Nah, it's begun after the WW1 when Mauser Arsenal was desperate and broke. They were forbidden to produce military weapon. They sold in a sneaky way huge bunch of equipment to Czechoslovakia. Then they start to sell Mauser rifle licenses to various gun-producers around the world.
On the other hand no one ever had a licence to produce SMLE but Brits &Co, even the US Savage didn't have right to produce the rifle for anything but lend -lease for British forces.
and then 50 years later no one simply needed to buy a license of SMLE to make a hunting rifle.
Paul Mauser was a very effective salesman-well before WW1 Mauser was busy selling to as many countries as possible-there were, of course, far fewer countries to sell to but they did a very effective job in South America in particular-they also put effort into sporting guns as did FN in Belgium who used the Mauser system under license-the Mauser is a good accurate system for hunting/target use and again as said prev was used by many makers post WW1 and 2 for new or reworked rifles.
Nobody mentioned a dead giveaway on this bayonet - the broad arrow! This is a common British military acceptance or government property mark used on all kinds of things. NH
Walkwolf Thanks, I'm going to a gun show today so I cancelled that order. But it as a just like the on in # 17.
Gday Scout,
Have a read up on the battle of the Mons in 23 Aug 1914 for evidence re the effectiveness of the MK1 No. 2 SMLE . The British "Old Army" of that era were very highly trained in musketry (from lessons learnt in the Boer War) and could fire 20-30 aimed shots per minute.The effect of their SMLE,s on the German infantry across open ground that day is legend. The Germans thought the British had a high concentration of Machine Guns and that they had done the damage. The fast action of the Lee Enfield,10 round mag and the musketry of the average British rifleman was the real reason the enemy were stopped that day.
I feel one of the greatest tests for a military rifle is it's ability to operate in the most adverse of conditions. This the Lee Enfield has achieved from ice to tropical humidity. I would love to see how the Mauser action would have stood up the mud and humidity of say Burma, New Guinea or the SW Pacific.
But again I to may be a tad bias.
All the best
Dave
The Arisaka is a Mauser type action-very strong and serviceable but one of the parameters for the Mauser was that the rifle has a low rate of fire so that conscript armies of the type that formed most of the forces of the period wouldn't blast away and use all their ammo up in five minutes at the start of a battle.
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