The Charlton automatic rifle was a fully automatic conversion of the Lee–Enfield rifle, designed by New Zealander Philip Charlton in 1941 to act as a substitute for the Bren and Lewis gun light machine guns which were in severely short supply at the time.

The original Charlton automatic rifles were converted from obsolete Lee–Metford and magazine Lee–Enfield rifles dating from as early as the Boer War,[1] and were intended for use as semi-automatic rifles with the full-automatic capabilities retained for emergency use.

[4] The two designs differed markedly in external appearance (amongst other things, the New Zealand Charlton had a forward pistol grip and bipod,[5] whilst the Australian lacked this, making it lighter and cleaner in appearance[6]), but shared the same operating mechanism.

Approximately 1,500 Charlton automatic rifles were manufactured in New Zealand,[7] and nearly all of them were destroyed in an accidental fire at the ordnance depot located at the Palmerston North Show Grounds shortly after World War II.

[8][4] As a result, very few Charlton automatic rifles are known to survive.