may have .147 case head protrusion or unsupported case,
National Brass and Copper Tube Company was one of the companies that made the soft head ammo that would probably fail in any cone breeched rifle.
Dr. Lyons said:Injuries Caused by Receiver Failures
Hatcher had data on the injury caused by the receiver failures for 43 of the 68 accidents. Three men lost an eye (7% of the total accidents) and 6 more (14%) had unspecified injuries considered serious or severe. The remaining 34 failures (79%) caused minor injury. The risk of serious injury from the failure of a low numbered Springfield receiver would be about 0.7 serious injuries per 100,000 rifles manufactured.
Putting Risk Into Perspective
It's hard for people to personalize risk to their own situation. The following are some risks of dying with common place activities that are of similar magnitude to serious injury from the failure of a Springfield receiver.
Risk of One Death per 100,000 population in a Single Year Caused By:
Riding a bicycle 100 miles
Smoking 14 cigarettes
Living 20 months with a smoker
Traveling 1500 miles by automobile
Traveling 10,000 miles by jet aircraft
Conclusions
The problem of Springfield receiver failures was a rare event throughout the service years of the Springfield rifle despite statements to the contrary. It was also concentrated in certain years of manufacture suggesting that an important component of the failure was human error in heat treatment. The heat treatment problems had been present long before the manufacturing pressures of 1917. The receiver failures were also compounded by a design flaw in the support of the cartridge case head in the Springfield rifle, and this problem was exacerbated by uneven manufacturing of brass cartridge cases during 1917-18.
Eleven receiver failures in 1917 prompted an investigation and a change in the heart treatment of the receivers. The decision in 1928 to replace the low numbered receivers as rifles were returned to arsenal for repair was an effort to provide soldiers with a greater degree of safety. The board of officers recommended that the low numbered receivers all be withdrawn from service, but the general responsible for reviewing this decision did not concur with the board's decision, and left most low numbered receivers in service until replaced by the M1 Garand in the early 1940's. He took a calculated risk, and the risk paid off. There were no further receiver failures after 1929.
It also suggests that ammunition manufactured during World War I likely played a major role in receiver failures.
{his complete piece is here: http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/}
Lyons said:I've used the detailed information that Hatcher provides in his notebook, and supplemented this with information from Campell and Brophy, and Ferris’ book on the Rock Island Arsenal Model 1903's (The Rock Island ‘03. Published by C.S. Ferris, 1992). There are some minor problems in Hatcher’s book. For example see the table on pages 446-47. He lists receiver by date of failure, and the list is consistent until 1923 when he lists three failures, then four in 1924, then four in 1923, then three more in 1924. I checked his dates against the detailed report of the failures (see pages 448-482) and concluded his dates were correct, but his sequence was wrong. I have grouped them by the reported year of failure in the table.
Hatcher reports 24 Rock Island Arsenal receiver failures but only provides serial numbers for 22 (see page 443). One Rock Island receiver, number 445,136 is said to have failed in 1918, but Rock Island did not reach this serial number until 1919, after double heat treating was instituted. There was obviously an error in reporting the serial number, or the date of failure.
There are also two Springfield receivers (numbers 946,508 and 951,718) included in the low numbered receiver table, and counted among the 68 said to have failed. These I used to estimate the rate of failure for high numbered receivers.
Brophy has an error in his table of serial numbers on page 445. His table gives the beginning serial number for Springfield Armory for 1913 as 531,521, but the beginning number for 1914 as 510,561. I chose to use the serial numbers provided by Campbell for 1913 to 1917.
I also included the early 1918 receivers manufactured at Springfield Armory in the 1917 tally. Since Rock Island Arsenal had not been manufacturing rifles since 1914, I place their 1917-1918 rifles in a separate category.
I made no effort for allocate the 11 receivers to either manufacturer, or calculate an overall rate. If the failures were all from one arsenal or the other, then it would change their relative positions. If the failures were distributed similarly to the current allocation, then rates of each manufacturer would rise, but their relative position would stay the same.
His analysis is invalid as it does not account every low number that ever shattered.
It would have been interesting to find given that a receiver shattered, what was the probability that it was a low number receiver. I will bet that number is closer to 99%.
Dr. Lyon is just another opinionated person justifying his use of low number receivers. He just uses statisitics.
Any one can do the same, but do it for yourself. Don't try to convince the simple or weak minded that it is safe, unless you want the responsibility that comes when someone hurts themself based on your bad advice.
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