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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE .308 WINCHESTER .


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Winchester introduced the 308 in september 1952 as a sporting cartridge .It was a commercial adaptation of the army ordance T65 rifle and machine gun cartridge .The origin of the 308 began after world war 1 . Following the close of this conflict ,ordnance devoted conciderable effort toward develoment of light semi and full automatic wealons .It was obvious that a cartridge with shorter overall lenght than the 30-06 would permit shorter ,lighter and more efficient gun mechanisms.One such development ,the 276 pederson,showed conciderable promise .But in 1932 ,it was rejected because a .30 caliber was deemed essential for military requirements .

With the organization of nato following world war 11 ,the short cartridge requirement was revived with the idea of equiping all NATO forces with a single rifle and cartridge . post war ammunition research lasted nine years and experiments ranged from a cartridge closely resembling the 300 savage to the T-65 round .The main difference between the 300 savage and the T-65 was the 3/16" longer neck of the latter .Standard service loadings of the T-65 and the30-06 provided about equal performance . Ordance adopted the T-65 in 1954, although M-14 Rifles chambererd for it were not available until 1957 .The 308 has also been adopted by more than two dozen other nations,but in different rifles .

The 308 is currently a very popular big game cartridge .It is also used by bench rest ,NRA high power and metallic silhouette shooters .Many competitive shooters state that the 308 is capable of better accuracy than the 30-06 for match shooting .Most u.s.rifle manufacturers and many foreign firms make 308 winchester sporting rifles . The 308 case is about 1/2" shorter than the 30-06 .Because of the reduced capacity ,it cannot be loaded to the ballistic equal of the 30-06 .But it comes close enough that ,that for most requirements ,the difference can be ignored .

Bullets heavier than 200 grains are not recommended for hunting in the 308 .They simply cannot be driven fast enough to make them effective at usual hunting ranges .Bullets from 150 to 180 grains are the best choice for the big game hunter .With the 130 grain hollow point the 308 does quite well as a varmint cartridge .

This information was condenced from the Speer reloading manual . Hope this is of interest to somebody . Harnser .

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Nice one>

By the way, how long was the 7.62mm (.308 Win) SLR in service?

 

FC

 

 

I dont know the answer to that one ,but it was certinly being used in ulster in 1972 when i was over there ,and it has been used in later conflicts ,when a longer range weapon was required . Harnser .

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