While aimed shots and marksmanship were always emphasised in British army weapons training there was also another fundamental tactic that was drummed into all infantry soldiers known as “The Mad Minute”.
The MM was all soldiers firing,reloading,firing again etc.as fast as was humanly possible for a specified period under certain specific situations in actual combat,normally aginst a mass infantry attack or when being attacked while overwhelmingly outnumbered.
The weapon was pointed towards the enemy but not properly aimed though it has been said that the soldiers developed a subconscious aiming technique similar to that of Zen archers without their being aware of it.
During WW1 German troops were often under the impression that the British were indeed using semi automatic weapons when this tactic was used against them.
The main reason that the British army did not adopt a semi-auto at that time was as other posters have already said the belief that too much ammo would be blazed away on every occassion without the results justifying it and increasing the logistics needed to support the troops several fold again without any notable tactical advantages gained.
Rightly or wrongly the Brit Army at that time believed their American allies to be extremly profligate with small arms ammunition without actually killing or wounding any more of the enemy then those comparable units not armed with S.A.
That was the prewar Regular Army, which was pretty well gone by the beginning of 1915. Thereafter standards of shooting dropped drastically; there wasn’t time or facilities to make really good shots out of people. Many would reach for a grenade rather than a rifle.
I find it very hard to believe that you could outshoot a Garand with a Lee-Enfield, all other things being equal. Does it really take 30 seconds to drop in an 8-round clip and pull the trigger 8 times?
Even if you take this as the benchmark, that’s 5 clips from a Garand. Can you insert and empty a clip in 12 seconds? It would seem feasible.
Most of what I was going to say has already been mentioned, but I will add that the Sten Gun isn’t select fire- the Mk II (the most common one) only appeared in one flavour, and that was full-auto. They weren’t very accurate and had an unbelievable muzzle climb, but they were great for room-clearing and street-sweeping.
Lee-Enfield rifles are fast, accurate, and hold 10 rounds in the magazine. They can also work very well in the most craptacular of conditions, can go for ages without being cleaned, and when all else fails there’s a bayonet on the end.
A trained Lee-Enfield shooter can reload without losing the sight picture, and British military training of the era stressed individual marksmanship over volume of fire.
They were vaguely thinking about getting around to a self-loader when WWII kicked off, but decided to stay with the SMLE (and later No. 4 Lee-Enfield) rifles since their infrastructure was geared up for it, and- just as importantly- the long and rimmed .303 British round didn’t lend itself that well to a self-loading rifle, and it was too difficult to adopt a new round with a war on.
It says something that in 1944, the British introduced another bolt-action rifle, the Lee-Enfield No 5 Mk I “Jungle Carbine”, even when it was obvious that everyone else was developing or issuing self-loaders…
Those were aimed rounds, not simply pulling the trigger until the gun went “click”. In other words, 38 aimed rounds, hitting the centre area of the target, in 1 minute.
I don’t want to get involved in a Lee-Enfield vs Garand pissing contest here, though- they’re different guns, designed for different things. Although I will point out that the Lee-Enfield had been in service for nearly 40 years when the Garand was introduced and they’re still in service now, 120 years later…
I’d have to see proof that British military marksmanship standards were higher than those of the US before I’d buy that the SMLE is faster than the Garand even in aimed fire. US troops were most assuredly taught aimed fire, not spray and pray.
BTW, the Garand is still in active US service as a DMW in it’s PIP form as the M-14.
Uh, sorry, but your info here is wrong. STEN certainly is select fire - that metal stud/button in front of trigger guard is fire selector (pressed to the left auto, pressed to the right semi… or other way around, I don’t remember). Actually semi-auto fire was often advised, especially for longer distances (or for silenced versions).
What matters here is what a typical trained soldier could do with the weapons in question. There’s some Brit sergeant or another who gets trotted out like a trained pony in these discussions by “smelly” enthusiasts. He was, no doubt, an excellent shot and could fire an Enfield very quickly. He was not, however, an example of a average soldier’s level of ability to place aimed fire with his rifle.
It would seem you’re right- I went through my reference library and the Mk II does indeed have a fire-selector. All the old soldiers I’ve spoken too have only ever mentioned using the “Plumber’s Nightmare” in full-auto mode, which must be where the confusion came from.
The Sten was still great for room-clearing and street-sweeping, but if I was a British Commando in 1942 or 1943 being issued an SMG from on-hand stocks that didn’t include Thompson SMGs, I’d be trying to get my hands on a Lanchester SMG, or ditching the Sten as soon as I could relieve a German soldier of his MP-40.
I don’t believe anyone has said otherwise. The British Military’s marksmanship standards prior to WWI were quite high (Both Britain and the US had about the same marksmanship standards, IIRC), but by the end of WWI the British standards were basically “Put five rounds into a man-shaped target at 200 yards”- something that can be accomplished without too much trouble using either a bolt-action or a self-loading rifle.
Your point about the average soldier’s level of ability to place aimed fire with his rifle is well taken. However, the section you quote from the manual concerns an aiming exercise that involves holes being pushed in a target at the instructions of the trainee, not firing the rifle. 3 inches at 500 yards is simply beyond the mechanical accuracy of a military issue Garand. A modern reproduction Springfield Armory M1 can shoot a 1.5 to 2.5 inch group at 100 yards; original military issue would probably have done worse, although the 30-06 is an accurate cartridge.
Quite so on the Garand rifle, Bogeyman; I said as much about the rifle myself in Argent Towers’ thread about his new Garand rifle a few weeks back.
What’s important from the bit I quoted is that there was an expectation that the shooter could hold groups that small even if the rifle mechanically could not. “Aim small, miss small” as was said in some movie or another.
Exactly. Pretty much the gold standard for effective use of a bolt-action rifle. The question then becomes, how many rounds could a hypothetical Master Marksman have got into the same target at the same range in the same time with a Garand?
It would seem to be the sort of thing that one of the rifle-toting TMs might be able to help test, but my (uneducated) guess would be that some number higher than 38 should be attainable.
I’m not sure of the quality of this as a cite, but it claims that
Even allowing for the usual degree of fluff and exaggeration, and the reduced range, that’s not a bad rate of fire.
Here is a compilation of old British-made films dealing with rifley type stuff. The reporter states that the Garand fires 43 aimed shots a minute while the Lee-Enfield fires 27. Comparison of the rifles starts at 4:08. The Garand and the L-E are both being compared to the .280 bullpup design which was never adopted.
