30-06 question?

R

RMC51

New member
I just watched a show "Lock and Load" with R Lee. they had some machineguns on the show and a couple of them were 30-06. Their statistics were that those units were good out to 2500-2950 yards, but the M1 Garand that is a 30-06 was good out to 1000yds. Will a 30-06 out of my Win M70 30-06 go 2500-2950yds?? Can anyone point me to some 30-06 flight statistics?
 
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There is a huge distinction between what the military considers "effective range" of a battle rifle and what a normal shooter would consider effective range. In the heat of battle, a line of soldiers could guestimate long ranges by holding way over. A hail of bullets from a line of soldiers doing that formed a defense against an advancing enemy a half mile away.

For civilian use, you need to be able to actually hit the target you are aiming at. That type of range is significantly less.
 
Will a 30-06 out of my Win M70 30-06 go 2500-2950yds??
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Yes, in fact it will travel much farther than that, but somewhere around 1,000-1,200 is about it for any real accuracy or with enough energy to do much damage.

Just using some data on my hand loads a 150gr bullet at 3025 fps will only have about 500 ft lbs of energy at 1,000 yards and will be close to 27 FEET low with a 200 yard zero. This is with some pretty hot handloads using a very aerodynamic bullet. Military loads are at least 100 fps slower so the difference would be even greater.

Hitting at 2500 yards would be like raining down tiny mortar shells on a target.
 
Someone with infantry experience can probably explain it better, but machine guns used for suppressive fire can do so at ridiculous ranges compared to a rifle in the same caliber.

It is essentially the small arms equivalent of indirect fire. Walk the tracers into the target area.
 
iirc the .30-06 machine gun cartridge was a spbt while the rifle cartridge didn't have a boat tail.

The Army developed the new bullet for both guns but decided that they didn't need it in the rifle.

Not sure if they continued with the boat tail for the Machine gun or just used up the supply on hand.

Another consideration is that the rifle is used to hit a specific target at long distance while the machine gun is an area weapon.
That's not to say rifles weren't used for area fire, just not as an individual weapon.

So the machine gun had a better long distance bullet and it wasn't used for precision shooting.
 
In the heat of battle, a line of soldiers could guestimate long ranges by holding way over.
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Back when the .30-06, 7.92x57mm, 7.62x54r came on the scene, the rifles chambered for them had sights calibrated for just such a situation: the OIC would callout a range and the company would be a "poor man's machine gun" ..... a fine theory, but not so useful in practice: most decisive engagements in Europe happened at under 400 meters.
 
As I recall from Hatcher's Notebook, the 150 gr flatbase '06 and M2 bullet had a "falling out of the sky" range of about 3500 yards.
The old idea of volley fire led to rifle sights graduated to 2500-2700 yards.
Likewise heavy machine gun doctrine.

After WW II they wanted more range for those applications, even though changes in tactics and equipment would obsolete the concept before the shooting started again. So they went to the 173 grain boattail. It had an ultimate range of 5400 yards, a 50% gain just from bullet design. This gave it the bad habit of shooting out the end of firing range safety zones, and kicked harder in rifles, so they ordered up a supply of 150 gr FB ammo and ended up going back to it in time for WW II.

As the war progressed, there was a lot of armor piercing ammo loaded. Hatcher said that by the end, the tendency was to just shoot AP all the time. That was a 163 grain steel cored bullet. I don't know how far it will fly, but that was not a consideration being that it would not go as far as a P47.
 
Generally a machinegun in 30 caliber and bigger is belt fed and fired from a tripod for maximum effect. When I qualified with the M-60 and when we trained shooting from Huey's you walk the bullets into your target. There was a tracer every 10 rounds in the belt, so that helped when you did not see the dust getting kicked up at range. The sights would get you close, but were generally worthless firing full auto.. You could also set the gun up on a traverse on the tripod, that would set your field of fire. A group of machineguns set up with interlocking fields of fire can do a lot of damage to infantry or unarmored vehicles.
 
emcon5 said:
It is essentially the small arms equivalent of indirect fire. Walk the tracers into the target area.
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Generally, that's true, but tracer burnout would limit your ability to walk the tracers. Back when I was playing with belt-fed weapons we generally considered 7.62 tracer burnout to happen somewhere about 800 meters and .50 cal burnout to happen somewhere about 1600 meters. Beyond that you had no idea where you were hitting, unless you were shooting incendiary and you'd get a little twinkling effect in the beaten zone. Very pretty at night, but tough on the impact area. Sometimes we'd have to suspend firing, go down range and put out fires. As it turned out, we got incendiary ammo very infrequently, and only when the impact area was wet.
 
Times have changed. Different in WWI and WWII (and other wars).

The 1903/M1917 has their sight graduated to 2500+ yards. They shot the same round as the MGs of the day, at the same range, lobing rounds into the enemy trenches 2000 or so yards.

In the WWI time period, indirect fire, with both rifles and machine guns was taught. Meaning shooting over a hill side at massing troops.

The Garand, (or any other '06) will shoot the same round, the same distance assuming you have enough elevation on your sights.

The problem is, this (extreme long range) is a lost art. Ask any infantryman how to compute the maximum/minimum ordinate of their rifle (or machine gun) at a given range.

The ideal is, if you have a group of soldiers assaulting a enemy position at point A, and you have another element at point B who is suppose to cover the moving troops by suppressive fire on the enemy position, the supporting troops need to know at what point(s) the are not putting the advancing troops in danger.

What you have is a arc of the bullet path that at some point is over the heads of the troops, you have to know the points where the bullets pass over the head, then drop back down.

I've taught that in machine gun and sniper schools, but I doubt you'll see it in Basic or AIT in todays army.

In case anyone is interested, To Calculation of the maximum ordinate. Double the time of flight in seconds, square the result and you get the greatest height in feet.

Any ordinate of any trajectory may be caluclted as follows:

Subtract the angle of departure for the yardage (that you want the ordinate of) from the angle of departure to the target.

Lets say you want the 800 yard ordinate of a 1200 yard trajectory:

For the M2 '06 round.

The angle of departure for 1200 yards is 19.9 mils
Angle of departure for 800 yards is 9.4 mils.

Value of ordinate is (19.9 - 9.4) 10.5 mils.

W is the height in feet. R is the range, M is the Mill difference ( or abscissa)

W = RM/1000

800 X 10.5 /1000 = 8.4 yards = 25.2 feet.

You can see that if the target is 1200 yards away, the advancing troops would be safe from overhead fire at 800 yards.

This is not of much value to the hunter or sport shooter, but one can see it does have value on the battle field.

It's just not taught any more.
 
"abscissa" - I'm not sure if I even used that word in a sentence during high school math classes.

This is just another one of those glaringly obvious and humbling reminders that I don't know quite so much as I sometimes think I know. But then again, I get that reminder a lot here on this forum.

Fascinating stuff...

NRA Life Member
------------------------
"There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual will believe them." - Malcolm Muggeridge
 
kraigwy said:
I guess I wont mention spin drift then
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As I recall, the M105 telescope in the M60 series tanks had a reticle for the HEP round that accounted for spin drift. As the range increased, the sight "slanted" toward the right. This particular sight wasn't used in the computer mode and was graduated out (IIRC) to about 3200 meters. I'd love to find an image of that reticle, but my Google-fu isn't strong this morning.
 
I don't doubt that, I don't know much about tank gunnery, but as to rifles and machine guns it (spin drift) has to be accounted for at distance.

If one was to place a dial indicator on the leaf sights of the 1903 & M1917, he would notice the windage changes for spin drift as the sight is moved up the ladder.

According to a chart I have, the drift for the 1903 using 1906 ammo, drifts 1 foot at 1000 yards, 2 ft, at 1200, 4 at 1400 and out to 36 feet at 2800 feet.

For the normal rifleman, he would be better off spending his effort on accurately determining wind corrections. A 2-3 MPH mistake in wind velocity would throw you off more then the wind drift and 1000 yards.

By the time one works out the formula for spin drift, the wind will change throwing all you computations out the window.
 
For the normal rifleman, he would be better off spending his effort on accurately determining wind corrections. A 2-3 MPH mistake in wind velocity would throw you off more then the wind drift and 1000 yards.

By the time one works out the formula for spin drift, the wind will change throwing all you computations out the window.
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And That is why I do not shoot at things that far away... I am a good shot with a rifle, but, never learned long range shooting.
 
Thank you guys for the great feedback. I have finally gotten the info that makes sense and goes along with what I was thinking it should be.

What I am doing is putting a new scope on this Win M70 30-06. I thought that the 30-06 should be ok for 1000yds. Every time I would ask about optics that I should put on this thing, I would get flak that I did not need 1000yds, I will never use it at that distance.

Well; The rifle and the shell will work out to 1000yds, so I want to put a new scope on it that will give it the capability to go to 1000yds. I have found a rage in central Florida that has a 1000yds range. Yes, I understand that, I may never shoot at a 1000yds other then at the range, but if I’m going to spend $600, $900, $1500+ for a new scope for this rifle, I want to get one that has the capability to go to 1000yds. My plan is to use this up in northern Florida for wild hogs and that should be 100-300yds, but I do not want to short scope the rifle. A scope that will work good for1000yds will work also work at 100-300yds, Correct??

Please tell me if my thinking here is good:
If I put a scope on it that will work for 1000yds on this Win M70 30-06.
I will need 35-40 moa with a 100yd zero. Jrm40 said that I would need 27 feet with a 200yd zero. Should a LR shooter be at a 100 or 200 zero? To get that it will need to be a 30mm tube or bigger, can’t get that much from a 1” tube? It will need to be 6-24x50 or 8-32x50, I don’t think a 4-14 is strong enough. Is this thinking on track, what am I missing?
 
A scope that will work good for1000yds will work also work at 100-300yds,
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Not really. 1000 is a LONG way. A 1000 yd scope requires lots of elevation (sometimes even special mounts with a taller rear ring) and lots of magnification. Anything less than about 20x and you won't be able to see the target very clearly. On the other hand, a hunting rifle for the distance you are talking needs to dialed down to at least 4x. In spite of your desire to shoot hogs at 100-300 yds, the vast majority of actual hog shots are somewhere between 30 and 100 yds.

In the last 5 years of hog hunting the longest shot I COULD have taken was right at 200 yds - and I even passed on that one. The shortest two shots have been at less than 10 yds.
 
the main differnce in the "range" listed is not because of velocity. a bolt action is always going to be a more efficient platform than a blowback or gas operated system( I don't recall which the machine guns were) since the bolt directs all the force forward while the automatics require some of the rearward force to cycle the bolt(that is not politically correct physics but I am generalizing). the main reason that the machine gun was listed as a longer range weapon is because the shooter can "follow" his shots and adjust acording to point of impact with greater ease and lay more fire down on a general area at range than a bolt action rifle can. these list the effective ranges. after 1000 yards with an open sighted rifle many shooters are lucky to hit a tourbus, no less a singular enemy while the machine gun would probably be able to do that quite nicely by peppering the tourbus.

Not really. 1000 is a LONG way. A 1000 yd scope requires lots of elevation (sometimes even special mounts with a taller rear ring) and lots of magnification. Anything less than about 20x and you won't be able to see the target very clearly. On the other hand, a hunting rifle for the distance you are talking needs to dialed down to at least 4x. In spite of your desire to shoot hogs at 100-300 yds, the vast majority of actual hog shots are somewhere between 30 and 100 yds.
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that is why a number of the 1000 yard scopes are variable zoom(usually between 4x and 24x) and have adjustable paralax. I bought the cheapest of the cheap barska 6-24x scope and I can just as easily find a target at 100 yards as I can at 1000. also...it is mounted on a 10/22 using standard height rings :D
 
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