It's resurfaced again...
Ever since the European convention of naming cartridges with bore x case length in millimeters began, there've been revisionists trying to apply this convention to extant rounds.
They've gone so far as to call this naming convention "universal metric".
There's a huge flaw in it.
It's not universal because cartridges are named.
It's not universal because there are many more variables in cartridge dimensions than just the bore and case length.
The burr that keeps getting under my saddle is the retcon of changing .303 British to 7.7x56mmR.
It wasn't called anything metric the entire time it was issued, and that was a damn long time. Historically inaccurate to use the UM designation and this retcon keeps happening in purportedly historical listings of the guns that use the round. This revisionism is entirely one way too, always applying the UM to an inch round and never putting the Americanized common name to a metric one.
Likewise, .30-06 is not 7.62x63mm. We won't even give a response to 7.62x51mmR.
The system really falls apart when you look for 8x50mm. 8x50mmR Lebel. 8x50mmR Mannlicher. 8x50mmR Siamese Mauser.
Cartridges are named!
Check out .308x1.5 sometime.
Cartridges accumulate aliases too. This is what UM was trying to take care of.
.380 ACP is also known as 9mm Browning, 9mm Corto, 9mm Kurz, 9mm Short, 9×17mm and 9mm Browning Court.
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7.62x51mmR? The 308 Win round is NATO 7.62X51. Where does the R come in? I don't recall a rimmed 308.
ReplyDeleteYou've never hit this one? It's what a bog standard Winchester Model 94 fires.
DeleteA decent argument can be made that .308 Winchester and 7.62x51mm NATO aren't the same round because SAAMI, CIP and NATO's drawings disagree.
This is one of the things about the gun hobby that drives me off my rocker. Even Jacobsen down in Story City admits that he has trouble keeping track of ammunition designations. Yes, it _would_ have likely been better if they'd always used metric designations; however, what is, _is._
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