about it in a Legion hall. Lots of politics and commercial competition issues involved as well.

It was known to the authorities in France by mid-1915, if not much earlier, that the rifle functioned well with high spec ammo, but not with over-sized ammo. For reasons unknown, the higher spec Canadian ammo was held back in the UK and other was issued to the Canadian Corps. Some was good, some was junk. Plenty of reports of it jamming Lee Enfields as well. Once the chambers were reamed from .460 to .462 and later to .464 there were no ammunition issues. The SMLE was quietly reamed to .464 as well, from .462, but that doesn't get much press!

Don't get me wrong, I'm a great fan of the Lee Enfield, but it's not coincidence that the UK asked Canada for telescope-equipped Ross rifles in 1940. Both rifles have their virtues. I believed the legend of the terrible Ross for a long time myself before I dug into the subject enough to get, I believe, a sense of what was really going on.

[Paul S.]

... For reasons unknown, the higher spec Canadian ammo was held back in the UK and other was issued to the Canadian Corps. ...

I believe A Rifleman Goes To War contains passages in which the author states that ammunition from specific sources (Canadian-manufactured IIRC) was held back for sniper and machine gun use since it proved more accurate and reliable (less Vickers MG stoppages).

[browningautorifle]

True, the ammo was apparently with some variance at the time.

[Alan de Enfield]

This video highlights a couple of problems :



It was posted by SRV1 on another board on which I posted the same information

[browningautorifle]

This was where we were on another thread...if straight pull was so great, why didn't everyone go to it instead of them drifting into obsolescence? I too have had them and they were OK to shoot for a while and then I sold them and moved on.

[Seamie]

This was where we were on another thread...if straight pull was so great, why didn't everyone go to it instead of them drifting into obsolescence? I too have had them and they were OK to shoot for a while and then I sold them and moved on.

Have you ever shot any of the Swiss straight pulls?