Alright, thanks to the Defense Academy at Shrivenham in the UK,
I actually have the chance to shoot (this is rifle number 7),
an EM-2 in the original .280 cartridge.
I am really curious about this.
.280 is described is an intermediate cartridge, and it is, it is less powerful than .308 or .30-06.
But it is still substantially more powerful than what we think of as intermediate today, namely 5.56 or 5.45.
So I'm really pretty curious to see how that handles in a rifle that is pretty darn light.
Now we also have a non-magnified optic here.
And a lot of the examples I've seen of these optics have been
really worse for wear, cloudy, difficult to see through.
This particular one is in excellent condition,
and it's way nicer than the other ones that I've seen before.
Looking through this, you've got a pointer coming down from the top,
and then ... four holdover lines, for 3, 5, 7, and 900 yards, I believe it would have been at that point.
Alright, let's put a couple rounds through it.
I'm going to go ahead and lock the bolt open,
and when you insert a magazine in the EM-2 it will automatically drop the bolt,
and slightly malfunctioned... Give it some credit, this rifle's very old and tired.
Alright, we actually had a deformed round in there, so we're going to try this a second time.
... This time, we're going to put the mag in and just charge the rifle normally.
Perfect. Alright, here we go.
This is semi-auto. Yes. My fire selector on this is here above the trigger,
and it's currently set to 'R', repetition, or semi-auto.
This is fantastic to shoot. Recoil on this is ...
this is definitely a heavier cartridge than a 5.56 or, like, a 4.85.
But ... this is a nice straight line recoil. Goes right into your shoulder, doesn't climb, it's really nice.
Alright, let's try this: a couple two-round bursts full-auto. Let's see if I can pull that off.
Alright, the fire selector is up here, we're going to push that over to automatic.
Now I don't know if this was deliberate or just coincidental,
but it's very easy from a firing grip, to go from auto to semi.
You have to actually adjust your grip to go from semi to automatic,
Which, if it's intentional, which it may or may not be, that would make sense.
Because, even a relatively intermediate cartridge like this, is still far more useful, I think, in semi-auto than full.
What I'm curious here is whether I can fire two-round controlled bursts,
and if I can keep them all on the target. Let's find out.
[click]
That would be a no.
Alright, I had one little failure to feed there which dented the case.
We've decided that, given the age of the rifle, we are not going to fire that round.
So I have three rounds here, let's see what a three-round burst looks like.
There we go.
That fired so fast it felt like one!
Alright, my second cartridge is not quite coming up into the firing position.
Remember guys, this rifle is, what, this would have been made in '51 probably,
which would make it 65 years old now.
And has been fired extensively by the School here at Shrivenham. So,
There we go, give it a little help. Got two rounds, let's try a two-round burst.
Alright, so that moved a lot more than on something like a 5.56.
... I've had the chance to shoot one of the XL64s, which is in the 4.85 British cartridge.
This moved a lot more in full-auto than that thing did. Two round bursts with that,
I was actually able to keep both rounds on, like, a 12 inch target at 25-30 yards.
This, I had one round on target and one round up to the right.
While that .280 cartridge ... it seems to be, as far as I can tell, a really nice compromise rifle cartridge.
It's not so much a machine gun cartridge from the shoulder.
If I had one of these, if I were dictating its usage, for what that's worth,
I would say stick to semi-auto.
In the lighter stuff, the 5.56 and 4.85, and 5.45 Russian, full-auto can be done a lot more controllably.
This one, I think, is just a little bit over the threshold for effective full-auto fire from the shoulder.
But I tell you what, in semi-auto, it is fantastic.
You know, most of the time, when we look at guns on Forgotten Weapons,
if they're rifles like this, that were potential military service rifles that never made it ... past initial testing,
There's usually a very good reason. There's usually some horrible problem
with the gun that makes it really obvious why they weren't adopted.
The EM-2 is actually kind of a different story. The overreaching ... you know,
the predominant reason that this was never actually put into production and adopted,
(although it was briefly adopted),
the reason was political controversy over what the cartridge ought to be.
And really, to be frank, it was US Ordnance Department's
obstinancy about retaining a .30-06 powered cartridge,
when this was very specifically designed for a lesser powered cartridge.
Now, looking back on it today, we can see that that lesser powered cartridge
is really what should have been gone with in the 1950s.
But for political reasons that didn't happen.
I think as far as I can tell, this rifle really is a fantastic, excellent rifle,
certainly in 1950s context. And
it's hard to say anything other than we would have been ahead of ourselves,
if this had been adopted. Rather than going through a couple decades of .308 Winchester
(7.62 NATO) as a service cartridge, before finally acknowledging that
... that cartridge really is more powerful than an infantry service rifle ought to be.
And going to a lighter cartridge (which we have today), going to something like the .280
I think would have been a really intelligent step forward at that time. And it's too bad that it wasn't.
In total, only about 55 of these were ever made, and it's a shame, I'd love to have one of these,
unfortunately I'm pretty sure it'll never happen, but it was a fantastic experience to get to shoot one.
A big thank you to the school here at Shrivenham for giving me the opportunity.
If you guys ever have the chance to check out an EM-2, absolutely don't miss it.
Thanks for watching.