Target Shooter 1

Military surplus supplies have dried up, and
even newly manufactured 7.62mm
cartridges are unobtainable. Note nickel
washed steel bullet jackets on these
German DAG cartridges dating from 1993
a sound and flexible workhorse thanks to large
dollops of taxpayer funded R&D. Such cartridges
are invariably popular too amongst the world’s
numerically largest group of recreational shooters,
US citizens, promoting a huge choice of factory
ammunition and handloading components. Our
subject dates from the late 1940s / early 1950s
when the NATO alliance countries were looking
for a common cartridge to replace the ragbag of
mostly 19th century designs
then in service. The British,
Belgians and Canadians
made a strong play for a
series of modest sized 7mm
rounds developed in the UK,
but the Americans would have
none of it – .30-calibre and
something approaching .30-06
M2 performance (152gn bullet
at 2,805 fps) was de rigueur,
so we got the 7.62X51mm,
or 7.62 NATO, initially
developed as the T65 series of
experimental cartridges.
Despite it being regularly
stated that the 7.62mm, or
to be precise its finalised
T65E3 progenitor, is a
shortened .30-06, that’s
not how the US Army and
Winchester designers did it.
Its parentage was actually the
.300 Savage, sensibly enough
as Savage had designed
its cartridge with the same
objective 30 years earlier
– a short cased round that would match .30-06
performance with 150gn bullets. However, the
.300 Savage based T65 case couldn’t supply
enough velocity to satisfy the US Army, and was
progressively lengthened to hold more powder,
ending up giving a 144-147gn bullet 2,800fps
MV. One significant difference from earlier
British and American military numbers was
the adoption of a boat-tailed bullet to give
.308 v 7.62 case-heads, the latter using far heavier / thicker primers. Note the NATO-compliance
symbol in the RG headstamp (a cross within a circle)
68 Target Shooter