#Post-war

Quick: What’s the definition of “assault rifle”? I’ll give you a moment to think about it.

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.

Today on an extra special episode of Historical Intermediate Calibers, we’ll be taking a look at one of the most controversial experimental military rounds, one that many believe should have become the standard for the Western World at the beginning of the Cold War. That round is the .280 British, also known as the 7x43mm, and beginning in 1947 it competed head-to-head against the caliber that eventually became the 7.62 NATO in trials to become the standard infantry small arms caliber of the free world. The .280 British has, in the almost 70 years since its invention, become one of the great “might-have-beens” of the small arms ammunition world. Many small arms enthusiasts wonder how firearms history might have been changed if this brilliantly designed British 7mm round had been adopted by NATO instead of the overlarge and too-powerful US-designed 7.62mm.

The world of early semiautomatic rifles is a wild, untamed one. The conventions that are virtually set in stone today as best practices didn’t exist, and a seemingly endless combination of requirements and ideas came together to produce some truly weird and wonderful firearms.

The MP-44, also known as the “Sturmgewehr”, was  a very influential weapon to post-war thinking. Even the Americans – who at the time rejected the “assault rifle” concept as we now know it – took notice and immediately began development in March of 1944 of a shorter round for infantry weapons, which later became both the .308 Winchester and 7.62 NATO rounds.