Weapons of the Great War: The Canadian Ross rifle.

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.

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.

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.