The Lowest Ebb of Webley

[Hsing-ee]

Was this the Hawk Mk III?

No spring guide, piston rings instead of a seal, a wobbly barrel pin, trigger unit with a dangerous weakness... barely made 9 fpe in .22, breakable plastic sights, transfer port oversize ...

While I am not a particular fan of the Webley Mk III underlever, this successor must have made the older rifle look like an absolute gem.

I remember the Vulcan arriving in 1979 to much fanfare as a truly powerful British rifle, but they had not addressed many of the problems with the Hawk.

In 1984 the curate's egg and rather expensive Webley Omega arrived, and another 20 years passed until the Webley Longbow was launched, according to many the best British break-barrel aside from the Air Arms ProElite.

So from the death of the Mk III in 1975 it took Webley 29 years to finally 'beat' the German competition, before dying.

Was the decision to make the cheap but awful Hawk Mk III the beginning of the end of Webley? Comparing one to a contemporary German model like an HW50 or HW35, or an Original Diana 35, it is really obvious that it is built down to a price and not up to a specification. This is not the case with the Longbow.