A fact that Emeric points out in his message is one of the most overlooked in modern small arms history: the Swiss and French 7.5 mm bullets have practically the same diameter as cal. .30 bullets (7.8 mm). 

EmericD said...

Well, I don't have a definitive answer to this question

OK, I'll give up then! So to your knowledge there was no formal study of 7.5mm against different calibers the way the Swedes did for 6.5 vs 7.9mm or the British later did in the Ideal Caliber Panel? That's quite surprising given all the pre-WW1 experiments you detail.

EmericD said...

Finally, the 7x59 mm cartridge was designed to be able to launch a steel bullet (~0.21 lbs/in²) at ~1000 m/s, the powders were nearly OK for this task, but the rifles were not

So they viewed 7mm Meunier as a technical failure (even the downloaded "stopgap" 7x57 version), not just interrupted by the war? That would explain a lot.

EmericD said...

All developments prior to WWI were devoted to find the "ideal" rifle round, but WWI experience showed that the squad main asset was the "automatic rifle"

Did this have any documented impact on cartridge choice? E.g. more emphasis on AP/I/T rounds? Or more worry about overheating (thermal load) or barrel wear which might also favour a bigger bore?

EmericD said...

close enough to the US .30" so in case of a new war, the US could produce the new 7.5 mm cartridge without much problems

If you wanted commonality wouldn't it make sense to go the same bore as well - I thought barrel making (boring) was a bigger problem than bullets (e.g. 7.92x33 and 7.62x39 were made in the full power rifle bore diameter despite using very different bullets)? Or was the WWI experience that only ammo was in shortage? I suppose introducing a new weapon in wartime is a different problem from keeping existing weapon types supplied.

EmericD said...

and the 7.5 mm Mle 1929C was born.

And you could argue it's the best all round rifle caliber cartridge of the time (aside maybe from the powder/primer chemistry) - lighter & less recoil than 7.92 Mauser or .30-06 while still having competitive trajectory in the light loading and range in the heavy loading, rimless unlike .303 and 7.62 Russian, more versatile for MGs than the various 6.5s. But it's somewhat anticlimactic if the process was just "well our 6-7mm didn't work very well, and here's this nice Swiss bullet (but inferior BC to Balle D!) in a size that's convenient for the Americans to make, but we'll keep the Swiss and not American bore because ... we like the metric system?"

Do the bullets/rifling have to be constructed differently to deal with the tighter squeeze? But this suggests otherwise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5%C3%9755mm_Swiss#Reloading.

That's a remarkable amount of tolerance in what we usually think of as a very precise system! Though I note the GP11 diameter is technically .306 not .308 ;)

However I now see the 7.5 French bullet diameter is .309 or 7.84mm! So if I understand correctly, the rifling is 4.3% smaller than the bullet where with .308 in a .30 bore it is only 2.6%.

The SAAMI specs of the 30-06 allow use of bullets from 0.309" and 0.306" diameter, so they were both technically in spec.

hobbes154 said:

So to your knowledge there was no formal study of 7.5mm against different calibers the way the Swedes did for 6.5 vs 7.9mm or the British later did in the Ideal Caliber Panel? That's quite surprising given all the pre-WW1 experiments you detail.

I don't think that they had the time to do that, as the work on the 7.5x58 mm started just after WWI and by 1922 all the details were already seated.

I've got a report from february 1922 already detailing the ballistic results achieved with the X1 bullet (11.8 g), the GP11 bullet and the X1c (short) bullet, and this report refers to previous results achieved with the GP11 bullet.

By the way, the twist of the French 7.5 mm is one turn in 270 mm, which is also the twist used by of the Swiss 7.5 mm cartridge, and absolutely not required to fire the X1c (later Mle1924C) bullet.

My understanding is that after WWI the priority was put to make an automatic rifle firing a modern cartridge, and to make it fast.

The previous work to replace the 8 mm Lebel started in 1893 with the 6 mm APX, and by 1914 (21 years later!) not a single weapon or working cartridge were available.

hobbes154 said:

So they viewed 7mm Meunier as a technical failure (even the downloaded "stopgap" 7x57 version), not just interrupted by the war? That would explain a lot.

I don't think that the 7 mm Meunier was considered a technical failure, as you can find studies on a new 7x59 mm using the slender R43 FMJ bullet dated from 1923-1924. The case body diameter of this 7 mm was the same as the 7.5x58 mm, and the R.43 bullet seems to be a scale-down version of the Mle1898D, in a FMJ form, sharing some attributes of the later Mle1932N & Mle1933D bullets (estimated weight around 150 gr based on the bulelt drawing, SD>0.26 lbs/in²).

By the way, if you scale-down the 7.5 mm X1 bullet weight from 7.8 mm down to 7.3 mm (7 mm bore), you end with a 149 gr bullet which is very close from the estimated 150 gr of the R.43 bullet.

Maybe the 7.5x58 mm was found less challenging than the 7x59 mm?

Given the bad experience with the 7.5x58 mm (revealed too late after development), maybe the 7x59 mm flaws did showed during testing?

hobbes154 said:

Did this have any documented impact on cartridge choice? E.g. more emphasis on AP/I/T rounds? Or more worry about overheating (thermal load) or barrel wear which might also favour a bigger bore?

No, I have nothing that could explain the choice of 7.5 mm vs. 7 mm, but I don't think AP/I/T rounds were a factor because there was a parallel program to developp a 9 mm heavy MG for dismounted infantry use, to deal with planes / light vehicles threat.

hobbes154 said:

Or was the WWI experience that only ammo was in shortage? I suppose introducing a new weapon in wartime is a different problem from keeping existing weapon types supplied.

By the way, the French army introduced several "stopgap" infantry weapons during WWI, like the Mle1915 Chauchat automatic rifle and the Mle1917 RSC semi-auto rifle.

I think that "outsourcing" ammo to avoid shortage was really the issue during this first high-intensity conflict.

hobbes154 said:

But it's somewhat anticlimactic if the process was just "well our 6-7mm didn't work very well, and here's this nice Swiss bullet (but inferior BC to Balle D!) in a size that's convenient for the Americans to make, but we'll keep the Swiss and not American bore because ... we like the metric system?"

France used 0.15 mm grooves (not 0.1 like other countries), so the bore diameter was 0.3 mm less than the bullet diameter, so the logical choice was 7.5 / 7.8 mm which gives the flexibility to use US .308" bullets.

By the way, late production of 7.5 mm Mle1929C cartridges were even loaded with the 7.62 mm NATO Mle1961 bullet instead of the Mle1924C bullet, and 7.62 mm NATO barrel were chambered from blank 7.5 mm barrels.

As a sidenote, the land-to-land diameter of the "7.62 mm NATO" UK L1A1 Self Loading Rifle is reported to be 7.54 mm, with a 7.80 mm groove-to-groove diameter, so technically it's a "7.5 mm bore" (same thing for the HK417, which is technically using a 7.5 mm bore to fire the 7.62 mm NATO cartridge).

So, it's not "we like the metric system" but more closely "we want to use 7.80 to 7.84 mm bullets, with 0.15 mm deep grooves, so we need a 7.50-7.54 mm bore".

EmericD said:

No, I have nothing that could explain the choice of 7.5 mm vs. 7 mm, but I don't think AP/I/T rounds were a factor because there was a parallel program to developp a 9 mm heavy MG for dismounted infantry use, to deal with planes / light vehicles threat.

Additional data: AP/T rounds were studied before 1928, and the reduced capability of the AP round was a question raised when the case capacity was reduced from the Mle1924 case to the Mle1929.

On the the Swiss military drawing I have, the GP11 bullet nominal diameter is given as 7.84 mm, which is .3087".

And the nominal diameter of the Mle1924 C bullet found on the drawings is 7.82 mm (0.3079"), with a minimum allowed of 7.80 mm (0.3071") and a maximum of 7.85 mm (0.3091").

Thank you for the "complete" drawing. I had asked the Swiss for GP11 bullet diameter, ogive radius and boattail angle. They kindly sent me a sanitized drawing with all other dimensions and all tolerances removed. So the only dimensions left were R 70, diameter 7.84, overall length  35.2 and 19 degrees boattail angle (9.5 degrees when expressed as the usual half angle). 

Thank you very much, very interesting info.