.280 Enfield...Ahead of its time

[Tony Williams]

I must disagree with both your comment and the title premise. The .280 British was definitely not ahead of its time. Quite the opposite, actually. It is a battle rifle cartridge, developed after intermediate rounds like .30 Carbine and 7.92 Kurz had already shown a better way forward.

I have to disagree there, Stan. The .280 was not ideal, but it was a viable general-purpose cartridge, unlike the 7.62x51, .30 Carbine, 7.92 Kurz and 7.62x39. The recoil was only around 7 ft lbs compared with about 11 ft lbs with the .303 Lee Enfield, making it controllable in auto fire.

The criticisms I would make of it are that the selection of a 7mm heavy bullet (to meet the US 2,000 yard performance criterion) meant that the MV had to be kept down, giving it a rather curved trajectory. It also meant that the ammo weight was rather high (although significantly lighter than the .303 and .30'06 which it was aiming to replace).

I would rather have gone for the .270 British (6.8x46) which had a base diameter similar to the Grendel's, but not in the 100-grain loading: with a heavier and more aerodynamic bullet of around 125 grains I think it would have been the optimum compromise.