Posted on 05/18/2012 11:00:10 AM PDT by Mikey_1962
Anybody know why they were considering .276 caliber?
Love ‘em too. Got two myself.
The .270 caliber bullet riding on the same powder makes a hell of a weapon. Fast, flat & hard hitting.
Favorite rifle evuh!
Well, except for my Springfield M1A in .308.
All I have are the 8 round clips , D’oh
What ever happened to the rifles that were supposed to be coming home from Korea?
I thought you lost them in a canoeing accident?
O’Bozo has banned then.
My Dad talked about “M-1 Thumb”.
“Anybody know why they were considering .276 caliber?”
I thought the ones that were supposed to be getting dumped on the market were carbines.
I don’t have a definitive answer, but it appears that after The Great War there was a line of thought among the various War Departments that a .30 caliber cartridge was more powerful than necessary for most purposes, and a .276 cartridge was adequate and, being lighter, lessened the load carried by an infantryman.
I loved the M-14. Once you humped the thing long enough you never noticed the weight.
Look at the ballistics of the .270 and 30-06. The .270 is flatter shooting when you compare bullets of similar weight.
I think it boiled down to we had a lot of .30-06 ammo, and didn't want to change. Note that the US military is still looking at .270 or 7mm bullets for their next cartridge. The 6.8 SPC for instance.
I hunt with the .270 (Browning A-bolt). Great power, and the round trajectory is as flat as the surface of a glacial pond at sunrise. I wish my dad hadn’t sold his old M1 though. I’d love to own one now.
~7mmx50 (.27) has been shown over and over by numerous different studies, starting in the 1920's, to be the perfect military round.
Curiously, the 7x57 Mauser had it right from the very beginning.
I love my Garands though.
“I think it boiled down to we had a lot of .30-06 ammo, and didn’t want to change.”
Precisely. The US military was sitting on tens of millions (if not billions) of .30 M1906 rounds left over from World War I. And per standard governmental procurement practice of the time, existing supplies had to be used up before a new design could be implemented. (Which is also why other interwar developments, such as the improved M1 .30-06 cartridge and the pistol-grip stock for the Springfield rifle, were not introduced until almost the eve of World War II. The leftover supplies from 1918 had to be used up first.)
Military spending in the 1920s and 30s was dismal at best (this was the optimistic era of “no more war” sentiment and the Kellogg-Briand Pact), and the military visionaries who saw the value of a semi-automatic rifle in future battle realized they would have a hard enough job trying to justify the money to replace millions of Springfield and Enfield rifles. Justifying new ammunition as well would likely have been a non-starter for the whole project.
About a decade ago, I had the opportunity to fire a Garand M-1 and a German Kar Mauser at Ft. Meade’s Rifle Range. Both rifles were the standard infantry rifle of that time.
There is NO comparison!
The Garand, though heavy and lovingly cared for didn’t rattle or make noise, outside of its sling and stacking swivels.
There was no slop between the metal to metal components and furniture. The clip of 30.06 rounds needed some force to insert with the thumb of my left hand.
The magazine/charging cover snapped back sharply with little help and the Garand SOUNDED like something forceful, authoritative and intimidating when squeezing off rounds for sighting and dope. The recoil with a properly adjusted sling was there. To relax and ride up. Then fall back into where it had been before. An absolute dream to shoot!
The Kar, on the other hand rattled wood to wood and metal to wood. With noticeable slop and looseness in the travel of the bolt.
A less than satisfying lock between bolt and barrel. A less than confident feel when squeezing a trigger that didn’t break evenly or consistently. Though, after settling in. The rifle did have decent, relatively tight groupings at 100 yards.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.