It was the Lee Enfield Jungle Carbine (No5) and also the Winchester Model D that got me thinking about this.
This is probably a silly little question, but all of the big WWII long guns (Mosin, Springfield, Enfield etc) have wooden shrouding.handguards that go all the way up over the barrel, right to a few inches before the barrel ends. Given that the British seem to have had trouble sourcing a lot of wood at points during the second world war, I kind of figured this would be the first thing to go in order to expedite production? But you see it on every long gun and lots of the carbines of the time, even the last-ditch stuff.
What function does this serve and why is it not considered necessary on civilian/sporting/hunting rifles?
(Thanks in advance)
Standard sized rifles and unstandard sized shooters with different levels of ability. Being able to grab farther down a barrel to keep it steady is kinda useful.
Having something that can work as "padding" (that won't melt or get shredded off through field use) to reduce the sound of the metal barrel hitting stuff when you're trying to move around quietly.
No matter how scratched up the wooden parts are they shine less than a barrel after the bluing has been scrapped off.
If trying to use a rifle in hand to hand combat, wood might dampen both sound and vibration transferred through to your hands to better keep a hold of it.
... as a few guesses...
Damn there are actually a ton of reasons for this, feels really obvious now.
Ain't that how it always goes? There's this thing that's always there but its its always been there so long that we just stopped seeing it and then one day BAM! you we it and we start wondering why its there...
Universe is pretty cool like that...