With you tendency for name calling and childish, nationalistic arguements, you have earned your place on my ignore list, Glider.
Re your comment on the ammunition capacity. Are you really telling me that you wouldn't prefer to go into action with 10 rounds in your rifle instead of 5 rounds. Because if you are I would ask you to find anyone to support that view.
Oh I can find plenty. After all, everybody wanted Mausers. Persians wanted it. Yugos wanted it. The Swedes wanted it. The Yanks copied it. Should I go on how many countries choose it as their service weapon...? Hell even
the French copied it and replaced the famous Lebel with a Mauser-action rifle, the MAS 36. All had 5-round capacity, as did the Mosin bolt action rifles (which are unrelated to the Mauser, and pretty clumsy, I own 3 of them. Still, they are sufficient weapons for a simple soldier.).
Nobody wanted the SMLEs, outside the British Empire that is, where there wasn`t that much of a choice.. It wasn`t a weapon of choice for most countries, the Mauser was. As a matter of fact, even the British wanted a 5-round magazine, as the Pattern 13 and 14 rifles, designed by Enfield engineers that were to replace the SMLEs reverted to a 5 round magazine.
On occasion, the Germans believed themselves to be under machine gun fire, such was the accuracy and rapidity of the rifle fire directed at them.
Funny the same story can be found in every British book... always without a source or any confirmation from the German side.
As the rate of fire achiavable with a Kar 98, I suggest you check the end of this youtube clip:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ck2v4iehVY
Of course this type of firing is totally pointless for anyone who has some experience on the range - there`s no way to fire at this as accurately
I guess British obsession with this RoF thing was a result of their colonial wars, and certain Zulu chieftains habit of using British army officer skulls as teacups.
And of course the
propaganda-value RoF price goes to the French - IIRC they managed to demonstrate - with a specially trained crew of course - that they could fire their famous M1897 75mm gun at something like
90 rounds/min. Totally useless and inpractical for anything else than propaganda purposes of course.
Re your comment about the British wanting the Walther version this was considered but disregarded as the Lee Enfield proved itself.
The British wanted the Mauser, not the Walther. I am not sure Walther was in business at all at the time.. The British wanted a Mauser 98 bolt system to be introduced and replacing the SMLE bolts, just before WW1, largely because the Mauser system is simply better, and more robust, also easier to manufacture. WW1 intervened, and altough the rifle was presented, the British army needed rifles, and lots of them. And after the war, they had a lot on stock, and besides, everybody was too bankrupt to even think of replacing all those millions of rifles and billions of rounds they had for them in storage.
If the Lee Enfield was so poor then why was the Sniper version in use until the 1980's remembering that the British always put a high premium on accuracy and sniper skills.
I guess because Britain was not in a good economical shape at the time, rather than the qualities of the rifle itself. Everyone else moved on by that time, or employed more modern bolt action designs. Most armies simply integrated a designated marksman of some kind for the infantry squad - the USSR for example with it`s famous SVD for example.
As for the SMLE, its not a poor rifle by any standard, it is just my impression that it is sorrounded in Britain, and to a lesser extent, in the Anglo-Saxon world with a sort of hype far in excess of its actual qualities. The Americans have something similiar towards the Springfield, but that`s just another Mauser 98, as are many of even todays modern hunting rifles.