Along the way, the Army contemplated replacing the .30-06 with a 7mm round developed by John D. Pederson. This turned out to be a dead end so the Army stuck with the .30-06. Thank goodness they did.
I've a feeling that, just as with the British War Office in 1912-13, your new cartridge project started as a .270 and grew to 7mm. The .276" British (7mm as Brit practice was to quote bore dia back then not bullet dia in naming cartridges) is a fascinating story and an object lesson in the dangers of becoming obsessed with ballistics to the detriment of everything else. After the South African war of 1898-1902, our War Office decided the Lee action rifle and 0.303" were inadequate and wanted a 7mm Mauser like what the Boers had used. Only they wanted it more accurate with higher velocities and ended up with the Pattern '13 that fired a really hot seven based on the .280 Ross. It used 50 odd grains weight of a really 'hot' blend of double-base cordite, wore barrels out in a few hundred rounds, produced terrible muzzle flash and blast, and recoiled badly. Worst of all, the barrel got so hot in rapid fire it charred the handguard and caused cook-offs with a round chambered but not fired after a rapid string - really safe occurrence one imagines.
The troops hated the Mauser system rifle compared to their SMLEs too - long, heavy, long bolt throw and six-round internal magazine. But ........... the British Army was going to have it, whatever the actual users thought about it, and it was only the outbreak of WW1 that killed the great British 7mm project off!
We also looked at the .276 Pederson after WW1 and Vickers made a licensed copy of the Pederson self-loading rifle. If you guys had adopted it, we probably would have too instead of developing the SMLE into the Number 4 Rifle. I've a feeling that what killed the Pederson round off was the rifle needing the cartridges to be greased for case extraction without tearing the extractor rims off. (A delayed blow-back like the later CETME / H&K design that used a fluted chamber to get round this problem.)
Anyway going back to the .276" calibre P'13, you guys know the rifle best as the .30-06 M1917 Enfield of course south of the 49th parallel, or the 0.303" P'14 north of it, this being what the Pattern 13 morphed into. The UK Pattern Room collection has some superb examples of the 7mm prototypes and troops trials rifles (as well as mouth-watering hand-built 'exhibition quality' Springfield '03s including an original .30-03 model stocked up to the muzzle).
The difference between us and you is that the .30-06 is still viable as a hunting and target round while the 0.303" is a historics arms shooting proposition only now over here. You occasionally see old Winchester soft-point 180gn ammo, but technically it's illegal on deer in Scotland as it fails to make a minimum 2,500 fps MV requirement. It's deer-legal in England and Wales, but there can only be a handful of deerstalkers who still use it now. Nearly all the rifles are based on military actions too, mostly SMLE or the later Number 4, so they're pretty rough and ready compared to modern rifles. The best examples are some really nice single-shot Martinis and well remodelled P'14s with the sight-protecting ears ground off.
Maybe we should have gone for the seven!
Laurie,
York, England
PS German, came 3rd in the F/TR division of the GB F-Class Association's 1st national League Round of the year over the weekend with the Eliseo B1, my best result to date. I must email Gary E and tell him as well as congratulate him on his California Palma result.
But don't forget there is also a scaled up .30-06 - the .50 BMG. John Browning did a perfect scale-up of the '06 to create the .50 when he designed the M2 machine gun. After all, when you're looking at perfection, there's nothing left to do but make it bigger! ;D
