Wikipedia's strength is its editing policy, which permits anyone to make changes. Over time, bad information can be editied out and the remaining article will reflect a higher quality of truthfulness. Or, at least, that is the theory.
But that is also its weakness because it demands written documentation as "proof". I think that this is a weakness because it leaves out the opportunity to include anomalous, very real, facts which do not agree with the published sources. This is especially egregious when it comes to military history, as we seem to be left with whatever passed the official censors....... and that is not how HISTORY should be written. HISTORY MUST BE FACTUAL OR ELSE IT BECOMES PROPAGANDA. This means that it must include ALL the facts, even the ones which the Official Censors removed..... if we can find them and put them back in. Yes, I agree, this is "Revisionist History".... but sometimes History NEEDS to be revised in order to reflect what REALLY happened.
MILITARY History is especially vulnerable to official censorship and only partly because most reporters have a healthy regard for the condition of their own skins. The Great War started with half a dozen rounds of .32ACP being fired by an ethnic SERB in BOSNIA. Guns, grenades and poison capsules were supplied by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret society mostly within Serbian Military Intelligence. Only the FIRST HALF of this scenario was visible to the public or to reporters; the remainder was censored. The alliance system then collapsed as general mobilisation began and, by the time the armies began marching, the story was TOO BIG for ANY reporter to keep track of. But small bits of real information CAN be valuable to the enemy, so the Armies, all of them, began keeping reporters away from the line of fire. The days of Richard Harding Davis and Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill were done; they had to find new work because the situation no longer was conducive to factual reporting.
And so The Legend began. Big Bully Austria, aided and abetted by Biggest Bully Germany and its Crazy Kaiser, were PICKING ON Poor Little Serbia. What was LEFT OUT was the fact that Serbia had STARTED the whole damned affair, quite deliberately removing the ONE MAN (Archduke Franz Ferdinand) who was working to make dissension (and thus a situation which could degenerate into a general war) unlikely.
The rest of the story, the greatest single tragedy in human history, then continued under the blanket of official censorship..... with us on the side of the people who had STARTED it.
If you have been watching Wikipedia during the past 6 or 7 years, you will have seen many changes in the section on the Ross Rifles. The first time I looked at Wikipedia's article on the Rosses, I very nearly lost my lunch. It has improved a LOT since then, although it still repeats too many of the Official Truths and ignores too many FACTS which are inconvenient. The trouble is that those Inconvenient Facts are disturbing to the Official Truth, which is what has been printed and reprinted and rereprinted since 1914. I am thinking that it's just about time to step in there and bring them some first-hand research, along with things I was told personally by the men who were actually there and DID it. So we shall see.
So, you see, sometimes History NEEDS a little revision.
................... .........................
In the case of the SSA rifles, I think that if you look at things CAREFULLY, you will find that there IS a window of time in there in which an SSA rifle COULD be completed as a Mark III. Our knowledgeable friend John Sukey (who knows a helluvva lot more about these than he generally lets on) has pointed out that many of the SSA rifles were completed with parts made by BSA, which was right in the same town. The Official Story is that they were completed with parts from Enfield, close to 200 miles away. I rather suspect that they WANTED to complete the rifles with Enfield parts and might have done so at the time the very first SSA Bodies and Bolts were being made (very late in 1915) but that PRACTICALITY stepped in and pointed to this MASSIVE heap of spare parts only a few blocks away. SSA was in Birmingham, but so was BSA..... and so was the old RSAF SPARKBROOK, purchased by BSA in 1906 and now being taken back by the Government and operated as BIRMINGHAM REPAIR. This would certainly make a great deal more SENSE.
But we have the Official Story and we have Practicality. Our friend John Sukey (along with one helluvva pile of rifles) is on the side of Practicality. I think they are right, at least insofar as 90% of SSA production is concerned.
As to the differences between the Mark III and the Mark III*, the main differences were in LEAVING OFF parts which were costly to make and generally not being used. In a 300-yard war, the Volley Sights (which began at 1700 or so) were completely useless.... so they were left off. The Magazine Cutoff was 2 extra parts and extra work on the Body and it wasn't being used, anyway, so OFF it came, sealing up a place where MUD could get into the rifle. In the inter-war period, when the STANDARD reverted to the Mark III, many rifles which HAD cutoff slots were rebuilt with Cutoffs, the wood being modded to accommodate the device..... and then they were modded AGAIN when the order came that the Mark III* was to be the NEW STANDARD.
It was all a very S T R A N G E kettle of fish, one might say.
The FORESTOCK was modified to bring the right side ABOVE the Cutoff Slot. It also had NO provision for Volley Sights. This is the Mark III* stock and it may be installed on a Mark III rifle just a long as you leave off the Cutoff. Alternately, a Mark III* Forestock CAN be altered to accommodate a Cutoff and I have seen such.
But this was done, in some plants, in STAGES, depending upon the availability of parts, so it is POSSIBLE to find rifles which are HALFWAY modified to the Mark III* pattern. The first thing to GO was the Volley Sights. THEN the Cutoff went. The drift-adjustable REAR SIGHT CAP also went (and the Rear Sight Guard changed for the new adjustmentless sight), as did the rounded COCKING-PIECE; these were replaced by non-adjustable Sight Caps and flat-side Cocking Pieces respectively. Late in the War came the final change, the small-head Cross Screw for the Nose Cap being replaced with a much less-vulnerable, ugly screw with a Large Head.
My 1918 NRF rifle has ALL of these modifications, while my Mark I***, supposedly rebuilt to the same specs, has woodwork (which I installed) which HAS the "drop" for the Cut-off but which does NOT have accommodation for the Volley Sights. So we KNOW that rifles fitting neither the one specification nor the other...... transitional rifles, as it were.... actually were built.
It is my thinking that the OP's rifle would have been an SSA Body, completed as either a Mark III or a transitional rifle, damaged or worn out in Service, sent to India, pulled out of the scrap pile and REBUILT in 1940 into the rather unusual (and highly-yummy) specimen which exists today.
A Keeper, for sure.
Hope this is of some help to someone.
.
