Will a .30 carbine penetrate commie winter clothing?

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My uncle served in the USMC in Korea at the Chosin Reservoir. His story was that the M1 Carbine was about worthless, but the M1 Garand would give them something to worry about.
 
I never heard that the heavy quilted clothing would stop a carbine bullet, but I've heard numerous claims that the heavy quilted clothing could reduce the effectiveness of the carbine's bullet.
 
It could be that the .30 Carbine in its day was as useful as the MP5 . Myth Busters could not make the shot through the scope work But The Military / Discovery Channel did . shooting through a Red Dot similar to the Russian PU scope . The real story behind that was not a myth , Hathcock did it and it was witness'ed .
 
First,I have zero experience shooting people or being in combat.

One factor that could play apart,maybe,is silk.Silk can be really good cold weather gear,maybe state of the art in 1950.And,silk is incredibly strong.
I don't know the gear,but a heavy garment of silk might be pretty tough.

On the other side of this argument,the 7.62 x 39 is about 350 fps faster and 13 gr more bullet weight.Yes,its an advantage,but its a "shade of grey" advantage.
Yet folks argue the 7.62 x 39 is ".30 cal so its better than the 22 of the M-16"

Were ourtroops not killed/wounded by the NoKo/Chinese pps 41 and 43 machine carbines?I'm not looking it up,but wouldn't tose be about an 87 gr bullet at what? 1600 fps?(7,63x25)I assume,that to survive Korean winter,our troops had heavy frozen clothing,too

Sending out mis-information propaganda to undermine a soldier's confidence in his weapon is a classic psy-op both sides use.It apparently works.

For its intended purpose,the M-1 carbine was excellent .But it was not a replacement for the battle rifle of the day.
 
Regardless of the actual reality, it was (and still is) believed that the .30 carbine was not sufficiently effective in the Korean winter.

Again, I'd like to point out that "not sufficiently effective" is NOT the same thing as "won't go through clothes". In this matter, I'm quite sure "the tale grew in the telling".

And the belief in "not sufficiently effective" was official. In actions, if not in regulations. I had a friend who was in Korea, serving as a telephone lineman (Signal Corps) for a couple years, shortly after the armistice ended most of the shooting.

He carried a carbine, and liked it. But, when it got cold, "they took away my carbine and made me carry that awful heavy M1 Garand." He didn't like that.

He was also happy to point out that he, personally, had never been in a situation where he had to shoot anyone, and if he had been, his opinions of the carbine and the Garand would be different.

The M1 Carbine served through the winter of 44-45 in Europe, and didn't get a reputation for not getting through heavy winter clothes there.

If you look at enough incidents, you can find freak occurrences where EVERYTHING has failed to do its usual job one time, or another. A lot of these have a perfectly rational explanation, IF enough additional facts are known. But, when they aren't, (or are, and just don't make it into the story), these kinds of tale get started, and embellished.

Adm. Kimmel was struck by a Japanese 7.7mm machinegun bullet, that went through his office window while he was watching the attack on Pearl Harbor. The bullet was spent, and bounced off his uniform. He was quoted as saying, "it would have been kinder if it killed me."

The Jap 7.7mm didn't get a reputation for being worthless because of this.

There was an American officer struck by an 88mm Tiger tank round. He survived a grazing blow to his neck. Nobody made up any stories about the 88mm not working.

But, lots of other stories got, and still get made up, and widely spread as "gospel". I cannot tell you the number of stories I heard about the M16 and what it could, or would not do. A couple of them actually did have some relationship to the truth, but not a very close one.
 
I wonder how many "hit him and he didn't go down" stories are really "a skinny Chinese in a big padded jacket and the bullet hit the jacket and missed the guy inside".
 
"I wonder how many "hit him and he didn't go down" stories are really "a skinny Chinese in a big padded jacket and the bullet hit the jacket and missed the guy inside"."

Pshaw!

Everyone knows that no American has ever missed center of mass of what he's shooting at.

Never.
 
The quilted uniforms worn by the chinese were supplied by the Soviet union, probably surplus from wwii, quite likely similar to what the red army wore when fighting the nazis.

German army had mp40 in 9x19. Russia in winter was no warmer than Korea. 9mm is less potent than 30 carbine. But I haven't heard mp40 being useless. Both sides used ppsh in 7.62x25. Stouter than 9mm but still no more powerful than 30 carbine. But ppsh was weapon dreaded by anyone on the receiving end.

I don't buy it.

-TL

Edit: the Chinese wore no silk, I am sure about that. It was quilted cotton.
 
Is it possible that the powder in 30 carbine rounds were affected by the extreme cold (on certain days/weeks) and was sometimes underpowering the bullet when fired in those conditions?
Just asking.
 
I am sure many things could have an effect from miniscule to more noticeable. Lubrication in the brutal cold temps, relatively low powered round to start with, with a relatively light weight bullet. Horrible weather conditions for accurate shooting, questionable accuracy at longer ranges etc.etc. I would say a lot of Chinese were hit but not well and foe troops used to seeing someone hit by a .30-06 it would seem useless. However I can guarantee you that I don't want to be the test subject standing at 150 yards wearing a puffy jacket while you test the accuracy and penetration theories by shooting at me.
 
I have read that during the so-called Malaysian Emergency in the 1950s, 9mm rounds used by the British would often penetrate so little that the base of the bullet was visible in the wound. Most of the casualties were caused by Bren guns and .30 caliber carbines, which the British used. Before the conflict ended, both the S.L.R. and some of the first AR-15s were also used.

Of course it doesn't get cold in Malaysia but jungle conditions are also hard on ammunition and just about everything else.
 
Well, I've never heard that about the British 9mm rounds, either during their fighting against the communist insurgency, or their earlier jungle fighting against the Japanese...
 
Jim Cirillo of the NYPD reported great sucess against criminals with the .30 carbine in soft-point configuration.

But I don't know how their clothing compared to commie soldiers! :o
 
Heck, I've seen Winchester whitebox 9x19mm get stuck in a 2x4 (the 2in side!). That shouldn't happen, but it did. Therefore, I'd say there may have been some weird combination of factors that may have stopped a .30 carbine round in snow/ice/clothing/gear during the Korean War. Now, I highly doubt it happened with any regularity!
 
During the Korean War would the enemy be wearing the soviet made telogreika or a Chinese knockoff? I can't watch the video at the moment but what clothing did you use for the test?
 
Did you see the mythbusters one where they tried to bust the " sniper shot through the scope myth" ?

They couldn't do it.

Carlos Hathcock did it, and its a verifiable fact.
Click to expand...

Actually the Mythbusters revisited that and shot a fixed power Russian scope and got the results that Hathcock did.
 
I wonder how many "hit him and he didn't go down" stories are really "a skinny Chinese in a big padded jacket and the bullet hit the jacket and missed the guy inside".
Click to expand...

and you know, the old stereotype of "they all look alike":rolleyes:

and there were alotta of em
 
My Uncle was a squad leader in the Army in Korea, his words were the Carbine was next to worthless as a man stopper, he said that he could see the fabric tear on the chest of some of the North Koreans as he shot them. He further informed me when he exchanged his carbine for a Garand that when he hit a man with the Garand he went down and stayed down. His words made an impression on me that have been life long, he would never talk about his Korean experience ever again except to say he lost many friends and the subject was closed.. As I recall I was about 14 years old when we had this conversation. William
 
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