Thread: Secret stash of old Enfield's

Thought some members may find this interesting.
Navy Arms Offers WWII Enfield #4 Mark 1 Rifles Chambered in .303 Britishhttps://www.tactical-life.com/guns/rifles/navy-arms-enfield-4-mark-1-rifles/
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https://www.tactical-life.com/guns/r...mark-1-rifles/

Cool story.
That blurb is painful to read for spelling errors though, gives it an unfortunate scam vibe.

Kind of reminds me of when
in the 7th form a few decades back a ship load of pristine US Army Indian motorcycles was found in an old warehouse in Auckland and were being sold off for a few hundred dollars each - "yeah mate, put yer deposit down here" fortunately I lacked even the deposit. I did dream however....

Old guys I used to work with back in my younger days used to mention on occasion that somewhere on the coast between Raglan and Waiuku there is/was meant to be a cave full of M1 Garands and American jeeps. Left behind when they moved to different parts of the Pacific war but stored ready to go in case they had to come back. I don’t know if it was wishful rumour or if there was an element of truth to it. If it was hypothetically true, everything there would be very rusty by now.

Like the story of the forgotten Spitfire in the tunnels under North Head.

Cool story, but I still call BS. Mostly the arms dropped to partisan forces were concealable and/or types chambered in locally available ammo. Unlikely to use mainstream infantry rifles who's use did not become mainstream (i.e. about in large numbers) until later in 1942, early 1943. Even then, production to supply British army requirements was still so limited that they were getting the same rifle manufactured in Canada and the US.

I'd be putting my bet on it either being some form of advertising story or a stock that was put into storage post war. Very odd that no mags were kept with them etc.

Originally Posted by No.3

Cool story, but I still call BS. Mostly the arms dropped to partisan forces were concealable and/or types chambered in locally available ammo. Unlikely to use mainstream infantry rifles who's use did not become mainstream (i.e. about in large numbers) until later in 1942, early 1943. Even then, production to supply British army requirements was still so limited that they were getting the same rifle manufactured in Canada and the US.

I'd be putting my bet on it either being some form of advertising story or a stock that was put into storage post war. Very odd that no mags were kept with them etc.

No thats not true

The resistance got pretty much the same small arms Infantry got with the exception of pocket pistols and later on Welrod's.

But there were some weird things dropped like S&W auto rifles and UD42-'s because they were so few in numbers I think SOE just wanted them to be useful somewhere?

Bren's, Stens, MK3 Enfields, Thompsons, M1 carbines, Enfield revolvers, 1911's all came down in drop canisters along with food and medical supplies.

I agree that those were put into storage because most of what got dropped here never got handed back and only a small fraction was actually used.

https://arsof-history.org/articles/p...resistance.pdf

Theres not a lot of defined stores allocation info, which is a little surprising because you can just about pull up turd tonnages recovered out of every base in any area you care to looks at. That link above has the most detail about packing and delivery systems and methodology. While i'm not trying to suggest the main battle rifles weren't supplied they were definitely not the preferred arm. Not conceable enough, and not really enough firepower for the role.

The majority of published info glosses over the supply side of the operation, and those with specfic info tend to support a similar line to the article above. I have a few books here with sections that refer to supply of weapons chambered in locally available cartridges (which would lead to the assumption of captured ammo) but thats pretty hard to verify anywhere...

Really interesting subject, one of the questions that comes up from it is most military armouries catalouge and seal stored weapons in grease and wrap with all identifying marks recorded outside the package. Those No4's obviously didn't get the military armoury treatment. A lot of Lee Enfields supplied ex-Aussie and sold off via the NZ range shooting groups ended up in a similar state, apparently the bolts were modified to tighten headspace to the preferred local ammo and the local order of business was take the numbered 'gauged' bolt out of the rifle, chuck it in a bucket and select another by trial and error method to pick one that had good bolt lug engagement and tight headspacing. I got that from one of the club armourer's that was doing that as part of the tuning service to convert military rifles into target shooting specials - seems strange to me but that's what they did and probably why so many LE's in NZ have mismatched bolts.