Rimmed v Rimless

[PhilB]

The following indicates that, over a decade before WW1, the rimless cartridge was being seen as the better option for general use. It`s also claimed to be better for single shot rifle use.

"Designed for flawless feeding through the various weapon types that were emerging in the late 1890s, the rimless case has become the most popular and widely used head type in the world. With no protruding rims or belts to complicate feeding, the rimless case has proven itself eminently well suited to later military developments, such as clip loading, magazine and belt-fed weapons."

http://www.exteriorballistics.com/reloadbasics/cartcase.cfm

I`ve had difficulties with .303 rounds fouling each other on SMLE & Bren even in shooting range conditions. So what were the overriding reasons for the British to stick with the rimmed cartridge? Was it better suited to battlefield conditions or was a machine gun war not foreseen?

[Stoppage Drill]

We were due to adopt a rimless 7mm round (.280 British) in the Pattern 1913 rifle.

When the war broke out it was decided to stick with .303 to avoid the problems which would have arisen from re-equipping. After the war there was still a drive for 7mm rimless, but no new rifle was seriously considered until 1948. That was abandoned for largely political reasons, and back we went to .303 until forced into using a rimless .30 (the .308 Winchester aka 7.62mm NATO in the late '50s

[MikB]

I`ve had difficulties with .303 rounds fouling each other on SMLE & Bren even in shooting range conditions. So what were the overriding reasons for the British to stick with the rimmed cartridge? Was it better suited to battlefield conditions or was a machine gun war not foreseen?

"Whatever happens, we have got

The Maxim Gun, and they have not"

...so no, at the time of adoption of 303, war against an enemy with machine guns wasn't foreseen.

Problems with rim-over-rim stoppages were not especially common with the Bren - if they had been the gun wouldn't have the reputation it has.

I've never had a rim-over-rim hangup in my SMLE, and whenever I've had a case of 'dead man's click' it's been because the bolt managed to override the rim as it passed over the magazine - a condition that probably would've been more likely had the round been rimless.

Rimless bottleneck rounds headspace on the shoulder, and this makes the depth of feed of the chambering tool a closer-toleranced operation than on a rimmed round, and in those days rifling was still broached and chambers bored and reamed, rather than the mandrel hammer-forming practiced today. This meant that a reliable chamber fit could in principle be achieved more cheaply for a rimmed round - though I don't know if any significant advantage was actually realised as compared to other nations' rifle costs.

Regards,

MikB

[TonyE]

Mik's point is well made about the advantages of a rimmed round in terms of headspacing. When Britain became seriously interested in the Swiss Rubin round that became the .303 eventually, it was rimless and the early trials (c. 1886) were all carried out with the rimless version.

It was then decided that a rimless round had disadvantages, particularly in feeding machine guns so the design was changed to one with a rim. In hindsight perhaps a mistake, but sensible given the technology of the late 19th Century.

I would take issue with Stoppage Drill on several points. First a relatively minor detail, the Pattern '13 round is the .276 Enfield and not the .280 British. If any round attracts the latter appellation it is the .280 round for the EM2 rifle of 1948.

The decision to continue with the .303 pro tem was taken because of serious problems with the Pattern '13 ammunition. The P.'13 was withdrawn from troop trials after a serious accident invoving a cook-off in a rifle at Aldershot. True, the outbreak of WWI killed of the continued research, but the .303 would have still been in service for some years even without WWI.

There was serious intention to adopt a new rifle around 1935-36, probably to be based around a Pattern '14 action (there were still 650,000 .303 P.'14 rifles in store) and several rimless cartridges were designed and made in .256, .276, .303 and 7.92mm calibre. WW2 did put a stop to that idea though.

On another minor point, we adopted the 7.62mm NATO in 1954, not the late 1950s (and it was not the .308 Winchester which was a later introduced commercial round with an externally similar case but with thinner case walls and web)

The attached picture shows the rimless Rubin round, the rimmed Rubin round of the 1888 Lee Metford Troop Trials and the .303 Powder Mark I round as adopted in 1889.

Regards

TonyE

[PhilB]

Thanks gents. What criteria swayed the Germans towards the rimless then? Was their specification calling for different attributes to the British?

[centurion]

"Whatever happens, we have got

The Maxim Gun, and they have not"

...so no, at the time of adoption of 303, war against an enemy with machine guns wasn't foreseen.

But it was. The British Army first used machine guns in 1879. Lord Chelmsford was advocating their official adoption in 1884. The Royal Navy first used them in 1882 with naval brigades and officially adopted them in 1884. The following quote comes from a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute in 1887 "It would be a very serious thing if the German, or any other, army were to take up the machine gun question, whilst we with all our practical experience have found it so useful on many occasions"

[MikB]

But it was.

...

"It would be a very serious thing if the German, or any other, army were to take up the machine gun question, whilst we with all our practical experience have found it so useful on many occasions"

Yes, but the future arrives on little cats' feet as someone said (who seems to've misquoted Carl Sandburg), and these must be amongst the earliest pawprints. War with Germany in the 1880s was pretty well unthinkable to most folk, and I think at the time this statement might have been accepted as referring to a threat more theoretical than real.

Regards,

MikB

[centurion]

Yes, but the future arrives on little cats' feet as someone said (who seems to've misquoted Carl Sandburg), and these must be amongst the earliest pawprints. War with Germany in the 1880s was pretty well unthinkable to most folk, and I think at the time this statement might have been accepted as referring to a threat more theoretical than real.

Regards,

MikB

But war with France was not, "the German, or any other, army were to take up the machine gun question" and moreover "most people" are not those who do the forces strategy and planning. Lord Charles Beresford who made the comment was not particularly a theoretician. He was supported in his views on the machine gun by Wolseley. Nordenfeldt, Gatling and Gardner guns were already being acquired by a number of European armies. Russia had already bought significant numbers of Gatlings and used them against the Turks at Nicopolis and Plevna

[MikB]

But war with France was not, "the German, or any other, army were to take up the machine gun question" and moreover "most people" are not those who do the forces strategy and planning. Lord Charles Beresford who made the comment was not particularly a theoretician. He was supported in his views on the machine gun by Wolseley. Nordenfeldt, Gatling and Gardner guns were already being acquired by a number of European armies. Russia had already bought significant numbers of Gatlings and used them against the Turks at Nicopolis and Plevna

Nevertheless, if the gentlemen you mention argued that the perceived risk justified a move to a rimless cartridge, they did not succeed in making their case, and neither did British arms fail because of it, then or later.

The rimmed round was used in a large variety of automatic smallarms, some of them with high rates of fire, and was never (AFAIK) considered unreliable or materially inferior to other nations' rounds due to that design.

Regards,

MikB

[Garron]

Rimmed rounds are still used today; The Russians, China, most former Warsaw Pact countries and other armies (or terrorist groups) still used the rimmed 7.62x54R round in their PKM machine guns and in the SVD marksman's rifle, its never seem to stop them can't call a rimmed case unreliable with well over 100 years of service history.

[centurion]

Nevertheless, if the gentlemen you mention argued that the perceived risk justified a move to a rimless cartridge, they did not succeed in making their case, and neither did British arms fail because of it, then or later.

The rimmed round was used in a large variety of automatic smallarms, some of them with high rates of fire, and was never (AFAIK) considered unreliable or materially inferior to other nations' rounds due to that design.

Regards,

MikB

Just where did I say anything ANYTHING about that? All I did is refute your unsupported statement that ".so no, at the time of adoption of 303, war against an enemy with machine guns wasn't foreseen" I still do unless you can provide evidence to the contrary

[Stoppage Drill]

I would take issue with Stoppage Drill on several points. First a relatively minor detail, the Pattern '13 round is the .276 Enfield and not the .280 British. If any round attracts the latter appellation it is the .280 round for the EM2 rifle of 1948.

The decision to continue with the .303 pro tem was taken because of serious problems with the Pattern '13 ammunition. The P.'13 was withdrawn from troop trials after a serious accident invoving a cook-off in a rifle at Aldershot. True, the outbreak of WWI killed of the continued research, but the .303 would have still been in service for some years even without WWI.

There was serious intention to adopt a new rifle around 1935-36, probably to be based around a Pattern '14 action (there were still 650,000 .303 P.'14 rifles in store) and several rimless cartridges were designed and made in .256, .276, .303 and 7.92mm calibre. WW2 did put a stop to that idea though.

On another minor point, we adopted the 7.62mm NATO in 1954, not the late 1950s (and it was not the .308 Winchester which was a later introduced commercial round with an externally similar case but with thinner case walls and web)

Regards

TonyE

My mistake calling .276 Enfield wrongly.

However, the .308 Win and the 7.62 derive from the .30 experimental round which was being developed for the US Army to replace .30-06. It took the military a long time to test the new round, and Winchester started selling it commercially as the .308 before the army officially took it into service as 7.62x51 NATO. Since then the military and civilian specs have indeed diverged. Some sources suggest that the rounds are not any longer safely interchangeable due to this divergence, but I know of no safety incidents which have occurred and SAAMI do not list 7.62 x 51 as a round which should not be fired from a rifle chambered for .308W nor vice versa. See this list:

http://www.saami.org/specifications_and_information/publications/download/SAAMI_ITEM_211-Unsafe_Arms_and_Ammunition_Combinations.pdf

bearing in mind the litigious nature of American society !

However, I would always agreeand recommend that any firearm should be used only with the ammunition for which it is marked and manufactured, just in case anybody wants to extradite me and sue me !

We may have decided to adopt the new round in 1954, but I assure you that the effective date of introduction was late '50s. That's when the US finally issued the M-14. My Battalion received it's 7.62 SLRs at C Lines Pirbright Camp in February 1959.

[MikB]

Just where did I say anything ANYTHING about that? All I did is refute your unsupported statement that ".so no, at the time of adoption of 303, war against an enemy with machine guns wasn't foreseen" I still do unless you can provide evidence to the contrary

OK, let's just say that a machine gun war was not foreseen as an issue carrying sufficient weight to justify a change in cartridge design when balanced against other considerations - which is what the thread is about. This is becoming too fine a point to be worth disputing further.

I would say that the OP's troubles with the rimmed case design reflect the wear condition of many of the original weapons and the inevitable decline in the distribution of maintenance and adjustment skills for these in today's shooting community. The guns are old enough to have been 'seen' by many smiths of widely varying levels of skill, and their detailed history is not usually documented accessibly to a buyer. My own SMLE is just such a piece, and I've owned it long enough to have a reasonably good idea of what the 'armourer' who sold it me knew how to do, and what he didn't.

I'm sure there are expert individuals who can still make them perform, but equally sure there are others who exaggerate their knowledge - and a buyer can't realistically tell the difference until they've put hundreds of rounds through the thing under varied range conditions.

Regards,

MikB

[PhilB]

OK, let's just say that a machine gun war was not foreseen as an issue carrying sufficient weight to justify a change in cartridge design when balanced against other considerations - MikB

If we can accept that,it raises some questions:-

1/ Why did the Germans see it diffently?

2/ Who would be the British people who decided on our behalf that a MG war wasn`t foreseen (& a rimless cartridge therefore unnecessary)?

3/ What "other considerations" would have tipped the balance?

I should add that each time I`ve had problems with a rimmed cartridge, it was probably my own fault for incorrect charging of a clip or magazine but I assume it wouldn`t have happened with a rimless cartridge.

[MikB]

If we can accept that,it raises some questions:-

1/ Why did the Germans see it diffently?

2/ Who would be the British people who decided on our behalf that a MG war wasn`t foreseen (& a rimless cartridge therefore unnecessary)?

3/ What "other considerations" would have tipped the balance?

1/ Don't know. Generally - not always - German engineering has embraced innovation more readily than British, with mixed results.

2/ Centurion might know. He knows who thought one might be foreseeable, but they clearly didn't carry the day.

3/ Cost and disruption of change, versus unquantifiable and uncertain benefits.

Regards,

MikB

[TonyE]

The decision c.1887/8 to go for a rimmed round was taken because it was believed that this was best for machine guns.

The Special Committee on Magazine Rifles had reported to the Ordnance Board in September 1887 that the future rifle cartridge should be rimless, but others expressed the opinion that this would cause feed problems in machine guns and so their recommendation was rejected. It should be remembered that Britain had been using the Gardner and Nordenfelt guns and had just adopted the Maxim in .45 calibre, all of which used a rimmed cartridge.

Regards

TonyE

[TonyE]

...However, the .308 Win and the 7.62 derive from the .30 experimental round which was being developed for the US Army to replace .30-06. It took the military a long time to test the new round, and Winchester started selling it commercially as the .308 before the army officially took it into service as 7.62x51 NATO. ....

bearing in mind the litigious nature of American society !

....We may have decided to adopt the new round in 1954, but I assure you that the effective date of introduction was late '50s. That's when the US finally issued the M-14. My Battalion received it's 7.62 SLRs at C Lines Pirbright Camp in February 1959.

Both the 7.62mm NATO and the .308 derive from the T65E3 case, but you are correct that Winchester probably started selling the .308 before the formal adoption by NATO, but only just!

NATO announced that the future small arms cartridge would be the T65E3 in December 1953 and this was formally ratified at a NATO meeting in August 1954. Winchester however had been given permission to develop a new commercial round based on the T65E3 case in early 1952, but I don't know when the first .308 rounds actually went on sale in the States.

Obviously re-equipment with the L1A1 took time but my statement was about the date of introduction to British service, not when any particular unit received its new rifles.

However, all a bit off topic!

Regards

Tony

[Stoppage Drill]

However, all a bit off topic!

Regards

Tony

Suppose so, but causes and effects go long beyond those four years and three months.

Anyway, Hatcher has some interesting comments about the relative merits of rimmed/less: well, if anybody would have . . . In my 3rd edition/2nd Stackpole printing it's on pages 205 and 206. Alternatively, Chapter 8, section sub-headed "The Strength of the Receiver".

Although he was writing in 1947, given that he is comparing '03s, G98s, M17s and Krags perhaps we are close enough to topic.