volume 11.3

Terry Wieland’s On Shooting

Dreadnought: Studies in Obsolescence

Ballistically at least, 1906 was a landmark year. It was the year that saw the launching of HMS Dreadnought, the battleship that revolutionized naval strategy, led to a vicious arms race, set the stage for the Great War and, by extraction, everything that came after - including World War II and Hiroshima.

And, it was the year that saw the debut of the .30-06.

In the navy, they call them guns, but in reality, they are rifles. The huge guns that graced the Dreadnought were 12 inches in diameter, and she had ten of them. The ship itself was a huge (18,110 ton) floating gun platform, powered by steam turbines. The weight of the shells was measured in tons, and their range in miles. Previous battleships had been floating mélanges of guns of different sizes and calibres, with just a few really big ones. Dreadnought was virtually all big ones, and her design rendered everything else obsolete. She gave her name to a whole class of ships that came after.

By comparison, the launch of the .30-06 was but the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in far-off Springfield, Massachusetts, home of America’s Springfield Armory.

The United States had several military armouries, but Springfield was the centre – birthplace of a succession of military cartridges and rifle designs, including the .45-70 Government. As the year 1900 approached, military small-arms design was evolving with breathtaking speed, largely propelled by the wholesale change from blackpowder rifles to those using smokeless powder and delivering unheard-of velocities with smaller bullets, jacketed in copper.

The United States abandoned the .45-70 in 1892 in favour of the European Krag-Jorgensen bolt-action rifle, but pitted against the Spanish with their 7mm Mauser in 1898, the Krag was found wanting. U.S. Army ballistic engineers at Springfield set to work to design their own rifle, and their own cartridge, to replace it.

In the time-honoured tradition of stealing that which defeats you, the Americans used the Mauser 98 as the basis for their rifle design. The Springfield was a Mauser-derivative in everything but name, to the point that Mauser sued for patent infringement and Washington ended up paying a dollar-per-rifle royalty for years thereafter.

In 1903, Springfield introduced a rifle and cartridge combination that historically are little but prototypes. That cartridge (now known as the .30-03) fired a 220-grain round-nose bullet at 2300 fps. As Philip B. Sharpe explains in The Rifle in America, the combination of velocity and the corrosive effects of the nitroglycerine-based powder resulted in alarmingly short barrel life. They backed the velocity off to 2,000 fps, which essentially left them back where they had started with the .30-40 Krag.

A redesign was in order. The engineers reduced bullet weight to 150 grains, changed the shape to a spitzer, switched to a different powder, reduced cartridge length by one-tenth of an inch, recalled all the rifles for re-chambering, and presented the whole reconstructed lot to the world in 1906.

The cartridge was called, officially, the “Caliber .30, Model 1906, Mark I.” Today, we know it as the .30-06.

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The business of nomenclature is not just the province of cartridge collectors and historians. It becomes a matter of great importance indeed if one finds one’s self without ammunition in a strange country, searching the shelves of the local dukka for something to put in one’s rifle.

As Sharpe reports, the .30-06’s predecessor, popularly known as the .30-40 Krag, was officially either the .30 U.S. Army, .30 U.S. Government, or simply .30 Government. Similarly, the .30-06 was given many of the same designations (.30 Government being the most common). Most headstamps today read either .30-06 or .30-06 Springfield (or Sprg.) Because the cartridge had a strong European heritage (it is nephew to the 8mm Mauser), it was only natural that Europeans would take to it. German gunmakers and ammunition companies promptly adopted it and renamed it the 7.62x63mm. Over the years, almost every European ammunition company has produced it under that name, and if you find a box of RWS H-mantle 7.62x63 in a back-country shop in Namibia, you are in business.

With the adoption of the 150-grain bullet at 2700 fps, military development of the .30-06 virtually ended, but commercial development was just beginning. The .30-06’s sporting and civilian career far outstripped its military impact. Almost immediately, Winchester chambered its lever-action Model 95 for it, and in 1908 began producing .30-06 hunting ammunition. The very next year, Theodore Roosevelt took a Springfield rifle to Africa on his epic safari. In 1910, Los Angeles gunmaker Louis Wundhammer made the first recorded 'sporterized' Springfield for the novelist and big-game hunter, Stewart Edward White.

From there, the .30-06’s influence spread in every conceivable direction.

First, it spawned uncountable wildcat cartridges as well as a raft of factory designs that have become standards – and even legends – in their own right. The .270 Winchester, most famous of them all, is but a .30-06 necked down. It came along in 1925. Other offspring include the .25-06, .280 Remington, and .35 Whelen. Lesser-known semi-factory cartridges include the 6.5-06 and .338-06. Then there is the .308 Winchester. After World War II, the U.S. decided the .30-06 was unnecessarily long, and that a more efficient .30 calibre would be a better military round. The result, the 7.62mm NATO, is just a shortened .30-06. Winchester adopted it in civilian garb as the .308, and it in turn led to the creation of second-generation popular cartridges, including the .243 Winchester.

Many of these cartridges achieved great popularity in their own right, to the point where they challenged the supremacy of their parent. Hundreds of magazine articles were published with titles like 'Is the .270 better than the .30-06?' and 'Can the .308 match the .30-06?' The answer to both is “no,” but that has not stemmed the flow. Meanwhile, the .30-06 marches on, sublimely oblivious to the pretenders. It is inconceivable that any riflemaker produce a rifle (assuming the action is a suitable length) and not make it in .30-06.

Almost immediately, the .30-06 embarked on an African career that continues to this day. Teddy R. and White were followed by Ernest Hemingway in 1933 and Robert Ruark in 1951. Jack O’Connor took a .30-06 to Africa in the 1950s, in preference to his beloved .270. (For the reason why, see paragraph above.)

Warren Page, O’Connor’s counterpart at Field & Stream, took a wildcat 7mm Magnum instead, probably to differentiate himself from O’Connor as much as any belief in the 7mm.

The greatest challenge to the .30-06 over the past 40 years has been the 7mm Remington Magnum, a belted case with great volume and horrific muzzle blast when fired in a short barrel. It burns a lot of powder and makes a lot of noise, but does not deliver a great deal more than the .30-06 when the latter is properly loaded with appropriate powders.

It is a ballistic fact that the same weight bullet in a larger calibre can be driven at the same velocity with lower pressures – hence, more easily. A 165-grain bullet (just about the ideal weight) in a .30-06 can achieve 2800 fps, even in a 22-inch barrel. A 160-grain bullet from a 7mm Magnum can reach 2900 fps, but only from a longer barrel – preferably 26 inches. The .30-06 is by far the more efficient of the two, as well as the more versatile. For specific uses, one will shade the other, but as an all-around cartridge for everything from marmots to grizzly bears, the .30-06 takes it in a knockout.

A century after its introduction, the .30-06 shows no sign of decline. Contrast that with the Dreadnought: The feared battleship and its brethren clashed at Jutland in 1916, the last of the great ships-of-the-line encounters. The Germans were leading on points when they retired to their corner and failed to come out for the second round. Decision: Britain. The Dreadnought went home to the Thames Estuary, where she spent the rest of the war guarding against a naval attack on London. She was sold for scrap in 1922, superseded by such greater ships as HMS Hood and the Bismarck.

Meanwhile, that other great innovation of 1906 sails on, the darling of serious hunters, target shooters, and devotees of the finest custom rifles. I don’t say there will never be a greater cartridge than the .30-06. I only say it has not happened yet.