Intermediate Cartridge - History

History

The Second World War saw the use of the bolt action rifles such as the Mauser Karabiner 98k, the Lee-Enfield SMLE, the Mosin Nagant, the Arisaka Type 38 and Type 99 rifles, and during the early years, the Springfield M1903, as well as semi-automatic battle rifles such as the Gewehr 43, the M1 Garand and the SVT-40. These rifles weighed over 8 lb (3.6 kg), and they were longer than 40 in (1,000 mm) and as such inappropriate for close combat. They fired cartridges capable of killing out to 1,000 m (1,100 yd). In close quarter combat all the major armies began employing submachine guns such as the PPSh-41, Thompson M1928A1 and the MP-40, all of which fired pistol cartridges. Compared with the battle rifles these submachine guns could provide high rates of controllable fire but they lacked the power and longer effective range of the battle rifles.

Bolt action rifles in use at the time were considerably long and heavy, and their rate of fire was only around 10 - 15 rounds per minute. The bolt action rifles were effective up to 800–1,000 metres (870–1,100 yd) in the hands of a trained marksman, but typical combat ranges were much shorter, around 150–300 metres (160–330 yd), and most of the time they did not exceed 500 metres (550 yd). Therefore, the potential of the rifle ammunition at longer ranges was seldom needed.

"...if hasty wartime training was such that he had no better than a fifty percent chance of hitting a target at 300 yards (270 m), there was no logical reason to give him a rifle and ammunition designed to kill at 2,000 yards (1,800 m)" —Ian V. Hogg, Modern Small Arms

What was needed was a more compact, selective fire weapon firing a cartridge combining the power of a rifle and the controllability of pistol cartridges. The resulting cartridge would have the accuracy of the former for typical combat ranges, and the firepower of the latter at short ranges.

The first cartridge fulfilling this requirement may have been the Japanese 6.5x50mm Arisaka used by the Russian Fedorov Avtomat rifle since 1915 (the cartridge itself dates back to 1897). The Fedorov was arguably the first assault rifle. Later came the 7.92x33mm Kurz round developed by the Germans in 1938, which was a shortened version of the standard 7.92x57mm Mauser round, and was used in another candidate for first assault rifle, the StG-44. When the Soviets developed the AK-47, they already had an intermediate cartridge of their own, so they adopted the gas operation system of the StG-44, which was extremely reliable making it an ideal field weapon.