Charlton Automatic Rifle

History of the Charlton Automatic Rifle

Any study of WWII guns largely covers the study of the major world powers involved at the time. Of course, this tends to leave small countries that lack the aforementioned industrial prowess often overlooked - like New Zealand and its "Charlton Automatic Rifle". Since these countries are unlikely to match local autonomous weapons manufacturing capabilities in numbers, they are often forced to procure large quantities of proven systems from abroad. The Charlton Automatic Rifle was born out of the absolute necessity for the Japanese Empire to directly threaten the Australian mainland and even New Zealand.

As a result, it became increasingly clear to the New Zealand authorities that the inevitable Japanese invasion required a strong self-defense mentality. Even more desperate, most of New Zealand's troops were stationed in North Africa along with British and Commonwealth troops to stop the advance of the Axis powers, led by Germany and Italy.

With foreign arms shipments from the UK and US largely tied to other businesses, Australia and New Zealand have launched several homegrown initiatives to help strengthen national security. While New Zealand relied heavily on incoming supplies of British BREN and British-American Lewis machine guns, these came too slowly and their future availability was in question. For this reason, the New Zealand government has funded an effort to locally produce modern automatic weapons - a task that fell to Philip Charlton and his Charlton Motor Workshop.

This weapon would serve as a temporary solution or permanent fixture if the shipment of British and American products never materialized. It was decided to convert existing stock of vintage 1888 Lee-Metford service rifles and 1907 (Lithgow) Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III* bolt-action rifles into this role.

Design work on a new automatic rifle began in 1941.

The old rifle was fitted with a brand new all-new gas piston and sheet metal receiver to protect the internal moving parts from dust and obstruction. For obvious reasons, external protrusions such as the bolt handle have been eliminated, and the internal mechanism has been redesigned for semi-automatic/automatic firing.

The end product is a respectable-looking automatic weapon that has proven to perform its intended fire support role. After completing the necessary field trials, the weapon was accepted into service with the New Zealand Army as the "Charlton Automatic Rifle" and mass production began in 1942. The Charlton Motor Workshop in Hastings, New Zealand, has modified the Lee-Metford rifle, while Electrolux in Australia has been given the SMLE Mk III* rifle modification.

Both weapons revolve around the same primary semi-automatic fire function, with built-in fully automatic fire modes in extreme cases. The inner workings of both designs are the same, just their appearance is different.

The main difference in the New Zealand modification is the use of a foregrip and a standard bipod mount, allowing stable shooting from prone or burrowing positions. As expected from a forced mid-switch, the exterior design is largely functional in its overall approach, with a straight wooden pistol grip, simple wooden shoulder rest, metal handguards and a heat sink.

Barrel fins, a design feature of the past few years, were largely eliminated by the end of World War II. A gas cylinder was added under the barrel assembly in the traditional way, aiming was carried out by means of a conventional iron arrangement consisting of a rear flip-ramp mounted and fixed front post. The bipod is located directly in front of the handguard area.

The weapon is fed from a curved 30-round BREN-style magazine, while retaining support for a 10-round Lee Enfield magazine for good logistical reasons. The gun weighs 16 pounds unloaded, has a barrel length of 44.5 inches, and the caliber type is one that is widely accepted.

The 303 Imperial cartridge is fired at 600 rounds per minute by a pneumatic semi-automatic with a muzzle velocity of 2,440 feet per second. Effective range is 1,000 yards, although targets can be hit from 2,000 yards away, albeit with reduced accuracy.

In contrast, the Australian version of the Charlton Automatic is noticeably cleaner in appearance. It has a similar stock and pistol grip arrangement, with the magazine feeder conventionally mounted in front of the trigger assembly. The receiver is known for its sharp lines, which do a good job of hiding the inner workings.

The charging handle is mounted on the right side of the body in the usual way, the front is wrapped in a perforated jacket, while the barrel - to the muzzle - still retains the look of the original Lee-Enfield rifle, showing the gun's pedigree giving up some obvious s things.

In practice, the Charlton automatic rifle has proven itself quite well, given the rather hasty modification. It was reportedly sold as a reliable and effective weapon given the environment in which it was designed and manufactured. Their role on the battlefield should be similar to the American Browning BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) and the British BREN LMG.

However, their range was short-lived, as only 1,500 systems had fully gone through the conversion process, and the arrival of the BREN artillery replaced the Charlton artillery in the same supporting role. Once the BREN guns hit the market in large numbers, local production of the Charlton gun was put on hold and replaced by the Owen submachine gun. As such, the Charlton Automatic was only in service with the New Zealand Army until the end of the war in 1945, and not for long.

His legacy was also hampered by an accidental fire in his camp shortly after the war that destroyed many of the existing Charlton guns. As a result, only a few are still in circulation, and some of them have eventually found homes as museum collections.

In any case, the Charlton Automatic is a perfect case study combined with local ingenuity. If they were pushed into direct combat missions in numbers, they might have performed very well, as expected, and might even carry on the legacy of the famous British BREN.

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