Some interesting article about 30 Carbine lethality
Since I have been writing about carrying the carbine as a duty weapon, and some recent posts about its effectiveness, its not a bad time to resurrect some articles about effectiveness of the 30 carbine.
Good stuff! I think most interested parties now understand that the Korean War myth was actually excited troops firing full-auto M2s way over the heads of the oncoming human wave and/or shooting up their ammo way too early.
Plenty of WWII carbine mythmaking along the lines of 'he shot the Jap seven times and he kept on coming' as well. Shot placement is everything and it is very difficult to test under controlled conditions where accurate data can be gathered. A 1/4" difference can be huge.
It all starts with the bogus concept of knockdown power. Any penetrating round that hits brain, load-bearing bone, or CNS is capable of a one shot knockdown. It has almost nothing to do with the force of the slug. In a hypothetical world (which cannot exist in Nature), even if a round could apply all its kinetic energy to a human target - no penetration, no deformation, and no heat - the impact would almost exactly equal the recoil felt by the shooter (assuming the shooter plus rifle weighed the same as the target). That's called physics and a million anecdotes cannot change physical laws. The lesson is: if the recoil doesn't reliably knock down the shooter, the impact of a non-vital area hit can't knock down the target by its force alone. If a carbine round and a .30-06 round each hit the same spot at the same orientation - and neither tumbled - and both penetrated through-and-through - the damage would be the same.
The anecdotes are likely making a correct distinction in that the carbine round is a bit less likely to tumble than a sptizer round (center of gravity attributes) and it is only about 2/3rds the length of a .30-06, so even when the carbine round tumbles it is less likely to hit something vital and tears up less tissue, causing less bleeding. That's the entire difference that can be explained by science. Plent of info on the net about the work of Dr. Martin Fackler. Read it.
Anecdotes are never more than a good starting point. WWII GIs were also taught - formally and informally - not to use their helmet chinstrap because the overpressure from a near miss arty round would tear their head off. This has about as much scientific basis as the carbine round myth. An overpressure adequate to decapitate a human would be so large as to easily puree the innards. Many still swear by the myth though.
My question is: why does the .45 auto round have a reputation for so-called 'knockdown power' when it has even less potential to tumble than the carbine round? Obviously it makes a bigger hole when not tumbling (approx. 2.25x the diameter of a .30), but is it maybe that it is compared to other pistol rounds - in other words, to smaller diameter rounds while the carbine round is compared to a longer round?
Just as car design involves compromise - horsepower vs. gas mileage, weight as a crash safety factor, etc. - weapon design is about compromise. The carbine more than lived up to its designers' hopes - and could have done even better. No excuse for the Army not learning the lesson by Korea. And an M2 version with a 3-rd. burst capability (if technically feasible) could have really helped in 1950-53.
My late friend Ray Barrios was entering a hooch following another soldier. As he disappeared down a tunnel, a VC shot the guy in front of Ray with a 45 at close range. The soldier was wearing a flack vest like we all wore at that time. The soldier was knocked completely off his feet and unconscious for a period of time. The bullet failed to penetrate the vest. That is knockdown power in my opinion. On the other hand, I witnessed a guy in the next hooch shoot himself in the head with a 45 and the bullet failed to penetrate the head or even make large wound. He just went down and died.
Most combat deaths are from a person bleeding out. Any hit in a major pipe, neck, upper chest, mid torso or groin and the person will die very quickly as they bleed out. The major blood vessel doesn't care what caliber makes the hole.
Most combat deaths are from a person bleeding out. Any hit in a major pipe, neck, upper chest, mid torso or groin and the person will die very quickly as they bleed out. The major blood vessel doesn't care what caliber makes the hole.
PM
Originally Posted by DaveHH
