I've been shooting the 6.5 Carcano since 1964. One of my favorite surplus calibers. I run NM MILSURPS, a long range surplus military firearm club. We shoot 50 Saturdays a year.
I ran a test a few years back on how well the round,as issued, would penetrate a 1" thick steel plate at 300 meters, The round almost went through! This was the down fall of the cartridge as loaded by the Italian military. It zipped through the enemy troops like a flying drill bit. The Britt's called the flesh wounds an "Innie Outie". Almost no energy dump unless it hit large bone.
Over the last 30 years I've run many test on 6.5 Carcano, 6.5 Jap, 6.5 Greek (6.5 M/S,) 6.5 Dutch and of course the 6.5 Swede.
The latter calibers having been used in wars for many years. At the turn of the last century, the 6.5 M/S killed many elephants in Africa.
Our forefathers were brilliant gun and cartridge designers. The Carcano action is one of the strongest made. The gain twist rifling in the '91 rifles is a brilliant design, and it works and increased barrel life by many hundreds of rounds.
The so called Torpedo bullet of 139-160 grains is impressive with its retained energy on target. And they are accurate in the hands of a shooter that knows how to shoot them.
I've shot all of the above calibers at my range at 800 meters. All did very well on target. My rifles are very good to unissued condition. Not Beaters with thousands of rounds threw them and poorly maintained.
"lets design a 6.5 caliber to fit in the AR type platform"...like the 6.5 Creedmoor. ....Gee a long 6.5 bullet really flies well!
Yes the cartridges listed are old, but they worked well and were deadly at 1,000 yards.
