WI: 7.62x51mm never becomes NATO standard

Deleted member 1487

At what range does the .276 fails to penetrate an helmet?
One use for MG is to saturate area targets with direct fire, which requires decent penetration at ranges from 500 to 1000m
If the .276 can penetrate an helmet at 1000m and be accurate enough allow snipers to make head shots at that distance you've got a capable round for all light infantry needs.
The 30.06 would probably still live for a while on AFVs
Apparently 60 ft/lbs of energy is all that is needed to produce a serious injury by a bullet and at 1000m the .276 Pedersen had over 374 ft/lbs of energy, which was more than the .30-06:
http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.co...n-were-pipsqueak-cartridges-in-compariso.html
By 500m the Pedersen round outperformed the .30-06 in terms of energy retention and accuracy. That was using the flat based 150 grain .30 round though. A heavier boat tailed .30 round would beaten the Pedersen round, but the M1 bullet was not used in WW2 and only after was a bullet like that used in a sniper role. So in terms of WW2 the Pedersen would have been a better round with much lower recoil.
That is that factoring in the AP variant of the .30 round though, I don't have data on the performance of that round.
 

Deleted member 1487

Of course if we are going to be talking about adopting a round that is accurate out to 1000m and capable of penetrating the standard helmet the Japanese 6.5x50 Arisaka with a very aerodynamic bullet is the way to go. That or the Carcano 6.5 or Mannlicher 6.5 with a better bullet design.
A bullet like this would be great (minus the hollow point), but I think VLD nose designs weren't known in the 1930s-50s.
 
Buddy please, we all know the .276 Pedersen T20E2 Garand would have trounced the FAL. :p
t20e2.jpg


Also Swedish 8mm? Why not just adopt the very well developed 7.92mm Mauser round? Or keep the existing .30-06 US round, except using the M1 boat tailed bullet?

.276 Pedersen is a good possibility.
 
Of course if we are going to be talking about adopting a round that is accurate out to 1000m and capable of penetrating the standard helmet the Japanese 6.5x50 Arisaka with a very aerodynamic bullet is the way to go. That or the Carcano 6.5 or Mannlicher 6.5 with a better bullet design.
A bullet like this would be great (minus the hollow point), but I think VLD nose designs weren't known in the 1930s-50s.
And now you've gone back all the way to the fedorov avtomat, that used theArisaka round.
Regarding penetration at range, the issue is not weather it can kill at 1000m, but weather it will go through a helmet.
It probably will, I just couldn't find test results that stated it.
 
WWII & Korean War era helmets were only good for stopping shrapnel and ricochets. They couldn't even stop pistol rounds or buckshot.
At close range.
The ability to go through a helmet at 1000m was a standard requirement for rifle rounds after WW2.
If you use a rifle that will only do it at 500m, and you use the same round on your MG, then you need something to shoot targets at 500 to 1000m in direct fire.
That's one reason way 7,62mm GPMG lived on in the 5,56 era.
 
It was not given that whatever the USA chose would be a NATO standard. Were it not for Churchill the British, Canadians and Belgians would have gone with the .280 which was briefly formally adopted. The French stayed with 7.5mm so there might not have been a NATO standard. Who knows what everyone else might have chosen.
 
Remember, the higher sectional density of 6.5-7mm projectiles vs. 7.62-8mm could mean that the .276 could actually have superior penetration at 1000m vs the .30-06.
 
The Garand was tested in .276 Pedersen and was liked and preferred to the .30-06 version, but the demand to use existing stockpiles of ammo necessitated the use of .30-06.

Yet every round that went the the M1 Garand during the war, none of it was from those stockpiles. 30-06 M1 Ball of 1924 caused problems, resulting in the M2 Ball during Garand development. M1 Ball ended up going to the Navy for MG uses, where the additional range over the M2 was appreciated
 
I can imagine the Commonwealth nations might adopt the No.9, aka the EM-2 rifle for commonality.

God I hope not - it was more difficult to make and more clunky than the M14 was.

FN FAL all the way - you can field strip a FAL in less time it took you to read this post!

And if you want a bullpup well the FAL was also built as a bullpup.
 
Yet every round that went the the M1 Garand during the war, none of it was from those stockpiles. 30-06 M1 Ball of 1924 caused problems, resulting in the M2 Ball during Garand development. M1 Ball ended up going to the Navy for MG uses, where the additional range over the M2 was appreciated

I suspect that not one round of that 30-06 stockpile made it to WW2 - I expect it was all used up in training well before Dec 41
 

Deleted member 1487

And now you've gone back all the way to the fedorov avtomat, that used theArisaka round.
Regarding penetration at range, the issue is not weather it can kill at 1000m, but weather it will go through a helmet.
It probably will, I just couldn't find test results that stated it.
And? If it was the best tool for the job...
If it had more ft/lbs energy than the equivalent M2 Ball .30-06 at 1000m then it would go through a helmet.

Yet every round that went the the M1 Garand during the war, none of it was from those stockpiles. 30-06 M1 Ball of 1924 caused problems, resulting in the M2 Ball during Garand development. M1 Ball ended up going to the Navy for MG uses, where the additional range over the M2 was appreciated
More reasons MacArthur sucked.
 
I suspect that not one round of that 30-06 stockpile made it to WW2 - I expect it was all used up in training well before Dec 41
M1 Ball was Substitute Standard till 1944, and some was around on the surplus market in the '50s.

I still have some 45ACP with 1939 datestamps I got in bulk decades ago, so despite millions of rounds produced, old stuff was around after the war
 
M1 Ball was Substitute Standard till 1944, and some was around on the surplus market in the '50s.

I still have some 45ACP with 1939 datestamps I got in bulk decades ago, so despite millions of rounds produced, old stuff was around after the war

I'm referring to one of the popular reason given for not changing over to .276 pedersen in the 30s in that their was a large supply of 30-06 - I suspect that that 'stockpile' was a fraction of an nth of the actual number of M1 and M2 ball produced during the period and I suspect that most if not practically all was used in training.

Or in other words

The reason given does not stand up to scrutiny
 
The reason given does not stand up to scrutiny

Agree with that.

Dugout Doug wanted to spike it, and that's the reason he used, even though most of that ammo in the arsenals was in belts or in 5 round strippers for Springfields, stuff that never was to have been in a new 30 caliber rifle in any timeframe.

Another thing, in all my reading on the .276, the M1917 Brownings were never going to be rechambered for any new round, everything I read pointed to them staying on 30-06 M1 Ball, AP and Tracer. 276 was to be for rifles only.
 

Deleted member 1487

Agree with that.

Dugout Doug wanted to spike it, and that's the reason he used, even though most of that ammo in the arsenals was in belts or in 5 round strippers for Springfields, stuff that never was to have been in a new 30 caliber rifle in any timeframe.

Another thing, in all my reading on the .276, the M1917 Brownings were never going to be rechambered for any new round, everything I read pointed to them staying on 30-06 M1 Ball, AP and Tracer. 276 was to be for rifles only.
I don't know about that. Doug probably thought that once told the .30 would work in the Garand that those ammo stockpiles would be usable once the Garand's kinks got worked out. The issues with the M1 ammo weren't considered a problem until 4 years after Doug's decision. By then the 1906 ammo was all used up and the M1 was all that was left and rendered useless by another decision due to the safety issues at firing ranges. So honestly I think MacArthur really did make his choice in 1932 based on what he thought at the time and the issues in 1936 then rendered that point moot.

As to the MG, yes the MGs weren't going to changed over, but in time, even just after WW2, might well have been phased out in favor of a .276 caliber MG.
 
I don't know about that. Doug probably thought that once told the .30 would work in the Garand that those ammo stockpiles would be usable once the Garand's kinks got worked out. The issues with the M1 ammo weren't considered a problem until 4 years after Doug's decision. By then the 1906 ammo was all used up and the M1 was all that was left and rendered useless by another decision due to the safety issues at firing ranges. So honestly I think MacArthur really did make his choice in 1932 based on what he thought at the time and the issues in 1936 then rendered that point moot.

As to the MG, yes the MGs weren't going to changed over, but in time, even just after WW2, might well have been phased out in favor of a .276 caliber MG.

That's a fair comment - was there not also an issue that the early .276 had to be coated with a wax? Or was that only the pedersen Rifle? That might have coloured thinking

Also IIRC there existed (not sure if still the case in 1932 but...well all armys at the time were still mostly horse dependent) the need for a rifle to kill a horse at so many hundreds of feet - perhaps the slightly smaller round was not considered horse killy enough?
 
That's a fair comment - was there not also an issue that the early .276 had to be coated with a wax? Or was that only the pedersen Rifle? That might have coloured thinking

Also IIRC there existed (not sure if still the case in 1932 but...well all armys at the time were still mostly horse dependent) the need for a rifle to kill a horse at so many hundreds of feet - perhaps the slightly smaller round was not considered horse killy enough?

Doubts about the lethal effect of the .276 round were strong enough to result in extensive tests in June and July 1928 by the "Pig Board" (so called because lethality tests were carried out on anaesthetized pigs). The Board found all three rounds (.256, .276, and .30) were lethal out to 1,200 yards (1100m), and wounding ability out to 300 or 400 yards (270-365m) was comparable. The "tiny" .256 caliber round was perceived to be the deadliest of them all.
 

Deleted member 1487

That's a fair comment - was there not also an issue that the early .276 had to be coated with a wax? Or was that only the pedersen Rifle? That might have coloured thinking

Also IIRC there existed (not sure if still the case in 1932 but...well all armys at the time were still mostly horse dependent) the need for a rifle to kill a horse at so many hundreds of feet - perhaps the slightly smaller round was not considered horse killy enough?
That was the Pedersen Rifle due to the toggle delay system and they hadn't thought of the grooved chamber to prevent the rounds from sticking.
It was not an issue in the Garand at all and the .276 outperformed the .30-06 version quite handily in testing.
At 1000m, well beyond most people's ability to actually see a target in battlefield conditions, even a horse, the .276 actually had more killing energy than the 1906 .30 bullet (which the M2 Ball that was used in WW2 was designed to match).
 
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