Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 30-06 cartridge length

OK Dumb question. Why was the 30-03 (then 30-06) case the length it is? Particularly when it was originally loaded by the US w/52 gr. MOL of powder leaving a lot of airspace. The only thing I could think of was that the 30-40 case is not that much shorter and was originally loaded w/ black powder and there was some sort of relationship, mechanically, between the Krag and the 1903. Muddy

Ingwe ought to remember...

He was there!

Maybe it had something to do with the original 1901 model being loaded with a 220gr bullet?

The .30/40 (.30 Army) cartridge was not originally loaded with blackpowder. It was a smokeless round from the start. Both it and the .30/03 had relatively long necks because they were loaded with 220 grain bullets with long bearing surfaces.

When the 150 gr. spitzer bullet was adopted for the 1903 Springfield rifle, the .30/03 case neck was shortened to a more appropriate length for the new bullet, and the .30/06 was born.

As a point of interest, the .303 British, which is a very similar cartridge to the .30/40 Krag, which it predated by a few years, WAS originally loaded with a compressed pellet of blackpowder, although the propellant was soon changed to cordite.

Thinking the "new" 8X57 Mauser Spitzer round may have had some influence. 1903A3 was forced to pay Mauser royalties for patent infringement.

The first military spitzer bullet was actually used in the French 8mm Lebel (Balle D spitzer boattail bullet made of solid bronze)in 1898. The 8mm Lebel also pioneered the use of smokeless powder in 1886 and made every blackpowder military cartridge instantly obsolete.

The royalties paid by the US to Mauser principally involved the charger system (stripper clips).

When the 7.92x57mm Mauser made the switch to spitzer bullets in 1904, they didn't shorten the case neck, but they did increase the bullet diameter just enough to complicate things in the 8mm world for the rest of time.

Wild, Not so according to my 7th edition of "Cartridges of the World". "Original loads used 40 grains of blackpowder with a 220 gr. full metal jacket, round nose bullet". Which I assume is the 40 in 30-40 as is the case w/older rimmed cartridges such as the 38-40, 44-40 25-20, 38-55 ect.- Muddy

paraphrase of Hatcher's Notebook page 2-3 says,
the 30-03 was set up for a 220gr full metal jacket bullet at 2300fps, experiments in 1906 led to the sharp pointed spitzer type bullet 150gr at 2700fps.

The sharp pointed bullet didn't extend as far forward as did the older round nose and it therefore became necessary to alter the design of the bullet seat in the barrel of the rifle to fit the changed bullet contour.
No further Springfield rifles were assembled during Nov.'06-Feb '07 owing to existing rifles having the barrels set back two threads and re-chambering to the new size.

Sounds like the new ammo was best with a shorter lead and there may have been a desire to keep older ammo out of the new chambered rifles.

Colodog, I would think a loaded 30-03 ctg.would not chamber in a 30-06 due to its longer neck. Muddy

The longer neck and the longer bullet in the '03 may not fit in the then new '06 chamber/lead, that may have been their goal but I haven't read anything concrete to know for sure.

I may have to look in my bullet collection and see
1, if I have an .03 military cartridge
2, if it'll fit an 06 chamber

It's the same thing as the standard loadings in, say, .30-30 and .45-70 vs the Hornady FTX loadings. The neck is trimmed to accommodate the ogive.

US Military Small arms, at the turn of the century, was somewhat behind the times.

The 7mm Mauser, in the Spanish-American war, showed the US Ordnance people what the future was.

The neck needed to be shorter to properly grip a Spitzer.....and it had to be somewhat light and go fast.

Not asking about neck length, ogive, bullet weight ect. The question is why was the 30-06/30-03 cartridge designed to be the length that it is incorporating excess powder capacity and hence needing a longer action?-Muddy

A lot of cartridges were designed with "excess powder capacity" back in the early days of smokeless, because early powders were very temperature-sensitive. A larger case allowed a certain muzzle velocity to be reached with lower pressures, leaving more "wiggle room" for safe pressures at warmer temperatures.

The classic examples of this are the many British cartridges developed during the Cordite era, because Cordite was one of the most temp-sensitive "powders." The .300 H&H, for example, was originally designed to duplicate .30-06 velocities, but the case was far larger both because of Cordite and because so many British citizens who hunted a lot were living in hot parts of the Empire.

But this extra case capacity was true to a certain extent of all early smokeless rounds, and is why the original velocities of many cartridges were lower than they are today.

John, Thanks, I figured it had something to do w/powder(s).- Muddy

Muddy, sorry for the wrong answer. I reckon I (still) need to work on reading comprehension...grin

Vic, No problem. I figured you were still heads down after the Tornado warning there last week!-Muddy