Who designed the lee enfield No4 rifle

7ECA said:
The Canadians participating in Operation Husky were of the 1st Div.
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*clears throat*

And 1st Canadian Tank Brigade. There were two Canadian formations that took part in HUSKY.

who better to reequip with new arms than a division that had been initially sent to Blighty with obsolete or non-existent gear.
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Initially, yes. But that was close to four years before HUSKY. After Dunkirk, 1st Div was the only trained and equipped infantry division in Britain. They were well equipped shortly after arriving.

I would have imagined new rifles would have gone first to the British infantry divisions that had just spent a few years in combat in North Africa and then took part in HUSKY a few months later.
 
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flashman2 said:
Right, but then if there was a stockpile of No 4s in Britain prior to HUSKY, why didn't British divisions have them for the invasion? Why would they bother using critical shipping space to get them there only to not issue them?
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They may have been issued to foreign formations that were based in Britain that needed arms, such as the Poles and the Czechs.
 
flashman2 said:
No, right, definitely not... but where did the early LBs go then? I suppose one possibility is that there was simply higher priority stuff to send over on the convoys in 42 and the first half of 43 so they weren't sent over until mid 43. I'm not sure that makes a ton of sense though, because then we have the situation where Canadians heading for Sicily are given new, presumably British made No 4s to replace their No 1s, while the British carry on using the old rifle? There's pics even into mid 1944 with British infantry in Italy all armed with the No 1. If the LBs made it over before mid 43, then why did the British carry on using the No 1 while Canadians got the new rifle?

By the time of Op HUSKY, LB had made enough No 4s to equip like 20 divisions. There were enough LB No 4s alone to equip every Canadian and British infantry division in Italy twice over.
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Have been seeing a lot of early LB Mk1s (0L, 1L & 2L) surface lately in NZ.
 
The Canadian formations fighting in Italy started there as part of 8th Army, a British army. The army would have decided which lower formations would first be issued a new equipment depending on the nature of the equipment and the scale of issue and the significance of these factors in the specific case. So who first got No.4 rifles in Italy may have been decided according to who was in the best place at the time to deal with the distractions. E.g. you don't send a new service rifle to infantry battalions deployed in forward echelons engaging with the enemy, you do it with formations out of contact, resting/training in rear areas where they can get instruction and practice with the new equipment and their support echelons can do familarization and swap over tools and spares, etc.
 
shredder said:
They may have been issued to foreign formations that were based in Britain that needed arms, such as the Poles and the Czechs.
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Polish II Corps still had No 1s in Italy. Not sure about the Czechs, or if they even fielded any soldiers in Italy, but there sure weren't many of them. In any case, nothing approaching the hundreds of thousands of No 4s produced by that point.
 
TheTooner said:
The Canadian formations fighting in Italy started there as part of 8th Army, a British army. The army would have decided which lower formations would first be issued a new equipment depending on the nature of the equipment and the scale of issue and the significance of these factors in the specific case. So who first got No.4 rifles in Italy may have been decided according to who was in the best place at the time to deal with the distractions. E.g. you don't send a new service rifle to infantry battalions deployed in forward echelons engaging with the enemy, you do it with formations out of contact, resting/training in rear areas where they can get instruction and practice with the new equipment and their support echelons can do familarization and swap over tools and spares, etc.
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Resupply of formations once on operations was done through the higher formation, but what Canadians were equipped with was very much a national decision. Much as we fielded the Ross rifle in WW1 and used C7s in Afghanistan, what the Canadian army used in WW2 was a Canadian decision. There's numerous examples of us using different and/or uniquely Canadian vehicles, weapons, equipment, etc etc.

The British formations in the Eighth Army that came from North Africa had two months to rest and refit prior to the invasion of Sicily; the Germans surrendered in North Africa in mid May, and the Sicily landings were mid July.

I suppose I should order a copy of Kennedy's history of Munitions and Supply and see if it would shed any light.
 
I talked to an old Canadian vet who served in Italy...he was an engineer and they handed in their #1 rifles and where issued the #4 rifles....his greatest disappointment was the bayonet...
 
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