1 rifles during World War II (Stratton 2009: 4). At what must have been its production peak, Ishapore made 600,000 SMLE No. The Ishapore Rifle Factory, north of Calcutta, began manufacturing this weapon in 1909 using British machines and the same specifications as that followed by the Royal Small Arms Factory. 1 Mk III in 1904 and the Indian Army soon followed. With an overall length of 44.5 inches and weighing a little under 10 lbs, its Mk VII ball cartridge delivered 2,450 fps at the muzzle (Stratton 2009: 5, 140). 1 Mk III to me it is the quintessential smallarm of the world wars.
Production changed to the 7.62 cartridge in the 1960s, and the last Enfields were made in the early 1970s. These rifles would eventually be manufactured at factories in England, India, Australia, and even a few in the United States. During World War I alone, more than 2,000,000 SMLEs were made at the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock, Middlesex (Reynolds 1960: 180). 303 Lee-Enfield saw service in both world wars and countless conflicts around the world.
Adopted by the British Army at the turn of the century, the. The pic attached shows an MER of mine, formerly an Enfield-made 1881 MHR Mk III numbered F1536, now an MER Mk I conversion numbered 7141.The constable’s SMLE was one of the 20th century’s outstanding military rifles and surely the one with the longest service record. If your MER is new made, not a conversion (which is sometimes the case), there will only be a number on the left of the face of the receiver, not on the right. If the barrel has been subsequently changed again, the MER conversion number generally is not changed (though I do have one carbine where the conversion number has been updated upon the installation of a second. The MER receiver number will have been taken from the barrel upon the barrel's installation. On MERs, as you know, the receiver will usually bear on its front face (a) its old Martini-Henry number on the right as you look from butt to muzzle (crossed out) and (b) its new MER conversion number on the left (you'll need to take off the foreend to see these). The barrel and backsight number usually match, unless the sight has been switched out at some point. Until 1926, the barrel number governed, which is to say that, in the event of non-matched numbers that of the barrel was taken as being the rifle's number. The "big three" serial numbers are barrel, backsight and receiver. Second, the numbers on the block and the lever may not be serial numbers anyway. RSAF Enfield especially, but the other factories too, made thousands and thousands of spare parts annually for various models. It is a rare rifle indeed that has all original parts though, given that many of the small parts are not numbered, we tend not to notice.
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