.276 Pedersen... a better alternative?

Hello SF_cwo2,

I have been looking for handguards like these for ages. I have the ACR upper receiver less the handguards...
Great to know they still exist!

 

You have any input on the trials? Were you with the Colt Team or with the Army testing the ACR's prototypes?
I haven't found too many clues about these, beyond Black Rifle II section on Colt's ACR.
Would love to get to know more.
Thanks for your comments, if you feel like.

 

To all people on line on the board,
Sorry, I know that this ACR topic is not WWII related (at all). I hope I am not annoying anybody by asking about it.
All the best to all over here.

 

I stumbled on this thread while reading up on the .276 Pedersen. Hope you don't mind my belated $.02 on a couple issues.
As far as the advantages of having a common caliber (.30) for rifles, BAR's and machineguns, I'm not sure if that's really a major logisitcal problem. Recall that the supply system was providing that .30 cal in three or four different packages. 8 round clips for the M1, 5 round stripper clips for anyone armed with a Springfield (grenadier or sniper), 20 round boxes for the BAR's, and belts for the MG's. In theory belts could have been emptied to refill scavenged M1 clips or M1 clips emptied to refill BAR mags, but I wonder if it ever really happened.

Another thought, it should have been possible to convert the BAR to .276 Pedersen. the .276 round was shorter than .30-06, and the case was I believe .450 in. diameter at the head, versus .473 in. on the .30-06. They might have been able to shave a little weight off the BAR.

As far as effectiveness, the 7mm Mauser cartridge was used by the Boers in South Africa with considerable effect at long ranges. The .276 produces less velocity than the Mauser, but out to 500-600 yards I suspect it would be more than adequate. Beyond that it's a job better handled by the medium machineguns or the company mortars.

Another advantage of the .276 would have been the lighter recoil which would both make easier to train marksmen (we're not all macho men who love recoil, you know) and in combat bring the weapon quickly back on target for a second or third shot.

In the actual event, keeping the .30-06 or going to the .276 probably didn't have any real effect on the outcome of the war. What the .276 might have changed (for the better imho) would have been the course of postwar developments.

 

Since so much interest in the .276 Pedersen round I remind everyone of the development around 1917-1918 for the 1903 Springfield called the Pedersen Device which turned a standard bolt action into a semi-automatic .30 caliber round. With this device a small adaptation was drilled on an existing 1903 springfield for the expension of the shell and the device was inserted making your bolt action into a semi-automatic rifle. This unit was accepted after successful tests but as the war was ending they destroyed many of them making them a grand collector's item today. If anyone still has one you can send it to me for satisfaction of my general interests in gun devices.(joke) I often speculate amongst my thoughts what the use for them may have been like if these were widely available to assist soldiers then, and later in the WWII era.

 

I view them as a curiosity and don't think they would have provided much at all. After all, they were designed for a pistol caliber round, so you would have had a battle size/weight rifle with a light weight round. Given the trench warfare of WWI, I doubt that would have meant much. By WWII the M1 Carbine filled that role with a much lighter/smaller firearm.

As far as the original question in this thread, if the money had been there to deploy the .276 Pedersen round prior to to WWII I think it would have been the correct thing to do, however, MacArthur made the right choice with the resources and supplies at hand. In the end, it made little difference IMHO.

 

All of those weapons were designed to fire ammo not originally intended for it with acceptable accuracy (meaning you'd hit an arm or leg when aiming center mass versus missing completely). A logistical problem is reaching for a case of rifle ammo and it turns out to be pistol ammo. We already stated it was a political decison. Politics rule when it comes to a government's spending of money. It doesn't matter how much better a weapon system is-- you can't buy it if the government won't sign the check!

The same things were thought when the rechambered BARs to fire 7.62 Nato. One slight problem-- overkill! The weapon now has more metal than it needs, structurally, to handle the smaller round.

 

There are horror stories from the Eastern Front of Russian troops getting the wrong ammo. Their Nagant revolvers used 7.62x38R, their Tokarev pistols and SMGs used 7.62x25mm, and their rifles used 7.62x54R. Russian ammo "spam cans" usually look like this:

http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/ammo033e.JPG

See how it just says "7.62?"

For poorly-trained troops this was a recipe for disaster.

"Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics."

Though, that said, the .30-06 ammo used in the M1 garand and the heavier weapons was not 100% intercompatible since the rifle was intended for use with M2 ball, and not the heavier ammo used in the MGs.

 

All US 30cal MG ammo was authorized for use in the M1. The only ammo issued solely for M1 Garands was the M72 NM round (which isn't a combat round). The Germans did issue 8mm ammo that was strictly for MGs.

 

Conventional wisdom is that garands are fairly ammo sensitive. The op-rod is long and slender and liable to bend with prolongued use of higher pressure rounds, while the gas port is very close to the muzzle, with very low dwell time and so liable to short-stroke with lower pressure rounds.

Not sure how much this mattered in actual combat.