As has been said there is a wide possibility of scopes that could have been fitted as new. What has not been said that scope could have been damaged and another fitted to keep the rifle in action. Go with Roger Paynes advice factory correct is not and never will be possible with Enfields after a war. I could add more on this matter but wont.
Looking at the Hunter's Lodge ad, I see they have "Royal Enfield" No.4's for sale. While it is true that Royal Enfield did indeed supply some gun parts to factories in the late 19th century, by the twentieth century their focus on bicycles and later motorcycles eventually became Royal Enfield’s primary focus. However, Royal Enfield's origins in gun making weren’t lost entirely as the company adopted the tagline “Made Like a Gun.” One of Royal Enfield’s earliest and most popular motorcycles also referenced guns: The Enfield Bullet was revealed in 1932, and apparently is still in production.
Sorry its a bit out of focus ............................
An Indian (Ishapore) manufactured "non Royal " Enfield No1 MK3 along with an Indian made "Royal Enfield"
Mine are not the best, but they are not too bad. I can think of lots of Enfields I'd rather have but instead of constantly striving for more, sometimes it's good to be satisfied with what one has...
I also remember the advertisement you could shoot 4 caliber pistol cartridges out of a Astra 400. What they failed to mention is you seriously stress the extractor and put extra wear and tear on the gun when you shoot 9mm or .380 out of a gun designed for 9mm Largo. You have to remember however this was in 1968 and the sales people used these colorful names to hawk this surplus "junk" back then. I am forever grateful to Sam Cummings for brining into the USA so many wonderful military surplus that will never be imported again. I was lucky to be around in the early 90's when there was a second "wave" of surplus coming in and bought a bunch of stuff very economically. I mostly purchased surplus British stuff ($79 Enfield's) and Russian capture German ($125 K98's, $175 Lugers). Purist collectors turned up their noses at the Russian capture stuff with the dreaded "x" on it but I had a gun shop where I knew the owner. He let me cherry pick items in the pallets of rifles he ordered from Century before he put them on the sales floor. I wish I had bought more but I was a poor college student. I still have a pretty decent amount of stuff from those days.
The interesting thing is the early 1944 production block, on a B prefix, so a long way into Mk.2 scope use, and yet the butt appears to have a very earlier Mk.1 scope number...
There's a good reason for that: they weren't producing a stream of No.4(T)s at H&H, they were producing a trickle.
So while flapping their wings about REL and Long Branch and their No32 scope production, "send a man over to help" etc. etc., there were thousands of Mk.I and Mk.II scopes sitting in store somewhere in the UK waiting to be fitted to rifles. I deduced that from records originally found by Clive Law, but here's some more proof: a W. Watson scope No. 1321, produced in 1941, getting fitted to a rifle made in 1944!
And as we can all see, that rifle hasn't been so much as shot since it left the custody of the MoD, in fact the condition of the wood and metal suggests it was never issued at all after conversion.
Last edited by Surpmil; 08-19-2023 at 12:45 PM.
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
I agree entirely that the butt looks original & untouched, & I'm not disputing your reasoning, but the fact remains, at least in my experience, that few observed matching 4T's show such a marked discrepancy between the date of the rifle & the date of the scope where the scope is dated several years BEFORE the date of the rifle it is matched to. From what my faltering memory can recall, the date is usually the same year or the scope is dated later than the rifle. I'm not for one minute suggesting the other way round cannot occur, & we might indeed have an example here, but I have not noted it to be particularly commonplace. Perhaps all those mystery rifles were set up & then put into store???
There are a number of mysteries I agree Roger. Why the early production "Less Telescope" rifles without "T" stamping or scope number on the wrist for example?
Those early Savages and Maltby's etc. should have been the first to be set up as the need was greatest in 1942/43. But of course when did those marking practices actually come into effect?
We know that few if any rifles with Mk.3 scopes were issued until the war was over or nearly over.
We know from Peter's research, visits to the H&H factory in London etc., discussions with surviving workers in the 1980s that they had one milling machine set up with the jigs to machine the contact surfaces on the pads. How many men & women were on the job? With one machine, given all that is involved in the process, five rifles a day seems quite probable.
It rather looks as though the whole thing was given a rather low priority in the grand scheme; which fits with what we know about the doctrines of the time and the general lack of interest in or appreciation of the value of sniping as method war.
Did the bombing damage to bracket production stall the whole effort for some time? Did it get pushed to the back burner as a result?
Clearly the rifles were not in existence in 1942 and into late 1943 from the inventory referred to. Most likely that is the reason contracts were let in Canada after all, and why rifles were being flown over from Canada as Warren found out, though I expect the push for that came from the Canadian Army who had been waiting in the UK for something to do for two years, using P14s with iron sights, W&S scopes and Alex Martin conversions.
Had production been steaming along in the UK, why bother to let contracts in Canada with thousands of un-mounted scopes sitting in store in the UK?
Did some committee at the War Office decide the scopes then in production were probably not worth fitting to rifles and quietly allow them to be produced and then shoved into storage in the expectation that something better would come along and production could be ramped up at that time?
Lots of strange things happen in wartime, and often other agendas interfere with what would seem to be "common sense".
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
I keep looking at the scope number on top of the wrist. It's obviously legit but do I see another scope number that's been barred out and sanded out below it? Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me? If there was another number there, it looks like five digits as it should be.
I wondered about that Brian, but convinced myself that my elderly eyes were probably deceiving me! However, I've just had another look, & pumped up the magnification of the photo as much as I can & I think you may well be right. As you say, it wouldn't be causing any controversy if it were a five digit number!
Surpmil, you are of course correct - there are so many little points that do not readily add up. What I can say, from direct observation, is that when DT & I jointly bought the 140 4T's back in 1997, I did a breakdown of most of them (we bought 120 in a job lot & the other twenty trickled in from a third party who had bought some from the original source but who then decided he wanted money in his pocket not 4T restoration projects). I still have the results; around about 85% of the total were BSA Shirley rifles dated from 43 to 45. The remaining 15% were Long Branch & early dated rifles - B1941's, ROFM 41's, S 41 & 42's. There were both S Mk1 & Mk1* rifles. ALL of the early production rifles has been scoped up, & ALL of the scope serial numbers were lowish (ie Mk1's).
From memory we had about five or six each of Maltby, BSA 41, Savage, & Long Branch rifles. There were only two Trials rifles, both of which had been removed from the batch, & which were offered to me for considerably more than the bulk of the rifles!
From study of these & other rifles I am pretty sure that the S51 is the first of the H&H markings that was consistently used. At least 50% of the 41 & 42 dated rifles bore the S51 on the butt, even though the other 'typical' markings were missing. The front body pads were all machined in the 'early generous shoulder radius' style as one typically sees on 41 to 43 rifles. It is possible the conversions were started early on & then set aside to be finished off much later..........but that does not explain the early scope serial numbers on these rifles. Interestingly, it was the early rifles that were in the least used condition. Many of them looked to have had very little use, & more typically it was the 43 to 45 rifles that looked to have seen plenty of action. Obviously that does not apply in every single case, but reflects the generality. So perhaps they did spend a lengthy amount of time in warehouses after conversion.......
I don't know where that leaves us.......! It certainly reflects a smallish number of early rifles compared to 43 to 45's, but shows perhaps those that do exist, were likely early rifles converted fairly early. The bulk were indeed 'run of the mill' 43, 44, & 45 examples.
Last edited by Roger Payne; 08-23-2023 at 12:30 PM.
I need to persuade one of my club members to remove the butt of his ex-Indian No.4T to see if the Indian's left the original rifle number on the butt socket insert, as I'm curious to know what it is, given its been removed from all external visible places by the Indians and renumbered by them. Its still has it's original S51 mark and the original scope number with original Mk.3 scope. Its a 1945 dated BSA rifle, and am curious as the scope number is about 1000 less than my L prefix 1944 dated rifle's original Mk.3 scope.
Just the thing for putting round holes in square heads.
PM
Originally Posted by Sapper740
