Libro II: Aspectos relativos a la seguridad y salud en el sector de la construcción En general todos los Títulos, pero en especial el Título IV: Disposiciones mínimas de
CONDICIONES PARTICULARES QUE REGIRÁN EN ESTA OBRA PARA CADA UNO DE LOS RESPONSABLES DE SEGURIDAD DE LA MISMA
Meanwhile, as if to prove that Dr. Carten's fears were indeed well founded, yet a third SCHV rifle and cartridge had been produced, right under his nose as it were, at Springfield Armory. The advent of the commercial .222 Remington cartridge in 1950 had been of particular gratification to Earle Harvey, the designer of the luckless T25/T47 series of rifles, and his colleagues at Springfield Armory. An avid shooter and bench rest enthusiast, Harvey had noted CONARC's burgeoning interest in the SCHV idea and felt, unofficially, that Springfield's design group should have a go at it as well.
Harvey had begun the development of the caliber .30 T65 "lightweight" cartridge, in 1944, by cutting a second seating cannelure in a standard M2 ball bullet and loading it into a commercial .300 Savage case, to an overall length of 2.8". Now, a dozen years later, examination of the "too little" of the Gustafson .22 Carbine and the "too much" of the ".22 NATO" T48 led Harvey, as had Gene Stoner, to choose the commercial .222 Remington round as an admirable starting point for an SCHV cartridge with a 500-yard capability. In Harvey's own words, "From information on cartridge case design and pro- pellant combustion, I decided to retain the .222 case diameter at the front of the case body; the shoulder angle of the .222; to increase the propellant charge; and to increase the bullet weight to 55 grains."
With muzzle velocity and chamber pressure limits tentatively set, case drawings were produced for the new cartridge, and
The .224 Springfield Rifle 77 quantity of 10,000 rounds. As it turned out, only this one
unheadstamped lot of ".224 Springfield" cartridges was ever produced. Remington reports that after development of a suit- able primer, they loaded 9,500 of the new cases with a 55-grain full metal jacket bullet obtained from Sierra, the same firm
making the initial lot of 3-piece, 55-grain .222 Special bullets to Gene Stoner's design. Interestingly, the remaining 500 .224 Springfield cases were loaded with Aberdeen's 68-grain, .224 caliber "homologue" of the .30 Ml ball, and were used in further SCHV lethality test firings by Donald L. Hall at BRL.
97. The short-lived "Caliber .224 Springfield Infantry Rifle" serial no. 1, top and right side views. Designed by A. J. Lizza.
Springfield Armory photo dated December 18, 1958
Speaking of evolutionary dead ends, the .224 Springfield rifle itself is interesting, if only in that it sprang from a much higher aspiration than did Dr. Carten's 6.35mm cartridge pro- gram. As an unofficial "labor of love" on the part of Albert J. "Tony" Lizza and his associates on the Armory's rifle design team, the .224 Springfield project was a perfect chance to correct all the faults perceived after countless thousands of test-firings of both the T25 and T44 series of rifles. Before the preliminary layout of the .224 rifle was begun, Lizza and his team had decided on a "rotating, front-locking breech bolt in a bolt carrier; assembly and disassembly through the rear half of the top of the receiver; double column box magazine; hammer fire control [a Remington idea, originated in the 1944 T22 rifle program and discussed in US Rifle M14] with selective semi- and full automatic, and a controlled burst capability of four shots per trigger pull; gas cutoff and expansion system of actuation."
Earle Harvey later recalled taking one of the two Springfield .224 rifles ever built to a SALVO meeting at the Pentagon, where the off-the-cuff opinion of most of the assembled repre- sentatives of the OCO, BRL and Frankford Arsenal was that the design showed promise and warranted further development. By this time, however, Dr. Carten was already aware of General Wyman's direct and informal "arrangement" with ArmaLite, which the good doctor correctly interpreted as an
audacious but unsettlingly effective "end run" around normal Ordnance procurement procedure. He was aghast at the idea of Springfield Armory, an Ordnance Corps agency, entering and thus encouraging the .22 rifle competition. Accordingly, shortly after the initial prototype was completed in mid-1957, the Armory received firm instructions to terminate its .224 rifle project and refrain from any further SCHV development work.
Regarding the actual performance of the .224 Springfield rifle, therefore, not much is known. Harvey was able to confirm that the cartridge as loaded by Remington did in fact have the desired accuracy, lethality and trajectory characteristics. Officially, a brief note appended to a 1960 Army Arctic Test Board report of flechette and 6.35mm Simplex and Duplex firings is all that remains of a "Cal. .22 (Springfield Armory design)". All it says is "data not available".
Of further interest is the fact that the .224 Springfield cart- ridge did not die out with the rifle. Remington, noting that no further activity was forthcoming from the Armory on the .224 project, approached Harvey and asked whether he thought the Army would have any objection to their loading the round commercially. The Army could hardly protest after having dis- owned the program, and Harvey's .224 Springfield cartridge was produced and marketed successfully for many years as the ".222 Remington Magnum".
The .224 Springfield Rifle 78
98. The .224 Springfield Infantry Rifle disassembled. From the front, note the M14-type gas cutoff and expansion system, the T25-style operating rod handle with two bolt carrier contact points (for reduced jarring and vibration), and Mr. Uzza's "stock and action clamp" trigger guard, the subject of US
Patent no. 2,912,781, described as "a jaw member pivotally mounted to the trigger housing [and] a trigger guard pivotally mounted to said jaw member for movement between a closed position encircling the trigger and an open
winter trigger position".
99. Bolt group closeup, from the Springfield Armory .224 caliber Infantry Rifle. The long, flat action pin is smoothly actuated from both sides by the double-ended operating rod (fig. 98).
The ".222 Special" Becomes the .223 Remington
The ".222 Special" Becomes the .223 Remington
The proliferation of names for the new .222 offshoots was causing some confusion, particularly between the .222 "Special" and the .222 "Magnum". Therefore, in 1959,
Remington announced that henceforth Stoner's ".222 Special" cartridge would be known as the ".223 Remington".