What was the most powerful military round put into service?

[AbitNutz]

I was wondering what the most powerful round put into general service was. I'm not talking anything other than a shoulder fired rifle. No rifle grenades or RPG's. I'm thinking there was little to choose form between the 30-06, 8mm Mauser, 7.62x54r...even the .303 and 7.7 Japanese were awfully close...but which was top dog? Or was there a 19th century cartridge that dusted them all?

[quietmike]

The 45-70, if loaded to it's full potential, gets my vote.

[Vann]

50. BMG? Does it count?

[Hickok]

As a standard rifle round, I believe the German 8mm Mauser, 7.92x57 round with a 196-200 gr bullet had the best long range ballistics of any round in WWII. It out distanced the 150gr 30/06, as well as others.

[Tackleberry41]

There were some odd ones out there. They made anti tank rifles at the start of WW2 when tank armor was still light enough to be punched by a 'rifle'. Germans simply made the 8mm longer, and ended up with a 8x93. Bet that would really send a round down range with some oomph. Russians had one using the 14.5 mm round used in the heavy machine guns. British had the boyes rifle, it was 55 cal, guess it had to be different for the sake of being different vs just using 50bmg. Polish had their own, sort of based on the german round, again different for the sake of being different 7.92x104mm. Internet says it would launch a 225gr bullet at 4100fps. Finland had the Lahti, which at 20mm was technically cannon class vs a rifle. The Swiss had the Solothurn another 20mm. The Lahti was in theory man portable, the Solothrun was fired from a tripod like a heavy machine gun, no stock for your shoulder.

[Earlwb]

Yeah I was thinking of the large anti-tank rifles too. All of the major military forces used them up into WWII for while. The .50 BMG sniper rifles is another big one.

If you want something more conventional, then the .338 Lapua sniper rifles may be it. Some of them tend to look like the larger .50 BMG sniper rifles too.

Now then as mentioned already the venerable .45-70 was probably the most powerful early cartridge and gun. For the early trapdoor Springfields it was mild. But if I remember right they used to make a fairly hot load for the Gatlin Guns in .45-70 caliber. That would have been quite terrifying to be on the receiving end of a Naval ship firing .45-70 rounds at you on your boat or ship. Those bullets would punch through just about everything in their way.

[PAT303]

Are we talking infantry rifles or specialist ones?. Pat

[PAT303]

I was wondering what the most powerful round put into general service was. I'm not talking anything other than a shoulder fired rifle. No rifle grenades or RPG's. I'm thinking there was little to choose form between the 30-06, 8mm Mauser, 7.62x54r...even the .303 and 7.7 Japanese were awfully close...but which was top dog? Or was there a 19th century cartridge that dusted them all? The Swedish Kulspruta m/36 cartridge was the most powerful,220grn bullet at 2500fps with a range of 5500m. Pat

[Ballistics in Scotland]

What's a rifle? There were quite a few 20mm. anti-tank rifles such as the Solothurn, mostly obsolete around the time they were built as far as anything but lighter armour was concerned. Possibly the .50 Browning might be disallowed because it was designed for machine-guns, and its use in rifles is incidental - and only rational in an anti-materiel role, rather than killing distant enemies deader than dead. A soldier half a mile from a field of jet fighters can dump the thing and run after an active minute, he and it both having earned their keep.

The German 13x94 anti-tank rifle round of the First World War was, apparently, designed for their Tank und Flieger machine-gun and a sort of giant single-shot Mauser with approximately an equal priority and timespan. It should have been extremely effective against the tanks of the time, but I think they appeared when the German war effort was no longer capable of putting enough of them into the right place at the right time. It was considered for the .50 Browning, but the round we know today, amounting to a almost exact scaled-up .30-06, was preferred. There was also a WW2 8x94 cartridge on almost the same huge case, for semiautomatic rifles which were produced in numbers disproportionate to their effectiveness.

Hermann Goering said that he could have won the Battle of Britain with the .50 Browning, but he needed an excuse at the time, and the decision not to have something similar was theirs. Most of the Tank und Flieger machine-guns, more or less a giant Maxim, were never issued, and were destroyed in their warehouses by Allied bombing.

[w5pv]

Would the 3.5" rocket luncher count it is fired from the shoulder and the recoil is like a mule kicking you.

[Hickok]

The Swedish Kulspruta m/36 cartridge was the most powerful,220grn bullet at 2500fps with a range of 5500m. PatNow there is one I never heard of. There goes my theory about the 7.92x57!:)

[OS OK]

I'd vote for any of the OP's listed rounds as long as there was a Marine behind it…'One Shot One Kill'…simple...

OS OK

[dtknowles]

Yeah I was thinking of the large anti-tank rifles too. All of the major military forces used them up into WWII for while. The .50 BMG sniper rifles is another big one.

If you want something more conventional, then the .338 Lapua sniper rifles may be it. Some of them tend to look like the larger .50 BMG sniper rifles too.

Now then as mentioned already the venerable .45-70 was probably the most powerful early cartridge and gun. For the early trapdoor Springfields it was mild. But if I remember right they used to make a fairly hot load for the Gatlin Guns in .45-70 caliber. That would have been quite terrifying to be on the receiving end of a Naval ship firing .45-70 rounds at you on your boat or ship. Those bullets would punch through just about everything in their way.

The 577/.450 Martini Henry was more powerful than the 45-70 and I don't know how you could make the .45-70 any hotter using blackpowder which was all they had at the time it was used in Gatlin Guns. They did make a down loaded round for use in Carbines.

Tim

[nicholst55]

The Navy SEALs at least used to have a single-shot McMillan .50 BMG bolt action rifle, used for long range sniping. Hardly a battle rifle or general-issue rifle, but still a conventional rifle. Just rather large. I've got a picture of me holding one somewhere.

[bruce drake]

Before the 45-70, the US Army had the 50-70 Govt with a 450gr lead bullet and 70gr of blackpowder. That Swedish 8x63 round that was earlier mentioned was a beast. SARCO has a bunch of those barrels available if anyone wants to play. Myself, I prefer to take a 8x57 barrel and rechamber it for 8mm-06 for my ultimate shoulder whacker. I used the LEE 240gr 8mm Maximum mold for mine.

[northmn]

At the turn of the century the 8mm Mauser (7.92X57) was redone to take a 150 grain bullet at 2880 fps. Due to the effect of hydrostatic shock it was considered more deadly up close and gave longer practical range. Up to that time most military units were using 200 plus grain bullets at around 2100 fps. Some like the Spanish used the 7mm at 175 grains a little. The German development at least contributed to the US development of the 30-06. The 304- Krag and the 303 British laoded at 220 and 215 respectively, esentially the same performance were found wanting at close range when the enemy was close and carrying edged weapons. The Kriss in the Phillipines was one example and the Bristish developed the softpoint at the Dum Dum arsenal. Americans filed of the ends of the FMJ bullets to get the same result.
The US settled on the 30-06 which was inspired by the 8mm Mauser. Cases for the 8mm can easily be made out of 30-06 cases, whcih I have done. The original 06 load was 150 grains or so at 2700 fps. I suspect that the American obsession with the 30 cal may be based on very long range advantages where the 30 cal will exceed the 8mm? Either one exceeds the other cartridge developments for some time. The 303 was redesigned witht eh MKII 174 gr bullets which had a hollow nose filled with aluminum or wood whcih could tumble on impact with flesh.
The Hague convention declared soft points inappropriate for "civilized warfare" after their use by the British and US.

DP

[Outpost75]

Russian PTRD-41 14.5x114mm WW2 anti-tank rifle, bolt action.

http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=444

[OS OK]

At the turn of the century the 8mm Mauser (7.92X57) was redone to take a 150 grain bullet at 2880 fps. Due to the effect of hydrostatic shock it was considered more deadly up close and gave longer practical range. Up to that time most military units were using 200 plus grain bullets at around 2100 fps. Some like the Spanish used the 7mm at 175 grains a little. The German development at least contributed to the US development of the 30-06. The 304- Krag and the 303 British laoded at 220 and 215 respectively, esentially the same performance were found wanting at close range when the enemy was close and carrying edged weapons. The Kriss in the Phillipines was one example and the Bristish developed the softpoint at the Dum Dum arsenal. Americans filed of the ends of the FMJ bullets to get the same result.
The US settled on the 30-06 which was inspired by the 8mm Mauser. Cases for the 8mm can easily be made out of 30-06 cases, whcih I have done. The original 06 load was 150 grains or so at 2700 fps. I suspect that the American obsession with the 30 cal may be based on very long range advantages where the 30 cal will exceed the 8mm? Either one exceeds the other cartridge developments for some time. The 303 was redesigned witht eh MKII 174 gr bullets which had a hollow nose filled with aluminum or wood whcih could tumble on impact with flesh.
The Hague convention declared soft points inappropriate for "civilized warfare" after their use by the British and US.

DP

Good post…but…isn't this an 'oxymoron'? …:bigsmyl2:

OS OK

[Hickok]

At the turn of the century the 8mm Mauser (7.92X57) was redone to take a 150 grain bullet at 2880 fps. Due to the effect of hydrostatic shock it was considered more deadly up close and gave longer practical range. Up to that time most military units were using 200 plus grain bullets at around 2100 fps. Some like the Spanish used the 7mm at 175 grains a little. The German development at least contributed to the US development of the 30-06. The 304- Krag and the 303 British laoded at 220 and 215 respectively, esentially the same performance were found wanting at close range when the enemy was close and carrying edged weapons. The Kriss in the Phillipines was one example and the Bristish developed the softpoint at the Dum Dum arsenal. Americans filed of the ends of the FMJ bullets to get the same result.
The US settled on the 30-06 which was inspired by the 8mm Mauser. Cases for the 8mm can easily be made out of 30-06 cases, whcih I have done. The original 06 load was 150 grains or so at 2700 fps. I suspect that the American obsession with the 30 cal may be based on very long range advantages where the 30 cal will exceed the 8mm? Either one exceeds the other cartridge developments for some time. The 303 was redesigned witht eh MKII 174 gr bullets which had a hollow nose filled with aluminum or wood whcih could tumble on impact with flesh.
The Hague convention declared soft points inappropriate for "civilized warfare" after their use by the British and US.

DP Very true.

Later the Germans went to a 196-198 Spitzer bullet at 2498fps (designed for MG use) to increase long range ballistics over the WWI vintage round that fired a 150 gr Spitzer at close to 2900fps, (2880 fps.)

This is the round, the s.S Patrone, bested most other standard rifle rounds as to range/drift used by nations during WWII.

The s.S Patrone round would stay super sonic to about 1100 yards.

[M-Tecs]

Lahti L-39 20mm Anti Tank Rifle

http://www.dndguns.com/lahti.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahti_L-39


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPhSxDwhTIA&ebc=ANyPxKpqh-b5qn4G_1psdzUcbvpCSW0qG-TQ4vamXxuIiMfdogDcqmwgdz0kZBuR-Z5JdGLD4WST00ED04_mApFTBS46m8Q_-g

[Loudy13]

Barrett M82...50 cal

[Wayne Smith]

Very true.

Later the Germans went to a 196-198 Spitzer bullet at 2498fps (designed for MG use) to increase long range ballistics over the WWI vintage round that fired a 150 gr Spitzer at close to 2900fps, (2880 fps.)

This is the round, the s.S Patrone, bested most other standard rifle rounds as to range/drift used by nations during WWII.

The s.S Patrone round would stay super sonic to about 1100 yards.

So did we, at least for a few years between the wars. The round outranged the rifle ranges of the day so it was dropped back to the 150gr to keep the rounds on the ranges! Cheaper to change the round to a less effective one than to re-build the ranges, I guess.

[Frank46]

The Swedish 8x63mm was actually a machine gun cartridge and the reasoning at the time was to have the gun crews armed with mauser rifles in the same cartridge to provide commonality (same ammo as the MG) with the weapon they were operating. Most if not all of the mausers were sold to Israel and either chambered for 8mm mauser or later conversions to 7.62 Nato. One of the few if not the only mauser to have a muzzle break to lessen the recoil of the powerful cartridge. Frank

[Tackleberry41]

The military generally considers a rifle to end at 50cal, cannon starts at 20mm. Yea theres a gap between the 2, but the only round I know of bigger than 50 and smaller than 20mm is the Russian 14.5mm.

The 45-70 is powerful, but the old BP loads we now consider the low end of the spectrum. And no its not really possible to make a stronger 45-70, since it won't hold more than 70gr. Plus the military would not have wanted to keep track of the 2 types of ammo, or 3 actually since they had a lighter carbine load. And the martini did hold more powder, not much tho. Depends really, think the military brass held 80gr. The drawn brass cases made for the 577/450 will generally hold about 90gr w a 500gr bullet. The converted 24ga will hold about 110gr.

[Combat Diver]

The Barrett 82/M107 has been a DoD wide .50 BMG rifle for awhile.

Here's me firing one here in Kuwait 16 yrs ago. (I'm 30 kms south of where that picture was taken right now)
http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/M82_Barrett_Kuwait_Feb_00.jpg

Then you have the 90mm and 84mm Recoilless Rifles. It is shoulder fired and rifled.

http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/DSCF2218_m3s.jpg
Night fire engaging out at 800m
http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Carl_Gustav_night_fire.jpg


CD

[OS OK]

Top picture, look at the pressure waves in the sand at the muzzle looks like ring waves when a stone drops in water.

Cool night fire…never forget the first time I watched a battery of 105 recoilless going at it in the pitch black night.

OS OK

[PAT303]

The Barrett 82/M107 has been a DoD wide .50 BMG rifle for awhile.

Here's me firing one here in Kuwait 16 yrs ago. (I'm 30 kms south of where that picture was taken right now)
http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/M82_Barrett_Kuwait_Feb_00.jpg

Then you have the 90mm and 84mm Recoilless Rifles. It is shoulder fired and rifled.

http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/DSCF2218_m3s.jpg
Night fire engaging out at 800m
http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Carl_Gustav_night_fire.jpg


CD Mate,you have lived a life. Pat

[SSGOldfart]

50. BMG? Does it count?
Was meant to be a crew served weapon not shoulder fired weapon( although I'm sure more than a few tried it as a shoulder fired weapon,I'd have to say the old 45/70 government or the 50/75 would be the most powerful,as standard issue. Weapon.
We had a few custom made weapons,but they aren't standard issue by any means.

[Earlwb]

The Swedish Kulspruta m/36 cartridge was the most powerful,220grn bullet at 2500fps with a range of 5500m. Pat

That cartridge was sort of a 8x63mm round. It probably looked like someone necked up a 30-06 to use 8mm bullets. But they appear to have made it a hotter loaded cartridge though. Sort of a +P kind of one as compared to the 30-06.

[dtknowles]

Was meant to be a crew served weapon not shoulder fired weapon( although I'm sure more than a few tried it as a shoulder fired weapon,I'd have to say the old 45/70 government or the 50/75 would be the most powerful,as standard issue. Weapon.
We had a few custom made weapons,but they aren't standard issue by any means.

As has been already indicated the 577-450 Martini Henry beats the 45-70 and I would guess the .577 would beat the 50-70.

Tim

[jeffkopf]

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160420/29b2f62ec417c0bc0506d56060149b0f.jpg

I always thought Chuck Norris was the most powerful military round ever put into service :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I'd vote for any of the OP's listed rounds as long as there was a Marine behind it…'One Shot One Kill'…simple...

OS OK

That sounds tremendously economical. Most military forces have to issue a lot more ammunition than they hope to kill enemies. Even the 1918 Paris Gun killed around 2/3 of a person per shell, and they could have put many batteries of medium howitzers on the Western Front for the same investment.

Virtually all of the early 20th century military rifles had far more power and range than was needed, and had both recoil and weight which were a hindrance to efficiency. It would be hard to imagine a better semiautomatic rifle cartridge than a lighter-bullet loading of the 6mm. Lee Navy, which proved impractical with the technology of the time but would be very workable now.

[Mk42gunner]

The military generally considers a rifle to end at 50cal, cannon starts at 20mm. Yea theres a gap between the 2, but the only round I know of bigger than 50 and smaller than 20mm is the Russian 14.5mm.
...

IIRC from GM A School the US Navy considers Small Arms to be .60 caliber and below; although shotguns and 40mm grenade launchers such as the M79 and M203 also fall into that category. Minor caliber runs from 20mm to three inch.

But then when you talk about real guns the minor/ major break is <6" or >6". Confusing sometimes.

The most common one I am aware of between the .50 and 14.5 is the .55 Boyes British anti tank round from WWI. Although now that I think about it, didn't the Russians have a 12.7mm heavy machine gun?


...
Virtually all of the early 20th century military rifles had far more power and range than was needed, and had both recoil and weight which were a hindrance to efficiency. It would be hard to imagine a better semiautomatic rifle cartridge than a lighter-bullet loading of the 6mm. Lee Navy, which proved impractical with the technology of the time but would be very workable now.

Very true, I personally think that most of the full sized rifle cartridges are too much for the average person that isn't a rifle enthusiast to shoot well.

I have often wondered what the popular sporting cartridges would look like if General MacArthur had let the M1 be built in .276 Pederson instead of .30-06. I can understand the monetary reasons for his decision, but looking back it seems penny wise and pound foolish.

I looked up the specs of the Swedish 8x63mm. It is not a standard Mauser .473 or even .480 rim size like the 6.5x55, the case suggested to use as a donor is the 10.75x68. You might also be able to use the 8x68.

It certainly has to rank up close to the top of powerful issue rifles, at least prior to the last couple of decades of the twentieth century when it became trendy to have rifles chambered for the .50 BMG round. Which I have zero desire to shoot; I have seen and fired too many M2HB's, to ever really want to shoot a 25-30 pound .50 cal.

Robert

[Hickok]

So did we, at least for a few years between the wars. The round outranged the rifle ranges of the day so it was dropped back to the 150gr to keep the rounds on the ranges! Cheaper to change the round to a less effective one than to re-build the ranges, I guess.Wayne, and I believe the AP round for the Garand was about 176gr or there abouts. Read somewhere, that snipers/marksmen preferred this round for long range work. Might be wrong on this.

[Adam Helmer]

Very interesting Thread. I think the "Most powerful Round" is moot beyond the practical question: "What is any round the average draftee (Never before gun-firing person) can fire for effect?" We had many soldiers who could not hit the broad side of a barn IF they were INSIDE the same barn. Ah, but I digress.

Powerful rounds exist and soldiers who can effectively employ them are fewer. A pleasant mental exercise, to be sure. My vote is for the M-14 and the 7.62MM round. It never let me down at 200, 300 or 600 yards. In July 1965 I was issued a "Mattel 16" in the woodchuck round .223 and was informed it was better than the .308. Whatever......??? I still miss my M-14.

Adam

[Mytmousemalibu]

Not the most powerful but its up there. 7.92x107mmDS, proof that even a lead core FMJ can go toe to toe with armor plate if it is sent downrange by enough powder! Impressive!

166771

[Ballistics in Scotland]

IIRC from GM A School the US Navy considers Small Arms to be .60 caliber and below; although shotguns and 40mm grenade launchers such as the M79 and M203 also fall into that category. Minor caliber runs from 20mm to three inch.

But then when you talk about real guns the minor/ major break is <6" or >6". Confusing sometimes.

The most common one I am aware of between the .50 and 14.5 is the .55 Boyes British anti tank round from WWI. Although now that I think about it, didn't the Russians have a 12.7mm heavy machine gun?



Very true, I personally think that most of the full sized rifle cartridges are too much for the average person that isn't a rifle enthusiast to shoot well.

I have often wondered what the popular sporting cartridges would look like if General MacArthur had let the M1 be built in .276 Pederson instead of .30-06. I can understand the monetary reasons for his decision, but looking back it seems penny wise and pound foolish.

I looked up the specs of the Swedish 8x63mm. It is not a standard Mauser .473 or even .480 rim size like the 6.5x55, the case suggested to use as a donor is the 10.75x68. You might also be able to use the 8x68.

It certainly has to rank up close to the top of powerful issue rifles, at least prior to the last couple of decades of the twentieth century when it became trendy to have rifles chambered for the .50 BMG round. Which I have zero desire to shoot; I have seen and fired too many M2HB's, to ever really want to shoot a 25-30 pound .50 cal.

Robert

I don't know how much MacArthur was motivated by economics, and it seems likely that he had a preoccupation, not unknown among recreational shooters, with the size of his corncob. But I think the uncertainty of producing a good .276 machine-gun came into the decision.

Mr. Petersen actually spent some time with Vickers in England, setting up a development programme aimed at securing a British government contract. Vickers did propose some improvements, and I think it went beyond a licence agreement, to an actual common military rifle. But the thirties were too much divided between times when a major war seemed inconceivable, and times when it was too conceivable for such a radical rearmament.

The Soviet 14.5mm. round was actually developed for an anti-tank rifle which was overtaken by tank development like so many others, and saw little use. It wasn't even a long-lived ordinary heavy machine-gun, although it would still be very effective in eliminating the ancillary equipment which has proliferated on modern main battle tanks. The bullet was heavier and had considerably higher velocity than the .50BMG, but the gun was considerably heavier, and perhaps not heavy enough for stability. It came into its own for the KPV quadruple anti-aircraft carriage, for shooting at things too fast and distant for the hollow-charge missiles which had taken so much custom from heavy machine-guns in other roles. I used to deactivate souvenir KPV rounds for members of the Kuwaiti military, and I wish I could have figured out how to get some of that powder, in huge multi-pierced grains, home for experimentation.

The British Daimler Ferret armoured car reached the surplus market in the late 1990s, and I might have been tempted if we had still been able to have the .30 Browning in a semiautomatic conversion. It was designed to resist the 14.5mm on the frontal plates (which I think must have been due in part to the angle), but only 7.62mm. on the front and rear, which must have given a lot of soldiers food for thought.

[w5pv]

Thanks to all who have served their country

[Earlwb]

I remember reading somewhere, that the 30-06, 8x57 and some other cartridges were chosen because the recoil effects were near the maximum that male soldiers could tolerate. Since the rifles came with steel butt plates and no recoil pads then this may be a reasonable assumption at the time way back then.

I remember when I was in the military, early on before we shifted to M16 rifles, we were still using M14's with the 7.62 NATO rounds. The recoil was starting to bother me towards the end of a shooting day when we were qualifying with the rifles. By the end of the week I was starting to bruise too, even wearing a padded shooting shirt. So I think that the higher ups may have settled on certain calibers as being as powerful as they could go at the time. Granted monetary, budgets and political stuff comes into play too.

[Speedo66]

Would the 3.5" rocket luncher count it is fired from the shoulder and the recoil is like a mule kicking you.

I've fired the 3.5 with HEAT rounds and I don't remember any recoil. It's a rocket, the exhaust gases pass out the back of the tube and don't cause felt recoil.

You do not, however, wish to stand directly behind it as it goes off unless you'd like a hell of a tan.

[Multigunner]

The .276 Pederson would have made for a decent select fire assault rifle round but did not have the potential for overcoming obstacles that the .30-06 and its contemporary infantry rifle cartridges had proven to have in combat situations. The Garand was not a selective fire rifle.
The recoil of the Garand never bothered me, and I'm not immune from recoil effects.

The Spanish and the Japanese experimented with lighter loaded versions of the 7.62 NATO cartridge and these improved control in full auto fire.
If something of the sort had been made available for the M14 they might have retained the select fire feature.

[Combat Diver]

I don't know how much MacArthur was motivated by economics, and it seems likely that he had a preoccupation, not unknown among recreational shooters, with the size of his corncob. But I think the uncertainty of producing a good .276 machine-gun came into the decision.

Mr. Petersen actually spent some time with Vickers in England, setting up a development programme aimed at securing a British government contract. Vickers did propose some improvements, and I think it went beyond a licence agreement, to an actual common military rifle. But the thirties were too much divided between times when a major war seemed inconceivable, and times when it was too conceivable for such a radical rearmament.

The Soviet 14.5mm. round was actually developed for an anti-tank rifle which was overtaken by tank development like so many others, and saw little use. It wasn't even a long-lived ordinary heavy machine-gun, although it would still be very effective in eliminating the ancillary equipment which has proliferated on modern main battle tanks. The bullet was heavier and had considerably higher velocity than the .50BMG, but the gun was considerably heavier, and perhaps not heavy enough for stability. It came into its own for the KPV quadruple anti-aircraft carriage, for shooting at things too fast and distant for the hollow-charge missiles which had taken so much custom from heavy machine-guns in other roles. I used to deactivate souvenir KPV rounds for members of the Kuwaiti military, and I wish I could have figured out how to get some of that powder, in huge multi-pierced grains, home for experimentation.

The British Daimler Ferret armoured car reached the surplus market in the late 1990s, and I might have been tempted if we had still been able to have the .30 Browning in a semiautomatic conversion. It was designed to resist the 14.5mm on the frontal plates (which I think must have been due in part to the angle), but only 7.62mm. on the front and rear, which must have given a lot of soldiers food for thought.

My neighbor (SFC/E7) just before I retired had three of them and he did just that with a semi 1919 :D
http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/16/48/54/01/ferret10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/view/16485401/214)


CD

[tdoyka]

i got this one on the 'net

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/g853/10-largest-caliber-weapons-ever/


Caliber is a key factor with shoulder-mounted antitank weapons, because a bigger diameter translates into greater penetration by the warhead. The largest currently around is the Eryx shoulder-launched missile (http://www.mbda-systems.com/mediagallery/files/eryx_ds.pdf) by European company MBDA, with a 135-mm (5.3-inch) warhead.Eryx is a guided missile with a range of over 600 yards. MBDA claims it's effective against bunkers and other fortifications, and even low-flying helicopters. The warhead will punch through about 7 feet of concrete or more than 35 inches of steel plate, making it deadly against the heaviest tanks.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

My neighbor (SFC/E7) just before I retired had three of them and he did just that with a semi 1919 :D
http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/16/48/54/01/ferret10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/view/16485401/214)


CD

There is nothing like a good hobby to keep a man out of mischief.

Auberon Waugh the journalist, and son of the cantankerous novelist Auberon Waugh, had an unfortunate incident with a Ferret while serving in the Horse Guards. When the machine-gun malfunctioned, he went around the front to try the interesting technique of grabbing the barrel and shaking it. He lost (and I may not remember the full list) a lung, his spleen, several ribs and a finger, which must surely be a tribute to his vitality if nothing else. I believe the gun was the FN NATO GPMG. It would be satisfying to think that Mr. Browning had no hand in it.

When I lived in Kuwait in 1993-96, in a conspicuously unmartial capacity, I lived in a tower block above a small plant nursery where they had a souvenired Iraqi armoured car, probably the French Panhard. I think they only drove it a time or two, shifting heavy objects. But I did know a Kuwaiti captain who had an anti-aircraft gun in his back yard, and used to say like General Braddock "We shall know how to deal better with them the next time."

[Combat Diver]

The FN MAG58/M240 machine gun action is nothing but a Browning M1918 BAR inverted! The quick change rachett barrel came from the FN BAR Type D, feed mech from the German MG42.


CD

[Kevin Rohrer]

Would the 3.5" rocket luncher count it is fired from the shoulder and the recoil is like a mule kicking you.

Not a rifle. It is as you say, a smooth-bore rocket launcher.

According to the OP's criteria, it has to be (1) in general service, (2) shoulder-fired, and is a (3) "rifle" (has a rifled-barrel).

Here you go. An M67 90mm, shoulder-fired, in general use, rifled-barrel recoilless-rifle. It was in general use in the 1960-90s. And yes, that is me at a much younger age in Germany.

166806

And in firing position:

166807
Big bada-boom

And the HEAT round for it
166809

[Scharfschuetze]

In WWI, the British Army issued African calibre hunting rifles to the boys in the trenches. The reason... The German snipers and observers used steel plates to protect themselves from the British 303 calibre weapons. Short of recoiless AT rifles and 50 cal sniper rifles, they are pretty high on the "powerful" list.

As an aside, when the British started using similar steel plates, the German soldiers turned their spitzer bullets backwards and shot through the British plates that way.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Well that is the story we hear, but very few African big game cartridges of the period would have been much better than the .303 at penetrating steel. The .280 Ross would have had some advantage, but the .375H&H hadn't turned into a .300 yet. My guess is that if it worked with the really large Expresses, steel-plate impact could take an enemy out of the line as effectively as a bullet.

[Multigunner]

The book "Sniping in France" does go into some detail on the use of African game rifles to penetrate steel plate and even break through brick walls to deal with German snipers.

The .303 cartridge has plenty of power, but they did not have AP bullets for that caliber at the time. In testing of various bullet resistant armorplates used in ground attack aircraft of the period they found the MkVII bullet was the least effective in penetration of all the main battle cartridges in use at the time. The MkVII with its two piece core was a great man killer but had less penetration power than the older, heavier and slower solid core MkVI bullets. A WW2 small arms manual gave the figures of 48 inches of packed soil for the round nosed bullet against 42 inches for the pointed bullets, they didn't used the Mk designation in that chapter but that corresponds to previous tests comparing the MkVI bullet against the .30-40 Krag with the MkVI at 48" vs 50" for the slightly heavier Krag bullet.
The solid core MkVIII bullet at slightly higher velocity penetrated well, and purpose made .303 AP bullets were very effective.
The French when they bought .303 ammo from the British for use in Lewis guns in aerial combat remanufactured the ammo replacing the Cordite charge with Poudre B and replacing the bullets with projectiles of their own design made especially for wrecking engines and airframes.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The book "Sniping in France" does go into some detail on the use of African game rifles to penetrate steel plate and even break through brick walls to deal with German snipers.

The .303 cartridge has plenty of power, but they did not have AP bullets for that caliber at the time. In testing of various bullet resistant armorplates used in ground attack aircraft of the period they found the MkVII bullet was the least effective in penetration of all the main battle cartridges in use at the time. The MkVII with its two piece core was a great man killer but had less penetration power than the older, heavier and slower solid core MkVI bullets. A WW2 small arms manual gave the figures of 48 inches of packed soil for the round nosed bullet against 42 inches for the pointed bullets, they didn't used the Mk designation in that chapter but that corresponds to previous tests comparing the MkVI bullet against the .30-40 Krag with the MkVI at 48" vs 50" for the slightly heavier Krag bullet.
The solid core MkVIII bullet at slightly higher velocity penetrated well, and purpose made .303 AP bullets were very effective.
The French when they bought .303 ammo from the British for use in Lewis guns in aerial combat remanufactured the ammo replacing the Cordite charge with Poudre B and replacing the bullets with projectiles of their own design made especially for wrecking engines and airframes.

I think pure power and bullet mass would be a much greater advantage on brickwork than on steel, on which, in the absence of a steel penetrator, velocity is the decisive factor. With the extraordinary velocity imparted by a hollow charge projectile, liquefied aluminium penetrates hardened armour very well. For this alone, the .303 MkVII would probably have been better than the round-nosed MkVI round. But I have seen pictures of sectioned wooden blocks in which it slewed sideways and created a short but wide tearing hole, while the .375H&H solid just went on and on.

I think those figures for penetration in packed earth are selected exceptions, or a lot of good sandbags would be. Certainly the results would be too variable for a 2in. difference between .303 and .30-40 to have much validity. The French remanufacturing strikes me as a case of the NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here), in the days when just about any bullet was adequate for just about any part of an aeroplane.

Sir Sidney Smith the pioneering forensic pathologist tells how while he was in Egypt, he was invited to investigate an alleged shooting of anti-British rioters by soldiers. The desired outcome was that they had shot each others with pistols, which would be eccentric behavior even in Egypt. He found little cones of papier maché in the bodies, which he declared to be from the nose of the .303 MkVII bullet. But he knew the authorized material was aluminium, so he wrote to the authorities pointing out that this seemed like an abuse by a contractor, which could cause infection in wounds. He received a reply saying that the modification had been authorized in wartime, and great care was taken that the material should be sterilized in manufacture, so the wounds would be no worse than being shot in the ordinary way.

[tdoyka]

https://www.quora.com/Has-the-military-ever-experimented-with-a-long-range-sniper-rifle-in-a-caliber-larger-than-50-BMG#!n=12

[Multigunner]

"He received a reply saying that the modification had been authorized in wartime, and great care was taken that the material should be sterilized in manufacture, so the wounds would be no worse than being shot in the ordinary way. "

I've sectioned POF made bullets with the "paper" nose. The specs call for compressed wood pulp soaked with a disinfectant.
The POF paper nose plug unpeeled like shreds of the old brown paper towel they used to use in wash rooms. It was tightly compressed and when I first cut into it the air positively reeked of a strong chemical odor.
There were several variations on the substitute nose plugs.

Solids used for heavy weight African game had very thick jackets occasionally these were steel jacketed.

[Idz]

Back in the days when we weren't politically correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery

[Ballistics in Scotland]

"He received a reply saying that the modification had been authorized in wartime, and great care was taken that the material should be sterilized in manufacture, so the wounds would be no worse than being shot in the ordinary way. "

I've sectioned POF made bullets with the "paper" nose. The specs call for compressed wood pulp soaked with a disinfectant.
The POF paper nose plug unpeeled like shreds of the old brown paper towel they used to use in wash rooms. It was tightly compressed and when I first cut into it the air positively reeked of a strong chemical odor.
There were several variations on the substitute nose plugs.

Solids used for heavy weight African game had very thick jackets occasionally these were steel jacketed.

Well plenty of things used on wounded soldiers have a strong chemical odor. But it sounds the sort of thing that brings bullet wounds into disrepute.

The first experimental .303 bullets were found to produce occasional core melting, and an intermediate layer of paper was considered, but thought to produce a risk of inaccuracy through eccentricity of mass. The problem was solved by thickening up the cupro-nickel jacket, and sectional drawings I have seen suggest that it was thicker at the nose than on the sides. Experts like WDM Bell made good use of the .303 on elephant, and though others got quite seriously killed, I don't think it would have been the fault of that military bullet.

With the MkVII it definitely would be, including on soft-skinned dangerous game. While the tumbling spitzer bullet can effectively emulate an expanding one, it sometimes doesn't. I don't know whether aluminium was the first material used, but it easily could have been, as the price and availability of the metal had tumbled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with the opening of hydroelectric powered smelters in the Highlands of Scotland. It was the standard at the beginning of the First World War, and considerably later tenite, the cellulose plastic used for buttplates and occasionally complete stocks, was used.

Both the ballistic and the wounding effects of pointed bullets were already known, from the French Balle D of the 1890s. But I don't doubt that the reason for the use of aluminium in the MKVII was the ballistic one. Even with crazed savages, whom the British had in plenty, the tendency to fight on while perforated wasn't as common as is sometimes made out, and they had just fought, in South Africa, the only war in which the long-range rifle has ever been the dominant weapon. It was pretty amicable as wars go, and the limited wounding effect of the MkVI and round-nosed Mauser bullets was found both adequate and reassuring. Military surgical texts, including Col. La Garde's in the US, are full of references to their having made warfare more humane.

[Scharfschuetze]

PzB (Panzerbuechse or literally Tank Rifle) 38 and 39 rifles in 7.92mm X 92mm.

These were also anti tank rifles and could penetrate about 1 inch of armor at 300 meters. The book "Infantry Aces" has a chapter on their use on the Russian Front. They were used for any hard target, not just light tanks. They were used for most of WWII and would have remained effective on the armored cars and half tracks used by most of the combatants.

The PzB rifles were descendants of the original anti-tank rifle, the Tankewehr 1918 (T-Gewehr) of WWI. It was a 13.2mm X 92R rifle that was basically an up scaled Mauser rifle. It also has to stand pretty high on the list of most powerful rifle rounds issued.

I don't have a photo of the PzB rifle, so I lifted this one off of the Internet.

Here are photos of a T Gewehr and its ammo that I took in the Luxembourg Military Museum. Given the confines of the display room and the length of the T Gewehr, I couldn't get a full length shot of it.

[JHeath]

The real story is that during WWI the Germans recruited every man over 6'10" into a special battalion and the British captured one of their scaled-up Mausers. The British government didn't want to give the impression that the National Health system had resulted in a generation of underheight men, so they invented the tank as an explanation for the giant Mausers.

[jlchucker]

Exactly, Speedo66. I've fired those with no recoil either. Same for 90 Recoilless, but both had a loud noise--and you didn't want to be directly behind either one when it fired. You'd get more than just a tan. When I was trained on the 3.5 and the 90 recoilless, they set up a demonstration about backblast. A wooden crate was placed a few yards on the ground behind the shooter. When the weapon was fired, the backblast broke that box into a pile of wooden shards.

[Multigunner]

"The real story is that during WWI the Germans recruited every man over 6'10" into a special battalion and the British captured one of their scaled-up Mausers. The British government didn't want to give the impression that the National Health system had resulted in a generation of underheight men, so they invented the tank as an explanation for the giant Mausers. "

Funny , but the King of Prussia's personal bodyguards were all over 6'8" with a number of seven footers in their ranks. An old WW2 film clip shows an enormous German officer at a meeting who had to stand over seven foot.
A photo of Joe Stillwell reviewing Chinese troops showed an enormous Chinese officer, seven feet or more standing next to a tiny Chinese officer probabl 5'4" at most.

In 1916 the British actually formed rifle companies of very small men called Bantam companies. These men were undernourished and below the minimum height for military service, but really wanted the chance to prove themselves.

[JHeath]

"The real story is that during WWI the Germans recruited every man over 6'10" into a special battalion and the British captured one of their scaled-up Mausers. The British government didn't want to give the impression that the National Health system had resulted in a generation of underheight men, so they invented the tank as an explanation for the giant Mausers. "

Funny , but the King of Prussia's personal bodyguards were all over 6'8" with a number of seven footers in their ranks. An old WW2 film clip shows an enormous German officer at a meeting who had to stand over seven foot.
A photo of Joe Stillwell reviewing Chinese troops showed an enormous Chinese officer, seven feet or more standing next to a tiny Chinese officer probabl 5'4" at most.

In 1916 the British actually formed rifle companies of very small men called Bantam companies. These men were undernourished and below the minimum height for military service, but really wanted the chance to prove themselves.

See, this is where you insist that the whole "jungle carbine" myth got started when collectors tried to explain the surplus SMLEs that were originally cut down for the Bantams. Which are correctly called RSMLEs (Really Short Magazine etc. )


Now I have to look up your race of eight foot nazi supermen . . .

Sounds like this thread topped out with the M36 round as the hottest standard battle rifle cartridge. Without re-reading the thread, did somebody mention the .338 Lapua?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The real story is that during WWI the Germans recruited every man over 6'10" into a special battalion and the British captured one of their scaled-up Mausers. The British government didn't want to
give the impression that the National Health system had resulted in a generation of underheight men, so they invented the tank as an explanation for the giant Mausers.

"Mauser rifle captured by men of a Bantam battalion."

I used to know a First World War sniper who was smaller and infinitely shyer than the women soldiers of the present day, believed it would be unchristian to kill anyone he could send home to take his pension, and got into the army with the "Daily Mail" for the 5th August 1914 wadded up inside his boots to make the height. But the Bantams were official, and we must be fair to them.

Late in the war, just like in the rest of Europe, some very weedy people were recruited. But the Bantams were recruited early, and mostly came from mining districts. Bad air and inadequate treatment of childhood diseases probably had as much to do with their stature as bad feeding, but although they ranged from below the regulation height of 5ft.3in. down to 4ft. 10in., they were extremely tough. The requirement was for an inch greater chest expansion than for larger men, and nobody got to be a Bantam who was short and weedy. The original intention may have been to use them for second line duty, but they eventually reached the front line, and performed very creditably there. dt was one of the two Bantam divisions that was responsible for the first taking of Bourlon Wood, in long close-quarters fighting with the Prussian Guard.

There is a true story of a man close to seven feet who was initially refused enlistment because he couldn't be properly equipped. When he kept insisting, they offered him a battalion where there was provision for specially tailored uniforms. So be became a sergeant in a Bantam battalion, and was extremely glad to be. They were eventually disbanded due to a lack of suitable recruits, which may represent the twentieth century improvement in mining conditions.

I don't know the weapon, wire-guided missile or recoilless rifle, which was responsible for one of the most interesting fatalities of the IRA's campaign in Northern Ireland. He fired it from the closed cab of a truck. The press always reported that the troops called a self-inflicted IRA fatality, more often in bombmaking, an "own goal" - a sporting term meaning accidentally scoring against one's own side. Very likely they did, but I think they more often called it the luck of the Irish.

[Four Fingers of Death]

I we are talking infantry carried shoulder rifles, they are were all pretty much on a par, but the Steyer95 round the 8x56R Hungarian or whatever it was called would probably have the edge with the fattest bullet and a decent amount of power, leastways, it feels that way.

If the 280Ross had of been accepted, it would have won as it was as powerful as a 7mm Rem Mag.

[Scharfschuetze]

If the 280Ross had of been accepted, it would have won as it was as powerful as a 7mm Rem Mag.

Interesting round that. The British .276 Enfield round for the Pattern 13 Rifle would have been in the ball park with the 280 and may have actually outperformed it with it's ball loading of a 165 grain bullet at a reported 2,800 fps. It did have issues though and like the 280 Ross round, was really ahead of its time given the propellants available at the time of their development.

[Four Fingers of Death]

The thickness of the barrel just ahead of the receiver on the Ross gives an indication of the power of the cartridge.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Interesting round that. The British .276 Enfield round for the Pattern 13 Rifle would have been in the ball park with the 280 and may have actually outperformed it with it's ball loading of a 165 grain bullet at a reported 2,800 fps. It did have issues though and like the 280 Ross round, was really ahead of its time given the propellants available at the time of their development.

The main issues involved the lack of a suitable propellant, and the use of nickel silver bullet jackets. It is easy to assume that a alloy with a high melting point should minimize fouling caused by frictional heat. But it has a very low coefficient of thermal conductivity, which means that more heat stays in the immediate surface of the bullet. Both would work fine nowadays, although there are so many alternatives, many times as many as we actually need, that there is no need for them. Even with modern components, the expectations of rapid fire at the time would have been excessive for such cartridges.

Just about all rifle barrels are much thicker near the action than they need to be to resist pressure. I think Ross wanted rigidity in the barrel, and some weight to resist recoil, and putting it near the action makes the rifle least unwieldy.

[Earlwb]

Here is another good candidate for the most powerful military shoulder fired rifle. The Finnish Lahti 20mm Anti-tank rifle. it is huge though, not exactly something you could carry easily. They even had a full auto version too. ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahti_L-39

Now the most powerful shoulder fired rifle in the world is the .950 JDJ. SSK Industries made it and they make custom stuff for the military all the time. So it makes one wonder what they made this for besides just for the heck of it because they could. Maybe it is to prepare for the possiblity of a large monster appearing one day (like in the "Big A** Spider" movie) for example. Wikipedia said it wasn't shoulder fired, but it sure looked like they were shoulder firing it in the you tube video, even with the rest.
ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.950_JDJ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPhSxDwhTIA

[Earlwb]

Adding in the other video for the .950 JDJ here


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv8acnL6jnI

[junkbug]

It still looks like Outpost75 nailed it with the Soviet 14.5mm anti-tank rifle cartridge. 33,000 ft/lbs, and an extensive combat record. That round was famously used in the battle of Stalingrad to disable or destroy German tanks while firing from upper stories of bombed out buildings. It is still in use today.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Yes, as long as it is desirable to keep the weight of tanks manageable, they will always be much easier to penetrate from above than from ground level.

There is something rather perverse in the way a few companies vie with one another in producing firearms that can have no earthly function in the real world until God obliges them by inventing a bigger elephant. The only way any of them can ever gain an unassailable position will be by inventing a shoulder gun that nobody can possibly fire from the shoulder under any circumstances.

[ksfowler166]

If anyone is interested here are some good videos detailing several anti-tank rifles.

Panzerbuchse 39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jupKqqqgBJM

[ksfowler166]

Mauser Tank Gewehr 1918

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko9A3ZbN8ZU

[ksfowler166]

Boys Anti-tank rifle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOnhPtqj3Jo

[ksfowler166]

Granatbuchse GrB-39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWFX08ay-pE

[Scharfschuetze]

Thanks for those video links Ks.

[William Yanda]

Good post…but…isn't this an 'oxymoron'?

Well, consider that it is the output of a bunch of diplomats, each trying to ensure that the rest don't get something over on them all.

[Four Fingers of Death]

I think the subject should have been 'what was the most powerful infantry man's rifle?'

The most powerful military round woould have to be the big navaal guns or the German railway guns or the Guns of Navarone style guns. All guns, all military.

[ksfowler166]

Well the OP did put the caveats of general service and shoulder fired on the topic. So that would exclude artillery since it is not shoulder fired.

[303Guy]

A very interesting topic and thread but the question of which infantry rifle fired the most potent round hasn't been fully answered. How do the various infantry cartridges compare?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The fundamental answer to this question is that after a small portion of the time since breechloaders arrived, they had become so powerful that it didn't matter in the slightest which was the most so, and were usable at such long range that it didn't matter which had the longest. All the improvements and disimprovements since, other than those intended exclusively to produce compliance with treaties, have been an effort to increase the chances of hitting somebody.

[Earlwb]

A very interesting topic and thread but the question of which infantry rifle fired the most potent round hasn't been fully answered. How do the various infantry cartridges compare?

Well, the most potent infantry rifle goes way back to the early guns. The Springfield .58 muskets with minie balls were much more powerful than people might realize. if a minie ball hit you in the arm or leg, you lost it. if it hit you in the torso, you died, either right away or later. Heck the old .70 caliber muskets used in the old days were very vicious in that same sense.

But then the .50-70 was quite vicious in that same respect, and it led to the .45-70 which was even more potent. Then of course the .577-450 British round is right up there on top too.

All of these old time rounds and bullets would likely knock you off your feet, or really close to it, if you got hit with one. Sort of like being hit with a modern 12 ga or 20ga shotgun slug.

When smokeless powder became the charge used in guns, then all the bullets became smaller. Then with the Geneva conventions, the bullets had to be all full metal jacket to wound more than kill, per se. Thus the modern rounds lost some of that serious viciousness the old black powder rounds had with the big bullets.

[Four Fingers of Death]

This is what I was taught when I was in the Army:

"The Hague Convention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907) of 1899, Declaration III, prohibiting the use in international warfare of bullets that easily expand or flatten in the body, but this only addresses that projectiles must not be designed to flatten or expand, not that they be jacketed" Wiki

The fact that wounding a soldier tied up about ten people was also cited as the main 'advantage' of FMJ bullets.

Those old soft Minie boolits and balls were super nasty and if you got anything but a graze. you were either dead of had something chopped off as stated previously.

[JHeath]

The most powerful service round was the 6.5x54 MS or 7x57. Both killed hundreds of elephants with one shot each. No other military caliber has done that. The others are all talk and no walk. Take that.

The lethality of the Minie ball owed a lot to the state of medicine at the time.

[JHeath]

Should add that W.D.M. Bell killed some with a .303 too. But not as many I think.

[M-Tecs]

If the definition of powerful is elephants killed than the king is the 7.62 x 39 out of an AK47. The lowly 22 rimfire has killed billons of cattle in commercial slaughterhouses over a hundred year span. None of these are remotely close to the most powerful shoulder fired military rounds.

[JHeath]

I'm only counting one shot kills of elephants. Which I think excludes anything AK. The definition of power is one-shot kills of elephants. Everybody knows that. It's been established.

But seriously, is "power" ME? Or Taylor Knockdown? Is SD a factor?

[M-Tecs]

It doesn't matter how we measure it but "powerful" has to include the nature of the target. The shoulder fired anti-tank rifle of WWI & WWII did a job lesser power rifles could never accomplish.

Some for the 50 BMG sniper rifles in common use today.

[PAT303]

A very interesting topic and thread but the question of which infantry rifle fired the most potent round hasn't been fully answered. How do the various infantry cartridges compare?
I would prefere to be hit by a modern rabbit cartridge than cop a .75 cal soft round ball from a Bess. Pat

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The most powerful service round was the 6.5x54 MS or 7x57. Both killed hundreds of elephants with one shot each. No other military caliber has done that. The others are all talk and no walk. Take that.

The lethality of the Minie ball owed a lot to the state of medicine at the time.

I suppose that must have something to do with their being pointed at elephants at the time. By the same token the most powerful pistol cartridge is unquestionably the .25ACP, as used by Stalin's infamous executioner General Blokhin to kill tens of thousands, including around 7000 of the Polish officer corps in a month. Fortunately my Polish air force uncle decided to take a chance on escaping to the UK, instead of playing it safe by surrendering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin

The 6.5x53R Mannlicher is most likely the round that fired what could have been a fateful shot. In the First World War Rudolf Hess was wounded in Romania, and treated by Sauerbruch, the eminent German thoracic surgeon. So it wasn't minor wound. Many decades later, in Spandau prison, a Dr. Thomas of the British army, with plentiful experience of bullet wounds, found that the records showed Hess never to have had a detailed medical in custody. He did so, and there was no trace whatever of the wound, which should have produced scarring, deformation of the ribs and lung tracking on X-rays.

The round-nosed Mannlicher bullet isn't quite the sort he knew of from modern times. If any could have left no trace, that would be the one. But the implications are interesting. Hess is supposed to have flown to the UK in an effort to broker a peace deal. But suppose one was actually made, used to get Hitler embroiled in Russia, and a substitute placed in Spandau to prevent the disclosure? Churchill could have squared it with his conscience by considering it better for Russia then than later. It seems unreasonable to consider the Nazis were treated worse than they deserved, but Stalin might well have known from the Cambridge spy ring, and it would explain a lot about the Cold War.

Round balls and Minié bullets could indeed have great effect on bone, although the low-velocity round ball had a great tendency to elbow aside the rubbery coating which arteries outside the body trunk have, and the early cartridge rifles had more shattering effect than either. Napoleon's Baron Larrey and American Civil War surgeons did surprisingly well in saving people and limbs when they had the chance, although amputations became more common when surgeons were overwhelmed by numbers in the big battles. The statistics show that survival from penetrating wounds of the skull weren't uncommon, and it has been suggested that Mr. Lincoln might have survived if they had dragged in a junior army doctor from the street, instead of the leaders of their profession. Col. La Garde, in 1916, illustrates X-rays of Civil War veterans with embedded Minié bullets which that technology had recently enabled him to remove.

The round-nosed jacketed bullet was hailed as a great step forward in humanity, although as with the more destructive pointed bullets which followed, range and trajectory were the main reason for them. Even on major bones, if the range was long, they might merely pierce them or leave a simple X-shaped fracture. In the Boer War it wasn't uncommon for wounded men to recover on the march (with horses handling the marching) without expert medical help at all. It would have been unusual either before or after.

[Four Fingers of Death]

My Dad was shot in the left forearm in New Guinea during WW2. The Jap bullet went through the wood work on his SMLE rifle and hit his arm, breaking a bone. As it wasn't a compound fracture and they were real short of men, his arm was dressed, placed in a splint and he was given a dead guy's rifle and continued on. Between the wound, malaria, short rations and extreme jungle fatigue for a few years, he was a bit wobbly and they put him with the company headquarters, along with his mate who was also wounded. The next day, when they were covering an attack on a Jap position on the next hill, his wounded mate who Dad had been resting his rifle on his shoulder (Dad was the better shot apparently), a bullet hit him in the face and Dad suffered a cut to the cheek. They though that Dad had been hit by the bullet, but when they cleaned up the wound after the firefight, it was found to be a bit of bone from his mate.

When they moved out, Dad who was as weak as a kitten and a bit giggly from the strain, said he needed another shoulder to shoot off. It was determined that he was bad luck and he was on his own, haha.

[303Guy]

The most powerful service round was the 6.5x54 MS or 7x57. Both killed hundreds of elephants with one shot each. No other military caliber has done that. The others are all talk and no walk. Take that.

The lethality of the Minie ball owed a lot to the state of medicine at the time.
What I heard about the 6.5 on elephants was that the method used for hunting was to go into the herd, select the elephant then shoot it in the stomach. All the hunter then had to do was to follow the herd until the wounded one left the herd and wondered off to die of peritonitis. This took a few days. The cartridge in question was the 6.5 Portuguese Mauser.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

What I heard about the 6.5 on elephants was that the method used for hunting was to go into the herd, select the elephant then shoot it in the stomach. All the hunter then had to do was to follow the herd until the wounded one left the herd and wondered off to die of peritonitis. This took a few days. The cartridge in question was the 6.5 Portuguese Mauser.

Elephants have undoubtedly been shot that way. But WDM Bell was a consummate anatomist, with plentiful experience before he came to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, and dissected dead elephants to determine the right bullet placement, and illustrates his books with his own drawings showing the angles at which a shot could be taken. It isn't true that this was confined to the frontal brain shot, for the brain from 3/4 rear was good, and in most circumstances the cluster of great arteries above the heart.
dd
He liked the Mannlicher-Schoenauer very much. It was the carbine, and he reduced the weight as much as possible, since one elephant in a day was no great success to an ivory hunter, and his shooting involved a lot of walking and running, without a gunbearer. He used it for a lot fewer elephants than the .275 Rigby, which is actually 7x57, and the .303 came second. He came late to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, and its use was limited by a bad batch of cartridges he found himself with, far from any more. Near the end of his elephant hunting career he came to the .318 Westley Richards, which is pretty much a .30-06 necked up to .330, and considered it close to ideal. He believed in choosing the bullet first, the velocity and gun afterwards.

But some recreational safari hunters got killed copying his technique. He was emphatic that the small calibres suited his needs and experience, not those of a man with one elephant licence. There is some pretty grim mathematics you can do. If your technique involves a 1% chance of being killed, it may be acceptable to a lot of people - once. Do that with ten elephants, and you have a either a 90% or 90.4% chance of coming out on your feet. (I am not sure whether it is most accurate to let into your calculations the fact that you can't be killed twice.) But shoot 1011 elephants, as Bell did, and you have a 0.0039% chance of being alive. Clearly Bell had worked out ways of being a lot better than 99% safe, and it wasn't by inflicting peritonitis.

[Earlwb]

I would expect that a lot of elephants were killed using the .303 British round too. It was ubiquitous in Africa at the time. it probably still is too. Heck the venerable 577/450 round was probably even more popular in Africa and they pretty much shot everything with it there. Even further was they used the .577 Snider cartridge in many sporting rifles and double combo rifle/shotguns too. They shot a lot of the big five using the .577 Snider too.
But for the rank and file hunters the big bore elephant calibers were the ones to use.

[JHeath]

M-Tecs, I was being mischievous. But the anti-tank rifles were more like crew-served weapons than battle rifles.

The .338 Lapua is a specialty item, but more like an individual weapon for firing at enemy soldiers.

Put it this way: if you had to face down a brown bear with a standard military rifle and ammo, what would you grab? Maybe a .45-70 or .50-70? I would probably take a .30-40/220 Krag over a "more powerful" .30-'06/150.

Power is a relative term. The power to penetrate in a straight line, deeply through uneven bone and flesh, is real power.

The 6.5 MS is great at that. So it is a very "powerful" cartridge in that sense.

[303Guy]

Elephants have undoubtedly been shot that way. But WDM Bell was a consummate anatomist, with plentiful experience before he came to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, and dissected dead elephants to determine the right bullet placement, and illustrates his books with his own drawings showing the angles at which a shot could be taken. It isn't true that this was confined to the frontal brain shot, for the brain from 3/4 rear was good, and in most circumstances the cluster of great arteries above the heart.
dd
He liked the Mannlicher-Schoenauer very much. It was the carbine, and he reduced the weight as much as possible, since one elephant in a day was no great success to an ivory hunter, and his shooting involved a lot of walking and running, without a gunbearer. He used it for a lot fewer elephants than the .275 Rigby, which is actually 7x57, and the .303 came second. He came late to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, and its use was limited by a bad batch of cartridges he found himself with, far from any more. Near the end of his elephant hunting career he came to the .318 Westley Richards, which is pretty much a .30-06 necked up to .330, and considered it close to ideal. He believed in choosing the bullet first, the velocity and gun afterwards.

But some recreational safari hunters got killed copying his technique. He was emphatic that the small calibres suited his needs and experience, not those of a man with one elephant licence. There is some pretty grim mathematics you can do. If your technique involves a 1% chance of being killed, it may be acceptable to a lot of people - once. Do that with ten elephants, and you have a either a 90% or 90.4% chance of coming out on your feet. (I am not sure whether it is most accurate to let into your calculations the fact that you can't be killed twice.) But shoot 1011 elephants, as Bell did, and you have a 0.0039% chance of being alive. Clearly Bell had worked out ways of being a lot better than 99% safe, and it wasn't by inflicting peritonitis.
Very interesting. No, Bell never did the gut shooting thing. Apparently, the elephant in those days were not so agro toward humans and it was possible to walk among the herd and as such, gut shooting one didn't pose a danger. But was this even true?

[Earlwb]

I seriously doubt the elephants were going to let someone walk into the herd. Everyone was wanting the big bore elephant guns because of the charging elephants. Even a .600 Nitro express might feel really small with a elephant charging down on you.

[Four Fingers of Death]

I've read quite a bit about Taylor and Bell, etc. and the hunting was done at extremely close ranges, 20 paces being considered the maximum for instant and reliable kills (remember the bullets were not like today's premium stuff) a lot of the hunting was done in long grass. If the elephant was not killed instantly and got the scent, you were in extremely deep doo doos! Bell mostly huned off a ladder. Crept through the grass with two natives, up the ladder and a frontal brain shot at a few paces. He liked the small calibres because he started with a 4 Bore and was launched off the ladder and into orbit when both barrels went off. He was reasonably slightly built as well. The pther reason he liked the rounds he did as they had long for calibre bullets and penetrated the elephant's brain reliably. The elephant's brain is a honeycomb of bone and extremely tough.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

We are hearing a great deal on this thread that is inaccurate. Bell's hunting was mostly done in country where white professional hunters hadn't penetrated, but Arab and Swahili hunters with more primitive firearms had. Elephant were less timid and aggressive than they are today, but they were fairly timid and aggressive, and less timidity when elephants are wounded is not a good thing. They go to each other's assistance, and wounding an elephant in a herd is not a 99% safe thing to do. Jim Corbett filmed tigers, unaware of his presence, from ranges as close as fifteen feet, and the behavior of tigers hasn't changed much.

Bell did indeed shoot elephant from extremely close range on occasion, but from further off when he could. The ladder story is far-fetched, and I doubt if he ever tried a four-bore. His aversion to recoil arose when he was in his teens, and tested rifles for Daniel Fraser the gunmaker in Scotland. It was both Frederick Courtney Selous and Sir Samuel Baker who believed their shooting had been permanently harmed by the use of the very large bores, a 2-bore in Baker's case.

The first rifle he used in Africa was a Winchester Single Shot, probably a .45-90, which he found unsatisfactory because of the hollow pointed ammunition, probably with the Gould bullet, which was all he had. Surplus Martinis and Cape double rifles, in which the rifle barrel took a pointed belted bullet, were popular among farmers etc. in South Africa, and knowledgeable hunters often preferred something more like the fast-twist match rifles of the period, with a heavy-bullet version of cartridges like the .500/.450 or the .461 Gibbs.

For the specialist elephant hunter, Bell turned up at the time when the "modern" jacketed nitro-express doubles hadn't fully taken over from the eight-bore and four-bore doubles. I think the eight-bore had gained popularity at the expense of the four, as a rifle of manageable weight and recoil could have higher velocity. Bell didn't agree that the double was more reliable than the bolt-action. You are pretty sure of a reliable first and second shot, but grassy debris can easily interfere with a third.

The elongated round-nosed smallbore bullets were indeed good at piercing bone, which had to be done even from the angles he considered acceptable. But placement was critical, as there were angles from which no rifle would do it dependably. Some of his rifles still exist, but I believe his light Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine was lost when his ship was torpedoed, returning from the Balkans, where he served as a fighter pilot. It was a small front, and my grandfather must have seen him overhead. In his early aviation days, flying unarmed observation aircraft in Africa, I believe he used a Farquhar-Hill automatic rifle, from the days when such weapons were all too bulky and vulnerable to dirt for ordinary military use.

[303Guy]

I was told that Bell said the 303 Brit worked fine on elephant but the 7mm Mauser bullet would exit the rear of the skull. I was also told that he was an extremely good shot and studied the anatomy of elephant and practiced his aiming continuously.

If I did much reading I would read his books.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I was told that Bell said the 303 Brit worked fine on elephant but the 7mm Mauser bullet would exit the rear of the skull. I was also told that he was an extremely good shot and studied the anatomy of elephant and practiced his aiming continuously.

If I did much reading I would read his books.

It certainly worked early in his elephant hunting career, but quite a few people got nasty surprises from the relative ineffectiveness on very large game of the spitzer pointed bullet when it appeared. You might get marginally greater reliability with a very heavily jacketed bullet made specifically for big game, but he considered the early jacketed military bullets satisfactory in most cases, and they are most likely what he used. He also made sixteen straight one-shot kills on Cape buffalo with the .22 Savage High Power, which should be even more compelling evidence that his methods weren't for everybody.

I've gone back to Bell's "Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter", in which he says:

"If your bullet has gone too far back and got into the stomach you are in for a lively time. Nothing seems to anger them like a shot so placed. If he comes for you meaning business, no instructions will save you, as you simply wouldn't have time to remember them. Hit him hard, quickly and as often as you can, on a line between the eyes, or in the throat when his head is up, and see what happens. Never turn your back to him. While you can see him you know where he is. And besides, you can't run in thick stuff without falling. Always stand still and shoot whichever animal threatens you most is what I have found to be the best plan."

[Artful]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIU1eJk-P5A
http://www.bevfitchett.us/heavy-machine-guns/images/3036_135_377-anti-tank-rifle.jpg
Anti-tank rifle cartridges (from left to right): 7.92 x 57 (for scale), 7.92mm Panzerbüsche (7.92 x 94), 7.92mm Maroszek (7.92 x 107), modern .50" Browning SLAP APDS (12.7 x 99), 13mm Mauser T-Gewehr (13 x 92SR), .55" ßüjtf (13.9 x 99£j, 14.5mm PTRDIPTRS (14.5 x 114), Oerlikon SSG (20 x 72£J, Solothurn S18-100 (20 x
Oerlikon SSG-36 (20 x 110RB), Japanese Type 97 (20 x 725j, Solothurn SI8-10001Lahti L39 (20 x 138B), Swiss Tankbüsche 41 (24 x 138)

Ballistic performance 14.5x114
Bullet weight/type Velocity Energy
59.7 g (921 gr) MDZ HEI 1,000 m/s (3,300 ft/s) 29,850 J (22,020 ft·lbf)
60 g (926 gr) ZP Inc.-T 1,000 m/s (3,300 ft/s) 30,000 J (22,000 ft·lbf)
64 g (988 gr) B-32 API 1,000 m/s (3,300 ft/s) 32,000 J (24,000 ft·lbf)
64.4 g (994 gr) BS AP 1,000 m/s (3,300 ft/s) 32,200 J (23,700 ft·lbf)
66.5 g (1,026 gr) KKV 1,000 m/s (3,300 ft/s) 33,250 J (24,520 ft·lbf)
Test barrel length: 1350mm (53 inches)

14.5×114mm ammunition has been manufactured in Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the former Czechoslovakia. Of special note are the new Chinese armor-piercing types:[2]

DGJ02: AP-T cartridge uses a 45 g tungsten penetrator, wrapped in a discarding sabot (similar to the US military SLAP cartridges) with dual colour tracer to aid ranging. The sabot splits and leaves the penetrator between 150 and 200 m from the muzzle. It has a muzzle velocity of 1,250 m/s and is quoted as being able to penetrate 20 mm of armour plate set at an angle of 50° at 1000 m.

DGE02: APHEI cartridge weighs between 175 and 188 g. At 800 m it is quoted as having a 90 percent chance of being able to penetrate 15 mm of armour plate set at 30°. At 300 m after penetrating a 2 mm soft steel plate (representing an aircraft skin) it can further penetrate a 1.2 mm thick steel plate producing 20 fragments. Upon explosion between 75 and 95 incendiary pieces are formed which have an 80% chance of igniting aviation fuel.

[Four Fingers of Death]

I think a lot of the usage of 303 in Africa was more down to what was available than what was best. No zipping down to the local gun shop when you were on foot, miles and miles into the velt or the jungle.

[303Guy]

I've gone back to Bell's "Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter", in which he says:

"If your bullet has gone too far back and got into the stomach you are in for a lively time. Nothing seems to anger them like a shot so placed. If he comes for you meaning business, no instructions will save you, as you simply wouldn't have time to remember them. Hit him hard, quickly and as often as you can, on a line between the eyes, or in the throat when his head is up, and see what happens. Never turn your back to him. While you can see him you know where he is. And besides, you can't run in thick stuff without falling. Always stand still and shoot whichever animal threatens you most is what I have found to be the best plan."
Those guys had guts!

I've mentioned before that my Dad hunted cape buffalo with a 35 Remington - all heart shots.

[JHeath]

Notice the PTRD is semi-semiautomatic. Recoil forces the bolt handle against a ramped plate and cranks it up, beginning extraction. Neat bit of Soviet design.

[Artful]

Notice the PTRD is semi-semiautomatic. Recoil forces the bolt handle against a ramped plate and cranks it up, beginning extraction. Neat bit of Soviet design.
PTRD is single shot no magazine - I think the term is self extracting or self - ejecting


PTRS is the Semi-Auto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0hUNfJoFuo

[Artful]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z-UvT68Vw

[Frank46]

The most powerful military round would be the 16" naval rifles installed on the fast BB battleships like the New Jersey. 1900 and 2400 pounds ( not quite sure of the proper weight) and 6 bags of powder. I believe one of the members here has a pics with one projectile and the bags of powder. Frank

[Combat Diver]

The Japanese Battleship Yamato had 18" guns and the German railway guns were almost twice as big at 80cm or 31.5"

168459
168458
CD

[Earlwb]

Frank46 and Combat Diver; While I do love and I am very fascinated by the giant guns, those aren't shoulder fired or carry-able by a infantry trooper. The OP was wondering what the most powerful rifle was that was shoulder fired by a soldier.

[kawasakifreak77]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z-UvT68Vw

I'll take two!

[Multigunner]

The man portable 37mm cannon used by US Troops during WW1 was a nice piece.
They used these to snip machinegun nests and for counter sniping work.
While very accurate for the type they weren't pin point accurate at extreme range, but when firing explosive shells they only had to hit within twenty feet of the target to wound or kill gunners. A direct hit in an MG position would likely damage the weapon putting it more or less out of action completely. The Germans had as many as six back up gunners in some gun positions to take over immediately when a gunner was hit.
When firing at a gun position the bursting shell could wipe out a gun crew, and with luck destroy the more vulnerable gun laying equipment, greatly reducing the guns usefulness till it could be repaired.

Snipers dug in behind walls and loophole plates were hard to take out with rifle fire, but the 37mm could quickly tear their little playhouse down.

[M-Tecs]

Not shoulder fired but at least its hand held.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arMJQDkNjuo

A woman with a mini-gun. Now that's true power.

[M-Tecs]

The man portable 37mm cannon used by US Troops during WW1 was a nice piece.
They used these to snip machinegun nests and for counter sniping work.
While very accurate for the type they weren't pin point accurate at extreme range, but when firing explosive shells they only had to hit within twenty feet of the target to wound or kill gunners. A direct hit in an MG position would likely damage the weapon putting it more or less out of action completely. The Germans had as many as six back up gunners in some gun positions to take over immediately when a gunner was hit.
When firing at a gun position the bursting shell could wipe out a gun crew, and with luck destroy the more vulnerable gun laying equipment, greatly reducing the guns usefulness till it could be repaired.

Snipers dug in behind walls and loophole plates were hard to take out with rifle fire, but the 37mm could quickly tear their little playhouse down.

Had to look up the man portable 37mm cannon used by US Troops during WW1. Very cool but not hand held.

http://www.landships.info/landships/artillery_articles/37mm_Mle_1916.html besides the one I posted above has a much nicer undercarriage.

[nicholst55]

168513

We've been shooting this one this past week; the Anzio SS20 20mm single shot. It normally comes equipped with a buttstock and a bipod, but we're firing it from a hard stand. The M14 rifle is included for scale. The Anzio weighs around 100 pounds in that configuration, and stands about 6.5 feet tall when stood on end. They offer the 20mm rifle as light as 59 pounds, all the way up to 135 pounds. A bit heavy for shoulder firing, and definitely not a general issue proposition. We're doing imaging of the projectile trajectory, not testing the rifle.

[M-Tecs]

The pocket version http://www.anzioironworks.com/20MM-TAKE-DOWN-RIFLE.htm

[Earlwb]

That takedown model is pretty neat though. But weighing 40 pounds, that take down model would tear your body up if you fired it off the shoulder, even using a rest. Ammo cost isn't that bad, but it costs more than that to buy some of the exotic elephant gun rounds.

[Multigunner]

I saw a .50 BMG pistol once. That would be insane.

[Earlwb]

Was it this one you saw?

http://talks.guns.ru/forums/icons/forum_pictures/002753/2753166.jpg

or this one

http://i.imgur.com/xwaKZTO.jpg

http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/photos/weapons_fireams/thunder50diagrearace.jpg

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/e5af6897-0497-403d-a5d0-223cdb6ab21d.jpg

or maybe this one:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/50_bmg_pistol_1-tfb-tm.jpg

[M-Tecs]

When piracy to get boats for running drugs first got to be a problem a company was make a 50 BMG handgun with a gunnel hook. That was the first 50 BMG handgun I was aware of. The must have been at least 20 plus years ago.

[Scharfschuetze]

The mention of the French 37mm infantry cannon of WW I brought to mind the 40mm M79, the M203 and the M320 grenade launchers. I don't think that they've been mentioned yet, but they will open a No 10 can of stomp a$$ in a hurry. With the duel purpose HE/AT round, they are pretty useful and they are shoulder fired. They will also fire flare rounds, buckshot and fléchette rounds.

The older M79 was the one that I found the most accurate, although its high trajectory made a 45/70 look like a varmint rifle.

[JHeath]

Looks like the Swedish 8x63 patrone M/32 cartridge was used in the Gevar M/40 rifle which was a 98 Mauser variant, but featured a muzzle brake.

The same case was also used for machine gun cartridges. But the M/40 was an individual soldier's rifle. I think this is probably answers the OP's question.

150gr at 3100fps
170gr at 2800fps
225gr at 2450fps

[Artful]

JHeath how does 8x63 Patrone beat the Ruskie 14.5 round which is
1,026 gr at 3,300 fps?

And it was a powerful round put into general service for specific duty
and is still in service today.

And as I recall once you cross over into 20mm rounds or larger they
were considered Artillery as most where crew served.

[GONRA]

GONRA's pretty sure the Swedish 8x63 patrone M/32 cartridge was developed for a Swede light machine gun.
After that, Swedes developed the Gevar M/40 rifle - machine gunners could use the same cartridge in their rifles.

[M-Tecs]

Doesn't qualify but I like mini-guns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06rpnmCmThM

[JHeath]

The OP specified "shoulder fired rifle." I think he meant the most powerful ordinary rifle.

Anti-tank rifles are "rifled" but so were Parrot Rifles. They are fired from bipods. They mount to the shoulder, but so did twin 20mm antiaircraft guns on ships.

The M/36 cartidge was originally intended for machine guns. But was later chambered in regular 98s as a more or less ordinary rifle.

[Multigunner]

The 8X63 was sometimes called the 8mm Browning. It was intended to allow use of a very heavy boat tail 8mm bullet over a heavy charge to greatly increase the long range performance of the browning Machineguns in use by Sweden.
The Swedes chose large strong men has MG crews, because their tactics required hauling the weapons uphill and changing positions quickly.
As Gonra stated the rifles chambered for this cartridge were intended for MG crew men. the tactics of the day required that machinegun crews carry a rifle in the same caliber as their MG. In those countries that bought up many WW1 Vickers and Maxim guns in .303 after that war they tried when possible to arm the gun crews with .303 rifles. One country even commissioned a Mauser carbine modified to feed the rimmed .303 cartridge. only one prototype is know to exist. It used a Rigby style floor plate, deeper at the rear, developed for sporting rifles.