What is your favorite WW2 Bolt action?

[texas gunman]

We are talking battle rifle, right?, the British Enfields is possbily one of the most reliable field guns ever advised.

Rear locked lugs, fast bolt, removable mags, KISS, rugged.


I've owned many surplus bolt rifles, almost find the Enfields design awsome.

Modern bolt rifle, have to go with Savage10 in .308, ten to twenty something years ago, M40 or Rem700s.

TG

 

[p99guy]

Just about WW2 bolt action military rifles as described in the poll list...wasnt concerning civy or modern.

 

[STAGE 2]

Nothing beats a national match 1903A3. Of course the enfield comes in a very close second with the K-31 given an honorable mention.

 

[Tikirocker]

P99,

Beautiful quiver of Mosin Nagants there - I am very partial to those also. The AJ Parker sight is a beauty - I'm hanging out for a Parker Hale to go on my No4 but the classic I have that we use in Australia was made by Central - an Aussie company from the old days. I am buying a mint unissued Finn M39 in a few months - can't wait for that but while we are showing off our clobber here's a couple of more of mine.

Ishevsk 1944 M44 - All matching, mirror bore.

SWP45 1945 Waffenbrun - Israeli K98 with German and Israeli markings.

 

[bennnn]

Quick crappy pic,,but that should tell you where my vote went.....

But I can't really pick just one rifle,,, c'mon........

 

[jrfoxx]

I picked the Enfield also.Mine is REAL accurate, the bolt is VERY fast, easy and smooth, it holds 10 rds compared to most at 5-8, and the peep sights are fast, accurate, and easy to use. And .303 british has plenty of power and accuracy for human tagets, and I'm sure would work well on most N. American critters quite well, with a well placed shot, out to 300yds.

And, so as to not to let RedneckFur down in his lust for pics....:barf:

"U.S. Property" marked Savage Enfield No.4 MKI

 

[srtrax]

I feel like i keep kicking the same ol' horse, 1909 Argintine Mauser! Giddy-up-go.

 

[p99guy]

the 91/30 PU just isnt complete without the 4x Soviet scout periscope..like you seen actor Ron Pearlman use in "Enemy At The Gates"

 

[FirstFreedom]

While I like Lee-Enfields, honestly I don't find them all that reliable - they seem very sensitive to any tweaking of the feed lips or the the rear of the lips. The Mausers seem much more reliable - I have to go with the 98 or K98, or the 1903.

And the final push forward to cock a lee-enfield, although it can indeed be done *fast*, it takes its toll on the palm of your hand - a cock-on-opening bolt is more comfortable in the long run.

 

[Tikirocker]

Hate to say it Firstfreedom but you'd be alone among millions calling an Enfield unreliable ... they are a most reliable battle rifle and rugged taboot as is evidenced by their long service and world wide renown. If you are looking for something to nit pick you can do that with ANY rifle ... this doesn't mean they lack reliability however.

 

[Davis]

"It has a removable magazine thats far easier to fix and modify and replace damage"

That can be a curse, too, as the magazine is more likely to suffer damage than on a Mosin or Carcano, both with external magazines, definitely easier to damage than the Mauser or Arisaka, and certainly more likely to be lost than any of them.

Also, even though the safety is easily manipulated with the thumb while trigger finger is at the ready, it was expressly forbidden to do that. The official method of engaging/disengaging the safety was with the trigger finger, which would move the entire hand about as much as a Mauser.

Of course, I am pretty sure that in the field, when such things no longer mattered, most Enfielders simply used their thumbs to flip it off or on.

In any case, the Enfield is undoubtably the most useful bolt-action combat rifle of WWI or WWII. While others might be more comely (like the Mauser), stronger, (Mauser or Arisaka), simpler to maintain (Mosin) or more rugged overall construction (Mosin), the culmination of a rugged design, 10 round magazine, fast bolt, easy safety, make it the best of them all.

Davis

 

[paknheat]

I also would have to vote for the Enfield models.

 

[FirstFreedom]

Hate to say it Firstfreedom but you'd be alone among millions calling an Enfield unreliable ... they are a most reliable battle rifle

Maybe I'm alone among millions, but two of the three that I've had, both No. 4s, would jam, jam, jam. Low jam, high jam, not stripping one off at all, you name it. With multiple different mags, same story. Tweak front left feed lips. Tweak front right. Tweak rear left. Tweak rear right. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually, you get everything *just right* and the damn things will strip rounds off and feed very reliably. But I sure as hell wouldn't trust one in a serious fight. That's been my actual real experience. The Lee-Enfield has some great points, but I seriously doubt reliability is among them, relative to other designs. Now, since this is a magazine issue, if I had a newly manufactured mag, or one which had never been used, so that everything is perfectly in spec, then I'm quite sure it would be utterly reliable. Point is, with use, spit happens, and mags get bent, dinged, etc. This rifle is sensitive to any slight change in the angle of feed lips on the mags, and with them being removable, this makes them much more susceptible to bending & dinging.

Now, in stark contrast, take 98 mausers, k31s, 96 mausers, etc. - ultra reliable feeding, in my (albeit limited) experience. As you say, I could be the only one in the world. I would bet a thousand dollars right now, however, that I'm not the only one who's had jammomatic SMLEs (again, it's a magazine issue, but that doesn't mean it isn't a real issue with the rifle/mag combo).

Now, are Lee-Enfields FAST? Heck yeah, they are awesomely fast for a turnbolt.

 

[Tikirocker]

Maybe I'm alone among millions, but two of the three that I've had, both No. 4s, would jam, jam, jam. Low jam, high jam, not stripping one off at all, you name it. With multiple different mags, same story.

I've never had this problem ... I don't hear any such complaints from fellow shooters and collectors that I talk with both locally and internationally either. One thing that can often cause this is people NOT knowing how to correctly load a stripper clip or magazine for an Enfield and instead they get a rim over jam! Are you SURE you are loading correctly in the step fashion for .303 rounds?

You will find the rifle isn't at fault but 99% of the time rather it's user error ... apart from that if the magazines are well maintained and all other things are equal you'll never have any problems with an Enfield.

 

[Limeyfellow]

Out of the 40 or so Lee Enfields I have used and the many I've owned I had two with loading problems. One was bent magazine lips. That took all of about 30 seconds to fix. The other was a really bad bent up follower. Both came from a consignment sale I bought where I got both rifles for $90 back in 1999. Had to replace the follower as it was just too badly bent up but that would have disabled any rifle.

Both are working fine now. The vast majority won't have this problem and the few jams are usually from inproper loading. The magazine Paris Lee created works just fine and just because a few old beaters had been bent up and abused badly over the 60-100 years they have been in service and used is no big news.

Seen one or two Mausers suffer from the same problem too and even a Swiss K31 miss its target if you don't make sure you have the rounds pressed in just right.

 

[Gewehr98]

U.S. Remington Model 1903A4 Sniper

Smooth, accurate, and it fires the good old .30-06 round.

 

[FirstFreedom]

Well, it's not that difficult, is it...the rim of the top round has to be in front of the rim of the round immediately under it, and so on, correct? If the rim on top were behind the rim below, it would be a problem. That's common sense to me. Now if it's supposed to be the other way (180 degrees from my intuition), and the rim on top goes BEHIND the rim of the round below, and so on, then I guess I'm doing it wrong.

If that is not the case, then again, as I said a couple of times, this is a MAGAZINE issue, not rifle, not user, not ammo (this is ball/spire ammo). It is caused by bent feed lips. This is definitely what is causing the jams and failure to strip off rounds. MY experience would suggest that many many many thousands of magazines out there have bent feed lips and will cause the rifle to be a jammomatic, if one can fairly extrapolate my 2 out of 3 experience. But perhaps one cannot fairly extrapolate this from my very small sample. Perhaps I'm just very unlucky. That's certainly possible. Very unlikely, but possible. Regardless of what my luck is on getting jacked up mags, these facts remain: (1) The rifle is highly reliable when a mag is used that is still to specs. (2) The rifle is very sensitive to mags being out of spec; that is to say, it doesn't take *much* of a bend of the mag body or lips to cause jams - it is intolerant to being out of spec, (3) In light of two, coupled with the fact that the mags detach, making them more susceptible to being hit and banged around, makes the rifle a bit suspect for serious defensive work, in light of the highly reliable, *non*-sensitive alternatives. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary.

 

[Tikirocker]

Rim of top round in front of the one below is correct ... tell me, do you use chargers to load your mags or do you load the mag up removed from the rifle and then slap it into the rifle?

As to your previous comments; your assertion that the Enfield is unreliable in a fight is pretty absurd - a rifle that has had a longer service than any other in major conflicts, used by dozens of Allied nations during both World Wars and beyond - still used by many to this very day ... known to be both rugged and reliable to a fault. Do you honestly believe that if these rifles were so sensitive and un-reliable that they would have been used as the main battle rifle by so many for so long? This is rhetorical since I already know the answer ... but I'll await your answer to the above before I have further suggestions.

 

[FirstFreedom]

your assertion that the Enfield is unreliable in a fight is pretty absurd

How so? Do you think it's gonna go from jamming every shot when dry cycling or shooting at the range, to suddently working perfectly just because I'm *in a fight*? Which assertion is absurd here? These I own are in fact, patently, demonstrably unreliable (or at least they WERE, until I fiddled excessively with the mag lips to get them "goldilocks" just right). Being "in a fight" isn't gonna change that fact. Are you claiming I'm making this up?

I think YOU should use it in a fight, if you're so all-fired up about its infallibility. It's proven to me that it's quite unreliable if anything happens to the mags. Quite unlike other old milsurp rifles I have. So I'll choose based on my experience. I don't care if 5 billion people used the rifles to kill 10 billion enemies without a single jam (allegedly). I KNOW what I see and experience with my own eyes. My eyes are not deceiving me. I'm gonna go with actual experience over some hearsay every time. Remember, everyone thought that the world was flat for a long time too, because that is what was repeated as "fact" over and over. When the chips are down, there are many better choices, EVEN among old rifles of the same vintage (WWI and WWII eras). I can't be worrying about whether I may have dropped the mags and bent the feed lips a couple hundreths of an inch, if the S ever hits the F (which of course, most likely, it WON'T ever, but nevertheless....)

 

[ksstargazer]

My favorite would be the Finnish M28/30. Used by the best sniper ever, Simo Hayha and the rifle was a winner in the 1936 Olympics. Deadly accurate which is why a small Army of Finns could resist a much larger Army of Soviets.