"They could shoot ours but we couldn't shoot theirs"

[WardenWolf]

The most common true instances of this involve Russian ammo, with three particular calibers:

7.62x25 Tokarev: This ammo was essentially a hotter version of .30 Mauser. The case dimensions are almost identical, and .30 Mauser ammo will feed and cycle just fine in a Tokarev. However, the Tokarev ammo would damage or destroy a Mauser C96.

9x18 Makarov: This is effectively a slightly hotter (around 10%) version of .380 (9x17). The bullet diameter is changed from .357 to .362. However, in a pinch, .380 ammo can be fired in a 9x18 gun with no ill effects.

9mm Luger: Russia's new pistols, that they are phasing in to replace the Makarov, fire a very hot-loaded version of the 9mm Luger round. They will function with NATO ammunition, but most pistols chambered for 9mm Luger cannot handle the Russian loading (break out the Ruger P89's, boys).

So Russia did, indeed, create just such a situation on three occasions.

[Mike Irwin]

And in at least two of those cases, it wasn't intentional, as in "We'll show those running dog capitalists! We'll make guns that can't use their ammo, but which can use our ammo!"

It was done for well-considered and somewhat practical design reasons.


Oh, and just so as you know, the Soviets, once they ran out of ammo that they had purchased with the C96 Mausers in the 1920s, issued Tokarev ammo to those individuals who were armed with a Broomhandle.

The reason why?

Balistics of the original Soviet 7.62 round were not all that much different from the ballistics of the 7.63 Mauser round.

The markedly higher velocities that you see, which everyone thinks means a super high pressure cartridge?

Those velocity readings are achieved through the longer barrels of the PPD, the PPSh, and PPS submachine guns...

[WardenWolf]

No offense, Mike Irwin, but you're a bit wrong there. The standard military pistol before then was the Nagant revolver. The Tokarev was the first semi-automatic pistol accepted into Soviet military service. The military Tokarev loading was indeed hotter than .30 Mauser. Some reloading manuals used the same loading data for both simply because the loading information of .30 Mauser was well-known and was known to function fine in a Tokarev, whereas information on the Soviet loading was not well-known. This does NOT, however, mean that they were the same in practice. The Tokarev round was indeed hotter. Note that this round does not gain much velocity out of a longer barrel; its powder charge is very much optimized for the shorter barrel of a pistol, and it winds up coming out of an SMG or rifle barrel with about the same velocity.

What DID happen was the Germans ordered a ton of obsolete .30 Mauser ammo to the front lines for use in captured Tokarevs. Russia may have intended that they be able to use captured ammo, but the reverse wound up being true because they captured so many Russian pistols but not much ammo.

I do not believe the .30 Tokarev / .30 Mauser backwards compatibility was intended, however. Keep in mind that, back then, Russia had not really developed an "Us versus the West" mentality. This did not really occur until after World War II. However, 9x18 was most certainly intended, as is the recent 9mm Luger adaptation.

[Mike Irwin]

WardenWolf,

You're sort of right, but you're also wrong.

No, the C96 Mauser was never the official issue sidearm. It was the Nagant revolver.

However, the Russian military approved the C96 for private purchase by its officers prior to World War I. It was very popular with Russian officers, as well as officers of other European nations. Winston Churchill purchased one and used it during the Battle for Omdurman, and thought very highly of it.

After World War I, both Germany and the new Soviet Union were something of international pariahs, so they naturally turned to each other for trade.

In the early 1920s the Soviet Union purchased approximately 20,000 C96 Mausers in 7.63 Mauser, primarily the smaller Bolo models, and issued them not only to high-ranking military officers, but also to Soviet secret police like the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. So, to a limited extent, the C96 Mauser was official Soviet military issue.

Additionally, the Soviet Union purchased not only several million rounds of 7.63 Mauser ammunition from Germany, but also from DWM the equipment necessary to manufacture 7.63 Mauser ammunition.

In the late 1920s, when the Soviets decided to adopt a semi-automatic handgun as general issue, they looked to the 7.63 Mauser for inspiration. The cartridge's dimensions were changed slightly to bring it more into line with Soviet manufacturing practices, but for all intents and purposes, the 7.62 Tokarev round was identical ballistically to the 7.63 Mauser.

The traditional load for the 7.63 Mauser is an 86 grain FMJ bullet at roughly 1,410 FPS.

The original Soviet-manufactured load for the 7.62 Tokarev was an 87-gr. FMJ bullet at 1,390 FPS.

The Soviets were more than happy with the 7.63 Mauser's ballistics, and saw no need to try to amp it up, and they didn't.

When fired in the longer-barreled Soviet submachine guns, the Tokarev round's velocity approaches 1,650 FPS. I've witnessed Soviet era ammunition being fired - over a chronograph - out of both TT33 pistols and PPSh submachine guns, and there is a several hundred foot per second difference with the longer barrel.

It wasn't until after World War II that the Soviet Union and other Soviet satellite states, primarily Czechoslovakia, produced uploaded rounds for use in submachine guns and the CZ-52 semi-auto pistol. Some of the Czech loadings would disassemble a TT 33 in relatively short order and would push 1,900 FPS out of Czech submachine guns.

That said, as I noted, the 7.62 Tok. round is dimensionally slightly different than the 7.63 Mauser round, and as such can give feeding and chambering problems in the C96. But, if it chambered, it could be fired safely.

"What DID happen was the Germans ordered a ton of obsolete .30 Mauser ammo to the front lines for use in captured Tokarevs. Russia may have intended that they be able to use captured ammo, but the reverse wound up being true because they captured so many Russian pistols but not much ammo."

OK, sorry that is absolutely wrong.

There was no need for the Germans to supply 7.63 Mauser ammunition to troops fighting in Russia.

In the early years of the war, the Germans captured millions of Russians and thousands of tons of equipment, including hundreds of thousands of PPD and PPSh submachine guns, both of which fired the standard 7.62 Tokarev round.

In addition to the guns, the Germans captured millions of rounds of 7.62 Tokarev ammunition, more than enough to supply all of the guns that they captured for a long, long time.

The Germans captured so much Soviet equipment that the PPSh was issued to rear-line German troops in occupied territories and, rechambered to 9mm Luger (a simple barrel alteration, the 9mm cartridge would feed through the standard drum magazine no problem) it was issued to front-line German troops fighting the Soviets.

[Mike Irwin]

On to the 9x18...

"However, 9x18 was most certainly intended."

Actually, it wasn't.

The 9x18 project had its origins in the Soviet capture of the Walther works in Eastern Germany.

One of the projects that they stumbled across was an early 1930s Luftwaffe project investigating the greatest performance that could be wrung out of a Walther PP-sized blowback operated pistol. The project was nicknamed the 9mm Ultra.

Intervening war caused the project to be shelved.

The Soviets ran with the project after the war. Their solution to increased performance was to increase the diameter of the bullet by making the case a true cylinder (not the 9mm's tapered cylinder), decreasing bullet weight slightly, and upping velocity a bit.

The 9mm Makarov round was adopted in, IIRC, the early 1950s.

Now, you say that the Soviet intention was backwards compatibility.

You're wrong, and here's why...

What would be backwards compatible with the 9mm Makarov? .380 Auto/9mm Kurz? The .380s case is shorter and the bullet quite a bit smaller in diameter, both of which would tend to give problems with chambering, potential misfires, and accuracy (there wouldn't be any).

Using standard 9mm Luger ammunition in the Mak is also a big no go. Again, chambering issues with a longer case (generally the 9mm Luger won't feed through a Mak's magazine) and the Luger operates at significantly higher pressures, very likely leading to gun damage. Not a good idea at all.

Additionally, exactly with whom would it have been backwards compatible?

No one was issuing .380 autos as standard military armament in the 1950s. The United States had its .45, and every other western power affiliated with the United States/NATO was issuing 9mm Luger.

I'm sorry, but the myth of "we can use yours, but you can't use ours" is exactly that, a myth. It had no bearing on the design or development of Soviet small arms/ammunition at any time.

What it really means is that the Soviets let the west do a lot of the hard development work on new cartridges, and then they came in and put their final thumbprint on it to meet their perceptions of what makes a suitable cartridge.

One last word on the 9mm Ultra project, which the Soviets turned into the 9mm Makarov.

In the 1970s the Ultra project was revived by Walther for the Super PP pistol, and renamed the 9mm Police.

As with the 9mm Ultra, the objective was to give the highest level of performance in a blowback operated gun. This was during the convulsion of terrorism in Germany, and their police forces, still armed with .32s and .380s, were finding themselves in need of more powerful guns.

As it was in the 1930s, the project was a flop, and the guns and ammunition faded out pretty quickly.

[WardenWolf]

Actually it was documented (though I can't find the sources now) that the Germans DID order 7.63 Mauser ammo for captured Tokarevs. The problem was the Russians did not really stock much ammo for these guns. They were a secondary weapon, and they could barely produce enough ammo for the Mosin early on. So often an officer would go to the front lines with just the ammo in his two magazines. If that got used up, that was it. When the Germans captured the weapons, they needed to supply additional ammo.

[Mike Irwin]

"Actually it was documented (though I can't find the sources now) that the Germans DID order 7.63 Mauser ammo for captured Tokarevs."

As the war progressed, I have no doubt that German manufacturers did supply 7.63 ammo. It was undoubtedly easier to supply rear-echelon troops so armed from the rear forward than trying to get captured supplies from the front back.

That doesn't take away from the fact that the Germans captured literally millions of rounds of 7.62 Tokarev ammunition.

The fact that officers only carried 24 rounds of 7.62 ammo is immaterial when you've not only captured the officer with a TT33, you've also captured 500 Soviet conscripts armed with PPSh submachine guns also chambered in 7.62.

The standard Soviet loadout for a soldier armed with a PPSh was approximately 300 rounds of 7.62 ammo. If if you only take a half loadout from each Soviet in the hypothetical example above you've now got 75,000 rounds of 7.62 Tokarev ammunition.

The PPSh wasn't a secondary weapon by any stretch of the imagination, either. It was, at various points in the war, the Red Army's primary small arm. It wasn't uncommong for entire units, up to the brigade level, were armed with submachine guns, giving a Soviet unit incredible short-range firepower.

This reuse of captured Soviet equipment wasn't limited to small arms, either. In the first two years of the war the Germans captured so many artillery pieces and ammunition that they were able to use guns like the M1936 76.2mm divisional not only against the Russians, but also shipped quantities to North Africa where they were employed against the British and later the Americans.

[James K]

"The Russians did not stock much ammunition for these guns..."

Huh? They stocked millions of rounds for their SMGs and the ammo was the same for the Tokarev pistol. Nor was the Tokarev ammo different enough from the German Mauser ammo to cause any problems. The Mauser was still in service in some Russian units through WWII, and they used the standard Tokarev ammo in them. If the myths about super power Tokarev ammo are true, the Russians wanted to blow up their own guns, sort of odd behavior in wartime.

The Germans also modified tens of thousands of captured Tokarevs to use the 9mm 08 cartridge, which it does with the original springs and magazine with no problem. If the 7.62mm pistol round is so powerful, guns made for it should malfunction with the "puny" 9mm. They don't.

Jim

[RaySendero]

James K Wrote:

I did say that I have fired 7.7x58 in a .30-'06 rifle. In fact, since first posting that, I loaded an entire (Japanese) clip of 7.7 into an M1903A3 and fired them. There were no signs of high pressure and no need to "stomp" on anything to chamber the rounds.

James,
I think the 7.7 Jap would also chamber and could be fired in the 8mm Mauser.

[James K]

No, the case is too long (58mm vs 57mm). The 7.7 will feed and go partly into the 8mm chamber but the bolt won't close.

So those German troops supposedly fighting in the Pacific* had to bring ammo for their Mausers.

Jim

*There were rumors during WWII that, because the "racially inferior" Japanese couldn't possibly have planned and carried out the Pearl Harbor attack or fight so well on the sea and on the ground, the real fighting was done by the presumably racially more acceptable Germans. That nonsense included stories of German paratroops captured in Hawaii and blonde, blue-eyed pilots flying Zeros.

JK

[RaySendero]

James K wrote:

No, the case is too long (58mm vs 57mm). The 7.7 will feed and go partly into the 8mm chamber but the bolt won't close.

So those German troops supposedly fighting in the Pacific* had to bring ammo for their Mausers.

OK - Got it.

[Mike Irwin]

"There were rumors during WWII that, because the "racially inferior" Japanese couldn't possibly have planned and carried out the Pearl Harbor attack..."

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

[James K]

Incredibly, some people really believed the Germans bombed PH and one really bright Congressman wanted to hold hearings to investigate the "German role" in the attack. It was known that the Germans had no aircraft carriers, so one "theory" was that the Germans had secretly built an airfield on the big island (Hawaii) and took off from there. Military personnel "identified" Stukas, JU-88's and BF-109's in the attacking forces. It was supposedly a sailor on one of the U.S. ships who claimed to have spotted the blond pilot mentioned in my previous post.

Jim

[Snow Dog]

Getting back to the original post - you guys do realize that the US were not the only ones fighting against the Japanese during WWII, right? Take a look at the 7.7 Japanese cartridge and the .303 British. They are very similar rounds. Also, before the war, the British sold a bunch of Vickers MG's and similar to the Japanese and they just copied the cartridge instead of redesigning/rechambering the guns. The Japanese made the 7.7 in rimless (Type 99), semi-rimmed (Type 92) and rimmed versions, depending on the gun it was to be used in (must have be a logistical nightmare!). As the cartridges are so similar this could be where the confusion/rumours got started (at least form a WWII viewpoint).

[James K]

The three types of 7.7 should have been a supply nightmare, but the Japanese really didn't get confused. 7.7 rifle ammunition was issued in rifle clips. 7.7 semi-rimmed was issued only in feed strips. 7.7 rimmed (.303 British) was issued only by the Navy to aircraft and ground units armed with licensed copies of the Lewis gun.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

The real problem came in getting 6.5mm ammo to the troops who were armed with Type 38 rifles, and 7.7mm ammo to the troops armed with Type 99s.

With the 6.5mm there was an additional problem of the Type 11 light machine gun. It was originally designed to use the standard 6.5mm ammunition loaded on stripper clips designed for the Type 38 rifle, but the round was too powerful and caused reliability problems.

Instead of simply redesigning the gun to allow its use with standard rifle ammo, the Japanese developed a downloaded round. Once it was removed from its packaging, it was indistinguishable from the from the ammo for the Type 38.

[Mike Irwin]

"you guys do realize that the US were not the only ones fighting against the Japanese during WWII, right?"

What?

You mean the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Philippinos, French, and Dutch were involved, too?

[Mike Irwin]

" Military personnel "identified" Stukas, JU-88's and BF-109's in the attacking forces."

Obviously the same guys who later shot down a number of US carrier aircraft sent to Pearl Harbor from Halsey's task force...

[James K]

Well, they had good enough eyesight to see through a pilot's helmet and recognize blond hair!

Jim