Rifles

The first centerfire rifle I ever fired was my dad's .30-06 Winchester Model 70 Super Grade. At the time (I was about 9 or 10 years old), all I knew was that the thing kicked like heck and was pretty noisy. Subsequent experience has been a good teacher, though, and the .30-06 has become my favorite longarm cartridge, not just because of its effectiveness and versatility but also because of its fascinating history.

Like most things of value, the getting there wasn't particularly straightforward, and some of the .30-06's best features weren't even particularly original. But when everything eventually came together the result was spectacular.

Like many popular sporting cartridges, the .30-06 began life as a military round. Though it goes back 100 years now, it wasn't the U.S. Army's first--or even second--.30 caliber.

The story begins in the 1870s, when the United States, like most world powers at the time, fielded a large-caliber (though it was then classed as "smallbore") blackpowder .45 single-shot rifle. The .45-70 Trapdoor Springfield was as successful an arm as any of its competitors (Britain's Martini-Henry, the French Gras, Germany's 71 Mauser, etc.) and threw its 500-grain bullet (the carbine load had a .405-grain bullet) out at some 1,315 feet per second with a bone-crushing muzzle energy of almost 1,600 foot-pounds.

It was accurate, could be fired at reasonably long ranges and gave pretty good service. But with the perfection of nitrocellulose-based smokeless powders in the 1880s, the equation changed drastically. It was now possible to use less powder in smaller cases with smaller bullets to get better results.

In 1886 the French surprised the world with the 8mm Lebel, the first smokeless-powder military rifle. The arms race was on, and in short order the Brits, Germans, Swiss and just about everybody else were testing and issuing their own high-performance longarms.

The United States was right in there with both feet and in 1892 adopted a rimmed, smallbore round for its version of the Norwegian/Danish Krag-Jorgensen rifle. The .30-40, as its designation implies, featured a .30-caliber bullet backed by 40 grains of smokeless powder.

Three years later the Navy brought out its own high-velocity repeater, the 6mm Lee Navy--a rather innovative arm for the period that was unfortunately a tad ahead of its time and was withdrawn from service after only a few years. The round did have the distinction, though, of being the first rimless load used by the American military. The gun was charged by means of a five-round clip, which held the cartridges in place by means of a curious flip-over wire bail.