DARWIN MILITARY MUSEUM
Darwin war history

Weapons of the Great War: The Canadian Ross rifle.

21/2/2018

 
The Ross rifle. It loaded five rounds rather than ten. The bayonet fell off during firing.  It was heavy, long, and prone to jamming because of dirt, of which there was plentiful supply on the trench warfare-dominated battlefields of the war. It was truly one of the worst guns to grace the battlefield.
Picture
Canadian infantryman with a Ross (Public domain)
Following an argument over rifles in the Boer War, the Canadian Ross rifle was born. Canada, as a Dominion of the British Empire, decided to produce its own service weapon.  The result? The disastrous Ross rifle, which was produced from 1903 to 1918. 
 
Sir Charles Ross, an advisor on small arms to the Canadian Government and a rich landowner in Britain, designed the Ross rifle and offered it to the Canadian government. The design was accepted and the rifle went into production in Ross’s own factory.

Although it was a 303 calibre, bolt-action, magazine-fed design, similar to the superb Lee-Enfield 303 then equipping Britain, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the Empire, the Ross Rifle was not nearly so capable.
 
There were many problems with the rifle and variations on the design were implemented to correct them. By the start of the Great War, a Mark III (1910) version was in service with the Canadian forces. However, the problems persisted.

The rifle would sometimes misfire if the bolt had been reassembled wrongly after cleaning, leading to disaster and sometimes death for the operator. The weapon was not nearly so tolerant of quality variations in the ammunition available at the time. At one stage in its sorry career, one officer serving in the Great War commented it sometimes took five people just to keep one rifle firing.
Picture
Ross rifle in the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum in London, Ontario. (Public domain)
In its defence, the Ross could be fired slightly faster, had better sights, and was a little more accurate at long range. But these minor advantages were not enough in the often-chaotic world of close quarter infantry fighting, where reliability was all. The Ross Rifle was really a hunting weapon.
 
The defects resulted in political infighting back in Canada between its supporters and detractors. By 1916 the supreme commander at the Western Front, Sir Douglas Haig, ordered that the Lee-Enfield rifle replace the Ross in all three Canadian divisions.

wwII history
2 Comments
Graham Clayton link
16/5/2019 15:15:32

One of the most vocal and fanatical defenders of the Ross rifle was Sam Hughes, the Canadian Minister for Militia and Defence. He refused to accept any criticism of the weapon, and even stated in Parliament that the Ross was so popular that “the Canadian soldier has to sleep on it or the British soldier would steal it from under him.”

Reply
rlefebvre@axion.ca
25/6/2020 21:29:09

I was lucky enough to find a rare Ross model 1905 rifle U.S. in a fine + condition ( best rifle I ever add to my military collection ) As for the Ross bayonet with all of its markings from the date to all the variety of different conversions, plus all those fantastic unit markings, one can actually follow its path in WW1.( RARE) Bob Lefebvre

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