[ Best WW2 Rifle Cartridge? ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another "Ask Ian" Q&A on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian of course, our question today comes from crablegs21 on Utreon, who asks,
"In your opinion and in hindsight, which country had the most optimised cartridge
for their primary infantry rifle in World War Two?
Additionally, which country could have benefitted most
by switching to that cartridge prior to the war?"
So answering this requires a little bit of definition setting.
Are we talking about the best cartridge?
Are we talking about the best cartridge for the infantry rifle?
And what exactly is the definition of "standard infantry rifle"?
So if I was asked to pick the best cartridge for an infantry rifle in World War Two,
I would say 8x33, 8mm Kurz.
Basically because it's the least powerful cartridge out there short of .30 carbine.
It is a round that has sufficient terminal effect to be practical in an infantry rifle,
but without the massive overpower that you get with all of the full-size rifle cartridges,
like the 8mm Mausers, the .30-06s, the 7.62 Russians.
... First off, does that fit the question? Maybe, maybe not.
The Sturmgewehr was never the standard infantry rifle of the Wehrmacht.
Although the Wehrmacht wanted it to become the standard rifle, it never actually did during the war.
But I'm going to ignore those concerns and say my first choice would be 8mm Kurz.
Fastest follow-up shots, it's a rimless cartridge.
Yeah, it's bigger in diameter than it ought to be, it's not the most efficient way to do
a cartridge for a box fed magazine gun because the magazines get really long.
But the Russians certainly saw the potential of it,
and we see 7.62x39 setting a major trend in arms development after the war.
Now the reason that countries didn't use lightweight cartridges like that in World War Two
is that going ... way back there was a realisation that
you're not just supplying a cartridge for an infantry rifle.
You're also supplying the cartridge for the supporting machine guns.
And for logistical purposes it really makes a lot of sense to use one single cartridge
for all of the infantry's ... rifles and the machine guns.
The problem is ... in order to make optimal use of machine guns,
and we see this in World War One, machine guns shooting at quite extended ranges.
As well as ... even in World War One, but especially in the 1920s and 1930s,
you're using those machine guns to shoot at things that aren't just people.
They are shooting at airplanes, they are shooting at vehicles.
And all of those things put together, the range and the targets,
require a cartridge that has significantly more terminal ballistic impact
than what's required for just shooting at a soldier.
And so that kind of sets the requirements for a cartridge
if you're using the same cartridge for the rifles and the machine guns.
And for that reason basically every country in World War Two
used a cartridge optimised for their machine guns.
The machine guns were considered a more important weapon than the infantry rifles.
Now it's interesting to look at some of what we ... would still consider
full-size rifle cartridges like 6.5 Swede.
The Swedes in the 1930s looked at that cartridge and realised that
they actually considered that underpowered for their machine guns.
And they went and developed a second cartridge, 8x63, specifically for machine guns,
especially like anti-aircraft machine guns.
That's basically the case head and diameter of 6.5 Swedish,
with the case length of .30-06 and an 8mm bullet. It's a really powerful cartridge.
That was adopted and used in Swedish machine guns,
because it ... allowed them to exploit the full capabilities of a proper fixed machine gun.
So, with that in mind, that's why everyone's using overpowered cartridges.
... Go back. If I have to choose the best cartridge that
was actually chambered in ... "the" standard infantry rifle,
I would probably go with 7.35 Carcano
because it remains the least powerful cartridge in standard use
in a standard infantry rifle in World War Two.
Now, I am acknowledging that that's going to reduce
the overall effectiveness of the machine guns that are being used in that calibre.
But I think it's the best sort of compromise that you can get.
And the question here is: what's the best cartridge for the infantry rifle?
So by using 7.35 Carcano, this is by the way
a 128 grain bullet at about 2,500 feet per second, so it's a full power rifle,
but it's really on the bottom end of power of full-powered rifle cartridges.
There are potential options in 6.5 that will also be light recoiling.
We already talked briefly about the 6.5 Swede,
that is basically almost identical ballistically to 6.5 Creedmoor today.
And of course the Swedes didn't consider it sufficient for machine guns.
It's a little more powerful than 7.35 Carcano even though the bullet diameter is smaller,
it actually uses a heavier bullet than the 7.35.
If we look at the other 6.5 cartridges that were in the war.
6.5 Japanese is hindered by its use of a semi-rimmed case.
... For just ease of feeding ... I think any cartridge that's going to be called
"the best of the war" has to be rimless, so that rules out 6.5 Japanese.
The 6.5 Carcano, you might think if 7.35 Carcano is good,
well 6.5 is going to be even better in all those ways.
Well the problem with 6.5 Carcano is that it was a long round-nosed bullet.
It was not a modern bullet by the time World War Two starts.
That's going to really hinder its use in machine guns.
In fact, it hinders its use in machine guns sufficiently
that the Italians also went and developed
their own heavier machine gun cartridge, that being the 8x59 Breda.
Which is really pretty similar to 8mm Mauser,
but with a heavier standard bullet, it was a 210 grain bullet.
For the same reason the Swedes did this, they decided that 6.5 Carcano
with its round-nose old-style bullet just wasn't sufficiently effective in heavier machine guns.
7.35 reduces the bullet weight, increases the velocity,
which is a good thing for machine gun use.
It's also a larger diameter bullet, which means the bullet has more internal volume
for things like tracers and armour piercing elements.
Things that militaries like to do, especially for use in machine guns.
So 7.35 is still going to be ... leaving behind some capabilities of machine guns,
but I think it's the best for rifles.
Now the second part of this question, what country could have benefitted from it the most?
That's a tough one ... I think I'm going to say the United States.
Because ... the US was the one country really using self-loading rifles through the whole war.
Yes, the Russians had the SVT, but we gave everybody M1 Garands
(unless they were in the Marine Corps).
Imagine the M1 in 7.35 Carcano, a shorter cartridge.
This is all hypothetical of course, there's no way the US could have done this conversion.
We were barely ... getting the M1 into mass production when the war started anyway.
But if you imagine the M1 in 7.35 Carcano,
it's getting closer to the idea of like an M1 in ... .276 Pedersen.
You've got less recoil, the gun can weigh less, the receiver can be shorter,
you're going to get faster follow-up shots.
You're probably not going to get 10 rounds in the clip, it's probably going to stay 8
because the cartridge diameter is more or less the same.
But ... I think it would be a nice step up in the M1.
It would also be really interesting in the BAR.
You could probably lighten the BAR substantially.
With less recoil you have a gun that's going to be more controllable
from the shoulder in full-auto or from a bipod.
I think it'd be really interesting to see what could come of a gun like a BAR in 7.35 Carcano.
So, those are my thoughts on World War Two cartridges.
I think the Kurz idea is a bit justified by the fact
that the Soviet Union certainly saw the potential in it,
and went ahead and it created a whole new wave of small arms concepts after World War Two.
Although again, worth pointing out: it caused the Soviets to go to a two cartridge standard.
They didn't use 7.62x39 in their supporting machine guns.
They used it in the squad automatic weapons, the RPDs,
but everything bigger, the Goryunovs, the Maxims that were still around, eventually the PKs,
they get 7.62x54 to better harness the capabilities of a machine gun.
So thanks to crablegs for dropping the question.
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