Alright, thanks to the Defense Academy at Shrivenham in the UK, I actually have the chance to shoot
(this is rifle number 7), an EM-2 in the original .280 cartridge. I am really curious about this. .280 is described is an intermediate cartridge,
and it is, it is less powerful than .308 or .30-06. But it is still substantially more powerful than what
we think of as intermediate today, namely 5.56 or 5.45. So I'm really pretty curious to see how
that handles in a rifle that is pretty darn light. Now we also have a non-magnified optic here. And a lot of the examples I've
seen of these optics have been really worse for wear,
cloudy, difficult to see through. This particular one is in excellent condition, and it's way nicer than the
other ones that I've seen before. Looking through this, you've got a
pointer coming down from the top, and then ... four holdover lines, for 3, 5, 7, and
900 yards, I believe it would have been at that point. Alright, let's put a couple rounds through it. I'm going to go ahead and lock the bolt open, and when you insert a magazine in the
EM-2 it will automatically drop the bolt, and slightly malfunctioned...
Give it some credit, this rifle's very old and tired. Alright, we actually had a deformed round
in there, so we're going to try this a second time. ... This time, we're going to put the
mag in and just charge the rifle normally. Perfect. Alright, here we go. This is semi-auto. Yes. My fire
selector on this is here above the trigger, and it's currently set to 'R',
repetition, or semi-auto. This is fantastic to shoot.
Recoil on this is ... this is definitely a heavier cartridge
than a 5.56 or, like, a 4.85. But ... this is a nice straight line recoil. Goes right
into your shoulder, doesn't climb, it's really nice. Alright, let's try this: a couple two-round
bursts full-auto. Let's see if I can pull that off. Alright, the fire selector is up here,
we're going to push that over to automatic. Now I don't know if this was
deliberate or just coincidental, but it's very easy from a
firing grip, to go from auto to semi. You have to actually adjust
your grip to go from semi to automatic, Which, if it's intentional, which it may
or may not be, that would make sense. Because, even a relatively intermediate cartridge like
this, is still far more useful, I think, in semi-auto than full. What I'm curious here is whether I
can fire two-round controlled bursts, and if I can keep them all
on the target. Let's find out. [click] That would be a no. Alright, I had one little failure to
feed there which dented the case. We've decided that, given the age of the
rifle, we are not going to fire that round. So I have three rounds here, let's see
what a three-round burst looks like. There we go. That fired so fast it felt like one! Alright, my second cartridge is not
quite coming up into the firing position. Remember guys, this rifle is, what, this
would have been made in '51 probably, which would make it 65 years old now. And has been fired extensively
by the School here at Shrivenham. So, There we go, give it a little help.
Got two rounds, let's try a two-round burst. Alright, so that moved a lot more
than on something like a 5.56. ... I've had the chance to shoot one of the XL64s,
which is in the 4.85 British cartridge. This moved a lot more in full-auto than
that thing did. Two round bursts with that, I was actually able to keep both rounds
on, like, a 12 inch target at 25-30 yards. This, I had one round on target
and one round up to the right. While that .280 cartridge ... it seems to be, as far
as I can tell, a really nice compromise rifle cartridge. It's not so much a machine gun
cartridge from the shoulder. If I had one of these, if I were dictating
its usage, for what that's worth, I would say stick to semi-auto. In the lighter stuff, the 5.56 and 4.85, and 5.45 Russian,
full-auto can be done a lot more controllably. This one, I think, is just a little bit over the
threshold for effective full-auto fire from the shoulder. But I tell you what, in semi-auto, it is fantastic. You know, most of the time, when we
look at guns on Forgotten Weapons, if they're rifles like this, that were potential military
service rifles that never made it ... past initial testing, There's usually a very good reason.
There's usually some horrible problem with the gun that makes it really
obvious why they weren't adopted. The EM-2 is actually kind of a different story. The overreaching ... you know, the predominant reason that this was never
actually put into production and adopted, (although it was briefly adopted), the reason was political controversy
over what the cartridge ought to be. And really, to be frank, it was
US Ordnance Department's obstinancy about retaining
a .30-06 powered cartridge, when this was very specifically
designed for a lesser powered cartridge. Now, looking back on it today, we can
see that that lesser powered cartridge is really what should have
been gone with in the 1950s. But for political reasons that didn't happen. I think as far as I can tell, this rifle
really is a fantastic, excellent rifle, certainly in 1950s context. And it's hard to say anything other than we
would have been ahead of ourselves, if this had been adopted. Rather than going
through a couple decades of .308 Winchester (7.62 NATO) as a service cartridge,
before finally acknowledging that ... that cartridge really is more powerful
than an infantry service rifle ought to be. And going to a lighter cartridge (which we have
today), going to something like the .280 I think would have been a really intelligent step
forward at that time. And it's too bad that it wasn't. In total, only about 55 of these were ever made,
and it's a shame, I'd love to have one of these, unfortunately I'm pretty sure it'll never happen,
but it was a fantastic experience to get to shoot one. A big thank you to the school here at
Shrivenham for giving me the opportunity. If you guys ever have the chance to check
out an EM-2, absolutely don't miss it. Thanks for watching.
