What do you mean no purpose? How else are you supposed to hold moisture in contact with metal in a place you are unlikely to service or inspect?

Dignity is its own purpose, GOOD SIR!

@@traumajock Then I have done right. :-)

+FrogmortonHotchkiss Brilliant

But wood isn't a critical war material, so they've replaced expensive-to-cast-and-machine steel and replaced it with cheap, easy to manufacture wooden parts to maintain the lines of the rifle and prevent snagging.

The carpenters' union probably insisted on it.

I second that statement.

Yea...... But your military doesn't use wood on rilfe anymore. Hmmmm.

@@ScooterLee-ei1ep shame. I like the dead-tree look

British, eh? 😁 Yes, by jove! You guys did a fantastic job with the sten. I'll resent your engineers forever!

Honestly, if they'd put a small slotted screwdriver on the reverse of the bayonet for a takedown tool that would have been genius

The Russians had already produced a bayonet with a screwdriver tip for the Mosin-Nagant 1891/30.

@@Khonsu1373 Maybe you should look at the first bayonet for the M1903 That thing is a giant screwdriver

Polymer was a mistake.

@@christianhoffmann8607 How so? Isn't it widely used because it is cheaper, lighter and just as strong as wood or is the world just full of idiots?

@@wav_form9322 clearly full of idiots

The world is full of idiots but polymer guns aren't a mistake in most cases. Yes wood looks better but it's less practical.

Polymer is more practical, but damn if wood doesnt look better. It is much more elegant and it looks like that weapon has a soul unlike most new polymer guns, they are just tools manufactured in great quantity to do the job, not unique in any way.

Not Deficient in Vitamin C

@@leebennett4117 Indubitably.

Xd

Limey

I guess it was designed for the navy then?

Even if it is the ugly basement child of the enfield family

In hindsight yes it did look bleak in 1941-1942 for the British. But looking back now the British simply had a huge edge over the Germans in intelligence. The German ability to sink ships at sea was plummeting. The German Air force was decimated. The British were winning in Africa and the Americans were gearing up for war. Also Germany had very little capability to land forces in England; they could maybe have landed 30000 men in England in 1940-41 but they would never be able to beat the home guard and expect reinforcements by sea. .

@@Litany_of_Fury 100% hindsight. Easy now. Though at the time anything that saved time and material was worth exploring. Though tool steel and skilled machine operators were in very short supply so I wonder about that milled reciver. There were also plans to mass drop cheap weapons, such as the STEN to resitance groups. What if the main manufacturing plants had been put out of action? Could a replacment be be batch produced from small enginnering works with simpler machinery?

"The benefits of hindsight may cloud our reference points. With the Battle of the Atlantic raging in 1942, the British were certainly desperate and the outcome far from certain." I'd argue you yourself are letting your preconceptions skew things. I mean in 1942 as a whole, there was 6 million DWT of shipping sunk. 23 million still got through. And the country had years worth of reserves and a well received rationing system in place. The idea that this could be an endgame for the Nazis is kind of...

@@jimmydesouza4375 Also every year of the war the UK was outproducing the Germans in terms of air power until 1944.

Jimmy De'Souza IIRC the U-Boat succes rate dropped dramatically in May 1942, so if the first 5 months looked very bleak for Britain, the rest of the year was a lot better, with the Anglo-Americans closing the Atlantic gap and increasing the rate at which U-Boats were sunk. Within a space of a month the tide of war was changed in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The focus may have been different given the circumstances, it looks like the designer was more focused on managing with smaller base stock and less waste at the cost of more non-machine handwork (welding, brazing, grinding), which kind of fits the conditions Britain was (or could have been) operating under.

I've never seen a bolt action with a barrel extension have I been living under a rock ?

I believe IJN's emergency bolt action rifle actually use a cast receiver and barrel extension locking.However, many people don't know that would work, so they thought shooting it would be unsafe

A rifle must have proper decorum! Our troops cannot serve without proper A E S T H E T I C

@@thechongwolla isn´t the sten from the brits too?

Hardwood is essential!

It doesn't look that bad - it's still recognisably Lee-Enfield-esque. It would probably have been sold to the troops as a lightened, modernised Lee-Enfield. Or a high-capacity P14!

Michael James: 🤣🤣🤣

A video where he shoots the G11. Hopefully.

I suspect something comedic. Naturist 2 gun match? Or Ian singing Bohemian Rhapsody?

"....Ian singing Bohemian Rhapsody?" If so, I'm hoping we get Karl on harmonies. EDIT: Along with Beardy, Dino Girl, and IV888. EDIT: And it would appear that Mark of gunts and rabbit holes would be a no brainer in regards to who should be on keyboards.

Hi Guys and thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgottenweapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum and I am here today on the Death Star to celebrate my One Millionth Subscriber by taking a look at the Planet destroying Super Laser.

Shit! I wanted to be the first guy to say it looked like an Enfield 4 and a MAS 36 had a baby.

A-1 Tetropilovstava I just commented that didn’t see your comment it really does tho

The odd shape of the bolt handle and the magazine area not covered in wood did it for me.

Probably the Madsen M47

Simonov designed several bolt action rifles/carbines for the M43 / 7.62x39 cartridge around 1946-47, including MKS-10 (original design), MKS-11 & MKS-16 (essentially scaled down Mosin system with SKS magazine instead of Nagant's). None of them went anywhere beyond prototype stage, though. Some photos of the MKS-11: popgun.ru/viewtopic.php?p=851659&sid=422030d21cfaec813c8eacd491e2f604#p851659

Yugoslavian M-49!

@@pebo8306 As an all-new design? The French MAS Mle. 1936, used by the French army into the early 1960s, and held in storage by the Gendarmerie into the 1908s. As for a bolt-action general-issue rifle, there are the Kark98k adopted by Germany in 1935, the No. 4 Mk. I and Mk.II adopted by the UK int November 1939, two months into WWII, and the M44 version of the Mosin-Nagant carbine with a permanent bayonet, which was produced beginning in 1943, officially adopted in 1944, and used all over the world into the many wars of National Liberation within the Cold War....

P14 Enfield also held 6 rounds. Coincidence or intent?

I'm kinda assuming that they wanted to make the magazine floorplate to fit flush with the top of the trigger guard (see: ~2:20). Probably for structural or manufacturing reasons? When Ian tips the rifle upward (2:26), it looks like the floorplate and base of the trigger housing is all one single stamped piece.. The capacity of 6 could simply be the result of their magazine location, rather than them designing the magazine hold a specific number of rounds. They mag would need to to be at least 5 in order to use the clips, but any more kinda doesn't matter. There's no disadvantage to having a magazine that holds 6 when your clips hold 5.. If you want to load with only clips, it essentially becomes a 5 round magazine that's a bit easier to load. If you wanted to load another one on top, you could, but it isn't necessary. (I suppose you could also add a clip while the magazine has 1 round left, so you never run dry? I kinda doubt that would be a significant contributing factor for the magazine design(err, did Ian do that with the M1917 in a match iirc?))

@@doraran5158 I thought the P14 held 5 while the M1917 held 6 because it's chambered in a rimless cartridge.

@@ben501st You are correct.

@@doraran5158 You reload after the first 5 rounds anyway so 6 to a charger will actually give you more firepower after the first 10 would have been expended on No4.

They did think of it but the glues available at the time werent 100% waterproof. The Germans tried it but how sucessful was it I bet it delaminated pretty quickly when it got wet.

All the plywood may have been going towards dh mosquito production. The British had excellent glue production....the Nazi's did not. Check out heinkel 162 production which was hampered by poor glue

@@babaganoush6106 I belive that Areldite, two part glue was one of the developments for Mosquito production. My Farther, who was a master carpenter always swore by (and sometimes at) Cascamite made from boiled bones.

It looks to me that the rounded front of the receiver could have been skipped later if time/machinery got scarce. Would make for one fugly rifle, but functional and present.

@@mfree80286 Isnt the lee enfield a rotating bolt design? That would imply the necessity for circular components or features at the center where the bolt is, as well as the necessary round features in the trunion where the receiver interfaces with the barrel. I dont think it would have helped much. If they were short on materials, a better option might just be to use a hacksaw to cut off segments of the cylindrical cross section, allowing for larger pieces that could be more easily recycled, as well as faster machining time with now only a finishing cut being necessary

@@SigneOtter Not so much short of materials, as others point out, but a potential shortage of materials and larger machinery. Time factors in too, I'm guessing, and that rounded front is a 'luxury' but starting with square stock makes start-to finish production easier on several fronts. Remember that the production line doesn't start with the receiver blank, it starts with the foundry.

@@mfree80286 Yea but rounded features are a necessity anyways. It may very well be that the rounded front serves some purpose with barrel indexing for example, we just dont know. My point is the receiver also has absolutely necessary internal round features, which require the use of a lathe anyways, because at the very least in the interior, it has to index with round components, like the bolt head, cartridges, and the barrel. Lathe machining square components is usually more effort than simply starting with a round piece of stock, because indexing a square milled piece of stock to machining on a lathe requires precise dyes. This is because you have to now line up the milled surfaces from the mill with the centerline of the lathe in order to machine it there, and have the features machined on the two different machines line up. In the case of doing it the other way, the lathe machined component is symmetrical about a centerline, which means you can quite happily drop it in to a mill and keep doing your thing, with no regard for alignment. My only point is it was probably less effort when it comes to set up, machining time, and so on, to start with a round piece of stock than a square one.

The webbing set had the large front pouches full of Bren magazines. You loaded your rifle from chargers held in the disposable bandoliers so you do not need to fumble to stow the empty reusable larger removable magazine and then fumble to extract the full one and insert it. Just grab a charger from the bandolier, push it in and close the bolt and resume play. You get to rejoin play faster than with a removable magazine. Even in the early 1980s you got your frontline fresh ammunition in cloth bandoliers of 5 round chargers and had to refill the magazines from the chargers stripped into the magazine. In real life the pouches were filled with GPMG belts and the SLR magazines went into pockets etc. whatever the official SOPs.

Except the MAS 36 used rear locking lugs, like a proper Lee-Enfield .

Guessing here, either post-war offload to try and bring cash into the economy, or as it was never accepted it was given back to the designer who then had no family or family interested in keeping it so the rifle was sold off upon his passing.

@@snowflakemelter1172 - also the name lee - Enfield refers to the two designers of the rifles. My point is the royal small arms factory produced some wonderful bolt action rifle. One varient of the rifle is still in service by the police in my country. My doubt is why there is no semi auto rifle made during the war?

sarath431 some prototypes were made but really, semi auto didn’t fit in with the doctrine of the time. It wasn’t until after the war that Britain decided to change its service rifle to the EM2. Ian has produced at least two videos on this later rifle

@@howardchambers3163 - okay. I'll check them now. Thank you.

sarath431 The Lee-Enfield takes its name from the designer of the rifle's bolt system-James Paris Lee-and the factory in which it was designed-the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield.

@@helliwell31 - yes. Ever wondered why royal small arms factory didn't made semi auto rifles during war?

IKR? Why get rid of that short and sweet bolt throw that was just made for rapid aimed fire

I'm going to try my best to explain this, because it can be a little complex, and I'm certainly no expert, but basically it has to do with how the trigger interacts with the sear, whether a firearm has a one or a two-piece trigger bar, and weight of the trigger spring. On a one-piece there's only the one part that acts on the sear and drags it down, and thus the pull is short. On a two-piece the sear is acted upon by the first piece, then transfers to the second before finally tripping and firing the weapon. This makes the pull longer, and the longer the pull the more weight on the trigger required, the less conducive it is to accurate firing(longer, heavier pulls are safer, however). Then, things like grit and creep come into play, where you can actually *feel* the linkage rubbing. Long, heavy, and creep = poor trigger, whereas short, light, and crisp = nice trigger.