Favorite Eastern Cartrige

Yossarian

Forum Resistance Leader
Simple Question here, what is your favorite non western military round?

Can be any type of small arm ammunition from any era, but cannot be from Western Europe or the United States or Western Hemisphere.

For many members here this would qualify as "foreign" ammunition types.
 
I think we've pretty much limited the choices to what the Empire of Japan used. After that, everyone either adopted NATO or Warsaw Pact standard ammunition.
 
Non Western caliber you say?

I would have to say 7.62x45mm. It was developed by Czechoslovakia for use in the Vz.52 Rifle. They dropped it after the Soviets forced them to adopt the 7.62x39mm. Their answer was the Vz.58 Rifle.... The Czechs have done nicely telling the Soviets to sit and spin on it throughout their history in the Warsaw Pact. If I had cash I'd design a modern rifle around this cartridge.

The Chinese are currently fielding the 5.8×42mm DBP87 in their new service rifle. Haven't seen much about it since the ChiComs haven't got into a shooting war and they're not exporting the caliber.

Another one I'm a fan of is the Swedish 6.5x55mm. A nice flat shooting low recoil round. Chambered in Swedish Mausers and the Norwegian Krag. Also Sweden's AG-42 semi-auto.

The classic British .577/450 Martini-Henry from the Zulu War period in a fun one to play with too.
 
Think Siam had some unique cartridge, but it may have been western based.

The Type 45 Siamese Mauser was chambered in a 8x50mmR which is not to be confused with the dimensionally similar Austrian 8x50mmR Mannlicher or French 8x50mmR Lebel cartridges. Later when they adopted the Type 66 Siamese mauser they went with a 8x52mmR cartridge with a spitzer bullet.
 
Non Western caliber you say?

Another one I'm a fan of is the Swedish 6.5x55mm. A nice flat shooting low recoil round. Chambered in Swedish Mausers and the Norwegian Krag. Also Sweden's AG-42 semi-auto.
Think I read that Sweden had some BARs in 6.5X55, bet that was sweet shooting!
 
I would have to say that the Soviet 7.62 X 39 is a favorite cartridge. I think by now, everyone knows that the Soviets learned for late WWII German small arms technology and recognized the need for a reduced power rifle cartridge, reduced from the full-power 30 caliber, 8 mm rounds in use at the beginning of the war.
The 7.62 X 39 MM cartridge is similar in performance to a number of medium -size game hunting cartridges in use in several nations.
The soviets first used it in the famous SKS, ( I have one), and later in the world famous AK47.
The cartridge has decent exterior and terminal ballistics, reduced recoil, acceptable accuracy and reliable feeding. It works and that's all the Russians needed to know. " The best is the enemy of the good". The Russians didn't worry about getting the world's greatest small arms cartridge, they settled for a good one.
I shoot my Russian-made SKS frequently ( Tula 1954) with both Russian TUL ammo and also with 62 grain East German plastic practice ammunition. Great fun!
 
Favorite Eastern cartridge

It's surprising that no one has mentioned the 7.62X54R Russian rifle cartridge. This is a rimmed cartridge, hence the letter R in the cartridge designation. This type of ammunition was the standard Russian rifle and medium machine gun cartridge from Tsarist days, all the way through the Soviet era and remains in use as the standard Russian medium M.G. ammo. It's performance is quite good, so the Russians see no need to replace something that works, unlike Western countries.
It is also used by Finland as a hunting and target shooting round and the Finns have some very clever loadings of this ammunition, including the so-called "cat-sneeze" cartridge, a standard cartridge downloaded so that it can be used for small game hunting. The Finns who are famous riflemen anyway, used the Mosin-Nagant rifle in this caliber for years including during the Winter War and the Continuation War against the Soviet Union, who were also using the same rifles and ammunition.
Mosin-Nagant rifles have been available in the U.S. for many years at give-away prices, some less than $100 for rifles in good condition. There were even some Finnish Civil Guard rifles on the market up till a few years ago. A Finnish Civil Guard rifle is pretty much the ultimate Mosin-Nagant.
This cartridge performs very well for hunting medium to large game and for long range target shooting.
The Finns for some odd reason call this cartridge 7.62X53. I don't know why.
Surprised that no one has named this venerable cartridge as a favorite.
 
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