Each WWII MG42 had about 6 men, IIRC - gunner, man with spare barrel and stuff, man with tripod, three with ammo. No LMG like the Bren.
Bren had gunner and one other with the spare barrel and mag box, although the rest of the section should have each carried two Bren mags IIRC. The Bren was part of the infantry section.
One up from there was the Vickers.
The .276 Enfield in the P-13 is only a bit shy of a 7mm Rem Mag in capacity.
It was hampered by the obsession with CORDITE. Great (leade-burning) propellant in the modest .303, but an utter abomination in the much larger .276.
Burn rate was too high, burn temperature was WAY too high, muzzle flash and blast were ludicrous.
All to out-range the 7 x 57?
Bear in mind, all of the lead-up to the P-13 took place at the same time the Germans re-wrote the rules in 1904, with their s-ball spitzer bullet. By 1912, the Brit boffins had come up with an "answer", but the 150gn bullet was of more-or-less conventional design and thus, too short to function reliably in the service rifles and machine guns. So, they "stretched" the bullet design and added a little aluminium internal nose filler,, this resulted in a bullet of 174gn, but very importantly one that was the SAME length as the old MK Vl bullet and retained the same overall cartridge length. Thus, it would happily feed through all the belt, strip and drum / tray fed machine-guns in the system. It "mostly" worked in the rifles, bur the ultimate solution was to simply make new folded-steel Mk Vll-specific magazines that could be swapped into the fleet of rifles.
Anyone who has ever owned or worked on "wildcat" barreled Lee Enfields will be aware of how critical the correct position and form of the feed-lips can be. Think of all the "fun" to be had "adjusting" the body internals of a P-13 to function with the shorter, more-tapered, rimmed, .303 cartridge.
Just what rules did the Germans rewrite in 1904 ? The Frenchalready had their spitzer boat tail bullet in 1898 . The reason for the German
S round was to give the same battle field zero as the 6.5mm's , without giving up the wound making capability of the 8mm . The German's developed the S round in 1896 as stated in their ordnance testing reports . I have seen a 1898 dated example and have a 1900 example . They just did not make the official change to the S round and the 400 meter zero until 1905 .
Sometimes I regret selling my 1889. Mine was an 1893 production gun that I bought from Edelweiss Arms last June. Mint bore, 90% overall, I paid $400 plus shipping. I worked up a cast bullet load using a 160gr .311” bullet over I believe 18 grains of IMR 4198. I decided having it and the K31was a bit redundant. I sold it to a local collector and kept the K31, I’ll probably kick myself down the road as the prices go up.
Yes, you probably will. I just picked up a very nice 1889 my self, and I am looking to start reloading for it soon. I might start off with your loading data, as it seems like a very mild load.