[Wilhelm]

Did the German and Axis military ever have a 12.7mm (.50 caliber) cartridge for any purpose such as we had with the .50 BMG? I heard that during the First World War they had an oversize Mauser with a 12.7mm cartridge used as an anti-tank rifle. Anyone have any info on this subject?

 

[hailstone]

The oversize Mauser rifle was a reality but easily defeated by increasing armor thickness. Other problem areas was size and recoil. More than likely a large investment of resources (time, engineering, testing, production, training) for small short term gain of destroying a few tanks until the armor was upgraded. Believe there was some information on this subject in one of the Mauser books.

 

[wyoman]

The Mauser anti-tank rifle was a 13mm. The Russians use the 12.7 for the DSHK heavy machine gun. Rheinmetal-Borsig made machine guns for aircraft in the same 13mm cal. during WWII.

 

[Jack]

The Germans used a 12.7 MM machine gun cartridge in some of their fighters during WW2. I have no details as to cartridge dimensions or ballistics, sorry.

 

[wyoman]

The Rheinmetall Borsig MG 131 13mm was the only large caliber machine gun used in German aircraft. The 7.92mm caliber MG-17 and MG-81 were below that. The only thing bigger was the MG-151 20mm canons and MK-108 30mm canons.

 

[Wilhelm]

Thanks for the responses

 

[mtmrolla]

There is an example of that German anti tank rifle in the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning Georgia

 

[mtmrolla]

During the Soviet Afgan war, the US Special Operations Command had some 14.5mm rifles made to shoot down Soviet helicopters. They were made by Crane as I recall and had large shoulder rests and a tripod.

 

[gschwertley]

The 13x92mm AT cartridge was used in the T-Gewehr during WW1; the AT rifles that Germany had early in WW2 were chambered in the 7.92x94mm. These were quickly found to be obsolescent. IIRC, these were the models PzB 38 and 39.