When did the military go from armor tipped .30 cal to non-armored tipped .30 cal on their way to .223?
In WWII the army was enamored with the black tipped armor piercing .30-06 round. If you shot at and hit a Nazi with your Garand you could probably would go through the quarter inch plate steel behind him. Got that tidbit from General Hatcher’s Notebook
Eventually the Army would change to the .308 round, then the .223. Somewhere in there they through the doctrine of issuing AP to fighters, routinely, over the side. When and why?
In war you don’t care about the backstop so much. AP may be expensive, but you issue full metal jacket for practice and gold tipped to war fighters if it means a better chance for victory.
Does AP work better, though? The AAR for TF Ranger in Somalia made the assertion that the tungsten tipped .223 wasn’t dropping enemy targets. Ok, fine. Maybe an AP .223 isn’t effective, especially against unarmored Somali fighters, but routine use of AP may be more advantageous than not against something like armored Chinese fighters, or Russian, or French. They wear armor.
Heck we may HAVE a whole boatload of AP rounds pre-positioned for modern military use in the event France invaded our ally, Germany.
I ask all this because I recently got Hatcher's Notebook from NRA affiliate Paladin Press. Turk had a little blurb from it on HIS blog about trigger timing.
Anyway, I had always 'known' that AP .30-06 was common in WWII, but Hatcher confirmed that fact in my head.
Hatcher was a BIG DEAL. And highly regarded by Jeff Cooper. What John Moses Browning (pbuh) was to designing guns, Julian Hatcher was to the study of firearms and such ballistics. So this should be a treat as it is CHOCK full of goodies. I'll probably crib blog entries from items of interest contained therein.
It's easy to get confused by different ammo designations. In anti-personnel use, 5.56mm gets it's effectiveness by the bullet yawing sideways, breaking at the cannelure and fragmenting. M193 (plain lead core) and M855 with the steel penetrator insert work this way to varying degrees. M855 is not "armor piercing", IMHO the steel insert just brings it up to "normal" penetrating ability, more or less. M995 is the full-on full size tungsten core AP. So it may yaw sideways in a soft target but is most unlikely to break anywhere. It also is not legal for civilian possession, not being specifically exempted from the AP ban like M855 and M2 ball (30-06).
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