I have heard of this cartridge. Though, I have never seen it's firearm or am able to come up with any practical use for a bullet so large. It would blow the chest right out of a caribou!
So my questions are: What is the bullet's history? What is the use of such a cartridge? Surely one cannot hunt with it. Can they?

I do not mean to offend, I am just curious and a little awe- struck.

quote:

Though, I have never seen it's firearm or am able to come up with any practical use for a bullet so large.

The .50 calliber has a very high B.C., it can exceed 1.0. Very practical for bucking the wind.

There are those who hunt with the .50, mostly very large animals, at long distances.

Excluding the Artic, and some other areas, few 21rst century hunters are really engaged in a "practical" pursuit. By the time you add everything up, in reality "practical" would entail driving 2 mile to the supermarket for your meat. Same goes for fish. For many, but of course not all, hunting/fishing is anything but practical.

That said, a hunting rifle is practical for hunting, a fishing pole is practical for fishing, and a .50 caliber target rifle is practical for sending a .50 caliber bullet downrange, with accuracy. In a pinch, my 62" carbon fiber .50 BMG cleaning rod would also be practical for fishing, but that's beside the point. The point being, in the end it is the enjoyment we all get from such pursuits that is important, not in the practicality of them, or lack thereof.

With VERY few exceptoions it was used on every US plane that flew in WW2. I think this was it's most practical application. It's also the secondary (or primary) weapon on most US armored vehicles, altho' I think the Bradly only has a 30mm gun.

There's more to sport-shooting than just putting meat on the table.

Some folks shoot their whole lives at tournaments, punching little holes in paper, and take a tremendous amount of pride in doing so.

That's generally where the 50 falls into line... although, I do have a friend up in Montana that claims to hunt moose with his 50 and says it really doesn't do much damage to the meat. He claims the round basically just punches a clean hole into the animal, but the velocity generates enough of a vacuum that it sucks a lot of blood and soft tissues out the other side.

Hunting is all a matter of preference. There's no such thing as one round killing something "deader" than another round.

===================

My wife and I are both SCUBA divers. And I personally love lobster. So, is it terribly practical to invest over $6,000 dollars into two sets of SCUBA gear, get air-fills for $70.00 every time we want to go out, then buy seats on a dive boat for another $100 every time we dive, just so we can pick free lobsters off the bottom of the ocean? (Because I can't stand paying $12.00 a lb for them in the supermarkets.)

Not very practical, but I do enjoy it.

Well, I'm no historian but if you want a little information the 50 BMG, it began as an invention of John Browning during WWI as an anti-tank round inspired by the Mauser bolt action anti-tank rifle of similar size. The war ended before it was adopted but the Army accepted it and the big machine gun design. The big M2 heavy machine gun was primarily conceived for fixed defensive positions but it didn't take long at all to realize its usefulness in armor and airplanes although the transition to fighters came last. For a long time it was too heavy for the available aircraft and the .30 cal was standard. I think the Buffalo was the last .30 cal fighter although the first P-40s may have been too. It and the M2 heavy machinegun have been in continuous service for at least 85 years largely unchanged and still going strong.

Hunters have the same problem; they are too damn heavy (30 lbs or more) to pack around but you can do some ambush hunting or varminting. There are a few lightweight models but they seem to lack popularity (duh?).

Oh I dunno ... those lightweight 50s are sort of fun for keeping the safe until you get some uppity Yankee friend come down to visit you and wants to have a peek at your gun collection...

I remember a PISTOL 50 BMG that was going around a few years ago. Seems it was an "order the engineering plans and build it yourself" sort of thing. I think it was advertised in Shotgun News or something, but it all gets a little fuzzy and hard to remember.

I've seen 50s as light as 12 - 18 lbs. I think Steve's "hunting" 50 up in Montana is right at 16 lbs., and Steve's a big boy and all, but to be truthful, I think the cold air up there has gone to his head.

It would seem that one learns something new everyday. I have never considered hunting as a sport or as an enjoyable thing, just always a neccessity. Something that had to be done. I can see however, being a long range hunter (a long range shooter) the enjoyment in long distance target shots. No life should be taken unless neccessary, and as far as I know paper is inanimate.
One could even have a competition. "Who could hit the center first". I shoot a .223 cal (alot smaller that the 50 I imagine) so it would not cost much to play this game.
Indeed this sounds fun!
Normally my guns are only taken out to hunt with, now I see that they have another "practical" use.
Thank you all very kindly for the history and information.

Don't forget the third practical use; self defense or the US Constitutional use: overthrow of oppressive government.

I've seen a 50 BMG pistol in one of the first issues of =50 Cal Shooter's Association magazine in a funny article about blowing reloading kits off of adjacent tables with the blast from the break. True or not it was funny.

My experience with a 32" barrel was that by the 3rd shot the concussion was clearing out sinuses that had been blocked for ever. The only thing better for that is ascending from 140-180 feet of water on SurD 02 table.

Most of the 13-16 lb guns I've seen are short barreled and fun but not THAT fun.

quote:

My wife and I are both SCUBA divers. And I personally love lobster. So, is it terribly practical to invest over $6,000 dollars into two sets of SCUBA gear, get air-fills for $70.00 every time we want to go out, then buy seats on a dive boat for another $100 every time we dive, just so we can pick free lobsters off the bottom of the ocean? (Because I can't stand paying $12.00 a lb for them in the supermarkets.)

Not very practical, but I do enjoy it.

Here's a picture of us en'route:

quote:

Originally posted by tiggertate:
My experience with a 32" barrel was that by the 3rd shot the concussion was clearing out sinuses that had been blocked for ever. The only thing better for that is ascending from 140-180 feet of water on SurD 02 table. :

I got a similar experience plus a bad one, spinal disk locked the night after when I turned the head to move rearward when parking.
My doctor asked me what I had done to get my shoulder and neck muscles so contracted

quote:

Originally posted by tiggertate:
Well, I'm no historian but if you want a little information the 50 BMG, it began as an invention of John Browning during WWI as an anti-tank round inspired by the Mauser bolt action anti-tank rifle of similar size. The war ended before it was adopted but the Army accepted it and the big machine gun design. The big M2 heavy machine gun was primarily conceived for fixed defensive positions but it didn't take long at all to realize its usefulness in armor and airplanes although the transition to fighters came last. For a long time it was too heavy for the available aircraft and the .30 cal was standard. I think the Buffalo was the last .30 cal fighter although the first P-40s may have been too. It and the M2 heavy machinegun have been in continuous service for at least 85 years largely unchanged and still going strong.

Hunters have the same problem; they are too damn heavy (30 lbs or more) to pack around but you can do some ambush hunting or varminting. There are a few lightweight models but they seem to lack popularity (duh?).

Have some more info:
https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/619104082/m/766105082

in fact the german TankGewehr 1918 round used a 8 mm bullet on a big case and not a big diameter bullet on the first version, the 13 mm came later

The 4th from the left will be used at the beginning of WW2 in the PzB 39 until 1941 ( PanzerBüchse, Antitank rifle).

The 1st is a regular 8x57.

The 5th is the 13x92 R derived from the french Gras 1874 in 11 mm R used by the French as anti ballon ammo.

http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n1/hd1for.html


One or two Belgian Hanriots were the subject of an interesting and highly successful armament experiment. By 1917, the Hanriot's single .303-cal Vickers machine gun was seriously inadequate. Like the Italians before them, the Belgians experimented with twin Vickers guns, but found that performance suffered too severely with the extra weight. The single weapon was a particular liability during the balloon-busting sorties that were Coppens' specialty. With high-speed winches reeling in the target and zeroed-in antiaircraft guns firing at the attacker's aircraft, there was little time for the deliberate shooting that light-weight armament demanded. Accordingly, the French sent Coppens an early prototype of a new, purpose-built weapon, the "balloon gun." This was a license-built Vickers chambered for an experimental, high-velocity 11-mm (.45 cal.) cartridge (inspired, no doubt, by the standard, early-war anti-balloon weapon, a .45-cal, low-velocity incendiary bullet fired from a Victorian-era Martini-Henry carbine). Coppens had the gun fitted to one of his several Hanriots (No. 17) and used it alongside the standard machines. Coppens considered the experiment a great success. The 11-mm gun was far more effective than two of the standard 7.7-mm (.303 cal.) weapons but weighed less. At least one other Belgian Hanriot may have carried the gun, but the weapons never reached production due to the end of the war. Interestingly, the 11-mm balloon gun inspired one of the most successful automatic weapons of all times, the .50-cal (12.7-mm) Browning. The U.S. Army in France wanted to produce the French weapon in the USA for use against the armored loopholes of late-war German machine-gun nests and pill boxes. But, in a foretaste of the M-16 controversy of the 1960s, the Ordnance Department refused to accept the French cartridge without modifications, citing the allegedly sub-optimal ballistics of the 11-mm projectile. Ordinance set out to "improve" on the foreign product and, some years after the end of the war, came out with an altogether different but ultimately successful cartridge.

Note from Ed

I found just a small mistake, the incendiary low velocity 11 mm round at the beginning of the war was in fact a 11 mm Gras 1874 that was still in french forces inventory and was still used by the territorial defense units at the back of the front lines.

Vickers modified a HMG for this round. funnily the French developped a rimless 13 mm when the German made a 13 mm with a rim based on the 11 mm Gras but lenghtened to 92 mm.

quote:

Originally posted by tiggertate:
...in a funny article about blowing reloading kits off of adjacent tables with the blast from the break. True or not it was funny.

True....trust me. My old 50 blew a loaded 30 cal ammo can off the shooting bench once. Whoops!

Best,

JohnTheGreek

Edmond, question for you. Have an old 50 BMG round with an epoxy matrix projectile, somewhat transparent, that has at least 3 subcaliber jacketed bullets visible in the center. They appear to be .45 ACP style bullets, truncated cone style, stacked nose to base. There are very mild mould marks on the projectile, including indentations from pins that held the bullets in place while the epoxy cured.

What is it? Photo available at a later date, cartridge is packed away at the moment.

Hi Dan;
I believe these were some sort of experimental multiple projectile cartridge from the Viet Nam era. Numrich Arms offered them for sale at one time.
Grizz

Thought they might have come from that time, doubt if they would have worked well though. Don't know about Numrich or other source, this one is charged and primed. Thanks!

quote:

Originally posted by DigitalDan:
Edmond, question for you. Have an old 50 BMG round with an epoxy matrix projectile, somewhat transparent, that has at least 3 subcaliber jacketed bullets visible in the center. They appear to be .45 ACP style bullets, truncated cone style, stacked nose to base. There are very mild mould marks on the projectile, including indentations from pins that held the bullets in place while the epoxy cured.

What is it? Photo available at a later date, cartridge is packed away at the moment.

I think that what you have is a 'Salvo' project .50 BMG, the one I had in hand in a collection was composed of 5 .30 caliber projectiles, each weighing 140 grains, all being in line inside a synthetic material sabot. another piece was composed of a similar sabot/hull with flechettes.
these projects were developped during the VN war.
HTH

AC,

My experience with 50 BMG on fluid media is that it does very little damage to the target. What it DOES do is penetrate very deeply for the same reason - it takes a lot of resistance to upset a bullet that heavy going that fast.

You won't see explosive impact with a 50 - just a hole all the way through. I mean ALL the way ..

Redial

quote:

I've seen a 50 BMG pistol in one of the first issues of =50 Cal Shooter's Association magazine in a funny article about blowing reloading kits off of adjacent tables with the blast from the break. True or not it was funny.

Way back, before I knew better, I had my .378 Wby on the next bench over from my State Arms Rebel. After sqeezing off a shot from the Rebel, the sound of that .378 hitting the concrete was a million miles away from funny. If I had a video now of the fit that I went into afterward, that would be somewhat amusing!