Dying beneath a pile of surplus .30-06 wouldn’t be all that unhealthy. You’d be a really wealthy man till it will definitely crushed you. I can settle for that, nevertheless it’s nonetheless exhausting for me to just accept {that a} mountain of surplus .30-06 killed the best way too cool .276 Pedersen. The .276 Pedersen was primed to turn out to be the following service cartridge of the U.S. Army as they sought to interchange the venerable .30-06 and 1903 Springfield with a semi-automatic platform.
The writing was on the wall. Sooner-firing weapons have been the long run. World Struggle I proved that, and machine weapons and submachine weapons have been turning into the norm. World wide, the principle battle rifle continued to be the bolt-action, however each the US and the Soviet Union wished a semi-auto platform.
As we all know now, the U.S. would discipline the M1 Garand in .30-06, however the M1 Garand was virtually chambered in .276 Pedersen.
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John Pedersen designed the .276 Pedersen in 1923. It was a 7mm projectile in a 51mm case. The projectile weighed 125 and moved at 2400 FPS. The cartridge had a major taper. This made extraction simpler, however would require curved magazines.
On this period it wasn’t a problem. They have been utilizing en bloc clips, so nobody cared that it was barely extra curved than different choices. The cartridge grew to become a favourite of the famously conservative Ordnance Board.
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Why the .276 Pedersen
Making a semi-auto .30-06 rifle that was close to the identical weight and size because the M1903 could be a major problem. The lengthy, highly effective cartridge was difficult to design round. Self-loading platforms existed, just like the BAR, however they have been pretty massive and heavy, not suited to arm a whole infantry squad.
John Pedersen, an extremely gifted firearms designer, designed the .276 Pedersen and a toggle-delayed blowback rifle to chamber it. The .276 Pedersen supplied troopers lighter ammunition and a lighter rifle total. The cartridge was 7mm x 51mm, and the .30-06 was a 7.62 x 63. The Pedersen rifle or rifles within the Pedersen cartridge had much less recoil, for sooner follow-up pictures.
Some claims state it had lower than half the recoil of the .30-06, however I can’t check that to confirm. The .276 Pedersen made it simpler to design a rifle, and for a bit, the Pedersen rifle and cartridge have been the frontrunners. That modified quite quick.
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The Pedersen Rifle
The Pedersen rifle had a giant flaw. For the toggle-delayed blowback motion to work, the rounds needed to be waxed. It’s by no means factor to want lubricated rounds. Wax might appeal to dust and particles, and what’s the prospect the typical infantryman protected his ammo sufficient to maintain it waxed?
Ian at Forgotten Weapons has an important video on the topic and supplies extra perception. Pedersen wished a royalty for weapons produced, and he additionally irritated the Ordnance Board. Throughout the last trials, he went to Europe to promote his design to the British. The Military wished him there for trials, and he was too busy to take their name.
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The Military went with the opposite front-runner, the M1 Garand. Garand introduced his rifle in each .30-06 and the .276 Pedersen. Utilizing the smaller cartridge created a rifle that was 12 ounces lighter. It additionally expanded the capability to 10 rounds in an en bloc clip.
The Demise of .276 Pedersen
What killed the .276 Pedersen cartridge with the U.S. Military was John Garand presenting a semi-automatic rifle that was pretty simple to deal with, dependable, and correct in .30-06. John Garand cracked the code on making an infantry rifle in .30-06 with the Garand.
It may very well be carried out, and it may very well be carried out properly. The U.S. had piles of .30-06 already, and it was a a lot smaller logistical endeavor to choose the cartridge they already had. This allowed them to make use of a standard cartridge between the rifles and machine weapons of the period.
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With that, the .276 Pedersen was killed for American use. The thought of a smaller projectile and intermediate cartridge was removed from useless. As we all know now, it’s the best way to go when arming a contemporary navy pressure.
What May Have Been
I feel it’s secure to say that People armed with .276 Pedersen M1 Garand would have killed as many Nazis and Japanese because the .30-06 model. It wouldn’t have made a distinction within the conflict itself or any notable battles. Troopers would have nonetheless complained that their rifle was too heavy.
The easy concept is that this is able to have helped usher in an period of intermediate cartridges just like the 5.56 we’ve now. I feel the alternative.
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If infantry weapons advanced from WWII, I feel we’d have carried out the alternative. If the .276 Pedersen had made its method into the M-14 as an alternative of the 7.62 NATO, we’d have saved the M-14 round a bit longer. It could have had much less recoil, been extra controllable in computerized, and won’t have been the shortest-serving service rifle.
We’d have had sick curved mags in an M-14, too!
Who is aware of what might have been? I solely know what’s, and I personally would like to have a lighter-weight, lighter-recoiling M1 Garand. Alas, mountains of surplus .30-06 are harmful to be round.
Ultimately, the destiny of the .276 Pedersen was sealed not by its ballistics, however by a pocketbook. The truth that the magnificent M1 Garand may very well be efficiently chambered within the present, plentiful .30-06 rendered the novel, progressive .276 totally pointless to the penny-pinching Ordnance Corps of the Melancholy period. It was a failure of creativeness, however successful for the bean counters.
