In the 1930s, in Germany, the history of the first high-velocity small guns ammunition begins. Harold Gerlich, a well-known designer in Europe, served as the company's president for the production of hunting rifles and carbines under the name "Halger." Gerlich's primary area of focus was developing a new rifle cartridge with the fastest potential bullet speed. Harold Gerlich declared in the spring of 1930 that he had achieved an initial bullet velocity of 1400 m/s when firing from a rifle of his own design, caliber 7 millimeters, and was sure that he could raise velocities above 1650 m/s. The firearms press was roiled by this information, and many well-known experts were dubious of Gerlich's assertion.
A 6.5 gram bullet's initial speed was 1475 m/s when Gerlich tested a rifle and 7 mm rounds at the Wannsee test site in March 1931. Such a bullet achieved a speed of 1600 m/s in June of the same year, and when employing a higher charge, an unfathomable speed of 1700 m/s. These findings disproved the doubts of the designer's then detractors.
Gerlich resolutely maintained his expertise in his written works, remaining mute regarding the design of his bullet and the design of the rifle barrel. Later, it was discovered that Gerlich's "super-high-speed" bullet was actually an enhanced and modified Karl Puff system bullet that had been tested in 1907–1908. The diameter of Puff's bullet, which was led by a special belt, was the same as the diameter of the barrel along the rifling fields. Additionally uncommon was the barrel rifling, which was progressive in nature and deep in the breech and smaller in the muzzle. The bullet encountered unyielding opposition as it moved through the barrel because the bullet belt filled the rifling and flattened as it moved through the bore. Additionally, a compressed pallet of gunpowder was placed on the back of the bullet. When this pallet entered the rifling, it fragmented into smaller pieces that burned more slowly than the main charge and increased the bullet's speed. The powder pan served as a supplementary mechanism to help position the bullet in the sleeve correctly before the shot, and when it was fired, it centered the bullet as it entered the barrel rifling.
The bullet used by Puff had a leading part caliber of 7.78 mm, a girdle caliber of 9.22 mm, a mass of 12.7 g, and a transverse load of 27.7 g/cm2. This bullet's starting speed was 902 meters per second. However, neither hunting nor fighting firearms at the time employed the Karl Puff design. Harold Gerlich successfully created the Puff system 20 years later by adding a second leading belt to the pool while "substantially increasing the diameter" of both belts.
Gerlich's innovations may have remained the exclusive domain of a small group of ballistics experts, but during the tests, the bullet's huge penetrating effect unintentionally came to light. According to thick steel armor, it was discovered that a bullet with a lead core weighing 6.5 g and an initial speed of 1450–1475 m/s creates a funnel with a depth of 15 mm and a diameter of 25 mm. On the same armor, a conventional fighting bullet barely caused scratches. The diameter of the hole a Gerlich bullet made when it was fired at a 12 mm thick armor plate from 50 meters away was 15 mm. More research has revealed that bullets traveling faster than 1150 m/s in armor produce breaks rather than the typical type of holes. In this scenario, the armor plate where the bullet impacts becomes brittle, like glass. In other words, steel was able to "break through" because a high beginning speed made it possible to reach its temporal yield strength. As a result, a novel method of shattering steel barriers was actually developed, in which the projectile's high beginning speed—not its energy or other physical characteristics—acted as the deciding determinant.
The Gerlich system's accuracy far beyond that of regular army rifles: at a range of 100 meters, five bullets weighing 6.5 g fit into a circle with a diameter of 1.7 cm, while five rounds weighing 11.7 g dropped into a circle with a diameter of 26.6 cm at a distance of 1000 meters.
Additionally, the bullet's fast speed meant that external factors like wind, humidity, and air temperature had relatively little of an impact on its accuracy. As a result of the trajectory's flat form, shooting needed fewer sight adjustments.
The two main "highlights" of Harold Gerlich's innovations were a tapered barrel and the so-called bullet weight coefficient, which alters as the bullet passes down the barrel. The bullet is given the maximum potential speed by the tapered barrel, which also enables you to retain this speed along the flight path. The barrel smoothly tapers towards the muzzle. The weight coefficient does not vary when a typical bullet is fired from a typical barrel. Naturally, you can simply reduce a bullet's weight to enhance its speed, but such a bullet will be unstable on its course. The Gerlich design bullet was an attempt to combine high starting velocity and stability on the trajectory since the weight coefficient increased almost twofold as a result of the bullet's compression in the barrel, meaning that it maintained the speed it was given almost as effectively as a heavy bullet.
But this innovation also had some serious drawbacks, which made this kind of rifle extinct. Therefore, one of these rifles' biggest flaws was their expensive conical barrel manufacture. The fact is that the barrels of rifled firearms were created by drilling at the start of the 20th century. Naturally, creating such a "non-formatted" barrel required a lot of work. During the tests, the second flaw was found. The situation was as follows: after the 400th shot, the bolt started to open slowly; after the 500th, manual opening ceased completely; instead, a wooden hammer was used to plow open the bolt. His research revealed that the metal on the locking components had sagged and hardened. That is, too much recoil actually riveted the locking components. And this is in what is essentially the strongest rifle locking mechanism ever made. The shooting resumed when these breakdowns were repaired in the workshop. However, the bolt once more ceased working after 400 more shots. It broke the bolt handle off during attempts to unlock it. In addition, the combat larva's left locking stop malfunctioned, one ejector cracked, and the second disintegrated. Some cartridges' capsules failed to withstand the pressure and slipped out upon fire, allowing powder gases to escape backwards. The firearm could only withstand 900 bullets as a result, and without repair, it could only work halfway. This implied that such firearms were inherently unfit for military application.
Ultra-high-speed ammunition needed more testing despite their obvious design problems because they obviously had room for improvement. Gerlich travelled to the UK to work on the development of an ultra-high-speed cannon before moving to the USA because the German government did not support his research. Experimental tests on the 6.197 mm caliber, ultra-high-speed Halger-Ultra rifle were conducted in 1932–1933 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. This system's bullet had an initial velocity of 1760 m/s. Gerlich believed that a rifle bullet's muzzle velocity might be raised to 2000 m/s. After Gerlich arrived in Denmark from America. Furthermore, the Danish government has taken the necessary steps to guarantee its safety. In 1934, Harold was returning from Denmark to the United States when he passed away abruptly inside the railway compartment as it was traveling through France. Such a specialist was harmful in the camp to any enemy on the eve of the new world. Many historians conclude that Harold Gerlich was merely "removed" as a result of this. Gerlich's innovations were afterwards safely forgotten and only applied to a handful of aircraft guns for jet aircraft. In small arms, the concept in fact "dead."
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