#.280British

Despite using the arguably backward L85A2 ( which Ian did a great series on that Nathan S. covered), after World War II, the British were one of the foremost thinkers in terms of individual small arms. Almost immediately after the war, the British Army and start arsenals started development of various bullpup designs, which ultimately resulted in the adoption (briefly) of the EM-2 bullpup – an arguably fantastic weapon system especially if one likes the .280 British.*

The following is a guest article written for TFB by reader Tim about his efforts with his friend Paul to recreate the historical .280 British (7x43mm) round developed for the EM-2 and FAL rifles during the early pre-NATO rifle trials of the late 1940s. Enjoy!

The Sterling L2A3 was the iconic Cold War submachine gun of the British Army. Inexpensive to make, compact and rugged, it was a design that incorporated the experience from the Sten submachine gun, a weapon which though inexpensive really left a lot to be desired. In a recent video, Ian from Forgotten Weapons and working in concert with Armament Research Services (ARES), produced a video overview of some of the British developments in submachine guns (which they called “machine carbines”) just before, during, and after World War II. These designs helped pave the way for the Sterling, which saw service all the way through the Gulf War until its retirement in 1994.

In January, just before the 2017 SHOT Show, I got the opportunity to travel to Cody Wyoming to visit the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to see some of their rare firearms and bring photos of them to our readers.

World War II, as the name implies, was a tremendous conflict with gigantic leaps forward in both technologies and the tactics that went along with them. As a result of the conflict, infantry-troops carried, shoulder-fired semi-automatic firearms became the norm, first inspired by the fielding of the Garand and later perfected by the Nazis and Soviets.

We’ve discussed a lot of different rounds in this series so far, but today we’re going to discuss a round that actually has a shot of being adopted (at least in some form) by the United States military as a next-generation small arms ammunition configuration. That round is the .264 USA, developed over the past few years by the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU).

The next few installments of my Light Rifle series of articles will cover in detail the development of the two calibers that shaped the NATO rifle trials until 1953: The .280 British and the .30 Light Rifle, the latter of which – spoiler alert – subsequently became the 7.62x51mm NATO in 1954. The subsequent rejection of the more intermediate .280 British as the standard NATO rifle cartridge caused considerable controversy in the UK, and many experts today believe that it was the superior choice for a standard round versus the much more conventional .30 Light Rifle. Advocates of the .280 British lament its rejection as being politically-driven, but – while there’s considerable truth to that notion – there is another side to the story. One critical document from this period is A Comparison Test of United Kingdom and United States Ammunition for Lightweight Weapons, from 1950.

In about an hour’s time we will be publishing a TFBTV video about the Pedersen rifle, which was chambered in the .276 Pedersen. Almost three decades later the British developed the .280 British round, very similar to the .276 Pedersen, and an experimental bullpup assault rifle chambered in it called the Enfield EM-2 or Rifle No.9 Mk1. Once again the US military were reluctant to give up a high-powered .30 caliber round for a lower powered 7mm round with better ballistics. The EM-2 was scrapped and the SA80 assault rifle was developed.

DTIC is a wonderful resource for finding documents that are important records in firearms history. One such article, which we will be looking at today, entitled “A Comparison Test Between United Kingdom And United States Lightweight Rifles” documents the 1950 test between the .280 caliber EM-2 (Janson Rifle, later Rifle No. 9), .280 caliber FN automatic carbine (later FN FAL, after a caliber change to the American .30 Light Rifle cartridge), and .30 caliber T25 rifle.