EM-2 Rifle - Background

Background

In the immediate post-World War II era, the British Army, like many other forces, started research into their own assault rifle. The British Army had originally planned to replace their .303 inch rimmed cartridge before World War I, but were forced to keep it due to time and financial constraints for another 30 years. With these constraints removed, they developed a new .280 inch (7 mm) intermediate-power round, and set about developing a new rifle to fire it as well as considering a machine gun using the same round, the Taden gun. At the same time Fabrique Nationale expressed considerable interest in the round, and started development of their own rifles based upon it. The Canadian Army also expressed interest in the new round, both to maintain commonality with the British and to modernize their forces.

The Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) at Enfield started working on four designs of which two generally similar designs known as the EM-1 (designed by Stanley Thorpe) and the EM-2 (the "EM" standing for Experimental Model) came to the fore. The EM-3 (designed by Major Eric Hall) and EM-4 (designer unknown) did not proceed beyond the drawing board. The nomenclature was made official on January 6, 1948. Both were unofficially named after the lead designers in each team and were known as the Thorpe rifle and the Janson rifle respectively (Stefan Kenneth Janson was an assumed name of the Polish firearm designer Captain Kazimierz Januszewski).

Both were Bullpup style weapons; the magazine and chamber are placed behind the trigger and pistol grip, leading to a shorter overall length (by about 20%) and a better ratio between barrel length and weapon length (the overall length of the EM-2 is 9.5 inches less than the U.S. M14, but its barrel is 2.5 inches longer). Both EM-1 and EM-2 used 20-round magazines with "stripper" reloads (as opposed to box magazines), included simple conical optical sights for fast aiming, and had a carrying handle built into the top. They could fire semi-automatic or fully automatic. The .280 round was accurate to about 800 yards (730 metres). The two designs were very similar looking, but were internally very different in design and construction, with no parts in common other than the sights. The EM-1 used steel plate pressings for simpler manufacture, and was slightly heavier. A fifth design was commissioned from the BSA company, who built prototypes of a more conventional rifle using the same 7mm round, the BSA 28P.

The EM-2 was eventually selected as the better design, and was adopted as the British Army's new rifle on April 25, 1951 as the Rifle, Automatic, Calibre .280, Number 9, the designation by which it had been known in the War Office since the American weapons tests of 1950 .

In common with other 20th century British designs such as the P14 and SA80, the EM-2 was designed to achieve a high degree of accuracy due to the tradition of British Army emphasis on marksmanship.

Though not adopted, the British Herald Miniatures toy soldier company designed its modern British Infantry figures using the weapon.