Why .30 caliber historically for military?

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The reason why the 30 caliber was widely adopted by many nations was the Internet had not been invented yet.

Instead of sitting deep in their headquarters seeking expert opinions on the information superhighway Generals were learning their lessons the hard way, actually killing enemy soldiers on the battlefield.

Europe was already developing the 30 caliber before 1900. The United States learned a painful lesson when facing Spanish Mausers in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. However theories be damned the round had to be proven on the battlefield with WW1 providing plenty of unwilling test subjects.

The 30 caliber proven itself again in WW2 and Korean War. The 223 was and remains a hotly debated caliber with the 308 seeing reintroduction by the Army in Afghanistan.

Just like the B-52 bomber some things just work so well there are no real improvements.
 
You also have to consider how the military (at least in the US) liked standardization of cartridges, which still somewhat applies to this day. If your infantry soldiers can break down a link of machine gun ammo when their rifle ammo starts running low, you only have to supply 1 caliber. In WWI the US used 1903's, BAR's, M1917's, and M1918's. All used the 30-06. It would have been pretty difficult for a US soldier to pick up the wrong ammo and fire it through his rifle. I think when you combine that with the trend that was already occuring (going towards smaller rounds) and the fact that it was a fairly proven caliber, it's easy to see why they used it as the standard for so long. Going into WWII there wasn't a good enough reason to switch. WWII pretty much proved that other advancements in military technology had pretty much killed the idea of trench warfare so the trend to smaller cartridges persisted. I think it is unlikely that it will continue much further than we are now. I think the 5.56 will either remain the NATO standard for a long time or "the people in charge" will start to see that something more along the lines of the 6.8SPC is appropriate. Anything smaller than the 5.56 (or 5.45 for the Russians) should probably be relegated to varmint plinking or PDWs.
 
"WHY the .28-.31 caliber was chosen by so many different countries independently during the same time period?"

Actually, they were not independently chosen. There was a great deal of international marketing back then.

Firms like Mauser had a catalogue from which they sold arms. Other countries were jealous of their rivals calibers and mimicked them, upping their performance in some way. For example, the 30-06 was a direct outgrowth of the Spanish Mauser cartridge. Those darned Spaniards had a hot little German cartridge, so we had to make it a little bit better.
Mauserguy
 
.30 is the 'sweet spot' for global geopolitics and (human) physics. Over and over we all have seemed to hit on it over the last 125 years or so for general battlefield use. Go to Russia, Germany,England, US--it's just there----like different flavors of ice cream.


Don't over think this---accept that it just *IS* --- it mostly is a function of the distances and obstacles over which (and through which) we shoot at one another--and of the same stuff (mostly water) we are made from. 30 isn't great against serious hard targets, and might be bested in some fast-shooting close combat senarios against soft targets. But put a decent marksman out at 400 yards with a Battlerifle in a traditional .30 (say an M-1, Mauser, or Enfield) and on ANY day a rational man would run like hell.
 
If you study military tactics in the late 19th/early 20th century you will understand why the .30 caliber was chosen.

Machineguns were still not common. Massed volley rifle fire was used as long range suppressive fire instead. There's a reason that the original Springfields, Enfields, Mausers, and Moisin-Nagants had adjustable ladder sights that went up to 2000 yards. No one was expected to hit anything in particular at that range, but a whole company (over 100) rifles firing at the same time dropped a lot of lead in the target area. Enough to make you keep your head down.

A .223 has about 75 ft-lb of energy at 1000 yards (about the same as a .25 ACP out of a pistol). A .30-06 still has over 500 ft-lb of energy at that range.

The military at the time would have preferred something on the order of a .50 BMG bolt action, but wisely figured out that a .30 caliber was about the maximum that a soldier could handle under sustained fire. The .30 caliber is still capable of doing significant damage at extended suppressive fire ranges, while the smaller calibers are reduced to a nuisance level.

As military tactics evolved and squad machine guns took over the long range and suppressive fire role in WW2, it was observed that the individual infantryman had little need to fire at targets over 300 yards. This lead to the development of the assault weapon and lower powered cartridges in smaller calibers.
 
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The US Krag

In 1892 the US Army adopted the Krag in what is today called the 30-40. It's said that as a result of going up against Spanish Mausers in Cuba the Krag was deemed inadequate and the 30-03 & 30-06 developed. Now I'm not saying anything against the Mauser, fine rifle, but what was so bad about the Krag? Used to own one and never saw anything wrong with it. If nothing else, it was the smoothest action that ever came down the pike and very easy to load, doesn't even have use for stripper clips. Can load it wearing very heavy mittens.
 
One thing that no one has mentioned is that modern militaries are limited to the inneffective full metal jacketed bullets that preform so poorly on living tissue that they are generally illegal for hunting.
 
The main problem with the Krag in action was its slow loading time - loading one round at a time is much slower than sticking a stripper clip in the action and thumbing in all five rounds at once. The other problem was that the .30-40 is a low-velocity round, and the Krag action, with only a single locking lug, couldn't handle the pressures of higher velocity rounds, as the Army discovered when they tried to speed up the .30-40. That combination of factors led to the adoption of a new rifle and a new cartridge.
 
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FWIW, the German army rejected the 7X57mm Mauser as underpowered, insisting that their rifles be chambered for a heavier cartridge. Hence, the 7.92X57mm (or 8mm) Mauser cartridge.
 
Key phrase there - "proper hunting bullets." Armies could not then, and cannot now, use those bullets. They are limited to ball ammo. The 7x57 in use at the end of the 19th century was only marginally more powerful than the M/88 cartridge already in use by Germany, but the new 8x57 finally adopted in 1905 offered a substantial increase in power over the 7x57.
 
2, 4, 6, 8, and up are even numbers.
.30 would be a fraction.
Click to expand...

.30 is a decimal.
3/10 would be a fraction. :)

IMO, it's because until relatively recently, it was covers the range of bullets that will retain energy and still pick up enough velocity (without breaking your shoulder) to shoot flat enough that you can concentrate on shooting someone before they shoot you, instead of compensating for drop.

Plus, it kills. Until recently that was the point. Now--when fighting against an actual army, not people that fight until they run out of blood--you're expected to kill an enemy, but as long as they aren't shooting at you at the moment it's all good.
 
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Range. Cost. Weight. Overkill.

Wars used to be fought with men standing on fields as far as the eye could see. You could literally SEE your opponent way over there. Whoever could reach him with a rifle would win. Bullets need to travel long distances, retain energy, and penetrate concealment or even cover.

A .23 caliber bullet kills a man just as dead at pratical rifle ranges as a .30 caliber bullet, yet weighs 1/2 (powder, shell, and bullet), takes up 1/2 the space, costs 1/2 to make, and a Soldier can carry twice as much ammo or other gear...

Doesn't take long to figure out that smaller bullets just make sense.
As wars developed where men got closer to each other, or didn't want or need to kill innocents, or where men needed to carry MORE bullets, the bullets inherently got smaller and lighter. Also, we realized that WOUNDING your opponent may be a better tactic than killing him outright. It consumes more enemy resources and possibly leaves him alive as a prisoner...

Unnecessary cost of producing larger bullets, transporting larger bullets, carrying larger bullets, overkill factor, etc.
 
2, 4, 6, 8, and up are even numbers.
.30 would be a fraction.

.30 is a decimal.
3/10 would be a fraction.
Click to expand...

I defer to the mathematical mastery of the board.
I meant .30 was a nice even number grammatically, not mathematically.
Isn't it easier to say "thirty" than "three oh three?"
(Can't imagine why the Brits picked that one off the wall.)

The 7.62x54R MN was originally the "three line rifle" where a "line" is a tenth of an inch.
That being the nominal bore diameter. Europeans liked deep grooves to resist erosion from hot early Ballistite derived powders.
 
Roughly 30 cal. is a good compromise on the bullet. It'll stay stable out to longer ranges and retain punch when it gets there. It's also better against cover at all ranges. The trade-off comes in number of rounds carried and recoil.

@Owen- The military thinking is to take your opponent out of action, not necessarily kill. A wounded man takes four more people to care for him, so it's a matter of logistics.
 
@Owen- The military thinking is to take your opponent out of action, not necessarily kill. A wounded man takes four more people to care for him, so it's a matter of logistics.
Click to expand...

Sometimes. This is an oft-repeated "truism" but it doesn't acutally seem to appear in any official military doctrine anywhere and it is far from a universal phemomenon. We seem to find ourselves engaging very few enemies who devote anything like the kind of care to their wounded that we do (meaning that this would hurt us more than it hurt our enemies) -- and on the flip side, we seem to fight a fair number of enemies who refuse to leave any soldiers on the field, wounded or dead, for a variety of reasons.

It can happen, of course, but repeating it as though it is part of the rationale for choosing one bullet over another is probably not wise.
 
Sometimes. This is an oft-repeated "truism" but it doesn't acutally seem to appear in any official military doctrine anywhere
Click to expand...
That's correct -- this is a fantasy created by armchair tacticians. Ask any Infantryman if he'd rather kill or only wound the man that's trying to kill him and see what he says.
 
the more things change... the more they stay the same...

5.56 is standard issue in AR variant rifles...

but there have been a whole lot of M-14s resurected from the darks of the armory basement, reconfigured with modern ergonomic furnature and accessories and sent to play in central asia.

7.62 isn't gone yet.

More massive bullets are needed to deliver adequate energy at longer ranges....
 
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Calibers are a trend of shrinking.
1700's was the 50 or 60 cal musket ball.
1800's was the wise of the 45/70 Gov't
1900's we see the 30 cals you listed, -06,x54R,x39,303 etc.
Late 1900's we see 22 cals 5.45x39, 5x56.45
Now we are seeing 17cal PDW's like the PS90 and stuff.

How long is it before we are shooting needles at eachother D:
Click to expand...

An excellent point.

This has been an interesting thread.
 
The Krag

The 30 Army (30-40) was loaded with a heavy 220 grain bullet. Switching to a 180 grain bullet would have added velocity. That's what happened later with the 30-03/30-06 if I recall correctly. Around that time there were advances in mettalurgy that would have allowed the Krag to run higher pressures.

As for loading, as I recall we just dumped a hand full of cartridges in, no need to bother with a stripper clip. Really quicker and easy do do wearing thick mittens. I guess a stripper clip might work well enough with thick mittens too.

Speaking of penetration, we used to laugh at the Soviets for their small caliber high velocity pistols, but their objective was penetration to go through a snow and log barrier, and/or thick winter clothing.
 
Reloadron:
Is one major reason for the Garand's design for the 30-06 (M2 Ball) because we had huge stockpiles of the ammo left over from WW1?
The primary US rifle by 1918 was the modified Enfield M1917.

Maybe this was Gen. MacArthur's prime motivation for the decision.
 
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That's one major reason. Another is that all of our other small arms were chambered for the .30-06 -- the M1917 water cooled machinegun, the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, and the M1919 air cooled machinegun. Adopting a different cartridge would have rendered all those weapons useless and replacing them would be costly.

Another reason was the one given by MacArthur -- an infantryman has to be able to shoot through things, and the .30-06 was a better penetrator.

A third reason was the Cavalry's objection -- the .30-06 was much more destructive to vehicles.
 
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