Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be selling
in their upcoming February of 2017 Regional auction.
And today, we're taking a look at an SMLE.
A Number 1 Mark III Enfield that
happens to have a grenade discharger cup on it.
Now you'll see these around from time to time,
And I thought ... this would be a good opportunity to discuss
what these actually are and how they were used.
So rifle grenades really kind of exploded (pardon the pun) as a concept during World War One.
It hadn't really existed prior to that, or it hadn't really been used. They certainly existed,
there are examples of in fact even flintlock rifles with grenade discharger cups rather like this one.
But never really saw common use until the First World War.
And at that point they became this really handy intermediate ... weapon,
something that the infantry could use that had a much longer range than just a hand thrown grenade,
but could be immediately used without the coordination required for artillery or even something like a light mortar.
This was really a valuable assault tool for squads of infantry.
You could have some guys with hand-to-hand weapons, some guys with rifles, maybe one light machine gun
and a couple of rifle-grenadiers to assault, say, an enemy position.
And these allowed you to throw explosives at a reasonably long distance in the build-up to an attack.
So while they didn't have the destructive force of mortars or proper real artillery, they were very useful tools.
Now like pretty much every other country, Great Britain started World War One with rod grenades.
And the idea there is you basically took an explosive grenade body and they stuck literally just about a .30 calibre rod onto it.
Depending on the range you wanted that rod would be between 6 and 18 inches long,
and you just slide the whole thing down the barrel and fire it with a blank charge.
And when you fired the expanding gas from the blank would hit that rod and throw the whole grenade out of the rifle.
It required no modifications at all to the rifle. And as soon as you were done, you could reload with ball ammo and go on firing.
So there were some problems with these rod grenades.
They weren't as accurate as people would like. They are bulky and weird to carry because you know they're all this long,
not nearly as convenient as just typical hand grenades.
And maybe worst of all, they have a tendency to damage the bore of a rifle.
It's not all that uncommon to end up with a ring in the bore of a rifle, meaning that pressure
... at a certain point has gotten high enough that it actually expands the rifle bore, and you're left with a little bulge.
That's really not a good thing. It's a potential safety issue,
and it just doesn't really help the accuracy of the rifle when you go back to shooting bullets.
So in 1917 the British adopted this as a replacement.
It's a 2.5 inch in diameter grenade cup and it works really simply.
Put a grenade in that cup and put a blank in the rifle, and when you fire the blank the gas throws the grenade out of the rifle, very simple.
The grenades that the British used, ... now they had a wide variety, but basically they were the standard Mills bomb hand grenade.
They replaced the fuse with a 7 second long time fuse.
And they put a big flat round plate on the bottom of the grenade, and that acted as basically a gas check.
So that instead of all the gas coming up and around the body of the grenade,
it would hit this flat plate and help propel it in a predictable manner out of the rifle.
Most uses of rifle grenades will have some sort of sight, and they'll adjust the range of the grenade based on the angle of the rifle.
So you'll have a sight with gradations that, you know, well if I want to go only 50 yards then I have the rifle pretty flat down,
but if I want 200 yards I have to bring it up to this kind of angle.
The British didn't do that, they did this differently. For this style of grenade projector
you would always hold the rifle at 45 degrees, and you'd actually hold it upside down.
So the rifle grenades were fired like this, with the top of the buttstock in the ground.
The reason for that is that is a lot stronger. The recoil energy is basically going straight along the stock.
If you do it this way you're much more likely to break the toe of the stock off.
So you'd hold this at 45 degrees, and then there's actually a vent up here in the grenade cup
that allows you to reduce the amount of gas that's actually propelling the grenade.
And so by adjusting that, at 45 degrees the Mills bombs out of one of these grenade launchers
would have a range of between 80 and 200 yards.
So one thing that makes these rifles really kind of distinctive and stand out is, of course, this wire wrapping.
This was a practice introduced by the British in 1942.
So they were actually using these SMLEs as grenade launchers into World War Two
while they were replacing the standard infantry rifles with Number 4 Enfields.
At any rate, this was to combat one of the main problems with rifle grenade launching,
which is that it gives a lot more recoil than just bullets.
In fact, according to the British, the recoil impulse from a rifle grenade is about three times that of firing just a bullet.
So it's roughly equivalent to picking the rifle up and dropping it right on the the top of the stock from a height of 12 to 14 feet.
That's a lot of force, that's a significant impact. So it had a tendency to crack stocks and handguards.
So they wire wrapped them like this, and also add a reinforcing bolt at the back of the stock
as a way to prevent that from happening.
Like many of the grenade launching wire wrapped rifles that are available, this was refurbished in military service rather late.
So this was a 1947 factory repaired rifle.
You can see up here that this cross bolt has been added just in front of the receiver to help strengthen things,
and then there's a narrow bit of wire wrapping back here to reinforce this rear handguard.
And then there's a much longer section of wire wrapping here at the front. In fact, from the nose cap all the way back.
Now a lot of people ask if these rifles are still shootable. The answer is typically yes, although
they may not have been cleaned very religiously, and the bores may not be very good.
Since they were only used for rifle grenade launching the accuracy wasn't particularly important to people at this point.
Alright, now the interesting part, the cup grenade launcher itself.
... Actually it's a really clever design. It's knurled here because we're going to unthread it to take it off.
And what holds it on are these two hooks that lock into the lightening grooves on the nose cap of the SMLE.
So in order to take it off, I'm just going to grab the cup part here and
unscrew it.
And it's this threaded section
... that locks down those two hooks, so once I've got it partway out here,
(there we go), and just slide it right off the rifle.
So we've got this rear plug that hooks on the gun, and then the actual cup discharger itself.
And of course, ... the tighter this comes on
(... in the right place),
this angled surface presses these two lugs inward like that, and they lock nice and tight onto the nose cap.
Now I mentioned a vent and that's right down here. We have this thumb tightenable screw so you can lock it in place,
And this is just an opening in the base of
the discharger cup.
So it's kind of held in place by those two round pegs.
And all the way closed means that all the gas from the blank cartridge is going to propel the grenade.
All the way open means that a substantial amount of it is going to vent out here rather than push on the grenade,
thus reducing your overall range. So as I said, ... this would give you 80 [yards] at a 45 degree angle,
that would give you 200. And if you wanted an intermediate range the
manual had notes for quarter, half and three quarters.
So I think 110, 140 and 170 yards respectively.
So to mount this on the rifle I'm just going to start with it pretty much unscrewed all the way, and we're going to slide it
on there. We'll just hold that in place and tighten this down,
and there we go. Ready to go. Very simple piece of equipment to actually mount and dismount.
You may be wondering what makes sure that the bore is actually in line with the grenade launcher.
And that is this little semi-circular cutout right there which locks onto the bayonet lug on the rifle.
So you just press it up against that and that's what ensures that you're lined up.
Now that being said, if you fire a live ball round into a grenade
you're going to have bigger problems than whether the bore is exactly in line with the hole in the grenade launcher.
You don't want to do that. These are for blank cartridges only, otherwise
you really do risk a bullet hitting the grenade, the grenade blowing up right where it is and killing you.
The British used these rifles not just for assault during World War One or anti-personnel grenades.
They ended up also adapting anti-tank grenades for them and they did actually have a rear sight
that was adopted specifically for use with anti-tank grenades where pinpoint accuracy is
maybe a little more important than with just general fragmentation grenades.
They also used them for signalling devices,
largely in place of flares. Instead of a flare pistol, well, you've got a guy with a rifle grenade launcher.
You can get a much more impressive signal flare out of this thing than out of a little flare pistol.
So they were used for that, they were used for smoke grenades, really a fairly wide variety.
And while this really came into its own during World War One,
it's interesting to note that at the beginning of World War One
it was something like 10 hand grenades for every 1 rifle grenade being produced.
By the end the proportion had flipped and it was the majority of grenades being used were actually rifle grenades.
In total, more than 50 million rifle grenades were produced by the British military during World War One. That's a lot of rifle grenades.
So they continued using these until ... basically they were replaced by the 22mm NATO style grenade which fits over a spigot on the muzzle.
There was a brief period, from 1925 to 1933, they actually adopted a slightly smaller
different grenade launcher cup, like this one but ... a 2 inch bore instead of 2.5 inch.
And as I said they got rid of that in '33 and went back to using these,
I think largely because the larger diameter grenade was a lot more effective.
Carried a greater payload for every sort of purpose.
At any rate, these used to be really common on the market, there ... was a huge glut of them,
but they've gotten rather less common in recent years. It's harder and harder to find these.
So if you're interested in having this one, take a look at the link in the description text below.
This does come with three other rifles in a single lot,
including interestingly a Brazilian Mauser with its own cup rifle grenade launcher.
So take a look at the link, that'll allow you to check out the pictures and the descriptions of all four of these rifles.
And you can also see Rock Island's price estimate.
And if you think it's something you'd like to place a bid on, you can do that right through Rock Island's website.
Thanks for watching.