Shooting It Out
By LAIN COLQUHOUN
LAST week, at the Infantry School on Salisbury Plain, the Army and the E.M.2—the new British service rifle—staged a convincing demonstration in favour of the latter. The Army's stage management was good, and, given its opportunities, the E.M.2 practically sold itself. That, at least, is how it appeared to a layman. The attendant galaxy of Service officers from almost every country in the world except the Soviet Union appeared equally impressed. They had reason to be impressed. The exacting field-firing tests showed that the new rifle can do all, and more, that is asked of it as the personal weapon of the infantry soldier.
Doubts and criticisms of it obviously remain, not in British minds, but in the minds of the Americans and the French to whom it has not yet commended itself as the standard weapon for the N.A.T.O. Powers ; mass production of the E.M.2 is to be held up pending further international discussion. It is difficult to believe that these doubts can concern the technical qualities of the weapon. They must be apropos of either (a) the funda- mental assumptions about modern battle upon which the War Office has-based its requirements for the rifle of today or (b) the wisdom, at the present juncture, of embarking on the production of an entirely new infantry weapon and its ammunition with all the delays that this implies. The British military mind has certainly never been panicked into hasty decisions about .new weapons. On the other hand, history has never proved it to be fatally behind events—although sometimes the race has been too close for comfort. Brown Bess the musket reigned supreme in the British infantry for more generations than anyone cares to remember. There was by 1800 a specialised Rifle Corps in the British Army which carried the Baker rifle, but all through the Napoleonic wars. Brown Bess was, in fact, the weapon-of the private soldier. It was not until the Crimean War that the Enfield rifle became the standard issue, and even then it was only a modified version of the invention of the Frenchman Minie.
Brown Bess was not, in fact, a very efficient instrument for the projection of missiles toward an enemy. To modern eyes it was, with its bayonet fixed, little better than a development of the pike, 'except that in this form it did not receive cavalry nearly so Well as the pike did. Its range was little more than a quarter of that of contemporary rifles. Its accuracy was very poor, and its rate of fire was extremely low. It was as efficient as any musket of its time, but to be really effective it had to be used in the mass by soldiers whose firing and reloading drill was of superlatively high quality. It was the rigid excellence of the British infantryman's drill both in square and line that gave him his superiority. As the 'nineteenth century 'drew On, rifled weapons became more common, and the design of the bullet improved. Better propellants gave higher muzzle velocities and flatter trajectories. Range and accuracy were greatly increased. These developments discCuraged the presentation of men in the mass before a resolute enemy. That tactic became suicidal. This was not fully appre- ciated until about 1915, although it was gradually dawning on the' military mind during the preceding sixty years. But if one dare not muster a throng of soldiers each to fire his shot at the enemy, how was the requisite volume of fire to be obtained? The answer lay in making it possible for each man to fire a greater number of shots per minute. Breech-loading was the first advance toward this end. In 1871 the British Army adopted the Martini-Henry, its first breech- loading rifle. It was far simpler and quicker to load from the breech than from the muzzle. Then came the repeating rifles. In 1884 Germany converted her Mausers to a magazine feed. In 1888 Britain introduced into her forces the Lee,Metford rifle of - .303 calibre with a box magazine. Five years later this was modified with a better barrel to take, a cordite propellant and emerged as the first Lee-Enfield rifle. Boer War experience showed that the Lee-Enfield was too long for the cavalry, so; with the idea of producing a weapon which all arms of the service could use, five inches were chopped off and the first short maga- zine Lee-Enfield appeared. With minor modifications this re- mained the weapon of the British infantry soldier unchallenged until the E.M.2 was designed.
During all these years of development the requirement of the British service rifle remained much the same. It was a general- purpose weapon, never cast for a specialist role. It had to kill its man—and the further away the better. When aircraft appeared, a drill was invented to enable the soldier to shoot them with his rifle. When tanks came on the scene, the experts invented the armour-piercing bullet—and they made it to fit the .303 rifle. Experience in the last war has altered all this. If we are to understand how the argument now runs, and how it has ended in the new rifle, it is best to forget all about rifles and to talk about bullets. The bullet, after all, is, really the weapon.' The rifle is only the means by which the missile is projected to its destination. The design of the rifle is largely determined by, • the projectile it will fire. It is now regarded as futile and misleading to expect the bullet which is launched by the infantryman from his personal weapon to deal with men at a great distance, with aircraft, or with armour, except for steel helmets or perhaps light body armour. These will all be targets for weapons other than the rifle-bullet. The latter is now only required to be able to kill a man at a maximum range of six hundred yards, piercing his steel helmet at that range if necessary. It should also be able to penetrate the body of ordinary, unarmoured vehicles. If it is to be able to carry out- its new role satisfactorily, the modem bullet must be capable of being delivered at a much higher rate of fire than is the .303 bullet from the Lee-Enfield rifle. These are the latest decisions of the War Office, and it is these which, have made possible the new rifle with its .280 or 7mm. ammuni- tion. The new bullet and its charge are smaller'and lighter than the old. To fire them it has been possible to design a rifle which . is revolutionary.
The E.M.2, the 7mm. rifle, is much lighter and handier than its. predecessor. It is self-loading where the Lee-Enfield has a hand- operated bolt action. Its rate of fire is therefore about four times as great. The opportunity has been taken of designing entirely new sights which are as fool-proof as anything requiring human intervention can be. But in spite of its refinements, the E.M.2 is rugged and simple to operate. It will not readily jam ; in .this respect it has passed tests which the American standard combat rifle, the Garand, cannot pass. More ammunition will un- , doubtedly be used if the E.M.2 goes into general service. That, indeed; is part of the idea. But the ammunition will be lighter. More can be carried on the man, and very much more on the normal establishment of transport of an infantry division.
It may well be argued that, in spite of all these martial quali-! ties of the E.M.2, production difficulties are against it. If Britain alone adopts it, she will be out of step with her Allies. If. the , whole Atlantic Pact goes in for the E.M.2, the production delays,, will be stupendous. All this is true enough, but there are certain factors to be set against it. In the first place, the Russians have an automatic rifle. Therefore N.A.T.O. ought to have one, too. True, they might standardise on the Garand, the American auto- matic. But as a piece of mechanism the E.M.2 is demonstrably better than the Garand. And if the tactical assumptions of the British War Office are correct, the E.M.2 is better adapted to modern warfare than is the Garand, which is unnecessarily, powerful and heavy. Britain, using the Lee-Enfield .303, is already out of step with her friends. If she is going to change, as she ought, is it not wiser to go straight for the better weapon instead of making two jumps, with the Garand as the intermediate one? The new 7mm. ammunition is so designed that the Garand can be very easily converted to use it—and not only the Garand but also the light anti medium machine-guns of both the British and American forces. There -is a strong case' for making these conversions as quickly as possible. Then at least the ammunition would be standardised, and, behind that safety curtain; production of the new rifles could go forward.
If the Americans are not questioning the basic military .assumptions on which such a programme rests, it is •difficult to see why they are hesitating. They are the last people in the world to be blind to the technical qualities of a new machine. But if tactics are the trouble, cap we not now- have the rival theories?
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