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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Patrick Graham:
I've tried the pulled 150 grain, 163grain AP and 173 grain match 30 Cal bullets. The 150 and the 173 grain are still are still fairly accurate in my Garands. I will be shooting CMP matches with my Garands and the pulled 173 grain.
The 163 grain wasn't as accurate as the rest but not bad. I got a feeling that the AP stuff was just for machineguns anyway. Just thinkin outloud there
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I guess its the old addage about different rifles liking different ammo, but many years ago (mid 60's) when I was shooting military highpower we discovered that Cal. 30 M2-AP was more accurate than M2 Ball, and almost but not quite on a par with the 173 grain LC-62 and LC-63 Match for accuracy. Someone suggested that the reason was that possibly the steel core was less likely than the lead core to have minute voids in the core causing it to be not perfectly in balance. If this was the real reason or not I am not sure, but I do know I just got my hands on some 163 grain AP and it is amazingly accurate in my 4 groove 03A3 loaded over 47 grains of IMR-4895.
I am not sure if Cal. 30 AP was loaded primarly for machine gun use or not, but I do know that from research done by myself and others, and speaking to "old timers" when I was in the service (many WWII vets were still on active duty then), they all said that M2-AP was the preferred load in the Garands in the ETO due to the type of terrain that most of the war was fought in (towns, villages, forests, lots of light armored vehicles etc.). Those that I spoke to that were in the PTO said that it was not used nearly as much for the same reason (mostly lightly vegitated areas, and some jungle). I recently purchased some New Winchester 147 grain FMJ and it performs very well, and the price is just a little bit higher if it is bought in bulk than the price of pulled surplus rounds.
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Carlyle
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