608 
FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1917 
BRITISH RIFLES FOR THE AMERICAN ARMY 
THE FINEST MILITARY WEAPON EVER PUT INTO THE HANDS OF A SOLDIER, 
NOT AS PRETTY AS THE SPRINGFIELD BUT BETTER SIGHTED AND FINISHED 
By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN 
F OR the first time since the Civil War, 
American private arms factories are 
busily grinding out rifles for our Na¬ 
tional Army, and not only making rifles 
for the army but making rifles of British 
design on British tools. 
To supplement our scanty supply of New 
Springfield rifles, which stood about 700,000 
when the war cloud dropped in the spring, 
Uncle Sam bought the British owned rifle 
making machinery in the great plants of 
the Remington, the Winchester and the 
Midvale companies at New Haven, Ilion, 
Bridgeport, and Midvale or Chester, 
Penna x changed the design of the British. 
Enfield M 1914 for which the machinery 
the .303 cartridge, because the British had 
not been able to change before war broke 
out to the .28 calibre. 
Uncle Sam found the British contracts 
filled, and the British owning some $15,000,- 
000 worth of machinery for the new rifle, 
in American plants. It would have taken 
a year to make the tools and fixtures for 
making the New Springfield in American 
private plants; he had to have rifles and 
have them in a hurry, and so it was a case 
of using some of the machinery in Ameri¬ 
can arms, plants. Our plants were fitted 
out with machines for making the Enfield, 
for the British, for making the Lebel for 
the French, and for making the Nagant 
for the Russians, and so we had our choice 
of any of the three rifles. The British was 
by far the best, so our board hastily 
changed the design of the rifle to shoot 
our army rifle cartridge, the 1906. 
One of the new rifles has been in the 
hands of the writer for a month and sev¬ 
eral hundred shots have been fired through 
it to make comparison between this and 
the New Springfield which he has shot 
for eight years, and which he has shot 
probably 30,000 times. It is probably the 
first rifle to get out into the hands of a 
private citizen. 
The new rifle, as by its title of 1914, was 
designed long after 
our Springfield, 
which came out in 
1903, but it differs 
only in minor de¬ 
tails. Both rifles 
are bolt action rifles 
like the Mauser of 
Germany on which 
they were designed. 
The manipulation 
of one is so much 
like the other that 
the soldier familiar 
with one would in¬ 
stantly pick up the 
other and handle it 
without the least 
hesitation. 
The chief differ¬ 
ence in favor of the 
new rifle is the 
splendid rear sight, 
which is set on the 
receiver or frame 
bridge not more 
than five inches 
from the eye, and 
which is a big peep 
or aperture sight 
like those used on 
sporting rifles. The 
peep is .08 inch in 
diameter and due to 
its closeness to the eye, it looks “as big 
as all outdoors.” The soldier can snap¬ 
shoot the charging Hun through it as 
easily as the sportsman can shoot at the 
running deer with the tang sight of the 
had been used, and set it grinding in July 
on a contract for a million or so rifles of 
this British type to shoot our army car¬ 
tridge. It is stated that the great plants 
are making 15,000 per day for the total. 
This is no abandonment of our own fine 
service rifle, the New Springfield. Our 
Springfield and Rock Island arsenals are 
grinding day and night making them as 
fast as the small capacity of the arsenals 
will permit. The adoption of the British 
rifle is merely to fill the awful gap in our 
arms supply that existed when we got into 
the first real war since 1865. 
The new rifle is not a poor rifle nor vet 
the Lee - Enfield 
which is still made 
in England and in 
use in the British 
army in addition to 
this new Enfield 
1914, which was 
made in the Ameri¬ 
can plants for the 
British army. En¬ 
field is merely the 
name of the British 
arsenal which makes 
British rifles, as 
Springfield is the 
name of our own 
chief arsenal, and 
the Lee-Enfield is 
merely the name of 
an old rifle adopted 
in the early ’90’s by 
the British and 
bearing the joint 
names of the 1 in¬ 
ventor and the ar¬ 
senal making it. 
Our new British, 
cross-breed rifle was 
designed by the 
British for a new 
.28 calibre cartridge 
in 1914, just prior 
to the war. War 
found the reserve 
stock of ammunition 
British cartridge, and 
new Enfield made 
The Enfield Rear Sight 
of war, so the British arsenals and 
factories of private sort, already fitted with 
machiner” for making the old Lee-Enfield, 
Ml 
.. 
Springfield top, Enfield bottom. Note position of rear sight 
still the old .303 
but 1,000 of the 
and in the hands 
of the troops for trial. There was no 
time for rearmament after the shock 
.303, were hurriedly set to grinding out 
the Lee-Enfield for the .303 cartridge, while 
the design of the new rifle was given to 
the great American plants taking British 
contracts. They were made, however, for 
