Anybody read the articals in the American Rifleman on the 6.8x43mm? Good bye 223! & good ridrance!

I think it is just switching one problem for another. If you search for the 6.5 Grendel, you will see it has better ballistics overall for a replacement.

quote:

Originally posted by D Humbarger:
Anybody read the articals in the American Rifleman on the 6.8x43mm? Good bye 223! & good ridrance!

I agree with your last sentiment. However, be advised that "certain members of the Special Operations community" is a pretty limited group of people, and there is absolutely NO INTENTION on the part of the current administration (or the Army!!) to change the caliber of the U.S. rifle at this time.

We forced NATO to adopt our service rifle cartridge twice. Once the 7.62mm, and just about the time the rest of our "allies" had rearmed with the 7.62, we made them change to the 5.56mm. We paid a heavy price for this! It is called the M9 Beretta 9mm! Now, what do you think the rest of NATO would do if we told them they have to change again - to a round which is for all intents and purposes the same as the one the Brits WERE going to adopt (.280 British) after WWII, until we forced the 7.62X51 on them!!

Don't forget the .276 that John Garand had originally came up with! Its come full circle!

I wonder what one of those Garands in .276 would be worth today? Were any preserved?

It wasn't designed for the Garand.

There was a special magazine device that hooked onto the side of a modified 1903 (the Mark I), called a 'Pedersen Device'

Iv'e got an almost brand new Mark I, that alone is worth at least a couple thousand.

With an original device, they could be worth anything, but are nonexistant.

-Spencer

quote:

Originally posted by ShopCartRacing:
It wasn't designed for the Garand.

There was a special magazine device that hooked onto the side of a modified 1903 (the Mark I), called a 'Pedersen Device'


-Spencer

Well Shopping Cart, you almost got it right??? Garand's selection for caliber was indeed the .276.When he and he and a general Mac Carther met the conversation kind a went like this. " You son of a sityseven and five eiths, We have over 257 ton of 1906 loaded ammunition in stores and you want to come up with the same cartrige with a thirty thousands smaller bullet ? Are you some kind of #@&*+## nut case?

I guess history shows they were both a shade or two off. Imagine if we could have given the troops in the Pacific an M14 using a .270 Savage with a reduced weight stock. Benefit of hindsight? We had the technology we just were not able to overcome egomania and political pressure. By the way these are the two biggest killers of our enlisted men in the last 200 plus years. sometimes I just get wound up. roger

www.65grendel.com

I'm having a CZ527 in 7.62x39 rebarreled to this round for a lightweight, walking around deer rifle. However, it was designed to perform on the AR15/M16 platform...

Around 1926 or 27 J. D. Pederson did perfect a semi auto rifle designed on the retarded blow back principle and it was chambered for a .276 cartridge. Obviously it was never adopted.

The Pederson Device on the other hand was designed to convert the Springfield rifle to a 40 round, semi automatic "assault rifle". The official designation was "Automatic Pistol, Caliber .30, Model of 1918. The device used a 30 cal round similar to the 32ACP. The converted Springfields were indeed called the Mark I.

quote:

Originally posted by ShopCartRacing:
It wasn't designed for the Garand.

There was a special magazine device that hooked onto the side of a modified 1903 (the Mark I), called a 'Pedersen Device'

Iv'e got an almost brand new Mark I, that alone is worth at least a couple thousand.

With an original device, they could be worth anything, but are nonexistant.

-Spencer

NOPE! The .276 Pedersen was the round that the Garand was origianlly designed around, and the Pedersen semi-auto rifle also, which was a competitor of the Garand to be the next service rifle.

The Pedersen Device, made to be issued during WWI but which was never fielded, was a "semiautomatic bolt" replacement for the standard Springfield bolt. It used a straight .30 pistol-type cartridge not too different than the later .30 US Carbine round, but shorter. This same cartridge was used by the French as the service cartridge in their 7.65mm pistol after WWI. The Pedersen device was so secret that its' cartridges were named Cartridge, Ball, Caliber .30 U.S. Pistol....

The .276 Pedersen CARTRIDGE was scrapped when then Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur informed Army Ordnance that "there will be NO change in the U.S. Army's service rifle cartridge....." The Garand had to be completely re-engineered to accept the longer, larger caliber .30/'06 round vice the .276 Pedersen round. This added a couple of years to the adoption date of the Garand!

There are a lot of Mark I Springfields around but damn few Pedersen Devices survived, as all were recalled to be scrapped after Nov., 1918....

Yep yep yep.
I'm wrong, sort of.

The Garand was changed from the .276 to the .30-06.

Are there really that many Mark I's around?

I have yet to see any come into the store in 30 years, except for the one on the wall.

-Spencer

Mark I's are not all that uncommon. They made some 65,000 of the Pedersen devices, before the end of WWI, don't know if there are any figures on production#'s of the Mk1. IIRC, the asking price on the ones I've seen was in the $800 - $1000 range.

Mark I Springfields are actually fairly common, in fact ODCMP has them listed for $400.00

Dave

There are a handful of Pedersen devices in private hands. They are a class III item, or were, so some of them are VERY private hands. I did see a registered one in a small private museum in Woodstock, VA, in the early seventies.

There is a Garand in .276 caliber in the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning in Columbus Georgia,I believe it is serial number 10.

WC