In the March/April Rifle Shooter Magazine This is the titled article wrtten by Richard Venola! It definitly is a to the point derogatory expose concerning the creation and selection of the 30-03 and 30-06 as a United States military rifle round.

It deals with it's history and inertia with resistance to change. Further it covers some of the adversity it has phisically and emotionaly created in a hunting rifle selection especialy amoung the adolescent and female hunters.

I find this bold article objective and long over do. Now before anyone goes into FLAMING RAGE enlighten yourself and read this truely interesting offering by Richard Venola. roger

Not to hijack your thread or anything, Roger, but I have a fiberglass stock I am planning on painting. According to Hotcore, you are quite the expert on this. Just wondering what kind of paint you use. Also, do you have pics of any of your projects? Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
I find this bold article objective and long over do. Now before anyone goes into FLAMING RAGE enlighten yourself and read this truely interesting offering by Richard Venola. roger

Please post a link to the article.

molar1,
Questions like yours are what the PM (private messenger) function is used for.

Will the NRA issue a fatwa on this ballsy writer? Maybe the VFW? Seriously, it was a fine bit of writing and thought. Yes, the '06 does have a lot more recoil than needed to get the job done as a battle rifle.

History would seem to point to the fact that the 276 Pederson would have been the "way foward".

However it is not a good idea to make a caliber change durring a time when war is near.

Again we had a chance to go with the 280 British.

Going from the 308 to the 223 was a giant step.

Depending on who you talk to it is either bad or good.

The current trend seems to be a step up in bore diameter over .223.

quote:

History would seem to point to the fact that the 276 Pederson would have been the "way foward".

The current trend seems to be a step up in bore diameter over .223.

And the 6.8 SPC delivers essentially the same ballistics as the Pederson did, but in the M4 instead of a 10-shot Garand. For military purposes the 6.5 Grendel seems have most all of what it takes to poke usefully large holes in things out to at least 600 meters. As for the 30'06, it certainly has a significant surplus of power for most hunting chores, but I'd argue that ill-fitting rifles and hard buttplates have as much to do with the negative elements of its reputation as its ballistic output.

/

[QUOTE]Originally posted by onefunzr2:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by bartsche:
Please post a link to the article.

Magazine article.roger

Roger,
i read the aticle. The guy talks like the 30,06 is some kid of super kicking round that the avarage soldier is gun shy of.
Come on now you've shot one i am sure. I will agree that its more power than needed, but its not a giant leap over the other rounds he mentions.
Was it the best round for the purpose at the time,
probably not. I think I would go 6.5 swede for that,
But did it serve us well ? hell yes it did !
And now that I think of it, there are times when even shooting at a relitivly puny animal like people a little more power is not a bad thing.
The only point I can remember he makes I agree with is that the 06 is too much for beginers , of small stature.
the guy who can't learn to handle an 06 in a few sessions better toughen up a littl before he joins the Army.
...tj3006

/

IMHO, which is just that...the guy couldn't get published if his grandmother owned the print outlet. Nobody else wanted the grief. So, they give this goober, whom I have honestly NEVER!!! heard of, the job. He probably thinks he is some sort of historian and ballistician. He does a "my hindsight is 20:20" and throws a lot of suppositions and half-truths, and innuendo and outright bullshit together and presents it as Nobel Prize level literature. "...women and children don't shoot the old '06 very well, so it had to be a poor battle rifle...". Garbage!
I've known literally hundreds of WWII and Korea combat veterans and to a man, they credited the Garand and its cartridge for bringing them home safe and sound from the wars. The 308 he praises never amounted to a popcorn fart for the US in any conflict. He's just a mediocre wanna-be writer who has nothing of substance to offer the world...but wants to see his name in print.

Rich
DRSS

I dont think I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about the '06

Alf.
Ever shoot with a WW2 era marine ?
They shot the same round and got much better results. True the avarage army infantry man is not much of marksman. Step up to a ranger and see what proper training does.
turn the clock ahead to vietnam. The ratio of rounds fired to rounds hitting the enemy was in the ball park of 50,000 to 1. Most of that was with .223.
The 30,06 in a decent rifle is mabye a little harder to master then a lighter round but not much.
How many huters who had grown up with 30/30s switched to 06s when they came home from the service.
The GIs loved the 06 and trusted it.
Those that did,nt like it grabbed 30 carbines or submachine guns first chance they got.
...tj3006

/

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
In the March/April Rifle Shooter Magazine This is the titled article wrtten by Richard Venola! It definitly is a to the point derogatory expose concerning the creation and selection of the 30-03 and 30-06 as a United States military rifle round.

It deals with it's history and inertia with resistance to change. Further it covers some of the adversity it has phisically and emotionaly created in a hunting rifle selection especialy amoung the adolescent and female hunters.

I find this bold article objective and long over do. Now before anyone goes into FLAMING RAGE enlighten yourself and read this truely interesting offering by Richard Venola. roger

Women shouldn't hunt, they should be at home baking, and any adolescent boy that can't shoot a 30-06 is a pussy!

I don't really understand the point of the article. The '06 in either the Springfield(which I believe weighed around 8.5lbs or so empty) or the m1917 enfield(which weighed around 9lbs empty)shouldn't have been too terrible in terms of recoil. Granted the guns probably didn't fit many of the shooters and they didn't have nice, modern recoil pads, but they still should have been manageable. My stepfather had a 03a3 and that was the first 30-06 that I shot, so I have a pretty good idea of the recoil in that rifle...Which wasn't too terrible to me, as a 14year old.

This has to be discussed in terms of what was possible in 1903 and, too a lesser extent, 1906. Powder and bullet technology was in rapid flux. I rather doubt that most of the alternate cartridges being discussed were possible then. We do know that the 6mm Lee Navy was a big bust. We also know that the original .30-06 loading only got 2700 fps with a 150 grain bullet, and even that gave problems with the rifles of the time.

Seems to me that the .30-06 was a very reasonable decision in 1906, and external factors kept it in service long after there were better choices.

I would think that accuracy would be more effected by the fear of being killed themselves than the recoil of a 30-06.

I have never been in any kind of combat situation at all and do not claim to have, but I have heard stories from my father as well as other combat veterans. They all seem to have had the opinion that accuracy was not as important as just having lead in the air traveling in the general direction of the guy that was shooting at you.

90% of fire directed at the enemy during an attack is merely to keep his head down.

Machine guns fire on fixed lines in defensive positions to deny ground

Neither kill many people but you wouldn't want to do without them!

Shooting a 30-'06 one or two times at sighting-in, or even 25 times in load development, is a completely different thing from shooting hundreds of rounds.

Many of the deaths in the Civil War were a result of generals who grew up with Napoleonic tactics of smoothbore muskets - long-range rifles slaughtered them by the thousands. The Civil War officers with that trauma to lead them insisted on a long-range rifle round in 1903 to suppress other riflemen from a mile away, not realizing that history had passed them by and that mission now belonged to the machine gun. The result was a fine sporting round, but an unnecessarily powerful military round, even for its time.

I can't recall specifically the source of the quote (Townsend Whelen, maybe?) who cited the main advantage of the Garand was in its recoil reduction so as to allow for the first time 600-round per day tests, IIRC.

Jaywalker

90% of fire directed at the enemy is to keep his head down???And when you run out of ammo and he sticks his head up grinning at you....when the 06 came out the object was to shot his damn head off.

I figured if you can make it through Boot camp surely the recoil of a measely -06 shouldn't worry you.

Imagine if they gave everyone 4-bores during the war

I started shooting 30-06 at age 14. I used to fire up to 40 rounds per range session. I can shoot more now.

I still shoot 30-06. It works. My wife also shoots a 30-06. She can handle it fine as well and has many times shot 40 or more rounds in a range session from miltiple shooting positions. She used to shoot my first 30-06 until I got her a rifle of her own. That rifle was a Rem 700 with plastic butt plate. Later Igot her a M70 with recoil pad but she in no way felt punished by the old 06.

Hello,
Yes, I believe it was Townsend Whelen who said that, but he also said that when a nation goes to war with a 22, there is something wrong!! Of course referring to the "mighty" 5.56 NATO or for civilians, 223 Rem. Any cartridge that has survived and thrived for 100 years is just fine with me.

I don't read gun magazines any longer. I tried again to read them but its just the same old same old written around the paying advertisers.

The 30-06 has been #1 for hunting for a century and not really used for the military for half a century. Who cares what he wrote.

Thanks for your input anyway.

This is what Petersen and this clown had in mind...get people talking, even about what a horse's ass he is, and folks will go out and buy the rag to see what the flap is all about.

Rich
DRSS

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
Now before anyone goes into FLAMING RAGE enlighten yourself and read this truely interesting offering by Richard Venola. roger

Nope Roger, you cannot stop the momentum in the feedback. Flaming Rage is the mildest form of sacred cow protection.

I enjoyed the article...

I agree. The .30-06 is a fantastic hunting round but I always wondered why they chose to go so large....the 7x57, 6.5x55, .276 just seem better in that they are more compact, more rounds per unit weight and still plenty of power for an infantry/assault rifle.

I also agree about the recoil. The .30-06 is hardly a 'kicker' in most sporters but after 20 or so rounds in rapid succession from a Garand I felt it to start being uncomfortable (although the 'pinging' of the clip is neat!), and I regularly shot my Mauser .30-06, just about every weekend, plus annual hunts, so was accustomed to the recoil, I also had a CZ .375 which was quite comfortable - that garand was not after many rounds.

I agree with Idaho SS. Just a fluff article to stir the pot, sell mags, and see his name in print. I think the mind-set of folks in 1940 was considerably different from folks now who learn their gun handling from TV and video parlours.
FYI, most small arms fire is overlapping, traversing fire, not at a target but acrost a zone or field of fire.

The military is always ready to fight the previous war. It's axiomatic.

Clearly there were better options than the .30/06; we also chose the M14 over the FN/FAL, an even more bizarre decision. Talk about NIH syndrome.

All that said, we should give due credit to both organizational inertia and the difficulty and expense if implementing change in a truly large organization. Just changing a logo is a multi-million dollar expense. Consider the cost of changing the standard cartridge for an army ...

To those who say, "I shot the .30/06 when I was six, so what's the big deal?", I offer this observation. You are an ENTHUSIAST. You WANT TO SHOOT and SHOOT WELL. In a war-time army, most of the fellows issued rifles are DRAFTEES who DON'T WANT TO BE THERE.

They aren't interested in learning shooting skills; they are interested in staying alive. Say what you want, but it's self-evident that the amount of time it takes to train a rifleman to shoot a 5.56 well is about 1/5th the time it takes to teach that same rifleman to shoot a .30/06.

I would have liked to have read the guys article, so I don’t know what he wrote. I have worked all my working life in military procurement. I would have been very interested if the guy had found period vintage requirements documents, or anything from someone on the cartridge development board.

For those who have never had to negotiate requirements, it is a messy experience. You have to deal with a spectrum of people ranging from ideologues (never one, always tow or more, and those always on opposite ends of the spectrum!!) , to the plain apathetic . You find the User wants something exactly like what they have, only a little better. The boots on the ground types distrust revolutionary things, preferring evolutionary advancement. Being an ideologue myself, I find it frustrating that the choice of parameters usually ends up being a negotiated “bestâ€, instead of being (in my opinion) the technical “bestâ€. I am certain the others who hold strong opinions diametrically opposite from my own feel the same.

History always washes out the bad from the good, but mediocrity lasts forever. As an example, the 7.62*54R is still in service!.

I believe that prior to WW1 the primary parameter used in the evaluation of service cartridges was long effective range. All the other parameters, such as lethality, rifle weight, weight of a defined battle load, recoil, etc, seem to be secondary when examining chosen historical rounds. Also, you an see how different weighting of secondary and tertiary parameters influenced the outcome.

As mentioned earlier, one has to look at the technology available, as the guys making the decisions had to use what was off the shelf at the time. I am certain that future gun nuts will laugh at our failure to use plasma proton technology in small arms, but then, smokeless powders “is what we gotâ€.

I am always surprised by the number of 30 cal vintage rounds and wonder why 30 caliber ended up being the median choice. . There are a few 6.5’s, the 7MM, and a couple of 8mm’s. . But there are a lot of of 30 cals; the 7.5 French, 7.5 Swiss, 7.62 Russian, 7.65 Arg, 303 Brit, 7.7 Ariska, to name the few that I can recall.

The US Army recognized that the 30-06 was too long and the rim was too thin, wanted to replace the round, but false peacetime economies kept the round in service for another generation. I really think it a shame that the 1900 era American boards went and developed their own round. There are two period rounds that I think would have been better long term choices than the 30-06: the 7.5 Swiss and the 7 mm Mauser. The 7.5 Swiss is the ballistic equivalent of the 308 Win, is just a little longer, but has a nice thick extractor rim. Quite a good case for something developed in the 1880’s. The 7mm Mauser is a very good combination of outstanding ballistics, decent lethality, and reduced recoil.

The 308 Win, or 7.62 would have been an excellent round to enter WW2 with, but as we have seen, by the 50’s the era of the full power service round had set. Since then the emphasis has been on the assault rifle concept. And again, it is a shame we did not adopt the British developed 7mm short rounds. Instead we ended up with a top down political choice of the 5.56 mm. A back of the envelope development with limited growth potential and dubious lethality.

Not that I would want to get shot with one!

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:

When the US entered WW2 only 2 out of every 100 recruits were actually capable of shooting a rifle. This in sharp contrast to the Germans who introduced mandatory shooting skill training for civillian boys and men as early as 1934.

It's been near a decade since the last time I shot National Competition at Camp Perry, but, there was a picture in the main hall of a huge stack of 5.56 ammo cans w/ one M-16 leaning agains the stack. This represented how many thousands of rounds fired per each enemy combatant killed in Vietnam. It's point was to underscore the importance of basic marksmanship, especially in times of war.

I'm of the opinion that this is a paramount issue with the general population of citizens from which our soldiers come regardless if the infantry weapon is the M-16, M-14, M-1, 03, or even a handmade Kentucky flintlock, etc., etc.

I'm alive today because my father survived battle in WWII while using his issued M1-Garand. He thought so much of this rifle that he smuggled it back along w/ his war trophies in a seabag. I have this rifle today in my safe as a reminder to my children of what my father and the men of his day went through for freedom. I have difficulty in understanding any second guessing of this rifle and or cartridge today other than mere b.s. fluff to sell magazines.

GVA

quote:

original .30-06 loading

1. The original 1903 loading was a 220 grain round nose
2. The German 8MM was probably a better machine gun round
3. Current trends have almost taken us back to the 6.5 Arisaka in performance.

About marksmanship:


Peleliu

From a page about the assault on Peleliu

The “bean counters†in CinCPac determined that, on average, 1,589.5 rounds of heavy and light ammunition were used to kill one Japanese soldier on Peleliu. On a per-soldier basis it took:

* 1,331 rounds of .30 calibre
* 152 rounds of .45 calibre
* 69 rounds of .50 calibre
* 9 rounds of 60mm mortar shells
* 5 rounds of 81mm mortar shells
* 1 rifle grenade
* 10 hand grenades
* 6 rounds of 75mm howitzer shells
* 5 rounds of 105mm cannon shells
* 1.5 rounds of 155mm Long Tom shells
* plus 500 and 1,000 pound bombs, flame-throwers, and napalm.

quote:

Originally posted by ireload2:
assault on Peleliu

Being somewhat of a WWII history buff, Peleliu is one of the sadest examples of total disregard for the lives of our fighting men by our Military leaders. It was the battle that should have never taken place.If you ever have a chance to read an unabridged story of that battle I'm sure you will find it more than shocking. roger

Roger,
I read E.B.Sledge's book With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa.
The 6 most deadly battles in the Pacific were all pretty horrific. My family made 4 of them...but not either Peleliu or Okinawa.

The 30-06 was about average in power, range, and recoil at the time of adoption. It may have been more powerful than necessary but we would have been bucking conventional miltary trends to go with anything less. The navy's experience with the 6mm had not impressed too many about the advantages of an intermediate round. In the 1930's about the same time we were considering adopting the .276 Pederson the Japanese and Italians went to .30 class cartridges instead of their 6.5mm's of about the same power as the .276 Pederson. They felt they needed more power than the 6.5mm's.
the 30-06 may have been a mistake militarily, but it was an understandable one. Plus, we sure got a useful hunting cartridge out of the deal.

God, don't you just love these monday morning quarterbacks.

FYI. give me a fire team of marines armed with M1's and you get your herd armed with 5.56's and we'll kill you dead.

quote:

Plus, we sure got a useful hunting cartridge out of the deal.

That is for sure and a very good one in deed. Had the army steered away from the 30-06 in its early years it may not have been so popular today. Perhaps then the German 8 mm's may have been more popular in the form of 8x60 mm to fit what we call a STANDARD LENGTH ACTION.

The 5.56 mm may have been ideal in the jungles of Vietnam, but certainly not in desert lands like Afghanistan & Iraq. The 6.5 Grendel (outperforming the 6.8 mm SPC)is busy to proof itself as a far better, flexible, effective, likable round than the 5.56 mm - seems to be the best compromise now that the need is there to penetrate vehicles (glass & metal).

Warrior

quote:

Originally posted by Remington720:
In the 1930's about the same time we were considering adopting the .276 Pederson the Japanese and Italians went to .30 class cartridges instead of their 6.5mm's of about the same power as the .276 Pederson. They felt they needed more power than the 6.5mm's.

The Italians went to the 7.35 Carcano in 1938 with a light 128gr. bullet at 1750 ft.lbs. of energy.

The Pederson ,developed in the 1920s, used a 150grain bullet at 1850 ft.lbs. of energy.

The military load for the 7.7 Arisaka round deliverd a 175 gr. bullet at 2250 ft.lbs.That is far less power than the 7mm X 57 military load with the 139gr. bullet at 2580 ft. lbs. Also of significance in this discussion is that the 7.7 was also intended for use in Japanese fighter aircraft as the existing 6.5 machine guns were thought to be inadequate against the than new generation of enemy aircraft.

IMHO had the M1 been chambered for the 30-06, 8mm X 57, 7mm X57, .308, 7.65, or .276 those touting its glories today would still be doing the same. Case in point the chopped down M1 they called the M14.

The original point was I thought this was, and there may not be many, an interesting magazine article. We may not all like what history has to say but it ain't going to change. roger