Sgt. York was using a 1917 Enfield but it is a totally different gun than the Lee Enfield. The pattern 14 Enfield was a British attempt to improve on their rifles by going to a Mauser type action and a .280 cartridge.
WWI interrupted the whole thing and the British contracted with American manufacturers to produce the Pattern 14 but in .303 caliber. I am not sure if any of them ever made it to Britain but America had a shortage of rifles in 1917 and had the factories change the pattern 14 to 30-06 and named it the 1917 Enfield. We actually produced more of them than we did 1903 Springfields.
Thank you for that clarification. I had always thought he’d used a Springfield until a couple of years ago... it’s all just so complicated!
“... the British contracted with American manufacturers to produce the Pattern 14 but in .303 caliber. I am not sure if any of them ever made it to Britain but America had a shortage of rifles in 1917 and had the factories change the pattern 14 to 30-06 and named it the 1917 Enfield. We actually produced more of them than we did 1903 Springfields.”
The US M1917 Magazine Rifle (”1917 Enfield”) was made from 1917 until 1920 or so, at a far higher rate than the US Armories (Springfield and Rock Island) produced the M1903 Magazine Rifle during the war, so wartime-only totals were much higher. But the M1903 was built from 1903 to 1937 or so, then was produced under contract by Remington until 1942, when the M1903A3 was adopted, and that rifle was produced until circa 1944; thus totals exceeded the 1917, eventually.
Many American firms had contracts to supply the Allies with anything and everything, from arms and munitions to foodstuffs. Remington and Winchester are simply two among the better-known entities.
Industrial processes were somewhat less flexible circa 1917; after years of being wishy-washy, the United States was not prepared to supply its own tiny but growing military forces with weaponry already approved for active service.
Fortunately, redesigning the British Pattern 1914 rifle to fire the US 30-06 cartridge took minimal time; the original (Pattern 1913) had chambered a rimless cartridge, the 276 Enfield.
Haven’t heard how many US-produced Pattern 1914s made it into British hands, but the British Army did use the rifle in specialized applications calling for higher accuracy, like sniping.
The Imperial Russians contracted with Remington (at least) to produce their o1891g (Mosin-Nagant) rifles, and purchased some 200,000 M1895s from Winchester, chambering their 7.62x54R cartridge and modified with charger guides. Reportedly, it was not well-regarded: using a lever action while prone, or crawling about on the ground, is very awkward. And it’s likely every other rifle then in use suffered in comparison to the o1891g, when it came to stoutness and durability.
US equipage was less than brilliant during the First World War. Not a single aircraft of American design made it into production, and only a small number of US-built DH4s (copy of a British DeHavilland design) built in America got there; the entire effort was more of a political stunt, requiring the artificial freezing of an already obsolescent design at an arbitrary point.
Gives the lie, in some ways, to the postwar accusations against the nation of militarism, and industrialists as “merchants of death.”