Boys Anti-Tank Rifle

Thank goodness it’s Friday!, and happy Firearm Friday to you readers!. This week for Firearm Friday we are looking at one of the showstoppers in the museum, the always talked about. The Boys Anti-Tank Rifle!

The Boys anti-tank rifle or officially Rifle, Anti-Tank, .55in, Boys was developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1930s and adopted into service in 1937 as Britain’s primary infantry weapon for engaging light armored vehicles.

 A large, heavy bolt-action design manufactured at several arsenals and commercial works, the standard Boys measured about five feet overall, weighed roughly 16 kg unloaded, and used a 5-round detachable box magazine; its long 914 mm barrel gave the rifle its best ballistic performance but also made it awkward to handle and transport.

The cartridge it fired, the specially developed .55 Boys round (derived from the .50 BMG case but belt-reduced and re-worked)  went through a couple of major loadings during its service life. The original Mark I used a very heavy steel-cored projectile at a muzzle velocity around 740–760 m/s; a lighter, faster Mark II was introduced to increase penetration, and experimental tungsten-cored rounds were trialed to further lift performance, though these were never a complete cure for thicker mid-war armor. 

In action the Boys proved useful in the limited role for which it was intended: against interwar and very early-war tanks, armored cars and soft-skinned vehicles. The rifle’s first notable combat employment came with British supplies to Finland during the Winter War (1939–40), where Finnish crews valued the weapon and used it successfully against lightly armored Soviet types such as the T-26; similarly, in 1940–41 the Boys could damage or disable early Panzer I/II and some early Panzer III models at relatively short ranges.

Practical experience on all fronts quickly exposed the Boys’ limitations. Its heavy weight and brutal recoil made it demanding for infantry to carry and to fire; accuracy and penetration fell away rapidly with range, and improvements in German and other nations’ tank armor soon outpaced any reasonable ballistic fixes.

 By the North African and later European campaigns its usefulness as an anti-tank weapon was marginal, and it was progressively replaced in British service by shaped-charge infantry weapons such as the PIAT and by vehicle-mounted anti-tank guns.

Even as an obsolete anti-tank system the Boys found second-line and ad-hoc roles: anti-material tasks (destroying unarmored vehicles, fuel drums, radio sets, bunkers and emplacements), static defensive positions, and colonial policing duties where heavy armor was rare.

Large numbers were also issued to Home Guard units early in the war and many were supplied to Commonwealth and allied forces; some surviving Boys rifles were later converted to .50 Browning for range use or retained as curiosities and museum pieces.

Today the Boys rifle is often remembered as a transitional weapon or a stopgap born in an era when tanks were still lightly armored and infantry needed some organic means of countering them.

 It illustrates clearly how rapid advances in armor and armament during the Second World War changed infantry doctrine: what began as a credible anti-tank solution in 1937 was rendered largely obsolete by mid-war, yet the Boys left a visible imprint on small-arms development and on the unusual niche of large-bore anti-material rifles that would continue to evolve after 1945.

We have 2 Boys anti tank rifles in our museum one on the way in and on the way out, the first one is easy to find. Next time you are in, see if you can find them both!.