Cool Guns/Rifles: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[For a Few Dollars More]]'' and ''[[The Good, the Bad Andand Thethe Ugly (Film)|The Good the Bad And The Ugly]]'', Clint Eastwood's character carries a "Hollywood Henry" (a 1866 Winchester modified as mentioned above).

'''Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield (SMLE)'''<br />Widely regarded as one of the best bolt-action rifles ever made, though this was not always the case. At the time of its introduction, it was considered to be far too inaccurate as well as unreliable for combat; there was also resistance to the idea of a magazine rifle from top brass, with fears of wasted ammo and the detachable magazine<ref>Detachable only for cleaning; the rifle was not designed to be loaded by swapped magazines</ref> being lost. Early rifles often had the magazine chained to the rifle's body and were fitted with a "magazine cutoff," a panel that closed over the magazine and turned the rifle into a single-shot breech-loader; soldiers were ordered to use the magazine only in emergencies, an order which was so universally ignored that the cutoff ended up being deleted altogether as a cost-saving measure.<ref>Magazine cutoffs were a fad in turn-of-the-century rifle design. Experience in actual warfare proved the idea to be pointless at best, but it took a while for the generals to realize it.</ref> It turned out however, that the SMLE was not as bad as was thought. In fact, it was just about one of the best rifles ever made; the problem in the Boer Wars was the ''ammunition'', not the rifle. It was accurate, reliable, and most notably, ''fast'': every British soldier was expected to be able to do the "Mad Minute," firing not less than fifteen ''aimed'' shots in sixty seconds; most were drilled until they could manage thirty (and thus also reload three times during that time)<ref>Unlike most other bolt-action rifles of that period, the SMLE cocks the striker on the closing motion as opposed to the opening motion, which uses the stronger muscles of the hand and arm</ref>. This had quite an effect on the enemy; at Mons during World War 1, German soldiers reported with horror to their superiors that [[Oh Crap|every British soldier was armed with a machine gun.]] This was helped by the fact that the rifle could carry ten rounds of ammunition at at time, double that of the rival German Mauser. Lest the Enfield be thought of as a superweapon, the design was mechanically much less sound than the Mauser or Mosin-Nagant designs; repeated firing of .303 British caused the receiver to stretch out over time, necessitating longer and longer bolt heads to be installed over the life of the weapon; good thing they designed the bolt head to be detachable. This is why, while the Mauser 98 action is used for all sorts of super-magnum big-game hunting rifles, the Enfield action was rarely used for sporting rifles. The British Army as well as the associated Commonwealth states, would continue to make use of this rifle all throughout [[World War I]] and [[World War II]], with Lee-Enfield sniper rifles lasting all the way into the 1990s. And in India, they're still in use as police weapons to this day. A little-known fact is that despite being the quintessential British rifle, the design of its basic action, James Paris Lee, was American. After decades of minimal interest in his designs from the US Navy and [[What an Idiot!|none at all from the Army]], he sold his latest rifle, the Lee-Metford, to the British military. An improved barrel resulted in the Lee-Enfield long rifle, followed by a succession of improvements leading to the SMLE in 1904, less than two months before his death. Another odd side note in Lee-Enfield history was Turkey's use of the rifle. A fair number of them were captured from British, Australian and New Zealand troops during [[World War I]] at [[Useful Notes/Turks With Troops|Gallipoli]], both of the "Long Lee" and SMLE varieties. Turkey had far more Mausers than Enfields, so at first the Enfields were just stored as emergency reserve weapons. But in the 1930s, Turkey decided to rebuilt their existing rifles<ref>A variety of Mauser types, Gewehr 1888 Commission Rifles and Enfields</ref> to match their new Model 1938 Mauser in configuration, and that's when things started to get strange. The modifications for all their other rifles were fairly straightforward, but the Enfield is quite different from any Mauser, and the conversion resulted in something [[Understatement|unique]]. The Turks called the resulting hybrid<ref>Mauser-style internal magazine and barrel, but Enfield buttstock and modified Enfield bolt; basically a Mauser in the front and an Enfield in the back</ref> the "English rifle", but today's collectors know it as the [http://www.turkmauser.com/Enfield/ Enfauser]. There are estimated to be [[Rare Guns|less than 30 of them in the United States]], with an uncertain number still in Turkey.<ref>Adding to the mystery is that nobody really knows how many Enfields were captured in the first place. But they're not as expensive as you might expect given the rarity, ''if'' you can find one. The reason being that the Enfauser is also an ''obscure'' weapon.</ref>