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Title:	RIFLE, MILITARY -  BRITISH RIFLE ENFIELD NO. 9 X1E1 7.62MM SN# EN103
Maker/Manufacturer:	JANSEN, STEFAN
Date of Manufacture:	C 1952
Eminent Figure:
Catalog Number:	SPAR 3609
Measurements:	OL: 90.1CM 35 1/2" BL: 64.7CM 25 1/2"

Object Description:

BRITISH RIFLE NO. 9 X1E1 7.62MM SN# EN103
Manufactured by the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, England - British assault rifle. Select-fire, gas-operated, 7.62mm version of the EM2 assault rifle. Fed by 20-round detachable box magazine. Rubber padded metal butt. Straight line stock with pistol grip.

Markings:
Receiver: EN 103/ENFIELD.

Weapon donated to the Springfield Armory by the British War Office.

HSOA, 1960, 1JUL-31DEC - "Brigadier Lindsay of the British Army presented an EM2 rifle to the Springfield Armory Benton Small Arms Museum."

Notes: The .280 version was approved for service in 1951. Rejected by Churchill due to NATO requirements dictated by the United States.

"Though the British government approved the EM-2 for service as the 'Rifle 7mm No. 9 Mk 1' in 1951, the U.S. Army, backed by the French, refused to accept the .280 cartridge as a suitable NATO standard. Eventually, in October 1951, the new Conservative government rescinded approval; in December 1953, the British Army ordered five thousand FAL rifles for troop trials and the EM-2 was abandoned.
SIMILAR GUNS - No. 9 X1E1. BSA made six guns for trials with the US .30 T65 cartridge, and Enfield then made fifteen similar 'No. 9 X1E1' rifles numbered EN100-EN114." - Walter

Only 25 presentations versions were made in 7.62mm. The only other one known in America is housed in the Winchester Collection in Cody, Wyoming.
In .280 configuration this was a classic assault rifle. Tests in 1951 clearly demonstrated that this piece outperformed the FN and the T25 in full-auto mode. So impressed were the British with it that they adopted it as there Rifle No. 9.
But standardization was now the rage. The Americans were locked into the T65E3 cartridge (7.62mm). If the British were going to sign on to NATO they had to adopt the FN rifle. While they rebuilt the EM2 in 7.62mm, when the time came to test it, they withdrew it from the test.
In a meeting between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Harry S Truman, the British did agree to adopt the FN. The EM2 was history.
While NATO locked itself into he 7.62mm, a round not compatible with "controlled and sustained" full automatic fire, in the USSR, Kalashnikov developed his now famous AK47. Firing a 7.62x39mm, rimless cartridge, the Russians had learned what the Germans had taught in WWII with the MP43, MP44 & STG45. An 'intermediate cartridge' was the key in developing an assault rifle. Plus, the ballistics of the "intermediate cartridge" are just as effective. The British reminded the Americans that they were perfectly happy with their .276 cartridge developed in the 1920s, and subjected to rigorous testing. Two M1s in the SPAR collection are actually chambered for the British .280 (SPAR-3506 & 3512), and test reports were favorable.
What it really came down to as Thomas B. Dugelby notes in his "EM-2 Concept & Design," was the NIH factor - Not Invented Here. The Americans were not going to adopt either the British caliber or a British weapon, and the British should have known that.

"The Russians, of course, were not the only people to have studied the German 7.92-mm short cartridge with interest. Probably the most interested were the British who, even before the war ended, were looking ahead and contemplating a new automatic rifle to replace the elderly Lee-Enfield magazine rifle. The first point to be settled was the cartridge, sinced the rimmed .303 cartridge was not the ideal for an automatic weapon - at one stage there was a move to adopt the 7.92-mm Mauser cartridge, since this was already in production in Binate for tank machine guns, but contemplation of the German Sturmgewehr and its cartridge soon disposed of the idea. As soon as the war ended an 'Ideal Cartridge Board' was set up to go closely into the cartridge question, and after much debate and sound reasoning, they arrived at a 7-mm 'intermediate' round, shorter than the .303 and somewhat longer than the German short cartridge. It is a notable thing that whenever, and wherever, a commission sits to determine the ideNext came the question of a rifle, and a design by Stefan Jansen of the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield broke new ground in several directions. Jansen saw the point of having a short cartridge in order to have a compact rifle, but he also appreciated that accuracy and good velocity come from having a long barrel, and he therefore designed his rifle in the fashion known (for unknown reasons) as a 'bullpup.' In this type of weapon the barrel is the same length as that of a conventional rifle, but the mechanism is set back in the stock so that the shoulder pad is actually at the end of the receiver, instead of being a foot behind it on the end of a piece of wood, and the bolt and the chamber are alongside the firer's face. This means that in order to get the trigger in a position convenient to the human form, it is in front of the magazine and chamber by a considerable distance. It also means that the rifle tends to lie low in the firer's grip and that his head, and therefore his eye, is some height above the top of the barrel, which in turn means that the sights have to be lifted up on stalks. Jansen got round this by putting a looped carrying handle on top of the gun to which the eye fell naturally as the rifle was held.
This became the 7-mm Rifle EM2 (for Experimental Model 2), and was a resounding success - it was gas-operated, using hinged flaps to lock the bolt into the receiver and fired from a 20-shot magazine. It was approved for issue in 1951 as the Rifle, 7mm, No 9 Mark 1, but this announcement merely brought to a head a dispute which had been rumbling through the NATO countries for some months - the question of the future NATO cartridge.
Pages could be, and have been, written on this subject, but we can condense it - the British had selected a short cartridge, but the Americans were opposed to it, refusing any reduction in performance from the .30-06 cartridge. The rest of NATO sat around and waited for them to make up their minds. Eventually it became a question of economic clout, and since the Americans were putting up most of the money and equipment for NATO, they had the final say. They were not particularly impressed by the short cartridge argument, but for the sake of amity, agreed to a compromise cartridge, which, in effect, was a .30-06 shortened slightly, but with practically the same performance. By political pressure this was forced on to NATO, and reluctantly agreed by the British, who now had to scrap their rifle and start again." - Ian Hogg

References:
Hogg, Ian. THE STORY OF THE GUN. St. Martin's Press. N.Y., N.Y. 1996.
Walter, John. RIFLES OF THE WORLD. 2nd Ed. Krause Publications. Iola, Wi. 1998.