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Notes
on the Pattern
of 1914 Volley Sights
The basic idea was pretty simple: if you could line up every man in the company and train them to aim and fire at distant targets (1200 - 2500 yards), you could rain harassing fire on distant targets. This was also much cheaper than the new-fangled machine guns. Starting with the first 'Long Lee' Enfield in 1888, all Enfield rifles were equipped with a special set of sights for long-range volley fire.
The sight radius of the Pattern of 1914 rifle was different from the SMLE and required it's own unique volley sights. The front and rear arms are not interchangeable with the SMLE.
World War One quickly proved that the idea of massed volley fire was as obsolete as the old "fighting square" of the Zulu War days and by 1917 the volley sight had been dropped from SMLE production. By that time the American P14 Enfields had arrived. For a variety of reasons, very few P14s saw front line service. After the war they went into storage or were sold abroad (to Latvia, among other places). In 1939 the British Government began removing the remaining P14 rifles from stores and returning them to service status as specified by the Weedon Repair Standard (WRS) - which called for the volley sights to be removed and the obsolete parts discarded - which is why it is almost impossible to find the original front dial pointer arm today.
Almost all small parts of a P-14 rifle are marked with the manufacturer's mark (R - Remington; E - Eddystone; W - Winchester). Finding OEM samples of these parts allows us to document the type and location of the manufacturer's mark.
| Volley
Sight taken from a REMINGTON P14 Bead missing; no British inspection or OEM marks visible on front. |
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Remington stamps visible
on reverse. Photos courtesy of |
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| WINCHESTER mark found on the back
of the P-14 volley sight dial. EDDYSTONE volley sight dials are typically marked on the front. |
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| OEM P-14 volley sight arms were marked in different places by each manufacturer; Winchester parts are marked on the back; the Remington mark is usually hidden by the bolt-stop spring. |  |
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| ERRATA Volume 4 of British Enfield Rifles, The Pattern 1914 & US Model 1917 Rifles (pg. 95) states that the dial pointer is 2.22" long. I discovered that this was incorrect after I had 20 reproduction P14 volley sight arms made - and then had to remake them. The correct length is 2.1". |
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