SMLE Mk 5
Painted Black (?)
Right side chamber: "small symbol w/ENGLAND"
Right side barrel forward of hand guard: "small symbol w/ 303 22" 10.5 TONS"
Left side breech: "No 5 MK I (F) 0/47 AC 2997"
Bottom of end of stock: "AC 2997"
End of stock wrist: "F w/small symbol, F18"

Attached Images

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	2-28 B.jpg (28.3 KB, 74 views)

Yep! In the mid 1960's they could be bought new for $30. Wish I had one now.

In the late 50s, early 60s it was less than that. There was a store in Boston, called Filenes, probably still there. They were supposed to have originated the bargain basement. They got in a shipload of SMLEs and opened the top floor of their building that had been used for storage. They laid out rows of folding tables. On the tables were several thicknesses of newspapers, and on the newspapers were blobs of cosmolene in the general shape of a rifle. Mk IIIs and Mk IVs were $9.95 and Mk 5s were $13.95. No, I didn't buy one and I passed on the Mk 4t snipers in cases with accessories and scope for $75; I didn't think they'd be accurate.

Yall are making me sick! Of course I wasn't born then.

the jungle carbine was my first gun. my dad and uncle picked it out of a barrel of them for $32. when they brought it home they gave me an old toothbrush and a bottle of alcohol and I had to clean the cosmoline off. I started reloading for it with my uncle's Lyman 310 tool. this was back in the early 1960's. it was really stupid to get rid of it

The No. 5 often had a "wandering zero" so was relatively short lived in service. But many were used in the guerilla war in Malaya and in Kenya during the Mau-Mau Emergency. I've seen quite a few photos of them over the years. Check old National Geographics and similar magazines.


Our younger readers think they were really cheap once, and it's true that those old prices seem wonderful. But I was earning $1.43 an hour as a library page when I was in college. I think gas was some 30 cents a gallon.

I have one I bought for 50 bucks in 1970.I even have a bayonet for it,made by Wilkinson Sword,got that for five bucks in South Carolina and had my pick of them out of a big box.Used it for deer hunting when I was poor as a church mouse.Mine is a Fazackerly made in 1944,and is in nice shape.The wandering zero is in the White House.

In 1959, I paid $24.95 for a almost new one. I still have it along with like new bayonet.

Think I paid $225 for my BSA No.5 Mk.I in the 1990's

Over the years, have had several SMLE's around but like a lot of us have done, they got sold or traded. The last 2 were a Mk5 jungle carbine in 303 and an Ishapore in 7.62. The Ishapore seemed to shoot better, at least for me.

That's a bit of a myth. Wile it did/does exist it was due to the wood and later cosmoline swelling.

The wandering-zero deal does seem a myth. Mine shoots fine firing 5 or 10 shots...however I'm not pumping round after round out of the gun until it's hot as a firecracker....or wading across rivers...getting rained on...prying lids off crates with my carbine..or other-wise mistreating my cool 1945 vintage jungle carbine...

Accuracy issues mythical or not? Don't know...I've also read theorys that maybe the troops were just griping so they could get 'hands-on' some modern automatic rifles in a fiscally tight post-war economy...The Empire swimming in nice Enfields..and tooled-up to produce more Lee Enfields and .303 by the ton! Even many third-world countries were packing automatic-heat at grunt level well before The British Empire did.

I thought the British determind it was due to the lightening cuts in the reciever. They were assymetrical or something, and that caused different stresses during firing.

I can't even begin to explain 'compenation' which was something the Mk IIIs were supposed to have because of the light barrel.

The semi-official line was that the No.5 suffered from wandering zero problems. How much of that was truth and how much it had to do with the British army wanting a modern semi-auto will likely never be known.

As for the wandering zero effect, some folk say theirs does it, and others not. Most often the guns that do it have badly worn draws and/or warped forends allowing barrel contact. The barrel on a No.5 should be free floated.

Ah, yes, the No.1 MkIII and the so called compensation. I believe this relates to the way the forend fits at the barrel shank followed by the mid barrel band and the spring loaded pusher under the muzzle.

Even the No.4 had a variant of this technique in that the muzzle end was supposed to rest on the wood and required 7-10 lbs force to move it up off the contact point. The Russians also found that a consistent force at the muzzle with the rest of the barrel free floated improved accuracy on the Mosin Nagant.

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