Britsh .303 & what if Aussalt Rifle

What if the brits keep the .303 round in the 1960s for there FN new self loading rifle but made the with a new .303 round rimlese as the 7.62 mm nato round would be a better aussalt rifle even with full auto rifle fire as well what dos board think off this bad idear or go .
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I don't know if the .303 is that much better than the 7.62 (.308). I have both calibers and the recoil is just about the same. While recoil is partly a matter of the rifle, it is mostly the round, and full auto with a .303 would be like the M-14 (a weapon that was loved by few, although it still has it's good applications).

The .303 is quite a bit more powerful than the 7.62x39, it is a heavier cartridge and is almost 50% longer than the AK round (3.07" vs. 2.2"). The .303 is very much a full power rifle round, much closer to a 30-06 or 7.7mm than to an AK round.

Maybe Tony Williams would like to offer an opinion. He's the Board expert on small arms.
 

Moglwi

Monthly Donor
At the end of the war the British where moving towards a 4.7mm?? bullpup assult rifle when the US used its Bulk to make 7.62 NATO standard so I do not think there was any way unless we where going it alone that we would have FN or anything else chambered for .303
 
The assault rifle fires the intermediate sized round that allows for weapon's control on full auto-fire. The .303 is a full sized rifle round, try to make an assault rifle based on that with full auto fire capability and its just too heavy and hard to control. Probably better suited for light machine gun.

Remember that the Browning Automatic Rifle fired a full sized Springfield 30-06 which was marginally more powerful then the .303. That weapon could be fired on full automatic but kicked like a mustang. It was classed as a light machine gun. The 30.06 is a powerful round.

This also brings into mind the power of the 7.62 x 51mm. Remember that the original design for the Belgian FN/FAL was to fire a round lesser then that(7.92 x 33mm), but Fabrique Nationale was convinced by the U.S to redesign the rifle for the larger round. That design was stretched to its limits.

The FN/FAL kicked like a wild-mustang on auto-fire. The .303 assault rifle would have been more like a B.A.R in my mind.
 
Last edited:
I thought the British went with semi-automatic SLRs for several reasons: the 7.62 couldn't be carried in sufficient quantity to allow full-automatic fire; it wouldn't be accurate in full auto and they already had SMGs for that kind of close-in work; and the Army still had a thing about accurate rapid marksmanship.
 
Load data shows .303 and 7.62 Nato are ballistically identical. The British experimented with a lower powered .280 cartridge after the war precisely due to the excess power of the .303 so a rimless military .303 was never in the cards.
 
As an offshoot of this, what would happen if Britain introduced the .280 cartridge in conjunction with an EM-2 type weapon?

Would any other countries have adopted this cartridge over the 7.62?
 
I suppose it would mess up NATO logistic if they did and I also suspect other countries would do something similar with some military equipment. Maybe to prove a point, maybe to benefit their military industrial complex.
 
Forget the load data. The .303 was rimmed,:eek: especially unsuited for a selfloader or full-auto.:eek:

The Russians have used their full-length rimmed 7.62mm cartridge (a knock-off of the .303 round designed during the Tsarist era) quite well in Tokarev and Dragunov select-fire rifles. Although these weapons were never standard infantry kit.
 
Yeah but those are, as you said, semi-automatic rifles. If the British wanted to keep the .303 they would have to start using it in assault rifles or it would become useless in the modern era.
 
The Russians have used their full-length rimmed 7.62mm cartridge (a knock-off of the .303 round designed during the Tsarist era) quite well in Tokarev and Dragunov select-fire rifles. Although these weapons were never standard infantry kit.
Tokarev WAS scheduled to be standard issue rifle (if my memory serves me well, standard squad according to 1940 plans was supposed to have 4-6 Tokarevs, 4 Mosins, LMG and possibly couple of SMGs to serve as trench swipers), but AFAIR all attempts to make to make reliable box magazines holding more than 10 cartridges (utterly not enough for full-auto weapon) failed. All automatic weapons chambered for 7.62R used either round disk magazines similar to Lewis or belt feed.
 
Tokarev WAS scheduled to be standard issue rifle (if my memory serves me well, standard squad according to 1940 plans was supposed to have 4-6 Tokarevs, 4 Mosins, LMG and possibly couple of SMGs to serve as trench swipers), but AFAIR all attempts to make to make reliable box magazines holding more than 10 cartridges (utterly not enough for full-auto weapon) failed. All automatic weapons chambered for 7.62R used either round disk magazines similar to Lewis or belt feed.

Interesting. I know surplus Tokarev rifles can easily be modified to fire .303--the British Empire round should have less recoil than full-size Soviet ammo.
(Why did the Red Army insist on select-fire variants for the infantry? A semi-auto Tokarev should be able to perform the same role as a Garand, an M14 or an SLR, none of which could normally be switched to full auto.)
Perhaps the perfected, Great Patriotic War Tokarev rifle could have been adopted by the Brits as an earlier SLR in .303, instead of the eventual 7.62mm Nato FAL.
Selected forces landing at Sword, Gold, Juno with .303 Tokarev knock-offs, anyone?
 
Top