30 USA or 30-40 Krag

R

Roamin_Wade

Moderator
Well, ‘cause I hate it when folks start sentences with the word “So”, I’ve got a real ammunition puzzle that I can’t figure out to save my life. My Cartridges of the World book says that there is a rimless version of the 30-40 Krag that is called the 30 USA. The problem is, and I’m an amateur-to-mid-level ammunition collector and I have a rimmed round that is clearly stamped -REM-UMC-30 USA. I guess it could be that this book could have some bad info or a typo or something. It says that the rimless version was made for the Blake Rifle. I’ve never heard of such an animal. I’m a machinist and so I checked this round diameterically and it is identical in every way to the 30-40 round. It even has that bevel on the primer side of the rim to help an incorrectly loaded bullet in the magazine well to slide over the rim of another bullet. I took some pictures of the sample rounds and the page in the book to post here but I still can’t attach them. It says they are too many bytes for this forum and I put my camera setting to non-HD, etc., so I’m still unable to take a pic with my phone, save it and then attach it in this forum so folks can look at them.
Anyone have any experience with the 30-40 or the 30 USA?
 
i've owned and shot US Krag rifles since the mid 1950s. Don't recall hearing of a rimless Krag round or the Blake rifle: Must not have been wildly popular. As you have stated: Some .30-40 rounds were head stamped .30 USA.

i'm looking at a box of Western rounds made in the 1940s-1950s. They are head stamped .30-40.
 
The 30-40 krag round was also known as the .30 US or the .30 army.

The rimless variant that Blake made for the rifle trials was a one hit wonder- it never caught on in either the military or civilian markets. fewer than 300 rifles were ever made.
 
I'm not a cartridge or Krag expert,just joining the discussion.

For the short time the Krag was the US Army rifle cartridge,...something like 1898 to 1903,there was good reason to call it 30 US or 30 USA.

I don't know anything about the Blake or a rimless version of the Krag round.

I'll speculate the rimmed casewas "proper",what folks were used to.Single shots,lever guns,etc. And the .303.

Mr Mauser thought outside the box with his rimless stagger box. Hmmm,why didn't we think of that? Rims complicate feeding.

I would guess Mr Blake was one of those machinist guys who could modify brass from rimmed to rimmless during the few years of innovation and transition.He may have filed a patent and made prototypes. I've never heard of a Blake rifle,either.

I'm thinking those 7x57 Mausers at San Juan Hill convinced Teddy that just going rimless with the Krag was not enough.
 
It even has that bevel on the primer side of the rim to help an incorrectly loaded bullet in the magazine well to slide over the rim of another bullet.
Click to expand...

That may be what the bevel is for, but there's no way to incorrectly load a Krag magazine, as long as the bullets point to the front.

.30 US, .30 Army, .30-40 Krag, I've seen brass marked with those.

.30 Govt is (I believe) the .30-03, until it became the .30-06.
 
I just looked and my book says that the American military round was called the “30 Army” which is also the 30-40 Krag, and there is another round named “30 American” but the “30 USA” entry says that particular round is called the 30 USA or the Rimless 30-40. In light of all of this the round I have that says it is the 30 USA, with a rim, must be a from a batch of ammunition that is mismarked. In other words it makes as much sense as a shell stamped 30-40 Krag that doesn’t have a larger rim than the largest diameter of the case body. Is mismarked ammunition common at all?
 
.30 Govt is (I believe) the .30-03, until it became the .30-06.
Click to expand...

Nope ...

Variously called the .30 US, .30 Army and .30 Government, the cartridge eventually became known as the .30-40 Krag, listing the caliber and powder charge. The rifle didn’t feature clip loading, like either the British Lee-Enfield or the 1892 Mauser, and when a higher-velocity load was introduced in 1899, the single-locking lug often cracked, leading to the Krag’s replacement with the 1903 Springfield. However, there was never anything fundamentally wrong with the cartridge itself; as evidence, Britain’s almost identical .303 defended the Empire through two world wars.
Click to expand...

Source: https://gunsmagazine.com/the-30-40-krag/
 
30-40 Krag also known as ... da '30 Gommint.'
Click to expand...
No, it is not.

.30 US Army or 30 Army was called that because it was adopted by the US Army and no other branches of the services. The US Navy had the 6mm Lee Navy (so called because it was adopted by the US Navy), and the USMC had the 45-70 Government (so called because at one time, it was the universal US armed forces cartridge for rifles and machine guns).

,30 Government was the .30-1903, later modified to become the .30 Government 1906, or simply .30-'06 as we know it now.
 
30-40 Krag also known as ... da '30 Gommint.'
Click to expand...

No, it is not. .30 US Army or 30 Army was called that because it was adopted by the US Army and no other branches of the services. * * * .30 Government was the .30-1903, later modified to become the .30 Government 1906, or simply .30-'06 as we know it now.
Click to expand...

Yes it is, junior. Pay attention and do some research. :rolleyes:

The 30-40 Krag cartridge, also known as the 30 Army, 30 Government, and even the 30 USA, was used by the US Army for about a decade before being replaced by a better-designed and faster-moving round that itself was replaced within three years by the 30-06 Springfield.
Click to expand...

Source: https://www.alloutdoor.com/2013/06/24/30-40-krag/
 
In logic, that is called "appeal to authority". I do not believe for an instant that some English major who got a job writing about guns knows more than Franklin Barnes, author of "Cartridges Of The World". But here's a challenge for you: you find a rifle marked .30 Government that a professional smith will do a chamber cast on and identify as .30-40 Krag and I'll eat my words.

And don't call me junior, I'm older than dirt. And I've been doing this gig as a gunsmith for almost 40 years.
 
[QUOTE
Quote:
The 30-40 Krag cartridge, also known as the 30 Army, 30 Government, and even the 30 USA, was used by the US Army for about a decade before being replaced by a better-designed and faster-moving round that itself was replaced within three years by the 30-06 Springfield.][/QUOTE]

Nope. 30-40 Krag, 30 Army or 30 U.S. 30 USA was the aforementioned rimless version. Everything with Government or Gov't on the cartridge box was some version of the 30-03 or 30-06. Russ Chastain is mistaken.
 
And don't call me junior, I'm older than dirt. And I've been doing this gig as a gunsmith for almost 40 years.
Click to expand...

Apologies. The reference should've been either, "Sir" or ... "Dude, seriously?" ;)

I do not believe for an instant that some English major who got a job writing about guns knows more than Franklin Barnes, author of "Cartridges Of The World".
Click to expand...

That ol' coot Frank Barnes learned at the knee of the highly-respected and much more knowledgable author Frank de Haas, now very much R.I.P., who states the following quite authoritatively at page 77 of his justly famous tome, 'Bolt Action Rifles' (Expanded 3rd Edition, 1995):

Referring to the 1892 Model Krag-Jorgensen rifle, de Haas writes:

Adopted with this new rifle was a new 30-caliber cartridge. Using a rimmed, bottle-necked case, it was the first U.S. military cartridge loaded with smokeless powder -- officially the "30 Army" or "30 Government" or, more popularly, the "30-40 Krag."
Click to expand...

FWIW, I've seen the 30-40K cartridge referred to with a slightly varied moniker: "30 U.S. Government."

See, e.g.:

Original G.I. ammunition (“.30 Army”) was called “.30 U.S. Government” commercially, and is very rare, and it has been known as “.30-40 Krag” after the adoption of the .30-06 in 1903.
Click to expand...

Source: https://www.ammoland.com/2017/02/u-s-krag-jorgensen-rifle-gun-review/#axzz5SD1X3czp

But here's a challenge for you: you find a rifle marked .30 Government that a professional smith will do a chamber cast on and identify as .30-40 Krag and I'll eat my words.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

Eating one's words generally makes for a poor diet. That said, I'll get right on it and let you know what I find.
 
Last edited:
".30 Govt is (I believe) the .30-03, until it became the .30-06."

Well, sort of.

While the Krag is more commonly known as the .30 US Army, it was also referred to as the .30 Government.

That apparently started AFTER the US Navy dropped the 1895 Lee rifle and its 6mm Lee Navy cartridge.

After all, since the Army and Navy are now both using the same rifle/cartridge, it's no longer the .30 US Army, right?

That didn't last long because the Springfield rifle and its cartridge were adopted, and it became known as the .30 Government....

But, often, to distinguish it from the earlier rimmed round, it was called the .30 Government '03, and later the .30 Government '06.

Remember, cartridge nomenclature can be quite fluid, especially in the early years.

That's why the cartridge was also tangentially referred to as the .30 Springfield '03 or '06 (along with the rifle).

There are even early printed references to the military's .30-45 cartridge, which is more commonly known as the .30 '03.
 
In case anyone is wondering if .30 USA ever appeared on headstamps for .30-40 Krag cartridges....

The answer is yes.

This is a blank, but it is the standard rimmed .30-40 cartridge.

https://www.gunauction.com/buy/10523526

That headstamp style makes it likely the round was produced sometime between WW I and WW II and likely for civilian consumption.

Obviously if Remington was using that headstamp on the cartridge it was somewhat comment nomenclature.


And, in post 1 of this thread at Cast Boolits you can see that both .30 USA and .30 USG were used on the .30-40 cartridge.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?56902-Five-different-30-40-Krag-headstamps
 
I'm going to have to dig through my collection as I have a number of .30-40 cartridges and I know there are varying headstamps. Just not sure what I have commercially.


As for the rimless round for the Blake rifle, the rimless round was NOT known as the .30 USA... at least not formally.

It was called, oddly enough, the .30 Blake after the rifle and after its inventor. However, some surviving examples of the round are headstamped .30 USA and manufactured by Union Metallic Cartridge (UMC).

It is surmised by some collectors that these rounds were possibly manufactured from UMC loaded ammunition by a third-party under contract to Blake by lathe turning the rim down and cutting an extractor groove.

Others feel that UMC manufactured the rounds by altering already manufactured, but unloaded cases.

Now here is something I've never seen before...

.30 Blake headstamped ammunition manufactured in... South Africa.

http://www.municion.org/Krag/30Blake.htm


Blake advertised his rifles for sale commercially for a number of years. It appears that he offered his rimless .30 Blake for a time, and also chambered the .236 Lee Navy round as well as the .400 Blake, but I've not had much success in finding any examples of that cartridge.
 
"But here's a challenge for you: you find a rifle marked .30 Government that a professional smith will do a chamber cast on and identify as .30-40 Krag and I'll eat my words."

Why, when .30-40 Krag cartridges marked .30 USG (see my attached photo above) were manufactured by Winchester?

That said, given that Winchester's early advertisements for the Model 1895 showed the cartridge as the .30 US Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1895#/media/File:Win1895advert.jpg) it's most likely that that headstamp is a much later iteration.

My guess is that the .30 Government name for the .30-40 became MORE common after .30-06 became the common civilian name for that round.
 
I looked in Madis' chapter on the 1895.
It was no help, I think he changed nomenclature every paragraph.
Hatcher and Sharpe didn't have a lot to say on the subject, either.
 
It becomes even more confusing when you realize that, over time, manufacturers often changed cartridge designations on their firearms based on a huge variety of factors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top