WI: 7.62x51mm never becomes NATO standard

Issue was EM2 cost more to make then a FAL did. And had issues. Now both could change with further development and mass production but at the start FAL was cheaper to make, and functioned perfectly.
Also I believe FN offered no royalty fees to Britain for production of FAL.

According to Gun Jesus the British Army adopted the EM-2 as their official service Rifle until Churchill made them switch to the 7.62mm NATO round.
 
Do You have a source for the cost of he EN-2? I have not yet found a costing for the production of this rifle in quantity that came from a reliable source and that includes the NAK.
 
According to Gun Jesus the British Army adopted the EM-2 as their official service Rifle until Churchill made them switch to the 7.62mm NATO round.
To be pedantic it was adopted as the Rifle No9 Mk1

In it's history it attempted to pander to the US target/battle rifle clique going through various versions from a ballistic match to the original 7.92x33mm Mauser Kurz up to a close match to the 7.62x51mm US. The lesser ones were preferred but they bent over backwards to placate the USA. Once Churchill rolled over to please his masters they said 'sod this for a game of soldiers and just built the FAL on Enfield's imperial tooling with a free licence from FN. Took about a year to convert the specifications from FN's metric to Enfield's imperial.

Going somewhat OT. The French Lebel was designed and prototyped in 3 months, the FAL was reworked to imperial in 12 months. The SA80 took 12 years, circulating non firearm engineers over the years.

When BSA made the BESA from the Czech ZB53 they decided it was faster and easier to just get metric tooling and make it in 7.92 instead of the palaver they found in of converting the ZB26 to the ZB33 imperial in .303.
 
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According to Gun Jesus the British Army adopted the EM-2 as their official service Rifle until Churchill made them switch to the 7.62mm NATO round.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM-2_rifle#NATO_standardisation
With the creation of NATO in 1949, there was a clear preference that NATO forces would have commonality of weapons and ammunition, so weapons designs had to meet with the approval of more than one government, and it was hoped, would be adopted by the organisation as a whole. It was at this point that the US put forth its own designs for NATO standardisation, using the 7.62×51mm NATO round in their prototype T25 and T44 rifles. Matters came to a head in 1951 in a shoot-off conducted at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, with the US claiming the British round was underpowered, and the British claiming the US round was too powerful to be used in a rifle in full-automatic mode. At the same trials the Belgian .280 FN FAL was also tested.

A series of lengthy debates followed, which were finally settled in an unlikely fashion when Canada stated they would use the British .280 round, but only if the US did as well. It was clear this would never happen. Winston Churchill felt a NATO standard was more important than any qualities of the weapon itself and overturned the decision by the previous Labour Minister of Defence, Manny Shinwell, who had already announced an intention to move to the .280 and the EM-2. During this time, prototype EM-2s were built in several different calibres: Chambons built two for the 7×49mm "Second Optimum" cartridge and another two for the 7.62×51mm NATO.[1]One of the Chambon prototypes was even rebuilt for the US .30-06 cartridge.[1] RSAF-Enfield and BSA built 15 and 10 prototypes for the 7.62×51mm, respectively.[7]Canadian Arsenals Limited also built 10 rifles for the 7×51mm "Compromise" cartridge.[8]
From what I've been able to gather the EM-2 was officially adopted as far as a statement of intent went, but they weren't actually produced outside of prototypes.

To be pedantic it was adopted as the Rifle No9 Mk1
Yeah if there is one thing we hate around here its pedantry. ;)
 
OK. a bit of clarification here. The EM-2 was the development designation given to the British .270 bullpup rifle, it retained this designation when the calibre was change to .280 in its various guises. When the rifle was formally adopted for issue to the British Army it became the Rifle No9. AFAIK no production rifle No 9's were actually built or issued. This can cause confusion in some reference works. All extant rifles of this series in various collections world wide are AFAIK all EM-2's.therefore to say that they are Em-2's is correct, as is to say that the Rifle No 9 was adopted by the British government for the British army. I hope that is a useful explanation.
 

Deleted member 1487

OK. a bit of clarification here. The EM-2 was the development designation given to the British .270 bullpup rifle, it retained this designation when the calibre was change to .280 in its various guises. When the rifle was formally adopted for issue to the British Army it became the Rifle No9. AFAIK no production rifle No 9's were actually built or issued. This can cause confusion in some reference works. All extant rifles of this series in various collections world wide are AFAIK all EM-2's.therefore to say that they are Em-2's is correct, as is to say that the Rifle No 9 was adopted by the British government for the British army. I hope that is a useful explanation.
It is, thanks. Now can you explain why FN didn't make a 6.5mm FAL?
 
AFAIK the original FAL was designed for the same .270 round as the EM-2. For all practical purposes you can call .270 as 6.8mm. I have not seen any documents showing that a 6.5mm round was considered in the immediate post war period.
 

Deleted member 1487

AFAIK the original FAL was designed for the same .270 round as the EM-2. For all practical purposes you can call .270 as 6.8mm. I have not seen any documents showing that a 6.5mm round was considered in the immediate post war period.
The original prototype FAL was in 7.92 Kurz. The one after that was .280 British and a bullpup, but FN dropped that in favor of the regular configuration. From what I've seen .270 never left British testing for use in any foreign rifle and was out early on in the process.
FN did test a 6.5x51 round for a Swedish MG, which would have been pretty deal for a battle rifle, besides the 6.5 Arisaka.
http://municion.org/6_5x55Krag/6_5x51Xpl.htm
 
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Wiking Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately the 6.5 Ariska is a semi rimmed round and would I think require modification to work well in an automatic rifle although it was used in the Federov Automat!
 

Deleted member 1487

Wiking Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately the 6.5 Ariska is a semi rimmed round and would I think require modification to work well in an automatic rifle although it was used in the Federov Automat!
Same in the magazines used in the Type 96. Britain even produced the rounds in WW2:
http://quarryhs.co.uk/256brit.htm
As Tony titled the linked article, it was a real lost opportunity. Modifying the rim wouldn't have been particularly hard either. If you're modifying it with a modern European powder load, it could be chopped down in length too and lose little to no velocity, especially with a lighter, more aerodynamic bullet.
 
Wiking Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately the 6.5 Ariska is a semi rimmed round and would I think require modification to work well in an automatic rifle although it was used in the Federov Automat!

Rimmed ammo worked flawlessly in Bren, and in a host of other automatic wepons.
 
Rimmed ammunition in an automatic weapon is a pain to load to avoid misfeed. I have done on the Bren so I speak from experience!!!
 
Same in the magazines used in the Type 96. Britain even produced the rounds in WW2:
http://quarryhs.co.uk/256brit.htm As Tony titled the linked article, it was a real lost opportunity. Modifying the rim wouldn't have been particularly hard either. If you're modifying it with a modern European powder load, it could be chopped down in length too and lose little to no velocity, especially with a lighter, more aerodynamic bullet.
The Royal Laboratory and Kynoch over 550 million rounds so they had some practice at making them....... They also made many millions of 6,5mm Romanian and quite a few million 6,5mm Norwegian Krag-Jorgensen. I think that making any 6,5mm round was not an issue for Britain.
 
I quote from 'British Military Small Arms Ammo https://sites.google.com/site/britmilammo/-30-inch

Britain adopted the U.S. .30 inch round in 1940, almost by default. The United Kingdom purchased $45 millions of military equipment from the United States including small arms, artillery, tanks and aircraft. The aircraft and vehicles were armed with .30 inch Browning machine guns and included in the purchase were 500,000 Model 1917 Enfield rifles and Browning and Marlin machine guns together with ammunition for them.
Further large orders were placed with Remington for ball, tracer, armour-piercing and drill rounds together with smaller quantities of incendiary. When the Lease lend Act was introduced in mid 1941 deliveries continued from the U.S. Government.
The subsequent history of the .30 inch in British service is a mixture of indecision and muddles thinking.
In April 1943 the British General Staff decided that the future infantry cartridge should be the .30 inch, but by August 1943 a new sub-committee of the Committee of Infantry Weapon Development decided that the American .30 inch was undesirable and recommended adoption of the 7.92x57mm cartridge. Based on this work on a new rifle commenced which led to the 7.92mm SLEM rifle.
Despite this and the fact that the Ideal Calibre Panel set up in 1945 had not yet reported, in August 1946 the army decided once more that the U.S. .30 inch round should be adopted. In a fit of either naivety or wishful thinking they made reference to the Small Arms Calibre Panel and stated that whatever recommendation the Panel made the United States would also implement. Fortunately this misguided decision was soon rescinded.
Despite the 1947 decision to pursue the recommendations of the SACP, the Director of Artillery stated that the .30 inch would continue in service with the Royal Armoured Corps since virtually all American and British armoured vehicles in British service were armed with the .30 inch Browning machine gun. Development was to continue for ball, tracer and API but not for other types.
New British ammunition came into service in the 1950s and remained in service until the late 1960s. After British production had ceased both ball and tracer were purchased fro FN in Belgium.
 
Rimmed ammo worked flawlessly in Bren, and in a host of other automatic wepons.

I wouldn't say flawlessly. Rimlock in a Lee-Enfield was a real problem and any weapon using rimmed cartridges in an automatic magazine fed weapon is generally more prone to such problems, the only place where a rimmed cartridge is not an issue in an automatic weapon is with Belt-feds so the Vickers gun, Russian Maxim, PK series etc were all extremely reliable.
 
I wouldn't say flawlessly. Rimlock in a Lee-Enfield was a real problem and any weapon using rimmed cartridges in an automatic magazine fed weapon is generally more prone to such problems, the only place where a rimmed cartridge is not an issue in an automatic weapon is with Belt-feds so the Vickers gun, Russian Maxim, PK series etc were all extremely reliable.
Rimmed ammunition still requires mechanical complexity not necessary in belt-feds using rimless ammunition. The cartridges need to be extracted backwards from the belt before being moved forward into the chamber.
 
I wouldn't say flawlessly. Rimlock in a Lee-Enfield was a real problem and any weapon using rimmed cartridges in an automatic magazine fed weapon is generally more prone to such problems, the only place where a rimmed cartridge is not an issue in an automatic weapon is with Belt-feds so the Vickers gun, Russian Maxim, PK series etc were all extremely reliable.

Seems like the supposed rimlock at Lee-Enfield is/was blown out of proportions, even with rounds purposly set to make rimlock happen? video
I'll reiterate that Bren worked just fine.
 
Rimmed ammunition still requires mechanical complexity not necessary in belt-feds using rimless ammunition. The cartridges need to be extracted backwards from the belt before being moved forward into the chamber.

However, that complexity is well understood and has no impact on the weapons performance. The test carried out by a Vickers gun in 1963 that burnt through 5 million rounds in an epic shoot of 250 round belt dumps which ran for 7 days and 7 nights with the only stoppages being for ammo related issues proved that a belt fed weapon with rimmed cartridges was in no way hindered by rimmed ammo.
 
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