1 Battle rifle...

.30 M1 carbine cartridge (left) shown next to 7.62x39mm Russian (center) and 5.56mm NATO (.223 Rem, right)

Now do you think its a rifle round?

Arethusa said:

I don't understand how anyone can call the .30 carbine round a rifle round. Technicalities aside, it's very much more a pistol round than the other way around.

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Who called it a rifle round? I think the term we've been using is "intermediate cartridge", which it certainly is.

Matthew

could have mis read something up there

Arethausa- Umm, those handguns in .30 carbine? They were intended for target, and varmint hunting. I doubt a Kimball would make a good combat pistol, let alone an Automag III, or the scarce Ruger. Massive fireballs though. Very impressive.

It's a CARBINE round. .30 U.S.Carbine.

Meplat-

The 8mm kurz and 7.62R are also called intermediate cartridges. There's a pretty significant difference between them and something like the .30 carbine round. I'm just saying that the .30 carbine feels like it has more in common with a .454 Casull or .45 LC than it does with a rifle round like the 5.56 NATO.

And those handguns weren't really intended specifically for target shooting; that's just sort of how it ended up, though, for the most part, no one bought them at all. The original intent was just to put together a handgun that would appeal to civilians in light of the red scare— and, more importantly, civilians who already owned M1 Carbines, which had been selling quite well for similar reasons. I have no doubt that they wouldn't have made very good combat handguns, but that was never the intent.

Arethusa- Kimballs tended to drop the slide stops, and launch the slides into shooter's anatomy. (Blowback .30 carbine pistol=bad) The Automags were just expensive, and finicky, and the Rugers were known for spitting with handloads. No, they'd have made horrible "combat" handguns. I'd have taken a damned Borchardt, or Schwarzlose Standart over a Kimball. Civvies during the "red scare" had a metric a$$load of inexpensive surplus rifles, and handguns to choose from. Flip through a 50's era gun rag for proof. (As a note, the .30 carbine handguns date to a later era. mid to late 60's in fact, with the really cut down "Enforcer" carbine all but being a child of the 1970's. I owned one. A turd in every sense of the word.)

In use, and application, the .30 USC is exactily what it was intended to be. Something between the .45 1911, and the .30(7.62X63) M1 Garand. A Carbine.

(Remember, the very first Armalite AR-15's were marketed as "Carbines" and the first government buyer, the USAF bought em to replace the M1 and M2 Carbine. Not to replace the M14.)

Meplat-

Wow, we really left the original topic of this thread in the dust. Oh well...

I guess the best way to put it is that the 7.62x33 compaired to the 7.92x33 or 7.62x39 are just 2 different aproaches to the intermediate cartridge. 7.92x33 and 7.62x39 are shortened rifle rounds, while the 7.62x33 is a lengthened pistol round.

Anyway, thanks for the pics Meplat. By the way, what's an M-43? And isn't the M1 Garand round more commonly refered to as .30-06?

Gnam- M43 is the soviet spec ball loading of the 7.63X39
The ".30-06" is a common name, but I used the metric designation for those more familiar with it. The specefic name for the round I pictured is the " Ball, Caliber.30 , M2" meaning a 152 grain projectile, instead of say, the 174 grain projectile used in the "Ball, caliber .30 M1". I could lay a bunch of ".30-06" rounds on my scanner, and they'd all be diffrent designations.

Meplat-

Meplat said:

Gnam- For all practical purposes, the .30 USC is an "assault rifle" round.
<snip!>
Meplat-

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It is? I thought the .30 was legendary for its short range and lacking penetration?

To me it is still just an overpowered pistol bullet put in a carbine sized weapon.

BTW, anyone know the specs on the cartridge used in the Pederson device? I wonder how similar it is to .30 USC.

Meplat said:

Gnam- For all practical purposes, the .30 USC is an "assault rifle" round.
...
Meplat-

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Meplat said:

Arethausa- Umm, those handguns in .30 carbine? They were intended for target, and varmint hunting. I doubt a Kimball would make a good combat pistol, let alone an Automag III, or the scarce Ruger. Massive fireballs though. Very impressive.

It's a CARBINE round. .30 U.S.Carbine.

Meplat-

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I'm really with Spier on this one.

Gnam- It's not at all similar. The .30 Pedersen continued on after WW1, as the French service pistol load. The Pedersen device was more an adaptation to allow a rifle to fire pistol ammo, than an early assault rifle. (Although I'd give a left nut to have one. VERY rare, and supposedly a lot of fun to shoot.)

Aretheusea- *Shrugs* Define, where a modern carbine fits in the definition of "assault rifle"

1- Intermediate caliber- A carbine IS by definition, an intermediate step between a full sized rifle, and a handgun. The .30 USC is a carbine load that, like the StG44's 7.92X33 predates the definition, but also helped defined it.

2- Capable of selective fire- The M2 fits this adequately. The M1 itself was not an "assault rifle" but the M2 is solidly there. (Or are you calling it an overpowered submacine gun?)

3- Detachable box magazine-

You seem to be attempting to firmly cement each and every definition used in firearms terminology in a specefic place. This works fine in libraries, but not so well when one is considering a firearm that blurs the established divisions. Another example? The nasty little 10"> M16 variants. SMG? Carbine? Assault rifle? Which is it?

The performance of the round leaves it well out of the normal "pistol" category .

A friend has a SAA monstrosity chambered for .45-70-405. Should I claim that is a "pistol" round now, merely because a handgun exists for it? Hardly.

I'd reccomend a session at a range with some of the firearms discussed. You'd get the point then. The .30 USC is not a pistol round. In the M1 carbine, it's what it should be. A light, adequate carbine load. Int he M2, it's a marginal assault rifle round. In a Kimball handgun, it's a closed casket funeral.

Meplat-

I know what the Pederson device is, my question was about the cartridge it used. What was it, like 7.62x20mm or something?

Gnam- Without raiding bookshelves, that sounds correct. (I believe the French variant was 7.65X20, or 7.65X21. I'd need to dig the little SACM 35 out of the safe.)

Anyhow, I found this. Now I just need 50,000 dollars.

"http://www.gunsamerica.com/guns/976372031.htm"

Meplat-

Not directly related to Gnam's .30 Pederson device question, but there was a Pederson 125 grain .276 round developed in the late 1920s, which had a muzzle velocity of around 2700fps. As for the metric version of the calibre, the closest thing to it I can find is this:

http://www.reloadbench.com/cartspec.html

Anyway, since it used waxed cartridges for reliable operation in the Pederson rifle, and more seriously, it would have cost the US military more to adopt it than to continue using the .30-06, it adopted the M1 Garand instead.

EDIT- whoops, I said wax, not waxed

OCIW- Same guy. John D. Pedersen. John C. Garand's earlier designs used the ".276 Pedersen" instead of the then in service M1 Ball. The cartridges were coated with a dry film wax based lubricant, not made of wax. Pedersen's design used a primer setback based recoil operation to extract and reload the weapon, and the dry film wax helped it a tad. Remember, externally lubricated automatic weapons were not uncommon at that time, (although they were definitely on the way out. Having to cease fire because your machine gun ran it's oil tank dry is not acceceptable)

The main reason given for the rejection of the .276 was the huge stocks of .30 caliber ammo left from WW1.

Of note, Pedersen designed many firearms for Remington, including the beautiful little Remington 51 automatic pistol, and the majority of self loading .22's sold by Remington.

Meplat-

Meplat said:

Aretheusea- *Shrugs* Define, where a modern carbine fits in the definition of "assault rifle"

1- Intermediate caliber- A carbine IS by definition, an intermediate step between a full sized rifle, and a handgun. The .30 USC is a carbine load that, like the StG44's 7.92X33 predates the definition, but also helped defined it.

2- Capable of selective fire- The M2 fits this adequately. The M1 itself was not an "assault rifle" but the M2 is solidly there. (Or are you calling it an overpowered submacine gun?)

3- Detachable box magazine-

You seem to be attempting to firmly cement each and every definition used in firearms terminology in a specefic place. This works fine in libraries, but not so well when one is considering a firearm that blurs the established divisions. Another example? The nasty little 10"> M16 variants. SMG? Carbine? Assault rifle? Which is it?

The performance of the round leaves it well out of the normal "pistol" category .

A friend has a SAA monstrosity chambered for .45-70-405. Should I claim that is a "pistol" round now, merely because a handgun exists for it? Hardly.

I'd reccomend a session at a range with some of the firearms discussed. You'd get the point then. The .30 USC is not a pistol round. In the M1 carbine, it's what it should be. A light, adequate carbine load. Int he M2, it's a marginal assault rifle round. In a Kimball handgun, it's a closed casket funeral.

Meplat-

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1. By this definition, though, something like the .454 Casull, .45 Long Colt, or, hell, .50 Action Express can be deemed intermediate. And, say what you will about viability or recoil, I'd sill consider something like Tromix's .50AE projects to be SMGs, largely because they are firing pistol ammunition.

2. Incidentally, yes, I would be calling the M2 something of an awkard submachinegun.

3. No argument there, obviously.

I'm not trying to cement the definition. And hell, I'm aware that there's a bit of room for broad construction with something like the M733, which, contrary to my opinion, Colt classifies as a submachinegun where I'd call it a carbine. I'm just saying that, in my opinion, the .30 Carbine's performance seems to qualify it more as a silly pistol round than a silly rifle or intermediate round. But, that said, you have a good point. I've never seen an M1 or M2 carbine being fired, much less fired one myself, and that could change my opinion. Just seems that, considering reports of the thing simply failing to penetrate big coats, much less anything more substantial, it's not really much of an assault rifle on the terms of anything else that gets the term. Not disagreeing that it's somewhat out there and in very inconvenient territory, categorization wise, however.

Arethusa- The failure of the little .30 Carbine in combat is another potential lenghty discussion. That of "Misapplication". That neat little gun was intended to replace the .45 M1911A1, for those who's job was not specefically that of "infantryman" but where they did face the chance of potentially seeing or being shot at by enemy combatants.

Instead, it became a broad issue weapon, something it was never origionally intended for.

In civillian/police hands the M1 Carbine was quite effective, given that civillians could stoke the magazine with whatever they wanted. 110 grain .30 caliber softpoints from the M1 Carbine are decidely more lethal than the origional pill.

Meplat-

LOL, when I heard the performance was bad against winter coats, I thought it just meant it's lethality dropped after going through the coat and being slowed down. I didn't know it failed to penetrat the coat all-together. This was at long range though, right?

It seems the firearm world is in need of new terminology. If you buy a civilian, semi-auto Thompson M1, they classify it as a carbine. Of course, no one would put a Thompson in the same league as an M4 or SG551 (or even a Colt M733 for that matter) but that's what they call it. The M1 Carbine, the M733, and various civilian sub-caliber weapons that aren't handhguns, are in need of their own classification, and not some general term that's lost it's meaning. If Colt is confused about what to call it's M733, then what are we supposed to call weapons like the G36C and Sg552 which are even shorter?