Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Mausers and Military Rifles '03 A3 ballistics?

I've chrono'ed bunches of various M2 Ball loads over the years and never got 2850 fps. 27-2800 was the range. Some WWI Ball ammo fetched up 2700 fps on the bean.

Oops, my bad. I checked my copy of Hatcher's notebook and it reports, on page 29, that the M2 velocity specification was 2805 fps, not 2850.

Kinda off the path but, where those service loads tubulars? I think I heard somewhere that the British and jap loads tumbled. Just curious.

Not to my knowledge. But, never having been witness to the wounding effect of this ammo I have no empirical knowledge of it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "tubular". Spitzer FMJ bullets will tend to swap ends after striking flesh, simply due to the centre of mass being toward the rear in flight and tending to get ahead of the point on the sharp deceleration in flesh. This was recognised very early, as was the effect on wounding potential, which led to some countries changing the design to push the COM even further to the rear to amplify the effect - Britain's Mk VII Ball load for the .303 being a case in point, with lightweight filler material inserted in the nose to push the COM back. Some bullets designs will also tend to break up as a result of the tumbling, amplifying the wounding potential even further.

The .30 Ball of 1906, and the S Ball for the 8x57 from which it was copied,are simple spitzer bullets, jacketed from the nose. They don't have a lightweight filler in the nose like the British Mk VII, nor do they have an air space or other mods to push the COM rearward. The M2 Ball is the same as the 1909 form of the .30 Ball load (there had been a couple of tweaks of the design between 1906 and 1909, including a cannelure introduced in 1909) save for having a gilding metal jacket instead of cupronickel.

FWIW US Ordnance had tested tubular bullets (of the Krnka-Hebler type) in the Krag, and a few in .45/70, back in about 1894, but I'm guessing that this wasn't what you had in mind.

Tumble/tumblers. Yeah that spell check thing....

Thanks for the insight.

The Marine Corps snipers and Army in WWII found and preferred pre-war Model 70 Winchesters. They were purchased and issued
on a very limited basis. Mine will outshoot any 1903 A3 or M1D hands down. The early Model 70s were used at
Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sanh by the Marines-usually with Unertls or Lyman Alaskan scopes.
Special Forces used them as the sniper weapon of choice. Unertls and Leupolds.

MACVSOG 71-72
KheSanh-71

I was given some of that ammo. The batch I got was total crap. Didn't group worth a damn from an accurate bolt rifle. One round had no powder. The necks were not uniform at all so the empties couldn't be assembled into good handloads.

Mathman, you think 168 BTHP Hornady bullets would feed ok in a Garand? MB

Thanks Vic. MB

I'm pretty sure they would. Look to load in the neighborhood of 47 or 47.5 grains of RL15, Varget or N140, or 46.3 grains of N135. These are all Garand appropriate loads, and they all shoot very well with 168 grain Hornady BTHP and AMAX bullets out of my Rem 700.

I posted the PPU info on the chance you may be looking for a commercial load..

I have two Garands that get a steady diet of them on top of 46 grs of H4895, no feeding issues at all.

Thanks ht, appreciate the info. MB

My two Garands get a diet of 49 grains of IMR 4895 with a 150 grain whatever over it. It's not Camp Perry accurate but it's fun to shoot. But it is deadly on hogs with the right 150 grain bullet.


However, if I want to shoot a heavier bullet I would want to use a slower powder. In that case I would look into a gas block. That will protect your op rod from damage from too much pressure but still allow max velocity.

there is still surplus military ammo floating around originally sold by cmp. greek or otherwise re imported.
i have a certain amount. this is from poor memory, but during wwII think there were at least seven plants making ammo.
i know i managed to get a can from a number of the plants from cmp.
i also know that the army repacked ammo from the pacific in hawaii in the early 50's in sealed containers. I have several of them never opened.
as to cupernickel, a few years back we ran across about 17000 rounds of early 50's french produced m2 ball. it had sat in storage in phoenix in a uncooled garage for all those years. ammo was bad for primer, brass reasons and other things. but the bullets were pulled, cupernickel, and the powder of an unknown type was saved. cupernickel bullets were reset in new brass/primers, and working up from a light load of that powder, and using a chrony, we got to 2750fps. interesting thing was even given the history of the original powder etc, there was only maybe
10/15fps variance between rounds in five shot strings.

another little oddity. few years back i bought a complete untouched arisaka from a very old man that wanted it to go to good home. it had been fired four rounds from some norma ammo, thats it. he was on mcArthurs's staff in tokyo at the end of the war, and brought it home along with a original sling and bayonet from the same plant. What he also brought home was a single round or ammo he said was for the gun.. except it wasn't, it was 30.06 stamped frankfurt arsonel something like 1935. I pointed that out to him, and how it got to tokyo is anyones guess.
as to the a.p. stuff, a now deceased brother in law was a landing craft driver in a number of pacific campaigns, but often went a shore. of course he was navy, but said prefered the springfield to a garand as the sand and stuff didn't jam them as bad and easier to clean.. also prefered the a.p., as japs thinking they were safe in bunkers made out of palm tree trunks found out to late there were not safe. for what it's worth.
the price of a.p. when you find it, is kind of rich these days, but i know of one distributor a few years ago that had over a million rounds of it for sale, it didn't last long.
ammo can be functional for a long time. I have personally fired 8mm german stuff out of a mg42 originally produced for operation barbarosa, have a case, unopened of WWII german 8mm, and another case made for the austrian/hungarian 91/30 straight pull. works just fine.
what i can't bring myself to do is to open an unopened box of ammo for the spencer carbine, and fire a round or two, but it is tempting.

thats about what i have traditionally used.

that friend of mine that uncorked all that french ammo, used to use a 210grain i think it was lyman cast bullet, or it might have been around 180grain, a head of a charge of unique.
i know there is a load in one of my old lyman books describing that load. quite accurate, low recoil.

Yes +- 10 grs. of Unique is used quite often in full size military rounds.