If you take nothing else away from this video, please don't use Turkish 8mm in a semi-automatic or fully automatic firearm
Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum, and of course today
we are taking a look at Turkish 8mm Mauser ammunition. This specifically is
1941 dated
ammunition and
there's a variety of ammo that came out of Turkey as surplus; a variety of dates and a variety of
Conditions to it. So some of it is heavy ball. Some of it is light ball- different bullet weights
Some of it is- has a reputation for having loose or cracked necks. Some of it has a reputation for being
Fairly good. All of it has a reputation for being very hot
So what I said at the very beginning there: don't use this in semi or fully automatic firearms. I mean
very, very deliberately
I know of probably half a dozen machine guns that have been destroyed with
various types of Turkish 8mm Mauser ammunition and I have a friend who is missing two and a half fingers from
Turkish 8mm Mauser ammunition. So today we're gonna take a look at this specific batch, see what we get on a chronograph and
then talk about what it is and why it is. So,
Let's actually just take this straight out to the range before anyone asks. I'm not worried about losing fingers
I will be shooting this in a Kar98k, a model of 1898 Mauser bolt-action rifle
Which should be quite safely capable of handling whatever pressure we can get out of this ammunition
We've actually got the original bandolier here run this on stripper clips fifteen rounds
2921
2931
2968
2922
2954
Next stripper clip
These bandoliers are kind of awful
Right
2975
2951
2977
2947 and one more clip
2976
2905
2946
2933
2937
Uh,
No, hangfires
recoil was
Harsher than I was expecting and I think I have actually opened up a crack in the wrist of the rifle
Alas my poor rifle did not survive this test unscathed
We'll take a look at this in a moment
but first
Let me give you a little bit of detail about what this cartridge is
It really is pretty much a copy of the German S cartridge
when the Germans went-
Everyone at some point went from round nosed bullets to pointed bullets
And when the Germans did this with eight millimeter- 8mm Mauser
They came up with- was a bullet of a little over 150 grains
traveling at about- about 2850 feet per second; 870 meters per second
A 9.8 gram bullet. And that would be their initial development
They would also then later go on to develop a heavy ball
Which was better for machine guns. That heavy ball would be their primary cartridge in World War Two
That is more like 196, 198 grains
Traveling slower- 2400, 2500 feet per second- in that range
So what the Turks have made here is a copy of the initial cartridge- the light bullet traveling faster
And this is because Turkey at this time was very much influenced by Germany
Their military was- had a lot of German advisors, German technical aid
and in fact what we see here is a lot of- very similar to
German equipment as well; the idea of packaging it in these bandoliers, on the stripper clips, the look of
The cupro-nickel
jacket on the bullets- this- this all looks very much like
German. It's a German flake powder in there, which you'll see in a minute
So that's where they were coming from. The big problem is this ammunition
Did not store all that well, and it has gotten overpressure as a result. So let's take a closer look at this ammunition
Taken apart and we'll talk about the chronograph results and some of what the cases look like
This ammo was originally packaged in
1,400 round wooden crates, the same as Germany's packaging standards, and then each of these bandoliers has
Seven pockets to it. Each pocket holds two stripper clips. So 70 rounds per bandolier. I don't have the crate
I apologize
These bandoliers do vary in color
But you can usually recognize them by the really- really kind of cheap style of little buttons
These are disposable. The cloth is thin, the buttons are flimsy
They're one-use sorts of deals
Not all ammo and bandoliers is Turkish. But right now the vast majority of what you actually find out there will be
This particular batch is nice and clean. We can pull this off here. All the head stamps are the same, and what we have
Oriented this way, what we have up on the very top at 12 o'clock is
TC with a star and crescent and that is an abbreviation for Turkish Republic. FS on the bottom is the factory code
We have 7.9 on the left side
That's the caliber, 8mm. And we have a four-digit date stamp 1941 over there on the right
Like I said dates vary on this. The Turks adopted 8mm in like 1928
Ammunition does exist dating back to the 1930s
Most of what you see imported is going to be between like, well, in the 1940s from '41 here through '49
Looking at some pulled bullets. We have a flat base style of construction
This is just exactly what the German S bullet was designed to look like
There is a little bit of a waist right at the base of the bullet that is for crimping the case neck into
If we take a look at actual bullet weights
An average of a sample of 10 here came out to 154.3 grains
With standard deviation of just 0.66 grains. So really a very consistent bullet weight. As usual,
I don't have any good way to assess accuracy with this
Factors like bullet concentricity, so I don't know about those
The cartridge case is made of brass. The bullet does pull a magnet, that's relevant to some people for some shooting ranges
And this is Berdan primed ammunition and it is absolutely definitely corrosive ammunition. So if you do use this, make sure to clean
with some sort of water-containing cleaning solution
soap and water, very hot water, those work very nicely to clean the corrosive salts out that are the result of corrosive primers
The owder used in this is a flake type powder. This also makes sense in that
It is the same sort that the Germans use, that's what they would have advised
And helped provide to Turkey. All right. Now, let's get to the important part which is
Chronograph velocity, pressure, etc
I fired a total of 15 rounds over the chronograph
our average velocity
Was 2948 feet per second with a standard deviation of 22.94
So that's not particularly- well that's actually almost identical to the Ethiopian 8mm ammunition
That we did some chronographing of. It's not particularly good. This would not be considered acceptably
Consistent by modern factory standards. More important than this, however, is what that velocity actually is
This is supposed to be a copy of the German S cartridge. It is about 100 feet per second faster
Than the German S cartridge was, from the best documentation I've been able to find. Which is, by the way,
Dieter Storz's book on the Mauser 98
And if we look at the case heads
You will see what is called cratering there, where material has come back up around the firing pin to create
what is, in effect, a little crater style of thing where the-
this actually protrudes up above this surface of the primer and that is an indication of
overly high pressure. Now there are going to be some people who will retort that this is sometimes just the result of
You know, a poor firing pin to, before- poor fit of the firing pin in the firing pin hole of the bolt face. However,
What I will do here though is compare the right cartridges to the left ones
these left hand cartridges are Romanian 8mm Mauser, which is
Substantially lower velocity, lower pressure. This is proper good ammunition fired out of the exact same rifle
So you can see that we have a nice deep clean firing pin impression on the Romanian
Where this Turkish- again, the exact same rifle- has much shallower imprints with cratering
This is a sign of overpressure
another sign of overpressure is the rifle breaking. So,
felt recoil was pretty hefty on this, and I have actually now developed a crack in the back of-
Well, in the wrist of the stock right here as well as right behind the receiver tang
So, I don't know. Yeah, you can see the crack there
what really- I
Discovered this because it is actually- you can feel it, running- running your finger over that crack
It is that the top section here is lifting up over the bottom section, and I noticed that during the firing
of those 15 test rounds, so
Between the cratering, the excessive velocity on the chronograph, and it breaking my rifle,
I am quite happy to go on the record as calling this stuff overpressure ammunition
I want to point out that pressure and velocity are not perfectly related in the way some people may expect that
They are. An increase in pressure does not necessarily translate exactly into a proportional increase in velocity
So when we look at this and say, oh, this is only 100 feet per second faster than what the, you know,
the proper German ammunition that it's copying was
That doesn't mean that the pressure is only that same small amount over what it ought to be
This is a case where the pressure- because of poor storage over time,
The pressure is increased more than the velocity has, so
You can't look at this and judge it entirely by its velocity. You have to also take into account factors like the primer cratering
People are going to ask if I was putting myself in danger doing this and the answer is, no I really wasn't
Because I'm shooting this in a Mauser 98 bolt-action rifle. This is a very strong action
It has very good properties for venting gas in the case of a ruptured cartridge
And while I do potentially risk cracking the stock, and if I keep shooting this in theory
There is a potential for the whole stock to actually break and, you know, recoil coming back on that shot,
Rifle can hit me and be unpleasant. But I don't really run the risk of this actually detonating because of one of these cartridges
That is not necessarily true for a self-loading
Firearm, no. If you have a gas system or a recoil system that is operating the gun
Overpressure ammunition can be a very serious problem
So don't be one of those machine gun owners who is happy to spend $20-, $30-, $40-, $50,000 on a very cool
historical machine gun and then
Get super cheap when they go to actually shoot it and buy the absolute cheapest, worst ammunition
They can find, like Turkish 8mm
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video
This is of course why I don't use the nicest rifles out there to do this testing
So we'll be finding, I think, a new stock for this rifle if we're gonna go on and and use it anymore in
Testing like this. So anyway, it is-
Thanks to the folks on Patreon that it's possible for me to pick up this ammo we started this series with
Ethiopian ammo provided by Century. I don't think after that, Century is ever probably going to want to work with me again, which is fine
I've been providing, you know
I provide the other ammunition since for this sort of testing, so a big thanks to everyone on Patreon who makes that possible
tune in again tomorrow for more cool Forgotten Weapons