Is It Safe To

[Alfred]

I can't imagine why the Americans should have been surprised at the ability of German bullets to penetrate that light armor. Except for the engine louvers, the M3 Personnel Carrier (half-track) had only 1/4" armor and the standard U.S. AP round will penetrate (up to) 1/2 inch of standard armor plate and 3/10 inch of face hardened armor at 200 yards.

Jim

Till they ran up against this sort of AP round the .30/06 AP , which was not considered suitable for the Garand BTW due to feeding issues and over stressing the op rod, was considered to be far in advance of anything the Germans had.

The US AP rounds were meant for use in MGs and the BAR handled it well.
I've used AP in Garands before without any problems, but the Garand was the new kid on the block so use of AP was not considered entirely safe early on.
Later versions of the Garand have more robust receivers than the early production model, and a radius cut in the op rod to prevent fractures from heavy ammo.

Ability to penetrate at extended range is another factor, the German LMGs were able to penetrate at ranges where the Half tracks should have been far beyond effective range of machinegun fire.

The hot load with higher velocity meant much greater retained energy at extreme long range than would have been expected from a less intense loading of the same projectile.

But we are drifting away from the subject of the thread now.

One thing to consider is that when Norway (?) adopted the 8mm Long Range Browning MG with case length of the 06 but a heavy 8mm bullet they ordered custom made versions of the 98K Mauser rifles in the same chambering for their MG crews. These are still to be found occasionally though most were rebarreled to 7.92 or 7.62 NATO in the fifties or sixties.
These have a muzzle brake milled into the barrel.
The cartridge was probably too long for a Krag any way.

[Alfred]

PS to the above, it was Sweden rather than Norway that used the K98 in 8X63 caliber for their machinegun crews.

[andiarisaka]

Regarding the safety lug bearing vs not bearing (on the US Krag's), if anyone can shed any light as to why this was done on the US Krag, I'd like to hear it. I've hypothesized that perhaps this made manufacturing easier as the bolts would have been easier to fit (no need to hand fit the bolts and serialize them). Nevertheless, it did weaken the US Krag system.

I can't say why this was done, less fitting seems reasonable. I have ran across several people who have a bolt like one that I have. It has the fully rectangular guide rib like a model 92 bolt, and it bears on the receiver, even if swapped into various receivers (not easy to find out if the front lug is also bearing, so I only use it in the rifle it came in). The front lug doesn't appear to have been lapped, and since others have rifles that appear to have been modified in this same way, I think there may have been some bolt bodies floating around that didn't have the lightening cut, and perhaps also not cut to make the safety lug nonbearing. This appears to have been the work of an armorer that knew what he was doing, at least on my rifle, headspace is still at minimum which indicates the front lug wasn't lapped.

To get into the discussion about 8mm Krags, there was a 8x57 Norwegian Krag sold on Auction Arms recently. They were made as hunting arms in the 50's. They were loaded down a bit for safety's sake and that resulted in their not making minimum energy requirements for elg (moose) hunting when that was raised shortly afterward. Most were modified into target rifles after that. The one that recently sold on AA was still in its original configuration, and I wish I'd have had the money to buy it, very rare according to those in the know!

[1886nut]

Regarding the safety lug bearing vs not bearing (on the US Krag's), if anyone can shed any light as to why this was done on the US Krag, I'd like to hear it. I've hypothesized that perhaps this made manufacturing easier as the bolts would have been easier to fit (no need to hand fit the bolts and serialize them). Nevertheless, it did weaken the US Krag system.

Not only would it have been costlier, but it would have made switching bolts more difficult.....you could have wound up with a situation where the bolt was bearing mainly on the safety lug only, not a situation you would want to have.

[andiarisaka]

Not only would it have been costlier, but it would have made switching bolts more difficult.....you could have wound up with a situation where the bolt was bearing mainly on the safety lug only, not a situation you would want to have.

I have read, on the old forum, of a fellow who lapped the front lug to make the guide rib bear. He managed to remove enough of the front lug that the guide rib was all that was bearing. As a result the rear of the receiver was taking all the force and it cracked for him. That's why I use my bearing bolt only in the rifle it came in, though with some patience I could probably check to see that both lugs are bearing if I put it into other rifles.