Like the Swift, this is an ancient round that has held up astonishingly well. 257 Weatherby Magnum Roy Weatherby’s favorite magnum is the world’s fastest. If you’re looking for a light-kicking big-game rifle that kills like electrocution, load a Swift with 60- to 70-grain bullets. I recall that I could load 40-grainers to 4,300. I had a very good one for a long time, and my chosen load fired a 50-grain bullet at 3,900 fps and change. But the Swift survived because it’s a hoot to shoot, very accurate, and presents no more problems than any other cartridge. Gun writers, not knowing what to make of the Swift, decided that it was creepy, unnatural, and dangerous, and printed nonsense about it by the ream. I’ve also seen bullets literally vaporize a few yards from the muzzle.) Because barrel life was so short, Winchester turned to stainless, and discovered that you couldn’t blue stainless steel, so the tubes had to be iron-plated and then blued. (I’ve seen Swifts liquefy lead cores the targets were sprayed with it. The Swift required Winchester to design bullets that would stand up to extreme speed. 30/40 Krag-Jorgensen, which did not last long, either. Neither rifle nor cartridge was a success, and they were dropped in favor of the. Navy and Marine Corps for the straight-pull M 1895 Lee rifle. To create this cartridge, Winchester necked down a case of breathtaking obscurity called the 6mm Lee Navy, which had been very briefly adopted by the U.S. 220 Swift Introduced by Winchester in 1935, the Swift was the first rifle round to crack the 4,000-fps mark. Here are the speed demons that I know about. If we do crack the 5,000-fps barrier, it will probably be done with something other than gunpowder and bullets.īut it was fun while it lasted. Today, you can get a Swift up to 4,300 fps without blowing it up, and a very few rounds can hit 4,500, but the quest for ultra-velocity in rifles has come to a grinding halt. 220 Swift and its muzzle velocity of 4,110 fps with a 48-grain bullet, we pretty much peaked. With rifles, alas, you run into the limited ability of brass cartridges to withstand pressure, of shooters to withstand recoil and muzzle blast, of bullets to withstand super velocities, and barrels to withstand the heat of hellish powder charges. The Navy’s Rail Gun, which employs electric current rather than gunpowder, gets over 8,000 fps with its projectiles. (I’ve also heard 6,300 fps from someone who was in a position to know.). The 120mm smoothbore main gun on the M-1 Abrams tank fires a depleted-uranium penetrator rod at least 5,700 fps. Rifle cartridges are not the most effective mechanisms for producing high projectile speed. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
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