How many lee enfields were made?

@ Kennymo:

Not quite sure which "peddled scheme" rifles you mean; that was WWI, the SSA and NRF rifles.

In WW2, BSA had the ONLY plant in the British Isles which still had a line set up to build the SMLE. Enfield had started converting the "Long Room" line to the Number 4 right after th 1931 Trials, but money was very tight and the Government were a bunch of pacifist creeps. In the years before the Second War, they actually destroyed more rifles than they made. I had a dozen of them, once upon a time: Great War SMLEs with post-war FTR markings and brand-new barrels, with the bolts removed, Bodies crushed and Chamber sawn halfway through: enough to make you cry.

BSA had tried to interest the War Office in rifles right from the first day of the war, but they were rather politely told that there was no need of their services. That changed the day after Dunkirk and they were ordered to turn out as many rifles as possible, as fast as possible. They started turning out brand-new BSA rifles, but then the Luftwaffe discovered Small Heath and bombed the snot out of it. So they decentralised a lot, had huge quantities of SMLE parts made by outside contractors, but assembly was done by BSA Small Heath. Markings were changed to B, just to make Fritz think they were from a different plant..... which did not exist.

BSA then set up a Number 4 plant at Shirley and provided much of the critical staff for the Government plants at Maltby and Fazakerley.

So there were no "peddled" RIFLES in War Two, although there were a helluvva lot of "peddled" PARTS, all assembled by BSA.

Hope this clears things up.

Okay, guys, where am I wrong?

The really ironic part is that BSA was SO critical to the British War effort in the Second War. They made Brens, Oerlikons, Hispanos, Polstens, Boys Rifles, you name it. The Small Heath SMLE plant the company had kept, tooled-up, critical staff trained and ready to go, from 1919 to 1940........ without a SINGLE rifle being purchased by the Government, and in the face of actual competition FROM the Government for foreign rifle contracts. In the 1970s, BSA needed a 1-year loan of 1 million Pounds to modernise their production facilities and bring out a motorcycle to blow the Japanese off the roads and out of their traditional markets. The Government refused. And so BSA went down in bankruptcy. The Small Heath plant was demolished to make way for a parking-lot some years ago. I have no idea what sits there today. I'm not really sure that I even WANT to know.....
 
No, LSA was London Small Arms, a longtime regular contractor to the War Office.

Originally, the War Office contracted ALL of its firearms to the Trade and they kept this up for over 250 years. The system was that the War Office was to approve a specific PATTERN of weapon, then contracts would be given out to different gun shops to show how each intrpreted the ideas. The one that the Board liked, or an amalgam of features that they liked, would be assembled into ONE firearm. This firearm would have a bit of string looped through the triggerguard and a brown shipping-type tag tied to it, then the string and tag were sealed together with hard wax bearing the SEAL of the Board of Ordnance and the Broad Arrow:
B.O.
W/!\D
(in ink) SEALED PATTERN
Musket Pattern of 1853

or something very similar.
This gun became the SEALED PATTERN governing all manufacture and it was available for reference.

Contracts then could be handed out among the Trade, 500 to a big shop, perhaps 50 or 100 to a smaller shop, until the entire military procurement had been contracted for. There were gigantic problems, of course, because there was no guarantee that even a SCREW from one gun would fit another. Parts would be CLOSE but there was no guarantee that they would INTERCHANGE because the technology had not yet arrived at that point.

The Trade system of supplying weapons to the Government continued until the 1860s, although it began to be phasd out when Enfield introduced the Patterns 1839 and 1842. The Tower Armoury still was making guns, also, although they were merely assembling parts bought in wholesale lots and on contract from many different shops which actually made them. MANY of the Pattern 1853 and even some of the 1858 rifled-muskets were produced in this way. My 1857 Tower musket has the names of the men and shops who made the parts all over the inside of the thing, where they cannot be seen unless you take it apart.

But Sir Joseph Whitworth changed everything. Whitworth was not a gun-maker, although he did design guns. He was a maker of PRECISION INSTRUMENTS and MEASURING TOOLS. The Pattern 1853 rifled-musket was SUPPOSED to be entirely machine-made and 100% interchangeable..... and it was not. Whitworth was brought in and Enfield turned over to him. His main task was to MAKE the 1853 rifle 100% INTERCHANGEABLE and he accomplished this in a spectacular manner, tightening up tolerances, designing and making true precision go- and no-go gauges for every dimension of every part; when he was finished, the new rifles were called the Pattern of 1858. In the late 1850s, Russian guns were measured in TENTHS of an inch (Lines), American muskets in HUNDREDTHS and British guns in THOUSANDTHS. People to this day curse the Whitworth threads but thy should not. It is a good system, it works well and it was the FIRST STANDARDISED thread system in the world. ALL modern industrial manufacture in EVERY country uses the principles which Sir Joseph Whitworth developed into usable form at Enfield and the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was the FIRST plant in the world to turn out a complex machine (a gun, in this case) which was 100% interchangeable, 100% machine-made.

Enfield set the standard for the Second Phase of the Industrial Revolution. The THIRD phase only came in 1957, a century later, when the US Board of Ordnance made it a condition that the M-14 rifle be made on CNC machinery.

When Whitworth was finished at Enfield, so were the critical gauges. I have seen them, the originals: a table covered with metal gauges, 3 feet wide, 3 feet up the wall and 30 feet long, to build a SNIDER. That set of gauges represented literally THOUSANDS of hours of work from the best machinists in the world, just to make. The cost must have been staggering. Two decades later, when it came time to prouduce the Lee-Enfield, severl sets were made, although certinly not all at the same time. For the SMLE rifle, SEVEN sets were made and these were sent out at 1 set for Enfield, 1 set to Sparkbrook, 1 set for BSA, 1 set for LSA, 1 set for Ishapore, 1 set for Lithgow and the final set to SSA. I believe that Lithgow, which is now a museum, has its original 1912 gauges on display.

But London Small Arms faced this challenge and the small and large Trade manufacturers in the city all took part in the company. Standard procedure was for parts to be made mostly by Apprentices who were being overseen by Masters. When an Apprentice had proved that he could make parts perfectly for the Government rifle, then he MIGHT be allowed to work on a double shotgun or even a sporting rifle. It was useful both to the Trade and to the Government, which had a small but guaranteed supply of small-arms available to it..... without the expense of setting up another factory. The COMPANY was able to get contracts for making the rifles and the parts were made by the individual shops, gunmetal castings from a couple of shops, barrels from other shops, stocks from other shops, locks from yet others. In this way none of the small companies would need to possess the whole staggeringly-expensive SET of gauges. The CONSORTIUM bought the gauges and each shop used only the ones it needed. In the day of $26 SMLEs, brand-new, saving several THOUSAND dollars on a set of Master Gauges was very important.

LSA spread its gauges out among the Trade in order that complete rifles might be made in a dozen or so shops. The parts went to their central "factory" and assembled into complete rifles. London Small Arms made the Pattern 1858, the Snider in Marks II and III, it made Martinis, Lee-Metfords and SMLEs. Their SMLEs were regarded, when new, as the best rifles that money could buy.

The Company was formed in 1866 out of the ruins of the old London Armoury, which had produced tens of thousands of muskets for the American Civil War. It was basd in Tower Hamlets, London, and ceased operation completely only in 1935. We just missed it by THAT MUCH!

Hope this helps.
 
Gibbs505 said:
Yea I overlooked Lithgow! My bad!! It was included in the overall totals though under SMLE!
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How did you come to your SMLE total? i cant get a total near that from the book, did you count all the conversions like the Cond MkII & MkIVs into your total as well??
I see you counted the .22 trainers into your final total but most were conversions, only the CNo7 & No8s & some No2 MkIV*s were new manufacture.
What about the No4 Mk1/2 & 1/3s were they counted?
 
5THBATT said:
How did you come to your SMLE total? i cant get a total near that from the book, did you count all the conversions like the Cond MkII & MkIVs into your total as well??
I see you counted the .22 trainers into your final total but most were conversions, only the CNo7 & No8s & some No2 MkIV*s were new manufacture.
What about the No4 Mk1/2 & 1/3s were they counted?
Click to expand...

I simply added up the figures starting from p439 of "The Lee Enfield Story" and each intro page from then on. I take your point about the 22's but I had no way of taking out the conversions and similar items. Also, I may have miscounted, I hate to admit it, but I am not completely perfect!!:D
 
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