Why did Britain not take up semi-auto rifles?

During the second half of the War, America increasingly used semi-auto rifles for its marines and Infrantry - M1s Garande and carbine and M17s?
Anybody thinking about this for all of five minutes can see the advantage of a semi over a single shot-bolt action.
I ran into a Vietnam SAS man on the bus one day - he looked pretty disheveled - so i quized him for five minutes just to make sure he wasn't making stuff up. Satisfied that this man was indeed the real deal (i swallowed hard because i'd just questioned a killer!) I then obviously talked war for the trip which he was happy to do, except i kept picking up on a fair bit of unresolved hostility...towards what i don't know. Anyway, i asked him this question, with the obvious advantages of a semi over a single shot, why didn't Britain or its allies decide (even off their own bats) to devise a semi auto infantry rifle?
He thought for a whole 5 seconds and his answer was that the semi was too complex and meant not only greater training time but meant a less reliable weapon.
I agreed with his thoughts but couldn't help thinking that America managed to overcome this, it seems, and their infantry reaped the rewards...Anyone care to add to why Britain continued to use a VERY old rifle, one which they used i think at the end of the boer war let alone WW1!?

 

One of the items I thought I recalled was the desire for ammunition that could be used the same in rifle or pistol. Apparently, this was not pursued or possible (?) with a semi-automatic. I found the following article on line:

Semi Automatic & Assault Rifles which has the following quote:

"...The problem was not in making semi and fully automatic rifles; the problem was in making them reliable. The US Army had settled on its semi automatic M1 back in the early 1930s. That allowed a lot of time for the weapon to be developed and refined before it saw action, practically a decade in fact. Both the Germans and the Russians fielded examples in the first half of the war on the Eastern Front, but neither was a success. The Red Army remained heavily reliant on bolt action rifles, but the Germans continued their research and developed several notable weapons. The British meanwhile, never produced a self loading rifle for the duration of the war, waiting until the end of hostilities before commencing work on the politically doomed EM2.

Another major factor was ammunition. No army was enthusiastic about introducing a new calibre into its ranks. All the existing bolt action rifles and their accompanying light and heavy machine guns used the same round. As a result, all semi automatic weapons were expected to do so as well. This severely limited what could be achieved, and added to the mechanical reliability problems of many designs. Two new rounds were eventually introduced, one of which was to have a profound impact on firearms evolution. Most though retained the same high power, heavy recoil ammunition used in bolt action weapons. Several designs became popular sniper rifles, where the ability to get off a second round quickly with minimal re-aiming proved particularly lethal."​

 

Britain was a proverty stricken nation in the 1930s and one with an empire. An auto rifle would probably have necessitated a new rimless round - not a practical thing to do on such a scale when you've little money to develop new weapons as it is.

 

First off you had a perfectly good (some would say excellent) rifle. Secondly all nations except the US relyed on bolt action rifles. As said above the US had both the time and resouces to spend on it.

 

Plus the fact that rearmament was done at a gallop in Britain from 1936 onwards. We were barely ready for war with what we had.
In WW1, British factories alone produced seven BILLION rounds-
.303 British - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There would still have been very substantial stocks of ammunition around in the run up to WW2, so it made sense to use them rather than create a completely new type.

 

The "British" had also rolled the SMLE out across the Commonwealth and Dominions; by 1939 there were rifle and ammo plants in India and Australia IIRC....and of course Canada after the Ross debacle!

It was a relatively reliable weapon for ALL environments...apart from the headspace issue; and a trained British Army user could fire off all ten rounds aimed, quicker than a G.I. could deliberately aim and fire all his. The 1945 Ruhr experience was that fired from the hip, thumb and forefingers working the bolt with ring and little finger through the triggerguard, a squaddie could certainly fire faster than an automatic rifle when "mouseholing"

 

A combination of cost (the SMLE was available in huge numbers) and thinking that said the SMLE was adequitely fast firing with aimed fire to be nearly as efficent as a self-loading rifle. The British switched once the SMLEs started getting worn out and dated. It isn't untypical for Britain, often strapped for cash, to take their time re-equipping their military with better equipment. Instead, it seems they simply expect the Army to do with what they have and substitute British grit and a stiff upper lip for the right gear.

 

a semi-auto isin't all that hard to make except that the rimmed .303 would make it tough to design a reliable action, unlike the 30-06 or the 8mm mauser.

and besides, hand-fired weapons were hardly pivotal in any major war in the 20th century.

 

No real mention of doctrine here, and it was so Important to the central choice of a nation's primary Infantry weapon.
The British Army was very much subscribed to the aimed Infantry shot, obsessed with it even, ingrained to the very core. They felt that there wasn't yet a semi-auto that could compete with the Enfield for accuracy, along with the other factors like range, ruggedness, availability, ease of clearing stoppages etc.
A great deal of discussion was also in the air that semi/auto would increase wild fire and ammunition waste (a wide military debate in many countries, not just the UK, for the early part of the c20th. It isn't as if the introduction of semi-auto or auto was exactly easy or straightforward for any nation as the technology firmed up).

As TA alludes to, there was also (and still is in certain circles) much debate about whether among large bodies of men there was all that much speed advantage over a well drilled soldier with a bolt action, particularly in light of the massive shift that changing a widely issued rifle entails. Watching someone who really knows what they're doing give it the old 'Rounds Rapid', or the minimum 15 aimed rounds 'Mad Minute' with an Enfield is 'surprising' to say the least, alarming even. There were German soldiers in WW1 that reported facing machine guns, when in fact they were receiving fire from Rifle Infantry.

Mad minute record, from:
THE LEE ENFIELD RIFLE ASSOCIATION :
(remember these shots have to hit the specified target to be counted.)
"the record is 37 rds in a minute achieved just after the first world war by a British Skill at Arms Instructor."

~A

 

I see your point, but the 12 or 15 round rapid fire was about getting maximum lead in the air (due to too many people missing trying to aim + aiming brought the fire rate way down, people sitting there waiting for the shot etc.) Where as a semi, you can correct your aim without having to move, you just correct and fire again... a MASSIVE advantage. I can't see the argument that it was as good or almost as good as a semi having much weight. As soon as any and every army could, they switched to a semi-auto...so the answer would seem to be in "a good design and the money and time to produce it."

 

I have practiced with my Mk III* SMLE made in 1918 and I can easily put 15 to 18 rounds in about a minute down range to 100 to 200 yards in a 12" target without much trouble using nothing but standard loading clips and iron sights. It isn't that hard and it isn't much less than a semi-automatic would do. Now, I'm left handed so my technique varies some from the "standard" British training one. I personally think it is actually an advantage. It certainly has proven that way with revolvers.....

 

I could pump off 15 rounds on a semi in about...8 seconds...aimed about 25 seconds. It fires as fast as you pull the trigger. In my opinion, and that of every army it seems, the semi is superior.

PS: if your hitting said target, thats nice shooting.
PPS: I'm jealous you have a MKIII SMLE.

 

What is an "M17"?

Some good points were already raised so I'll just add a few more. Following Dunkirk, the Brits had a large rifle deficit that needed filling now. Churchill committed England's resources to "just win the war" with what worked. Production line capacities were thus already taxed leaving little time or effort to be afforded to R&D. He wasn't concerned about having exotic weaponry to arm post-war troops.

Also remember few countries conducted small arms R&D. Many still expected WW1 trench warfare part 2.

 

In the process, using up potentially much more ammunition per man, for a quite possibly marginal effect on a battlefield. Swings and roundabouts. (And that 15/rpm minimum was seen as a poor score for the experienced bolt action British soldier.)
That's not to denigrate TA's score! He's not being screamed at by an instructor daily, or in regular combat... probably...

As for 'that of every army' - In WW2, the Soviets and Germans, & most all other smaller combatants still relied on the bolt action as their primary small-arm, just as the Commonwealth did. It's quite an assumption to think that the semi or auto was all that universal, even though every nation had examples and new pieces along those lines. The earlier German & Soviet attempts, for example, were found wanting in so many ways that they could even have proven disastrous if adopted more widely.

Overall, perhaps the main military shift in rifle style is the one from 'Long Range Bolt Action Rifle' (Enfield, K98, Moisin etc.) to the Assault Rifle, where questions of range and it's relevance had more bearing on the shift. And increased faster fire's usefulness, within that new awareness of shortened contact ranges, came almost as a bonus. The 'Semi-auto Long Range Rifle' was maybe more of an evolutionary subset of the first concept, rather than the next great leap forward, and no large Army that I'm aware of fully established anything that could be termed Assault Rifles until postwar.

~A

 

Must not forget the lend-lease m1s, m1a1s, and (correct me if I'm wrong), m2s. They British did indeed have them in their inventory during ww2.

Main reason why British didn't isn't so much different from lets say...the French, who were in a similar situation. Most of Europe were trying to recover financially and rifles were not really seen as significant. After ww1 automatic weapons and light/heavy MGs were thought to be the important once. Which the Brits had plenty off.

 

did the British still use the enfield bolt action rifle in Korea, my guess is they still used the same ww2 weapons and TO&E as WW2. Or did they learn any lessons and change the structure of there infantry companies and make more auto-matic weapons available to the infantry sections. In late WW2 the standard weapons for an infantry platoon were:
Lee Enfield Rifles
Sten Guns
Bren Guns
2in Mortars

 

They still used the No. 4 Mk 2 SMLE in Korea, Yan-
Modern Firearms - SMLE Lee-Enfield

 

Thanks for the link, I cant think what was going through the minds of those men taking on North Korean and Chinese troops coming at them in wave attacks, they must have depended at lot on support weapons, LMGs, MMGs, Mortars, artillery and air support, very brave men on both sides.

 

And in the case of Bill Speakman VC; empty beer bottles.
Sorry, sorry, way off the Enfield topic, but I can rarely resist reference to one of the great 'completely lost it' VCs.
Viewing Page 6731 of Issue 39418 - London Gazette



To veer back on track, a nice site on Enfields:
The Lee-Enfield Rifle Website

~A

 

What a guy, thank Von.