- Thread Starter
- #21
Gday mate,Whats your take on the ey marking, and this particular rifle?
There seems to be a few different camps on that marking, here's my opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I don't believe the E.Y marking is for emergency use, I believe it denotes rifles delegated for secondary line service due to bore wear or some other issue including being obsolete. Some have found E.Y on grenade conversions, again I believe that's because they pulled those rifles and converted them to that use, why mess up a perfectly good enfield when you have a serviceable beaten up one for the conversions, especially when rifle grenades weren't a huge part of british infantry doctrine more of a nice to have. So I don't believe it stands for "Extra Yield" if that was the case they would have increased the barrel proofs on those rifles, which is appears they didn't do.
So regarding this particular rifle, come the start off WWI it was already being phased out, you do see some early on in the conflict but they already had ramped up production on the MKIII for 7 years at that point. From what I've read the royal navy ended up with a bunch of MKI's which makes some sense as they were forced to hand over all their MKIIIs in 1914 and even were forced to buy arisakas at some point for secondary and reserve units. So post wwi they go into storage, Ireland gains freedom in a moment of good will Britain donates some old enfields to the cause and pull a bunch out of the naval armories (that's the rumor anyway). They don't want give brand new ones or ones that don't work, just some good enough ones to keep them happy. In my experience something that is unsuitable will be stamps U/S (unserviceable) or D.P (Drill purpose).
So from what I've seen the Emergency Use opinion comes from a drawing of markings found in a 1960s enfield book, that doesn't state the primary source that they got it from. Ian Skennerton who wrote the holy Bible on enfield rifles is of a similar opinion to what I have, that it was a marking for secondary use within service, so reserve and territorial units. He mentions that is the only reference to that marking he has found.
Apologies for the long reply, I'll dig the rifle out later and have another good look over it for you.