Lapua 338 Magnum
This caliber is fairly fresh to the sniper environment, but Lapua 338 Magnum has deal with the significant difference as being the first and effective caliber that made exclusively for sniping purposes so that it has gained in global recognition popularity from the previous few years. The round was specially designed to reach at 1000 meters with plenty of energy to pass through 5 levels of any military battle suits to taking down any target correctly. The highly effective range of this round is about a mile or 1600 meters length in the proper shooting situations. It also could come very close to the 2000 meters length target and presented you to have the perfect mixture combination for a shooter, rifle, ammo, optics, and spotter.
The 338 Lapua Magnum was obviously not a hunting caliber, although it made in good shape for the purpose in long ranges. It was subsequently a cartridge that produced for long range competition and military target shooting with velocity and bullet penetration top-quality characteristics in comparison to the common .30 caliber cartridges. Lapua 338 Magnum profiled as a target cartridge, however some manufacturers was designed it also for hunting rifles.
.338 Lapua Magnum, The Early Story
The beginning of the Lapua 338 Magnum starts back at 1982, there’s an American business enterprise called Research Armament Industries (RAI) was expected by U.S Marine Force to create a long range rifle for sniping concept. RAI was a fairly small company run by Jerry Haskins (late before) which operated generally in the field of defense technology developments. Basically, the project was to produce a target rifle which fit on the 1000 yards length, but in fact that the point was more likely to create a 1500 meters sniper rifle.
He developed two types of the rifle, the model of 500 for .50 BMG cartridge and the 300 for .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Though the .300 Winchester Magnum didn’t meet up with the army penetration specifications, the search for an innovative RAI 300 caliber with better ballistic attributes and heavier bullet began. The very first choice was to examination a wildcat from the case of .378 Weatherby Magnum, necked down with .338. It’s actually found to being a faulty solution because the low body tapering and belted case structure.
There is a rimless .416 Rigby case for the next, which usually used mainly for a big game hunting caliber. It manufactured by American Brass Extrusion Laboratories Ltd, also called as BELL. The new cartridge was based upon on BELL .416 Basic, which has been used mainly as a relative case for wildcat cartridges. The .416 case was necked down to a .338 bullet. A new caliber was made, generally known as .338/416 and 8,58×71.
Finnish Lapua Cartridge Factory which Manufactured Lapua 338
Sooner from then, the deadline to supplying weapons and ammunitions for the U.S army tests was getting much closer, and RAI began to search another manufacturers. Finnish Lapua Cartridge Factory in Finland was noticed through their US distributor which known is Kendall International. As well in the summer or 1984, Lapua was associated to the progression of the .338/416 cartridge. Along with RAI, guns for the .338/416 were manufactured and also sub constructed by Lapua’s distributor, Kendall.
As soon as the American manufacturers got off the development (RAI had a financial difficulties), Lapua still existed alone together with the new caliber cartridge with actually no weapon manufacturers. The management determined to proceed the advance development of the product. This generated and resulted in specifying the specifications, and later the cartridge was named as the Lapua 338 Lapua Magnum. The most significant differentiation to the late 8,58×71 mm cartridge was the size. It’s approximately 2mm shorter that RAI’s draft case and therefore the powder space volume in Lapua’s made was 1mm shorter. The 8,57x71mm didn’t suit with the 8,6×70 or Lapua 338 slot provided anymore.
