.256 cartridge evaluated for military use pre-WWII?

[PrimitiveBeasty]

Having finally got my hands on a set of P.O. Ackley's handbooks, I've been devouring them. :mrgreen:

In vol. II, there is a section on gun shot wounds by Frank T. Chamberlain, who did testing on live animals to analyze the terminal effects of different cartridges in different scenarios, etc., with the goal of helping select a new cartridge for the new automatic rifle.

He states that there were three cartridges which received the most attention during testing: the 30-06, an experimental .276 which was adopted for a short time (.276 pederson, I would presume; it is interesting to note Chamberlain didn't like it very much), and "a little .256 caliber, 125 grain flat-base baby at 2700 F.S. that was a real honey."

I was very interested to read about this cartridge, which he clearly favored and did his best to get adopted (the .276 was adopted instead, but of course it was in turn dropped again for the 30-06). I had not heard of this cartridge before, in spite of having read a bit of the .276 in Hatcher's notebook, which is even stranger because according to Chamberlain, Hatcher and his brother were rather involved with the testing, which was at the Aberdeen proving grounds.

This is the most suited part of the forum I could find, so I thought I would see if any of you have any knowledge of this cartridge Chamberlain was so fond of. I should sure like to see what it was, who developed it, and who managed to sneak it into the list of evaluated cartridges!

[gnoahhh]

The .276 Pederson was never "adopted". It was the chambering of the Pederson rifle that was submitted for testing in the semi-auto trials that were conducted throughout the '20's. It was looked upon with favor and so was designated as a chambering for other submissions, including John Garand's initial offering. General (Dugout Doug) MacArthur, as Chief of Staff, put the kibosh to it in favor of the billions of rounds of WWI surplus .30 Gov't ammo (.30/06) mouldering in government warehouses.

[junkbug]

Does your research specify whether the .256 was a bullet (groove) diameter or bore diameter. That size just sounds suspiciously similar to the bore size of the Dutch/Romanian 6.5x53mm service cartridge, which British commercial interests renamed .256 Rigby

Thanks

[John Traveler]

Try directing your research to the Aberdeen Proving Ground Ordnance Museum. When I visited in 2002, they had a fabulous collection of experimental small arms and ammunition displayed and placarded with their development history. I would send email inquiries to the director of the museum.

[Multigunner]

Before serious design work was done for a Semi-Auto U S Infantry rifle the Ordnance Dept ran field tests of a more or less cobbled design using the Remington .25 self loader cartridge.

They weren't realy testing the rifle, which was a dead end design not suited for general issue, they were testing the method of deployment and advantages to be expected from arming regular troops with autoloaders.
They had some experiance to go on from the use of the BAR and the French WW1 era autoloaders which saw limited use in that war, as well as the Mexican Mondragon rifles. The rench and Mexican designs had been used more as a substitute for the LMG, aimed rapid fire proving more effective in most situations than full auto fire.

[PrimitiveBeasty]

Chamberlain mentioned only a .256 caliber, he did not specify whether it was bullet or bore diameter. He did mention that two of these .256 cartridges weighed together as much as a single 30-06, though.

Thank you all for replies, I will be doing some of my own research, but of course I hope to hear more here!

[leadman]

About 6 or 7 years ago I met and old man at the range that was having some problems. We got to talking and he asked me if I wanted some old magazines, I said yes, and a few days later I went to his house to pick them up.
Turns out he was 89 years old, had been a Colonel in the Army and was at Aberdeen for much of his career. He showed me cartridges that I had never seen before. He knew the designations of all of them, some had no headstamps. He was an interesting fella, but unfortunately passed away shortly after that.

He even had some cartridges the British were testing.

Wish I could have spent more time with him.