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)
i think it's just style. that's just how 1890s rifles looked and those were still the predominant designs being used by ww2. plenty of repeaters & bolt actions before that time didn't bother, plenty afterward haven't. i mean it looks nice so not the worst fad imo.
we'd have to track down ad-copy for like lee enfields to see if they were marketing that touch as necessary protection for its 'super-rapid' fire making the barrel too hot, but this trend only lasting about 50 years indicates to me it was of marginal benefit