7.65x53 designations

[Eaglelord17]

Hi all,

Currently I am trying to slowly pick away at writing a generalized book on military rifles and pistols from roughly the invention of smokeless powder until roughly the 1950-60s (basically bolt actions to early semi-automatics).

Basically my question is as I have been having a very hard time finding any information on it is what is the official designations for 7.65x53 in Peruvian, Argentine and Belgium use?

I know the three types were the initial bullet with the 210grn round nose at 2133ft/sec, the later spitzer bullet with a 150grn bullet travelling at 2723ft/sec, and the final version which was a 174grn boat-tail spitzer bullet at about 2400ft/sec.

I am not sure which versions were adopted by who and when, and what each country designated it (such as say M89 or M91 etc.). For example Peru might have only used the first two listed, and never adopted the 174grn, I just don't know.

Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

Information

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[Ovidio]

Hello Sir,


from what I've learned from a very well informed Italian site about reloading, the heaviest bullet was 215 grs and was created in 1889 and adopted by Belgium immediately thereafter for use in the M89 Mauser rifles. Bullet speed was 610 m/s. Rifle and ammo were pruduced until 1936.
Around the change of century, a 154 grs. bullet was introduced. Speed 840 m/s.
This ammo, obviously together with the rifles (models 1890/1891), was adopted by Turkey, Argentina, Bolivia, Perù, Paraguay, Ecuador and Colombia.
Info gathered and not original from me, but that site is really a very serious one, which I use for most of my first approaches to new calibers, and it never failed me once.
Also the historical data always matched any further research I ever made, so I quite believe them.
If you want to try understanding Italian, the address is: 5,6x57mm
You might like it.
For any help in translating, don't hesitate to contact me.
I'll be traveling the whole week, but if it is not too urgent, I will be glad to help you.
Hope I could give you some interesting info.

[Eaglelord17]

Definitely some interesting information there (google translate actually does a fairly good job translating it to English). I am not really looking for reloading information, rather what the different militaries designated the round for their personal usage.

Like for example have the British have the different marks of .303 British, I am sure each of those countries had a different designation to the rounds, likely based around when they were adapted, I am just not sure what it was or who would be best to contact to figure it out.

[Ovidio]

Well, that's not what they do, unfortunately
They give usually a rather interesting basic info, like the weight of the bullets and the speeds, but not much else.
This site is reloader-oriented, with some further historical data.
In any case, maybe that could help someone else, especially for reloading data.
I hope you still could gather some hints.
Good evening!

[green]

Argentine designation for 154 gr was "cartucho con bala Normal N". Heavy spitzer "cartucho con bala Especial E".

[Eaglelord17]

Very interesting. I did some more research using that term and from the looks of it the Argentine military used a naming convention very similar to the Germans (which makes sense as they were big on modeling their military after the Germans). The 150grn spitzer bullet was called the bala 'S' (Ball 'S') and the 174grn was called bala 'SS' (Ball 'SS'). The Germans used the 'S' designation for their spitzer round as well, and 'SS' for the later heavier spitzer boat-tail bullet.

[green]

Above was from "Military Small Arms Ammo 1945-80" Labett
!891 Arg Mauser manual from 1920s lists "con bala S"

[Bruce_in_Oz]

"Military Small Arms Ammo 1945-80" Labett:

Sounds like a book to hunt down and add to the already-creaking shelves..

[ireload2]

You can research Handloader Magazine for a letter from an Argentine Ordinance officer. He discussed some of the confusion caused by the SF ammo. He said they called it the 7.65 Mauser with NO nomenclature for the length of the case. The letter was printed in the letters from readers section about 20 to 30 years ago. Anyone with an index of the articles could probably locate it for you.