Thirty-Something Rifle Cartridges I:  The 32s and 8mms

Mid-caliber rifle cartridges are very useful.

A qualifier:  I’ve said before that if you can only afford one rifle for big game in North America, buy a .30-06.  That fine old round, properly loaded, can handle any game in North America, even though it’s a tad on the light side for big Alaskan grizzlies and moose.

But there are a whole family of rifle cartridges that are useful, solid, and versatile; these are generally known as the mid-range or mid-caliber cartridges.  I’ll refer to them in this series as the Thirty-Somethings.  These rounds launch bullets ranging from the .32 to the .375 and have a wide range of power selections for almost any eventuality.

In this series we’ll focus mostly on rounds widely used in North America.  So, while we’ll look mostly at American cartridges, we’ll also examine some from other parts of the world that have seen a lot of use here, like the 8X57mm Mauser and the great old .375 H&H.  So, let’s start with the first group – the Thirty-Twos.

At the End of the Black-Powder Era…

Remember when we were talking about the history of lever guns?  In 1894 Winchester Repeating Arms Co. and the DaVinci of firearms, John Browning, brought out the great Model 1894 Winchester lever gun.  While that rifle is so intimately associated with the .30WCF cartridge that the terms “.30-30” and “94 Winchester” are damn near synonymous, it’s rather less well-known that the Model 94 wasn’t originally introduced in that caliber; instead, it was chambered in its first year for two thirty-somethings, the .32-40 and the .38-55.

In 1894 the .32-40 Ballard was a popular round.  It had been introduced ten years earlier in the Ballard Union Hill #8 and #9 target rifles, loaded with a 165-grain cast bullet over 40 grains of black powder, resulting in a muzzle velocity of about 1,450 fps.  The long, straight-tapered case allowed for a smooth, even powder burn and resulted in a good reputation for accuracy.  Famed barrel-smith Harry Pope was fond of the round and made it the basis of his .33-40 wildcat.  This round looks somewhat odd by today’s standard but it successfully made the transition into the smokeless powder era, and was offered in a sporadic manner in Winchester lever guns through most of the twentieth century, although mostly in the commemorative editions of which Winchester was so fond.

The .32-40 was overshadowed in 1895 when Winchester released the Model 94 in the smokeless powder .30WCF, but the New Haven gunmakers weren’t done with .32s yet.  In 1901 they released the Model 94 chambered for the .32 Winchester Special, which took the .30WCF case and expanded the neck to take a .321 bullet.

At first glance it’s hard to see a reason for this round.  The .32 WS, in its primary load, fired a 170-grain bullet, like its smaller-bored cousin.  Ballistics were near-identical, with the .32WS having less power past 150 yards or so due to the lower sectional density of the bullet.

But for the hand-loader who was sitting on a big supply of lead and black powder – not an uncommon thing in 1901 – the prevalent wisdom of the day claimed that the .32 had a couple of advantages.  First, its slightly larger bore was claimed to make for easier cleanup of the messy black powder residue.  Also, Winchester used a 1-16 rifling twist in the Model 94s chambered for the .32, as opposed to the 1-10 twist of the.30WCF; this, again, supposedly made for easier cleaning.

So, the .32 Special may have been just the ticket for the guy with a lot of black powder to burn, or maybe for the occasional recalcitrant old coot who thought that smokeless powder wasn’t here to stay.

Like the .32-40, the .32 Special hung on through most of the twentieth century, in later years mostly in commemorative Winchester models.

Another variation came from Remington, who was determined not to be outdone by Winchester.  In 1905 Remington introduced their Model 8 autoloader, followed in 1914 by the Model 14 pump-gun.  Both rifles saw a fair amount of market, and both were chambered for (among other rounds) the .25, .30 and .32 Remington cartridges, essentially rimless versions of the .25-35, .30-30 and .32 Special.  Unlike Winchester, Remington didn’t fiddle around with different twist rates in their guns and the Model 8 auto – the famed old Remington “piano leg” – was fussy about ammo, fouling and hanging up quickly if black-powder loads were used.  It’s hard to see what Remington had in mind with this range of cartridges other than ensuring that they had an offering in every bore size to compete with Winchester.

Winchester did have another .32 caliber round, the .32WCF, better known as the .32-20.  This was mostly a small-game round of modest power; while it’s a great old cartridge for big hares, bobcats or raccoons, I’m going to restrict this discussion to big-game rifles – in spite of the fact that I’d love to have an original Model 92 Winchester in .32-20 or .25-20 for hunting snowshoe hares and jackrabbits.

In 1914, as we’ve seen, the shooting world saw some new influences hit, and the thirty-something rifle cartridges were affected along with everything else.

The Mid-Century

In 1898 the famous Mauser-Werke, down in the small town of Oberndorf in Bavaria’s Neckar River valley, introduced a world-changing bolt gun, the Model 1898.  We’ve already discussed this rifle and its significance, so now let’s look at the cartridge that was paired with this rifle for use by the German military – the 7.92x57mm, more commonly known as the 8mm Mauser.

The 8mm Mauser predates the Mauser 98 by ten years, having been first introduced in the 1888 Commission rifle.  The original cartridge was the Patrone 88, launching a .319, 227-grain round-nose jacketed bullet at about 2,000 fps.  As a first-generation smokeless powder cartridge, the Patrone 88 carried over the heavy, round-nose bullet design common in the last generation of black-powder rounds.  In 1895 the bullet/bore size was changed slightly to reduce barrel wear and ease cleaning (supposedly) resulting in the .323 bullet diameter that would stick with the cartridge in military loadings.

In 1904 and 1905, the cartridge got a facelift; the neck dimensions were slightly altered, and the brass thickness increased a tad.  The new round was loaded with a 153-grain spitzer bullet, producing about 2,700 fps.  This made the new round, the S Patrone, more effective at extended ranges due to the higher velocity and better bullet design.

The 7.9×57 S Patrone was the standard German military’s rifle and machine gun cartridge in both World Wars.  Interestingly, after the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles forbade the use of the round in civilian arms, but by 1930 or so the German manufacturers were roundly ignoring the Treaty, and the cartridge again became popular in civilian hunting rifles; a rimmed version, the 7.9x57mm IRS, was even developed for single-shot and multi-barreled rifles.

The 7.9x57mm remains a popular hunting cartridge in Europe today, at least in those jurisdictions that still allow the unwashed peasantry to own rifles.  In the United States, the round gained a significant following when surplus Mausers became widely available at bargain prices; the 8mm Mauser offers performance very similar to the .30-06, and in fact the round is still loaded by many American ammunition makers today.  In fact, the 8mm Mauser remained the only .32/8mm bolt-gun round commercially loaded in the United States until 1978.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Big Green had realized a commercial success with its excellent (then) Model 700 rifle and with their 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge.  I always thought the 7mm Magnum a tad overrated; an old elk-hunting friend of mine shot one and was fond of bragging about its velocity and flat trajectory with his favorite factory load, until I pointed out that in my big commercial Mauser I was shooting a .30-06 handload that ran a 165-grain Barnes bullet at only 100fps less than his factory 140-grain 7mm loads, and took to his brother’s chronograph to prove it.

In the late Seventies, Remington determined that they wanted to compete with Winchester’s beefier .300 and .338 Winchester Magnums.  Remington’s engineers came up with the 8mm Remington Magnum, but they made one key mistake:  They used the full-length .375 H&H case as the basis for their new round, mandating its use only in Magnum-length actions.  The new 8mm round was intended to compete with the excellent .338 Winchester Magnum, but Winchester’s offering had a thirty-year head-start and could be chambered in standard-length actions.  While the 8mm Remington Magnum was a powerful round that could easily handle any game in North America, launching a 200-grain pill at a bit over 3,000 fps, it never gained much following.  The .32/8mm was generally considered a European bore size, and components (chiefly bullets) were not available in as many options as either .30 or .338 offerings.  The 8mm Remington Magnum is still in use today, but as sporting rifle cartridges go, it’s a footnote.

Today

Speaking of footnotes; since the new century dawned, the American shooting scene has seen only one new .32/8mm round.

In 2000, Winchester and Browning introduced American shooters to the .300 Winchester Short Magnum, a fat round with a rebated rim that provided magnum horsepower in a short-action rifle.  The “short fat” case supposedly allowed powder to burn quicker and cleaner, and soon the WMS rounds gained a modest following.  In 2005, Winchester introduced the .325 Winchester Short Magnum, which actually fired a .323 180-grain bullet at about 3,000 fps.

After its release, Winchester engineers allowed that the .32/8mm bullet was the largest that could be efficiently paired with the WSM case, and so no larger offerings were forthcoming.  Unlike the 8mm Remington Magnum, the .325 WSM did gain some following, and like its older brother, the .338 Win Mag, it is capable of taking any game in North America with the right load.

The .32/8mm bore diameter has never been overly popular with American shooters.  If any caliber is America’s caliber, it’s the .30.  It doesn’t help that American manufacturers have never really gone in for this bore size in a big way, and it helps even less that one of the few major offerings was a commercial flop.

But step up one bore size to the thirty-threes, and the picture changes quite a bit.  My own favorite hunting rifle is one of those; I’ve described my .338 Win Mag, the inestimable Thunder Speaker, in these virtual pages before.  So stay tuned for the next installment, in which will examine the Thirty-Threes.