101combatvet
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And how many days were you in combat with one?
Is 30 Carbine the Round of the Future?
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And how many days were you in combat with one?
Sure I can,
It was light, held more ammo, was semi auto, and found to be generally effective enough in combat.
There, fixed it back.
Sometimes the carbine worked really, really well in combat, sometimes it didn't. Most guns are like that. Lots of stories of failures, and while some of the failures are facts, often the reason given isn't, and still it becomes legend.
Remember what you are looking at, a .30 caliber round that is close, but isn't quite the equal of the .357 Magnum.
You can consider the .30 Carbine as the first generation WW II "intermediate" power rounds, defining intermediate as more powerful than standard pistol rounds but less powerful than (full size) infantry rifle rounds. The other (less famous) is the 8mm Kurz (7,92x33mm), which is more powerful than the .30 carbine.
History aside for the moment, I don't think the .30 Carbine round is the round of the future, there are a great many things available today that outperform it, in a great many ways.
It's a neat piece of history, and deserves respect for what it can do, and what was done with it, but its a dead end for future development, as I see it.
Cite one...
There are a great many documented, fully vetted failure examples involving the Colt M/556 platform across multiple wars going back decades, so many in fact that there have been numerous studies, developments, design changes, etc, etc, etc.
What's your point?
I've never forgot...
You're right, they are not equal, the .30 out of the the M1 Carbine exceeds the ballistics by a relatively wide margin. Out of common pistol lengths (where people rave about the effectiveness of the Magnum) the .357 produces about half the energy of the .30 Carbine. It isn't until you get close to the 200 neighborhood where the .30 drops enough in velocity to start to be comparable to the .357 at the muzzle.
I haven't 'considered' it anything other than what it is.
I never asserted it was...
As was the case in 1945... what's your point?
There isn't a personal weapon today issued by a single military that isn't 'outperformed' by something else.
Now with that said, name another military vetted semi-auto weapon that is as light, as compact, as rugged, as simple, and as fast, with equal/superior ballistics, is as efficient, all while producing equal/less recoil, flash, and muzzle blast, to the M1 Carbine.
As I've said already, there isn't much that can beat what the M1 provides in terms of HD and civilian/LEO types of use. If modern SP/expanding ammunition were allowed on today's battlefields, the Carbine could even hang with more modern platforms in the typical combat distances seen.
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101combatvet
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Just what I thought, good try, but you have no idea what you are talking about.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
Keep the personal squabbles out of this thread, okay?
Cheaper because the AR-15 platform is essentially "open" at this point leading to widespread non military adoption. In 1980, you couldn't get an M4 for any cost (not invented yet), but you could get an M1 Carbine.
The civilian market has created the "scale of economy" which makes it affordable to slap together an M4 clone but not an M1 Carbine clone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the M1 Carbine is better, I'm just saying that the M4 was a long time coming in a continual line of advancements and refinements.
Had Ingram been commercially successful with his line of 5.56x45 (took M16 mags), 7.62x39 (took AK mags) and 7.62x51 (FAL mags) rifles based on the M1 Carbine design we might be having a different discussion right now.
Jimro
The .30 Carbine does NOT beat the .357 Magnum by ANY margin, if you do the honest thing and compare carbines to carbines, not carbines to pistols.
.30 carbine shoots a 110gr bullet at 1900fps from a carbine barrel.
.357 Magnum shoots a 125gr bullet at 2200fps from a carbine barrel.
approximately 10% heavier bullet, more than 10% faster. And that completely leaves aside the capability of the .357Mag to shoot heavier bullets, something the .30 carbine cannot match.
The OP asked if the .30 Carbine is the round of the future. I say, it's not.
The 30 Carbine was on the leading edge for the US usage of short lightweight carbines chambered in an intermediate round. Even with it's ballistic limitations it was pressed into uses it was never intended for and it for the most part performed very well. The concept has evolved into the M4 carbine and it's SF variants. Being as the M16/AR15 platform is so mission adaptable I can't see any round not suited for an AR length mag being popular in the future and IMHO we've pretty much arrived at the round of the future with the 5.56. it's already staved off challanges from the 6.5, 6.8 and 7.62 rounds.
101combatvet
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Are you actually saying that the M1 evolved into the M4?
101combatvet
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Okay, because my next question would have been your source which I knew there wasn't one.
The M1 was mostly a replacement for the 1911A1, it did serve that purpose well by increasing max effective range beyond 50 meters.
The M1 was mostly a replacement for the 1911A1, it did serve that purpose well by increasing max effective range beyond 50 meters.
That may have been it's intent, the reality is it was pressed into many frontline rolls, which is IMHO part of the reason for "inneffectiveness" reports.
When you're standing beside a guy shooting a Garand at stuff a M1 just doesn't seem very effective of course I've shot my Garand with my AR and it makes the AR seem puny too
t4terrific
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I find the drift in this thread FUNNY. The OP asked about the 30 Carbine cartridge not the Carbine 30 M1. Seems almost EVERYONE is viewing the cartridge through the limitations of the gun it was originally chambered in and MOST with the military specified 110 gr. Round Nose FMJ bullet it originally came with.
Remove the carbine from the equation and put the round in a gun that would accomodate a long for caliber subsonic bullet OR load it with a good Boat Tail Spitzer and the equation begins to change a lot. Can the gun accomodate a powder with a different burning rate? How about a 150 gr. bullet w/ a charge of 1680 or 4759 pushing it? What happens when you run a Speer 110 gr. HP? How about a Sierra 85 Gr. SP driven to 2450 fps?
The 300 Whisper / BO has a little more case capacity (but not much) and is loaded to 15000 PSI higher pressure. Otherwise all you have is a round that goes into a gun that can accomodate a long bullet on a short cartridge that can be run subsonic to supersonic. In reality I can come reasonably close with a 30 carbine round loaded up to the same pressure.
The 30 carbine round can be a good PDW cartridge.. especially IF any real effort went into putting the right projectile on the end and put it into a gun that can accomodate a wider variety of bullet lengths.
.360 bolt face? So what. That is trivial. 30 M1 mags? Again Trivial... Ever heard of a Marlin 62? They used their own mag.s.
Focus on the cartridge.....that is what the OP asked about. What you put it in is a different subject. Otherwise we would have covered the Universal Enforcer in detail already.
Remove the carbine from the equation and put the round in a gun that would accomodate a long for caliber subsonic bullet OR load it with a good Boat Tail Spitzer and the equation begins to change a lot. Can the gun accomodate a powder with a different burning rate? How about a 150 gr. bullet w/ a charge of 1680 or 4759 pushing it? What happens when you run a Speer 110 gr. HP? How about a Sierra 85 Gr. SP driven to 2450 fps?
The 300 Whisper / BO has a little more case capacity (but not much) and is loaded to 15000 PSI higher pressure. Otherwise all you have is a round that goes into a gun that can accomodate a long bullet on a short cartridge that can be run subsonic to supersonic. In reality I can come reasonably close with a 30 carbine round loaded up to the same pressure.
The 30 carbine round can be a good PDW cartridge.. especially IF any real effort went into putting the right projectile on the end and put it into a gun that can accomodate a wider variety of bullet lengths.
.360 bolt face? So what. That is trivial. 30 M1 mags? Again Trivial... Ever heard of a Marlin 62? They used their own mag.s.
Focus on the cartridge.....that is what the OP asked about. What you put it in is a different subject. Otherwise we would have covered the Universal Enforcer in detail already.
FWIW,my aftermarket carbine with aftermarket GI type paratrooper stock rides pretty handy in my Reagan first term Toyota.
Looking over the top of it like a shotgun and making "clank clank clank noises a gallon jug gets torn up quick at inside 50 yds.I consider it good equiptment.
Of course,there still is the option of using the sights.
Round of the future?Not so much.
Another angle on the OP's question,someone I know observed that as barrel lengths became shorter on M-4 variants...like 10.4 in or so,the efficiency of the 5.56 round,as loaded for longer barrels,dropped off.
Looking at the 221 Fireball round for inspiration,a 5.56 by 30 mm (or so) round was developed.
This led to a Colt MARS project,and re-scaled prototype carbines were prototyped and tested.
Of course,there are reasonable questions about cost and logistics,
but it was a more modern excecution of the M1 carbine .
The cartridge developed something like 2575 fps IIRC from the 10 in bbl.
I'm writing from memory rather than research,so please forgive minor errors.
Looking over the top of it like a shotgun and making "clank clank clank noises a gallon jug gets torn up quick at inside 50 yds.I consider it good equiptment.
Of course,there still is the option of using the sights.
Round of the future?Not so much.
Another angle on the OP's question,someone I know observed that as barrel lengths became shorter on M-4 variants...like 10.4 in or so,the efficiency of the 5.56 round,as loaded for longer barrels,dropped off.
Looking at the 221 Fireball round for inspiration,a 5.56 by 30 mm (or so) round was developed.
This led to a Colt MARS project,and re-scaled prototype carbines were prototyped and tested.
Of course,there are reasonable questions about cost and logistics,
but it was a more modern excecution of the M1 carbine .
The cartridge developed something like 2575 fps IIRC from the 10 in bbl.
I'm writing from memory rather than research,so please forgive minor errors.
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