[ Ethiopian Oddities: Long Lee-SMLE ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today with another
Ethiopian oddity at Inter Ordnance / Royal Tiger Imports.
This came into the US along with a big batch
of Enfield rifles, Number 1 Mark III SMLEs, from Ethiopia.
And this is clearly the result of
improvising, adapting and overcoming on the part of some Ethiopian armourer.
Because what we have here is most definitely not a standard pattern of Lee-Enfield.
This is a Lee-Enfield Mark I Long Rifle
that has been fitted into a Number 1 Mark III SMLE stock,
complete with - mostly complete - partially complete with volley sights.
So let me show you what they did here, because it's actually kind of cool.
This is like a reverse weird mullet of a rifle.
So the back end is fairly normal: we've got a regular Enfield buttstock, brass butt plate.
As we move up the rifle we see that this is,
"Aha, this is an early pattern of rifle, because we have the early safety on the cocking piece.
We have a cartridge cut off, we have the rounded magazine
of ... what would later become ... the Mark I Lee-Enfield."
Some new designations would come about later on, but it's an early magazine.
This is missing its dust cover on the bolt, but OK, this has been in Ethiopia for a long time.
We've got our rear volley sight there.
That's actually still in pretty good shape, that's got a nice strong spring to it.
But as we start moving forward, things get a bit weird.
So we have the rear sight that we would expect from an early Long Lee.
But this is not the sort of barrel band we would expect.
Normally these rifles would have this as a rear handguard, and then that's it.
This one, all of a sudden, now has what appears to be an SMLE front handguard.
And now things are getting weird, because this front sight arrangement is nothing normal.
We have a bayonet lug that looks like it ought to fit a Lee-Metford 1888 pattern bayonet,
but the bayonet lug is far too close to the muzzle.
Normally your whole [bayonet] grip assembly sits in between these two points,
and there's not enough exposed muzzle to actually hold the ring of the bayonet.
So this is all fully decorative.
There's some odd banding here at the front.
And then I don't even know what the heck this thing is,
this gigantic sight protector that sort of maybe is reminiscent of a Number 4 Enfield.
This thing just gets very funky by the front end.
Now what's kind of cool is, thanks to the standards of Lee-Enfield manufacture,
we know exactly what this started off life as
because it's marked on the rear socket where we can still see it.
This was an LSA, a London Small Arms Company, Lee-Enfield Mark I.
So this was in fact a very early Lee-Enfield.
And it does have that very early style of safety.
So the first Lee-Enfield Long Rifles had no safety at all.
I actually have a video on one of those proper, original, very early rifles.
The cavalry decided that they wanted a safety, so they developed this
cocking-piece mounted safety for the cavalry carbines.
And then, when the Lee-Metford became the Lee-Enfield, they added that safety to it for a time.
We have a few additional markings up here, these are of course Ethiopian markings.
And I think that's a rack number,
I probably should have checked before I started filming, but I believe that's a rack number.
... There are a couple of different styles of markings that are fairly common
on rifles out of Ethiopia, and this is one of them.
We then have the barrel Nock's form, and you can see that big letter "E".
That indicates that this is Enfield rifling and not Metford rifling.
And it's a little hard to read there, but it says Lee-Speed Patents, and we have a serial number.
And of course we have the front half of the volley sight,
but the actual front sight piece of the volley deal is missing.
So normally you'd have a little bead out here that would serve as the front sight,
and you would rotate this to whatever [range] you wanted ...
and then you can use your front sight off of this. But that front sight element is missing.
It does still have a fully functional magazine cut off there.
Magazine looks pretty good.
And of course the whole front end of the gun is very much SMLE like, World War One pattern like.
And the barrel length is not that of an early Lee-Enfield carbine,
nor that of a Long Lee rifle, but in fact it is the barrel length of an SMLE.
So I'm pretty sure that this is an Ethiopian armourer, who ... had some gun parts,
and needed to make a working gun out of it.
And kind of fitted up what he had to the standard pattern of what was being used at the time.
I think it's really neat to take a look at some of these.
To me, some of the most interesting collecting is the weird oddball stuff.
Frankly, that's what got me into Forgotten Weapons in the first place.
And so sometimes that oddball stuff is factory prototype, experimental,
developmental sort of guns that are made in a very formal factory setting.
And sometimes that can be the result of weird kludges out in the middle of the African wilds
if you are an Ethiopian armourer in the 1920s, I suppose,
who's got some broken rifles and needs to make working rifles out of them.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
I think these are really cool to take a look at, they're all one-of-a-kind interesting neat guns.
Thanks for watching.