Inherent Weakness ?

[Alfred]

Excessive pressures or bad headspace/chambers. Norma 8mm Mauser ammunition is loaded to roughly match (relatively speaking ballistics wise) WW2 and post-war 8mm Loadings. Or atleast the specific loading that I buy that Norma makes seems to match quite well. I couldnt tell you right now I'm a few thousands of miles away from the ammunition boxes.

Either way downloading ammunition is not a substitute for using the wrong ammunition. There is a reason why there is "8mm Mauser I" (.318 diameter) and "8mm Mauser IS" (.323 diameter) plus the "8mm Mauser IRS" which is a rimmed .323 caliber round for break actions.

The "downloaded" US sporting ammunition originally used the .321 bullet designed for the .32-40 black powder era cartridge, it was deemed safe enough for use in the undersized bores of the 1888 Commision Rifle and other rifles of that type.
Many Mauser actioned sporting rifles that were being sold at the time used old stock barrels of the smaller diameter.
I believe Norma manufactures ammo of both bullet types, to provide safe ammunition for antique sporters of the earlier bore size.

The L8 was a stop gap measure, the British knew they wanted a semi-automatic battle rifle if they were to adopt a new firearm and ammunition, they had trialed the precursor to the FN FAL the FN SAFN49 in 8mm Mauser while Saive was in Britain after the occupation of Belgium. Why the SAFN49 and the 8mm Mauser? Because the arms designer was in the country able to work on his rifle he was developing pre-war, and because the British were already manufacturing 8mm Mauser for use in machine guns that did not feed the 303 British well.

I've seen prototypes of the FAL rifles chambered for a 7mm intermediate cartridge, I don't think it was the same cartridge as the .280 British.

They were not going to spend alot of time on the L8, when they had other firearms in the horizon.



And most ammunition degrades with temperature exposure. It is a standard warning on any ammunition, and its in most if not all firearm field manuals from every country, that over heated ammunition is something to be avoided.

And from the article on No.5 wandering zero we now know that .303 No.5 rifles used in tropical environments sometimes spread their receivers. The Cordite ammunition, and probably some other types as well seem to have given excessive pressures under those conditions.
Had LB rifles received the same level of abuse in combat situations they might well exhibit the same spreading of the receiver.

Warnings against use of MkVIIIZ ammunition in No.4 rifles appear to have gone unheeded, according to Reynolds, so this ammunition with its higher average pressure would be very close to the standard pressures of 7.62 NATO. If MkVIIIZ ammunition gave excessive pressures in tropical heat, and there are historical quotes that say just that, then a 7.62 NATO cartridge of even higher average pressure would likely do the same.

Yes and no, standard ammunition that can be fired is great. However interchangeability is confused right now with being the same. As long as it can be fired in everyone elses firearms it was good enough performance was another issue. You can see this with the wide variety of manufacturing differences in NATO countries of 7.62x51mm NATO ammunition, as well as the changes many countries did to their ammunition to suit them, even if it means their ammunition is not identical to everyone elses. The closest thing to a standard for performance and function in ammunition is the SS109 ammunition in 5.56x45mm NATO loaded by various countries.

On several occasions over the years I've seen warnings of 7.62 ammunition showing up on the surplus market that gave excessive pressures and damaged mauser rifles. One I remember was Santa Barbra marked 7.62 that gave pressures of about 67,000 psi. Others gave even higher pressures.

Both Enfield factory conversions like the ones I listed, and the 303 Epps improved rounds used for decades used charges as high as standard 7.62x51mm NATO (or 308Win) and I have yet to hear of one verifiable accident from any of the people I know who own either "conversions".

So I dont honestly see the issue of this "weakness" that is being claimed.

Dimitri

I haven't heard that .308 max pressure level loadings were recommended for the .303 epps, or similar "improved" chamberings.

Modern propellants can sometimes allow high performance with lower pressures than attained with older propellants, or the propellants chosen for factory loads.

While I've seen some stories on various wildcat cartridges on No.1 actions , they seldom make any claims that the rifles were subjected to higher pressures than the max average recommended for the .303.

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