This was the U.S. Army cartridge that was designed
around Olin Chemical Corp's 'Ball' propellent.
This powder was more powerful than the
propellant used for the .30-06 ammo used
by the W.W.II/Korea era M-1 Garand rifle.
It was smaller than the .30-06 but was still too
big and powerful for the modern battlefield.
It was not small enough to significantly
reduce the size of the rifle that fired it,
and wasted precious metals.
It's design was directed by John Gray,
who was the Senior Civilian Engineer for the
Army's Small Arms Development Branch, in
cooperation w/ the the Army's Frankford Arsenal
and Olin's Corp's Western Cartridge Division.
It was designated the T65, and was
12mm shorter than the .30-06.
Even though other NATO countries
knew it was obsolete they submitted to
U.S. pressure to adapt the cartridge
to the weapons they were designing.
This caused controversy and delays in
standardizing NATO's infantry rifle cartridge.
In the end the U.S. switched to the 5.56 mm
cartridge, leaving NATO countries w/ the
obsolete 7.62mm NATO rifles well into the 1980s.
Eugene Stoner used the cartridge
in his initial AR rifle
design, but
quickly switched to the 5.56mm cartridge.
The most famous weapons to use
the 7.62 NATO cartridge were:
M-14 |
FN-FAL |