07-07-2019, 05:13 PM
The wisdom of adopting the .276 Pedersen is another topic and was discussed in a previous thread, http://www.65grendel.com/forum/showthrea...g-the-Myth. The "existing inventory" issue, as it turned out in hindsight, was incorrect. According to Hatcher, the US had used up all of its WWI 30-06 inventory by 1936, about the time the M1 Garand was entering service. It would have been easy to predict this at the time.
The tooling issue in not as big a deal as many believe. I am familiar with that type of equipment, having worked at a plant that did deep-drawing, machining and assembly of brass and steel components. The most important thing was that the .276 Pederson was similar in length and diameter than the 30-06. Deep-drawing and assembly equipment are largely designed around the product length, so a longer cartridge might have been a problem. As it was, the existing equipment could have been easily adapted to the new cartridge. The actual punches and dies were non-durable tooling. In other words, even though they are working with brass, they are replaced fairly often. The cost savings in raw materials, brass and lead, would have quickly paid for the modifications. While writing this, it just occurred to me that it is possible that the Pedersen cartridge was designed around the existing tooling.
There also been some discussion about what the final version of the .276 Pedersen would have been. A 2016 article on TFB stated that the army actually intended to adopt a larger .276 cartridge that had the same size base as the 30-06. That article claimed that the change would have been made to allow the use of more varieties of (less dense) propellants and longer bullets. On the other hand, others state that the larger-based round was just a semi-rimmed version of the original, designed for experiments in existing machineguns designed around a 0.471" base. Somewhere on the interwebs is a site that has photographs of several of the .276 Pederson variants, including the semi-rimmed version, but I can't seem to find it now.
The US military argued that the .276 Pedersen would add unnecessary complexity to the supply chain. Nevertheless, by mid-war, they ended up needing to supply 30-06 (loose, in belts, stripper clips, and enbloc clips), .30 carbine and .45 acp at the front line.
The tooling issue in not as big a deal as many believe. I am familiar with that type of equipment, having worked at a plant that did deep-drawing, machining and assembly of brass and steel components. The most important thing was that the .276 Pederson was similar in length and diameter than the 30-06. Deep-drawing and assembly equipment are largely designed around the product length, so a longer cartridge might have been a problem. As it was, the existing equipment could have been easily adapted to the new cartridge. The actual punches and dies were non-durable tooling. In other words, even though they are working with brass, they are replaced fairly often. The cost savings in raw materials, brass and lead, would have quickly paid for the modifications. While writing this, it just occurred to me that it is possible that the Pedersen cartridge was designed around the existing tooling.
There also been some discussion about what the final version of the .276 Pedersen would have been. A 2016 article on TFB stated that the army actually intended to adopt a larger .276 cartridge that had the same size base as the 30-06. That article claimed that the change would have been made to allow the use of more varieties of (less dense) propellants and longer bullets. On the other hand, others state that the larger-based round was just a semi-rimmed version of the original, designed for experiments in existing machineguns designed around a 0.471" base. Somewhere on the interwebs is a site that has photographs of several of the .276 Pederson variants, including the semi-rimmed version, but I can't seem to find it now.
The US military argued that the .276 Pedersen would add unnecessary complexity to the supply chain. Nevertheless, by mid-war, they ended up needing to supply 30-06 (loose, in belts, stripper clips, and enbloc clips), .30 carbine and .45 acp at the front line.