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ARMAG

Search matches names, aliases and the text of every page. An arm found by its service designation is found by its alias, not its title.

.30-03 Springfield

Introduced 1903

Also known as .30 Government Model 1903 — the same cartridge under different names, all of which find this page.

Dimensions and pressure

Generated from the schema, like every specification table on this site, so a figure recorded on this entry cannot be missing from the table.

Identity
Designed by
not recorded
Introduced
1903
Production
not recorded
Standards body
No standards body
Case type
Rimless
Case shape
Bottleneck
Dimensions
Bullet diameter
7.82 mm0.3079 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes .308 in; converted here. See caseLength note.

Bore diameter
not recorded
Case length
64.52 mm2.540 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes 2.54 in; converted here. No free dimensional standard exists for this obsolete military round, superseded by .30-06 Springfield in 1906.

Overall length
84.84 mm3.340 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes 3.34 in; converted here. See caseLength note.

Rim diameter
12.01 mm0.4728 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes .473 in; converted here. See caseLength note.

Neck diameter
8.64 mm0.3402 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes .340 in; converted here. See caseLength note.

Base diameter
11.94 mm0.4701 inestimatedsource

Cited article's infobox publishes .470 in; converted here. See caseLength note.

Pressure
Maximum pressure
not recorded
Pressure standard
not recorded

SAAMI and C.I.P. measure pressure differently and their figures are not interchangeable, which is why the body is always named beside the figure.

Loads

Velocity is recorded per barrel length as published. A gun page interpolates between these points and never projects beyond them.

M1903 220 gr full metal jacket round-nose ball

Frankford Arsenal

Bullet mass
14.26 g220.1 grestimatedsource

Cited article's ballistics table publishes 220 grains, with no source credited for the row; converted here. No test barrel length is stated anywhere in the article, so no velocity is recorded.

Cartridge mass
not recorded
Bullet type
FMJ
G1 BC
not recorded
G7 BC
not recorded

Chambered in

Computed from every entry that lists this cartridge. Nothing here is hand-maintained.

No entry on the site is chambered in it yet.

Gallery

A .30-03 Springfield rifle cartridge standing upright with a round-nose bullet showing a bare metal tip, beside its base showing a W.R.A. CO. 30 G. 1903 headstamp.

Image credit

Title
File:30-03 Springfield.jpg
Author
Jim Miles(attribution required)
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Source
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:30-03_Springfield.jpg
A .30-03 Springfield cartridge with its original 220-grain round-nose bullet, and its 1903-dated Winchester headstamp.

Detail

The .30-03 Springfield is a rimless, bottlenecked rifle cartridge the United States adopted in 1903 alongside the M1903 Springfield rifle, replacing the rimmed .30-40 Krag and its single-locking-lug Krag–Jørgensen action with a rimless round better suited to a Mauser-style staggered-column magazine. It was the US Army’s standard service cartridge for barely three years before being replaced in turn.

This is the direct predecessor of the .30-06 Springfield, not an alternate name for it. The two share the same rimless case head and bullet diameter, but the .30-03 was loaded with a 220-grain round-nose bullet at a longer 64.52 mm case-to-bullet-tip overall length; when the Army’s ordnance board adopted the pointed spitzer bullets that other armies were already fielding, it shortened the case’s neck and throat rather than the case itself, and renamed the result .30-06 for the year of the change, 1906. Existing M1903 rifles and .30-03 ammunition stocks were both altered or withdrawn as part of that transition.

This entry carries dimensions from the cited Wikipedia infobox, recorded as estimated because no free dimensional standard exists for a cartridge withdrawn from production over a century ago. One ball load’s bullet mass is recorded, also estimated; no source states a test barrel length for any published velocity figure, so none is recorded and the cartridge computes no muzzle energy or trajectory. No maximum pressure figure is published free for it either.

References

  1. .30-03 Springfield · 1362890749 · read 2026-09-01

Last verified 2026-09-01 · review status: agent-populated