The best infantry rifle – for its time – ever produced 

This is the first of a series by award-winning author Tom Lewis on historical firearms that The Report will be running throughout 2026. 

Many Australians’ most memorable early experiences with military firearms may have been with the venerable Lee Enfield .303 in school cadets. Sometimes sleeved down to .22, these beautifully elegant rifles equipped our troops by the hundreds of thousands in World War II. 

Incredibly though, these weapons also equipped Aussie troops in the 1914-1918 Great War – the terms WWI and II were not used until around 1940. Thousands of Australian soldiers trained with the rifles while awaiting the troop transports to Gallipoli in 1914-15. This was then the weapon they fought with in those Turkish trench positions. After the campaign to force a new front failed, the soldiers took their rifles with them across the Mediterranean to join the fight in France. The rifle was so good it was deemed suitable for use 20 years later in another world conflict. 

The .303 was a superb weapon, accurate and quick firing, but above all, sturdy and reliable. If the definition of the best infantry rifle is one that can be thrown into liquid mud, pulled out, wiped off in 30 seconds and then loaded and fired, then the .303 was your man. 

The full name was the SMLE – Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield .303. The ‘short’ referred to it being shorter than the weapon it replaced, the 1895 version of a .303 calibre with a 30.2-inch (770 mm) barrel as opposed to a 21.2-inch (540 mm) one. ‘Magazine’ referred to the fact it was a magazine-fed rifle, a very desirable feature in the field, for it replaced single-shot weapons and thus offered a higher rate of fire. 

This high cyclic rate was in fact one of the battlefield-changing aspects of such magazine weapons. It was a change as dramatic as the long-distance accurate rifle replacing the short-distance musket of the Napoleonic wars. Morale-inspiring colourful uniforms of those days were perfectly understandable – morale is one third of combat power, something brilliant soldiers like Napoleon and his formidable opponent, the Duke of Wellington, understood well. Carefully manoeuvred, musket-equipped troops could be moved about some 400 yards from the enemy, who could not reach them with his firearms. The rifle’s gradually improving distance changed that, and now a magazine-fed rifle added high rates of fire to the mix. 

This was the picture when the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) deployed to France in 1914. They were coming to the aid of the Belgians and the French against the Germans. It would be the first modern war fought between comparatively matched forces – and it was this type of rifle which would change the face of battle forever. 

The Germans were equipped with the Mauser Gewehr 98, a similar weapon except for its five-round magazine. Two forces facing each other with these weapons produced such a storm of fire that it was impossible to advance against it. Naturally, the troops lay down to fire more safely, and naturally, too, a scrape in the ground was better than nothing. A trench was better still – and so the war quickly became one of a front of trenches hundreds of kilometres in length. The Western Front began in 1914 and lasted until 1918 and much of it was because of the quick-firing modern weapons now in use. 

A well-trained British infantryman – and the BEF were superb – was capable of firing 20 shots a minute, and they were well-aimed shots too. The SMLE can hit a man-sized target at 500 metres. The firepower from such rifles on both sides was enormous and with an additional two machineguns for each battalion fired from the flanks in enfilade, little advance could be made.  

Contrary to what many movies would have viewers believe, any necessary attacks on a large scale were well worked out beforehand. Artillery bombardments of the enemy positions would be made, and a ‘creeping barrage’ of artillery bursts would be made in front of the men before they walked forward. Even so, with barbed wire entanglements and the barrage lifting before the enemy trenches were reached, there was enough time for the enemy to emerge from dugouts and begin rifle firing. It took the development of the tank along with aircraft support to break the Western Front in 1918. 

A moment of calm in the trenches. Lee Enfields .303s lean at the ready. 

The .303 was loaded by placing the full magazine with its staggered ten cartridges in place and then working the bolt on the right-hand side of the weapon to the rear. Moving it forward would push a cartridge into the breech, and with the bolt closed the rifle was ready to fire. An adjustable backsight would be adjusted, and if the weapon was not intended to be fired immediately a safety catch would prevent both the trigger and bolt being operated. 

After a round was fired, the bolt would be operated, and this would eject the smoking cartridge case from the breech. The rifle does have some ‘kick’, which can be lessened by tucking it firmly into the shoulder. Firing would go on until the magazine was empty. It could be reloaded in place by using two ‘stripper clips’ of five rounds each. A well-trained soldier could reload in fewer than five seconds. 

Incidentally, the rifle was not produced for left-handers and nor was there a conversion kit to produce the weapon for southpaws. 

The rifle took the Pattern 1907 bayonet, with a length of 550mm, of which 430mm was the blade itself. These bayonets had a double hooked quillon, to engage an opponent’s bayonet and enable his rifle to be twisted out of his grip. The quillon was generally disliked and often unofficially removed by unit armourers. 

Original hooked quillion of the Pattern 1907 bayonet (Britsh Army). 

There are several versions of the SMLE. The most produced model is the Mark III*. The ‘*’ saw the removal of a magazine cut-off mechanism and the volley sight. A future article will outline the further developments far and wide that the SMLE had in its career. 

A magazine Lee Enfield Mk I rifle (Long Tom), used in the Second Boer War by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. 

On the Western Front: British soldiers with rifles in hand moving forward through wire at the start of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. Although this scene is now generally considered to have been staged for the camera, possibly at a Trench Mortar School well behind the lines, this image and the film sequence from which it is derived, have regularly been used to represent British troops “going over the top” at the start of an assault on the Western Front. Source: Imperial War Museum. 

About the author:  

Military historian; public speaker, author of 25 books, and a retired naval officer, Dr Tom Lewis received the Order of Australian Medal (OAM) for services to naval history. He served in the Iraq War in 2006 as an Intelligence analyst, and also saw Defence work in East Timor. He is an expert on World War II, especially in the Pacific, but has also written in areas including medieval battle, and the reality of battlefield behaviour. He has worked as a divemaster, high school teacher, and journalist. His latest books are Cyclone Warriors – the Armed Forces in Cyclone Tracy; The Secret Submarine, revealing the RAAF’s sinking of the Japanese I-178 off Sydney in 1943, and Australia’s Coastal War, which brings together all of the submarine, surface, and air attacks around WWII Australia. The Sinking of HMAS Sydney has just won the 2024 Australian Naval Institute’s Commodore Sam Bateman Book Prize.