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Reading through Tony Williams and Max Popenker's book on assault rilfes renewed interest in an old question of mine.

At two points before WW2, one around 1913 and the second during the late 20's/early 30's, the British Army was looking at rifles chambered for a full power 7mm cartridge.

The first was an overly powerful round that led nowhere.

The second was the .276 Pedersen.

The Pedersen was developed to take part in the USArmy's self loading rifle tests of the early 1930's and was used by both the Pedersen Rifle itself, and the rival Garrand. Eventually the Garrand won, in part because American authorities decided to stick with the 30.06 round and the Pedersen could not be chambered for this.

Still both weapon and ammunition were of interest to the British military and both were produced and tested here, along with the White Rifle.

So what if when the Americans decide against the .276 the British decide to continue with it and produce their own weapons to fire it?

France, Italy and Japan all changed the calibre of their standard rifle ammunition between the wars so it's possible Britain would have too.*

So what weapons would the British use, I don't think the Pedersen would be adopted because of it's waxed cartidges or the Garrand because of it's en bloc loading system, so perhaps a version of the Lee-Enfield chambered for .276, or a modified Garrand with charger loading, or perhaps a completely new design?

How would this effect things like aircraft armament? Would the eight .303 Brownings of British fighters be replaced by .50 Brownings because 7mm x 51mm is too small to effectively bring down an enemy bomber?

Also what knock on effects would this have later? Would Britain be prepared to increase the size of their standard calibre from the tried and tested 7mm x 51mm to 7.62mm x 51mm? After all the Pedersen had shown it could kill a man just as well during the war, so why add weight and recoil?



*France from 8mmR to 7.5mm as the 8MM round was old, overly large and difficult to work in automatic weapons.

Italy from 6.5mm to 7.35mm and Japan from 6.5mm to 7.7mm as they felt their bullets didn't have enough range or stopping power.
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