Word: cal
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...full automatic fire at the target. The riflemen were two of the country's top small-arms experts: Major General Julian S. Hatcher, U.S.A., ret., and retired Marine Major General Merritt A. Edson. They were at Aberdeen to try out the Army's secret, new, lightweight .30-cal. automatic rifle...
While newsmen and rifle experts looked on last week, the new weapons hurled rifle grenades 250 yds., sent tracers pinging off a tank at 400 yds. without a miss. In target contests, the new .30-cals. poured out fire twice as fast and just as accurately as the Army's standard 30-cal. M-1 Garand rifle. At 100 yds., their steel-core slugs plowed through half-inch armor plate; at 1,200 yds. they riddled a steel helmet; at 2,000 yds. they ripped through six inches of wooden planking. Fitted with 20-shot clips, the new automatic...
After the war, the U.S. and Great Britain went off in different directions in search of such a weapon. U.S. Ordnance men decided that the standard .30-cal. slug was the smallest size with enough stopping power. They got to work on a light-weight cartridge (the T-65) that was half an inch shorter than the standard Garand cartridge and weighed about 16% less, without sacrificing any weight in the bullet itself. The light rifle* that they built around the stubby new shell fires as heavy a slug with the same muzzle velocity (about 2,800 ft. per second...
British gun designers turned to a much smaller weapon: a .276-cal. automatic rifle with a light slug and a relatively low, 2,300-ft.-per-second muzzle velocity. U.S. experts who saw the British .276-cal. perform at Ft. Benning, Ga. (TIME, Aug. 20) call it a "pipsqueak" weapon. They do not like the .276-cal.'s high, telescope-like sight: it could snap off in battle, become useless in foggy or muddy terrain...
...Britons stepped forward. Armed at first with pitchforks, pikes and shotguns, they guarded Britain's coasts until the fear of invasion passed. When the Home Guard stood down in 1944, it was a tough, well-drilled fighting force, bristling with Tommy guns, dagger bayonets and U.S. .300-cal. rifles...