Use of Lee Enfield after 1945

[The Basket]

Aha!
The M1/M2 Carbine was used in Korea! So we have rapid fire small calibre large capacity weapon!
Problem was the round was too short ranged but what was the M2 doing on the front line anyways? Not my first choice!
I am loathe to call the M2 an assault rifle but if you were clever enough you could weasel a justification out of it as an assault rifle.

Also had WW2 gone on the Garand T20 with 20 round mag would have appeared which certainly would be in Korea. The war ended too soon for the T20 and it was cancelled.

So the 8 rounder was used in Korea!

Another issue is ammo logistics. An AK can go through 30 rounds very easily whereas it would take forever for a Martini Henry. One story I've heard is that the Lee Enfield was kept on so that the average soldier doesn't go full Rambo and keep his finger on the boom switch and waste his ammo. That's why the SLR in uk service was semi only.

 

[Shortround6]

It was more of a submachine gun. A bit longer ranged than other Submachine guns but closer to them than to a Assault rifle.

The round nose light bullet of the.30 cal carbine lost velocity and striking power very quickly.

 

[The Basket]

Quite so.
But it was used in a front line role which it's true capabilities didn't dessrve. As a pdw then fair enough.
I remember reading a soldier shot a Japanese soldier with the Carbine and the guy wouldn't go down. So he replaced it with the Garand as quickly as he could.

 

[tyrodtom]

I think the carbine was only meant to arm someone usually armed with a pistol, but it ended up distributed to more troops than origionally planned.

A .30 carbine round has just a little more power than a .38 special, nobody should have been very surprised it wan't a manstopper.

 

[yulzari]

Aha!
One story I've heard is that the Lee Enfield was kept on so that the average soldier doesn't go full Rambo and keep his finger on the boom switch and waste his ammo. That's why the SLR in uk service was semi only.

The L1A1 was semi automatic as tests determined that only the first round was near the target. I have tried the L1A1 with the matchstick trick on full auto (no I will not tell you how to do that) in the past and it just reached for the sky. The barrel would quickly overheat but the key thing was that the target could be re acquired faster on semi as it had jumped less. Effectively you could put more rounds onto the target on semi than on full auto. How fast can you move your finger? The only fault I ever had with it was the length in vehicles and FIBUA. One hit stays hit and a proper length to use a bayonet if it comes to pointy stick time. The Lee Enfield was a better half pike though. The stock shape copied the Brunswick in giving you some grip in pulling a bayonet out. The Lee Enfield pigsticker spike bayonet may have been more efficient than a traditional one but nowhere near as intimidating as a decent blade and the job of a bayonet is to frighten the enemy.

 

[The Basket]

The Falklands war was FAL v FAL.
Must have been one the few wars where both sides had same rifle.
The Argentine FAL was full auto and had a bigger magazine. This meant British forces could use Argentine magazines and ammo. Although I doubt any British soldiers changed thier rifle for the full auto. This eased logistic supply immensely as the Argentines were acting as the quartermasters!
If other nations kept the full fat FAL then full auto must have had its uses

 

[The Basket]

Why was the M1 Carbine so widespread if it was supposed to be pdw? Marines on Iwo Jima had carbines as their main combat battlefield weapon. Am I missing something here?

 

[Shortround6]

You are missing that the .30 cal carbine was actually much more powerful than a .38 special, and in fact was about 4 times more powerful than the Japanese 8mm Nambu and a bit over twice as powerful as a 9mm parabellum even with the 9mm being fired from an 8-10in submachine-gun barrel.
Still doesn't make the .30 carbine a powerhouse though. US alternatives were the Thompson gun, the M3 Grease-gun and Reising submachine gun. While the .45ACP has a reputation for stopping power it has poor penetration of cover (much less penetration in wood for instance) than the 9mm and a much more curved trajectory making hitting at 150-200yds much more of a problem than with either the 9mm or .30 carbine.
The .30 Carbine was supposed to be effective to 300yds.

 

[tyrodtom]

That's what happens when you pass on something you've heard without checking if it's true. Sorry for passing on BS about the carbine .30.

Could we say about 2/3rd the power of the 7.62 x39 .

 

[The Basket]

As a pdw then fine as it could be classed as an alternative to a Thompson or a 1911 and the Carbine is ok with that.
My issue is that especially if you know that your going to make contact with enemy why choose the Carbine over the Garand? Was it a choice? I personally would take a Garand

 

[tyrodtom]

The Marines maybe had a misplaced faith in the effect all the firepower unleashed on Iwo Jima before the invasion. They thought they would only be mopping up a few shell shocked survivors, and it would only take a few days.

 

[Shortround6]

Individual Marines did not select their own weapons except in rare circumstances.
Even if extra weapons were available to draw from changing weapons before combat would require the approval of the platoon and/or company commander.
Different weapon mixes in squads in the same platoon/company limit tactical flexibility.
In the company my father was in before Okinawa one of the men had salvaged a .30cal Browning aircraft machinegun from a wreck and fitted it with a BAR bipod and shoulder stock from an M1 rifle. Gun fired at twice the rate of a normal ground gun. My father remembered it being test fired at the island they were at before loading on the transports. The company commander made him get rid of it before going into action, claiming it would take a whole platoon to lug ammo for it.
About 1/2 dozen similar guns were used by other units on Okinawa or Iwo Jima. More liberal or progressive commanders?

 

[The Basket]

Considering the outcome of most of the island campaigns planning on easy victory was never correct.

I can see the virtue in the Carbine but I can see it's vices. There is no perfect weapon although the assault rifle is closer than most.

Aircraft machine guns have usually faster rates of fire because the barrel is cooler at altitude and would have airflow. Using an aircraft gun as an infantry weapon is not good. Goes through rounds like crazy will overheat and will weigh a ton.

 

[dogsbody]

From the Great White North.

Canadian Rangers Have New Rifle


Chris

 

[parsifal]

The US experiences in the atoll campaigns were highly specialised and peculiarly suited to the US army and marine corps special capabilities. The role of personal sidearms in these campaigns was very secondary to getting a level of co-operation between ship bombardment forces and the troops advancing at the front. Generally the bombardment forces were only effective if they had been specially trained for such work. when the fast carrier forces were pushed into this role, they generally failed to provide effective NGS to the forces ashore which in turn led to unacceptable losses. The most effective gun platforms were the destroyers that could get in close and pump shells on demand into an enemy position. It was this sort of response that saved the US forces ashore at both Gela and Salerno.

These situations don't really tease out the limits to the American doctrine on fire support at squad level. The firepower of the force was still the artillery, albeit naval gunfire. in situations where the US army needed to fall back on its semi automatic rifles only it rapidly became clear that these weapons were of no advantage, and probably a slight disadvantage, compared to the bolt action equipped Australian forces fighting alongside them

M1s and garands were an advantage to building confidence, but as an actual battlefield weapon, were no better than their contemporaries in the jungle at least.

here is an article for the Australian army in developing a jungle warfare doctrine:

http://vuir.vu.edu.au/19393/1/Threlfall.pdf

 

[The Basket]

The American insistence on full power cartridge was decisive in shaping military rifles post war. The Sturmgewehr fitted Soviet doctrine and not American doctrine until much later.
Of course British FALs were imperial to the inch. So no 7.62mm please. Strictly .308 inch!
Jungle warfare is gruesome stuff. Fight the terrain as well as the enemy and perfect for ambush

 

[RCAFson]

From the Great White North.

Canadian Rangers Have New Rifle


Chris

If the Cdn government had equipped the Rangers with M-1s, instead of Lee-Enfields we'd now all be speaking Russian...

 

[parsifal]

The American insistence on full power cartridge was decisive in shaping military rifles post war. The Sturmgewehr fitted Soviet doctrine and not American doctrine until much later.
Of course British FALs were imperial to the inch. So no 7.62mm please. Strictly .308 inch!
Jungle warfare is gruesome stuff. Fight the terrain as well as the enemy and perfect for ambush

not sure what your point is here, but Australian SLRs, over 50000 of which saw active service in Vietnam, used the standard 7.62 NATO round. Conversion from the Lee Enfield to FAL was more than anything so that we could meet agreements to re-equip to NATO standards. Conversion of the Enfield to the NATO standard was considered and a few even changed over to this calibre, but it was found to be not cost effective to do, and so the opportunity to change to the newer SLR was taken at that time.

I actually don't know if the UK L1A1, essentially the same rifle as the Australian SLR , was built to 7.62mm Nato standfard, but would highly expect so.

7.62mm SLR Rifle Specifications

 

[The Basket]

The Australians still recognise the Queen as thier sovereign so used the SLR same as the Brits. Not the FAL and it's metric ways. I am not into this too deep to know the real difference between imperial SLR and metric FAL but the rounds were the same. As had to be NATO standard. The SLR seemed to be the standard rifle of the commonwealth

The Australian and NZ troops used the SLR in Vietnam and found it to be powerful and the round a real stopper. From what I've read the SLR overall was a first class weapon and was as good as it gets for a mass produced general issue rifle. It was over long and heavy but that was the nature of the beast. It was a worthy successor to the Lee Enfield and as good as the SA80 was bad.

Oddly the Soviets did not make a SLR equivalent.

If one looks at say the CETME or the G3 the StG 45 rifle which both were based on used the Kurz assault rifle rounds whereas the modern rifles were full power. The MP44 may have been replaced by the StG 45 but of course history stopped that!

 

[stona]

I am not into this too deep to know the real difference between imperial SLR and metric FAL but the rounds were the same. As had to be NATO standard.

The 'inch' and 'metric' refer to the tooling used to manufacture the weapon. It doesn't matter if you use imperial, metric or standard cubits to tool your rifle as long as they are all manufactured the same size.

My brother lives 72.6 miles away from me, but at 116.84 kilometers he's in exactly the same place, as he would be at 383,328 feet

Cheers

Steve