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The Lee-Metford rifle
Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls....
 (a.k.a. Magazine Lee-Metford, abbreviated MLM) was a breech-loading British army
British Army

The British Army is the Army branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707....
 service rifle, combining James Paris Lee
James Paris Lee

James Paris Lee was a Scottish-Canadian and later American inventor and Weapon designer, best known for inventing the bolt action that led to the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield series of rifles....
's rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford. It replaced the Martini-Henry
Martini-Henry

The Martini-Henry was a breech-loading lever-actuated rifle adopted by the United Kingdom, combining an action worked on by Friedrich von Martini , with the rifled barrel designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry ....
 rifle in 1888, following nine years of development and trials, but remained in service for only a short time until replaced by the similar Lee-Enfield
Lee-Enfield

The Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle was the main firearm used by the military forces of the British Empire/Commonwealth of Nations during the first half of the 20th century....
.

s bolt action mechanism was a great improvement over other designs of the day.






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Encyclopedia


The Lee-Metford rifle
Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls....
 (a.k.a. Magazine Lee-Metford, abbreviated MLM) was a breech-loading British army
British Army

The British Army is the Army branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707....
 service rifle, combining James Paris Lee
James Paris Lee

James Paris Lee was a Scottish-Canadian and later American inventor and Weapon designer, best known for inventing the bolt action that led to the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield series of rifles....
's rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford. It replaced the Martini-Henry
Martini-Henry

The Martini-Henry was a breech-loading lever-actuated rifle adopted by the United Kingdom, combining an action worked on by Friedrich von Martini , with the rifled barrel designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry ....
 rifle in 1888, following nine years of development and trials, but remained in service for only a short time until replaced by the similar Lee-Enfield
Lee-Enfield

The Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle was the main firearm used by the military forces of the British Empire/Commonwealth of Nations during the first half of the 20th century....
.

Design

Lee's bolt action mechanism was a great improvement over other designs of the day. The rear-mounted lugs placed the operating handle much closer to the rifleman, over the trigger. This made it much quicker to operate than other, forward-mounted lug designs which forced the rifleman to move his hand forward to operate the bolt; also, the bolt's distance of travel was identical with the length of the cartridge, and its rotation was only 60 degrees compared to the 90 degree rotation of some French and Mauser-style actions. In addition Lee introduced a superior detachable box magazine to replace the common tube and integral box magazines in use with most repeaters, and this magazine offered greater capacity than the competing Mannlicher
Mannlicher

Mannlicher may refer to:*Ferdinand Mannlicher - a famous weapon designer*various guns bearing his name:**Rifle Mannlicher-Sch?nauer**Pistol Steyr Mannlicher M1894...
 design.

The Lee-Metford was something of an anachronism, using a black powder-loaded rimmed .303
.303

.303 may refer to:* .303 British, a rifle cartridge* .303 Savage, a rifle cartridge...
 cartridge; most rifles of that time in a reduced caliber used smokeless powder
Smokeless powder

Smokeless powder is the name given to a number of propellants used in firearms and artillery which produce negligible smoke when fired, unlike the older gunpowder which they replaced....
, and the MLM was intended to make use of a smokeless cartridge, but this was not available when the Lee-Metford was designed. The design went through several variations during its service life, with the principal changes being to the magazine (from eight-round single stack to ten-round staggered), sights, and safety. The Lee-Metford started to be phased out in 1895 in favor of the Lee-Enfield, which was a virtually identical design but adapted for the use of smokeless powder. The Metford pattern of rifling was shallow and subject to rapid wear when ammunition loaded with cordite
Cordite

Cordite is a family of smokeless powder developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant....
 was used, with barrels becoming unusable after less than 5000 rounds. Changes included a new, deeper rifling pattern (designated Enfield pattern) and sights adjusted for the flatter trajectory enabled by the smokeless propellant.

Replacement

Replacement of the Lee-Metford rifles took several years to achieve, and they were still in service in some units during the Second Boer War
Second Boer War

The Second Boer War , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog , was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902, between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics of the Orange Fre...
 in 1899. Troops with the Lee-Metford and even the Lee-Enfield had a disadvantage to the Mauser
Mauser

Mauser is a German arms manufacturer, maker of a line of bolt-action rifles and pistols from the 1870s to present. Their designs were built for the German armed forces but have been exported and licensed to a number of countries since the later Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, as well as being a popular civilian firearm....
-equipped Boer troops, when long range accuracy was a concern. Poor sighting-in and quality control at the factory level resulted in British rifles being woefully inaccurate at ranges greater than ; upon correction they were essentially equal to the Mauser action in terms of accuracy, and superior in most other attributes. Even so, the British considered a whole new rifle, the Pattern 1913 Enfield
Pattern 1913 Enfield

The Pattern 1913 Enfield was an experimental rifle developed by the Royal Small Arms Factory for the British Army from 1912 to 1914 to serve as a replacement for the SMLE#1904 ....
, based upon a modified Mauser design, but its development was cut short by the First World War and the eminently adaptable Lee-Enfield served for another half century.

In British service the Lee Metford was also upgraded to the standards of later rifle patterns (e.g. to charger loading and Short Rifle, the SMLE pattern), though the barrel was almost always switched to one with Enfield pattern rifling. The Lee Metford was produced commercially and used by civilian target shooters until the outbreak of World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, as it was considered to be inherently more accurate than the Enfield pattern of rifling. In this context, barrels and boltheads could be replaced as frequently as the owner wished, or could afford.

See also

  • British military rifles
    British military rifles

    The origins of the modern British military rifle are within its predecessor the Brown Bess musket. While a musket was largely inaccurate due to a lack of rifling and generous tolerance to allow for muzzle-loading it was cheaper to produce, loaded quickly, and the use in volley fire by massed troops meant accuracy was largely irrelevant....
  • Charlton Automatic Rifle
    Charlton Automatic Rifle

    The Charlton Automatic Rifle was a fully automatic conversion of the Lee-Enfield rifle, designed by New Zealander Philip Charlton in 1941 to act as a substitute for the Bren and Lewis gun light machine guns which were in chronically short supply at the time....
  • Lee Model 1895