[archy]

I wonder if anyone has done much work with the 6.5 Jap?

The Russians did, in the days when they were considering a switch to a rimless cartridge for easier engineering of a soldier-proof [that's IVAN the soldier-proof!] semiauto rifle.

What they came up with was Federov's Avtomat, not as Ivan-proof as they'd hoped, so only around 3250-3500 were built. Neither were the various Tokarev semiauto designs of circa WWII overly reliable; many found use as sniper weapons. Dragonov's SVD is pretty decent, but the Russian troops' nickname for it is *the oar*- it's not especially handy, nor light. But it'll hit and kill longer than the max range of an RPG-7 [about 900 meters, for the PG-7] and the troops found that....helpful.

[yarddog]

In the biography of Erich Hartmann, he mentions the time he was captured and escaped from Russians. He was being held in a room and he watched some of them with a radio.

He said they played around with it and appeared to have no idea how it worked.