The 14.5×114mm (.57 calibre) is a

heavy machine gun A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable (carried by one person) and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or ...

and

anti-materiel rifle An anti-materiel rifle (AMR) is a rifle designed for use against military equipment, structures, and other hardware (materiel) targets. Anti-materiel rifles are chambered in significantly larger calibers than conventional rifles and are employed ...

cartridge used by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, the former

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a Collective security#Collective defense, collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Polish People's Republic, Poland, between the Sovi ...

, modern Russia, and other countries. It was originally developed for the PTRS and

PTRD The PTRD-41 () is an anti-tank rifle that was produced and used from 1941 by the Soviet Red Army during World War II. It is a single-shot weapon which fires the 14.5×114 mm round, which was able to penetrate German tanks such as the Panzer III a ...

anti-tank rifle An anti-tank rifle is an anti-materiel rifle designed to penetrate the vehicle armor, armor of armored fighting vehicles, most commonly tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles. The term is usually used for weapons that ca ...

s, and was later used as the basis for the

KPV heavy machine gun The KPV heavy machine gun (, an initialism for ) is a Soviet designed 14.5×114mm-caliber heavy machine gun, which first entered service as an infantry weapon in 1949. In the 1960s, the infantry version was taken out of production because it was ...

that formed the basis of the ZPU series anti-aircraft guns that is also the main armament of the BTR series of

armoured personnel carrier An armoured personnel carrier (APC) is a broad type of armoured military vehicle designed to transport personnel and equipment in combat zones. Since World War I, APCs have become a very common piece of military equipment around the world. Acc ...

s from the

BTR-60 The BTR-60 is the first vehicle in a series of Soviet Union, Soviet eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs). It was developed in the late 1950s as a replacement for the BTR-152 and was seen in public for the first time in 1961. BTR (vehi ...

to the

BTR-80 The BTR-80 () is an 8×8 wheeled Amphibious vehicle, amphibious armoured personnel carrier (APC) designed in the Soviet Union. It was adopted in 1985 and replaced the previous vehicles, the BTR-60 and BTR-70, in the Soviet Army. It was first de ...

and for heavy anti-materiel

sniper rifle A sniper rifle is a high-precision, long range shooting, long-range rifle. Requirements include high accuracy, reliability, mobility, concealment, and optics, for anti-personnel weapon, anti-personnel, anti-materiel rifle, anti-materiel and sur ...

Cartridge dimensions

The 14.5 × 114 mm has 42.53 ml (655

grains A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit ( caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and le ...

H₂O) cartridge case capacity. The exterior shape of the case was designed to promote reliable case feeding and extraction in

bolt-action rifle Bolt action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the turn-bolt via a bolt handle, most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the firearm (as most users are right-handed). The majority of b ...

semi-automatic rifle A semi-automatic rifle is a type of rifle that fires a single round each time the Trigger (firearms), trigger is pulled while automatically loading the next Cartridge (firearms), cartridge. These rifles were developed Pre-World War II, and w ...

s, and

s alike, under extreme conditions. 14.5 × 114 mm maximum cartridge dimensions. All dimensions in millimetres (mm). Americans define the shoulder angle at alpha/2 = 22.5 degrees. The common

rifling Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groov ...

twist rate Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groov ...

for this cartridge is 455 mm (1 in 17.91 in), 8 grooves, ⌀ lands = 14.50 mm, ⌀ grooves = 14.95 mm. According to the official guidelines, the 14.5 × 114 mm case can handle up to 360 MPa (52,213 psi) piezo pressure. In C.I.P. regulated countries every rifle cartridge combo has to be proofed at 125% of this maximum C.I.P. pressure to be certified for sale to consumers.

Ammunition types

* BS:

Armour-piercing Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate armour protection, most often including naval armour, body armour, and vehicle armour. The first, major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the t ...

incendiary original anti-tank round. The projectile weighs and is long with a core of

tungsten carbide Tungsten carbide (chemical formula: ) is a carbide containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. In its most basic form, tungsten carbide is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes through sintering for use in in ...

with of incendiary material in the tip. The overall round weighs approximately and is long. The projectile has a muzzle velocity of approximately and can penetrate of RHA steel at an incidence of 0 degrees at a range of , or at a range of . * B-32: Armour-piercing incendiary full-metal-jacket round with a

hardened steel The term hardened steel is often used for a plain-carbon steel, medium or high carbon steel that has been given heat treatment and then quenching followed by tempering (metallurgy), tempering. The quenching results in the formation of metastable ma ...

core. Projectile weight is and

muzzle velocity Muzzle velocity is the speed of a projectile (bullet, pellet, slug, ball/ shots or shell) with respect to the muzzle at the moment it leaves the end of a gun's barrel (i.e. the muzzle). Firearm muzzle velocities range from approximately t ...

is . Armour penetration at is of RHA at 90 degrees. * BZT: Armour-piercing incendiary tracer full-metal-jacket round with a steel core. Projectile weight is and muzzle velocity is . Tracer burns to at least . * MDZ:

High-explosive incendiary In warfare, high-explosive incendiary (HEI) is a type of ammunition specially designed to impart energy and therefore damage to its target in one or both of two ways: via a high-explosive charge and/or via its incendiary (fire-causing) effects. E ...

bullet of instant action. Projectile weight is . * ZP: Incendiary tracer round Cartridges use lacquered steel cases and percussion primers. Some countries also use brass cartridge cases. The propellant consists of smokeless powder with seven tubes, designated as "5/7NA powder". Two different versions of bullet series are known, the earlier has a conventional bullet jacket with a boat-tail. These have a long engraving portion that causes considerable barrel wear. The newer bullet types have a smaller engraving portion with a rounder boat-tail and were used from about 1957 onward. The cartridge has been manufactured in Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the former

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

. There are new Chinese armour-piercing types: * DGJ02: APIDS-T cartridges use tungsten penetrators, wrapped in discarding sabots (similar to the US military SLAP cartridges) with dual colour tracers to aid ranging. The sabot splits and leaves the penetrator between and from the muzzle. It has a muzzle velocity of and is quoted as being able to penetrate of armour plate set at an angle of 60° at . * DGE02: APHEI cartridges weigh between and . At it is quoted as having a 90 percent chance of being able to penetrate of armour plate set at 30°. At after penetrating a soft steel plate (representing an aircraft skin) it can further penetrate a thick steel plate producing 20 fragments. Upon explosion between 75 and 95 incendiary pieces are formed which have an 80% chance of igniting aviation fuel.

Chambered weapons

Anti-materiel rifles * Anzio rifle * Cadex CDX-X145 *

Denel NTW-20 The NTW-20 is a South African anti-materiel rifle, developed by Denel Mechem in the 1990s. It is intended for deployment against targets including parked aircraft, telecommunication masts, power lines, missile sites, radar installations, refine ...

* Gepard M-3 * Istiglal IST-14.5 * Mambi-1 AMR * PDSHP *

PTRS-41 The PTRS-41 () is a World War II-era semi-automatic anti-tank rifle firing the 14.5×114mm cartridge. Design The PTRS-41 was produced and used by the Soviet Union during World War II. In the years between the World Wars, the Soviet Union bega ...

(anti-tank rifle) *

PTRD-41 The PTRD-41 () is an anti-tank rifle that was produced and used from 1941 by the Soviet Red Army during World War II. It is a single-shot weapon which fires the 14.5×114 mm round, which was able to penetrate German tanks such as the Panzer III a ...

(anti-tank rifle) * Shaher * Snipex T-Rex *

Snipex Alligator The Snipex Alligator is a bolt-action, magazine-fed anti-materiel rifle chambered in 14.5×114mm manufactured by XADO Holding Ltd. Design The Snipex Alligator long-range large-caliber magazine-fed repeating rifle is designed to engage moving and ...

* Truvelo 14.5×114mm *

Vidhwansak Vidhwansak (Sanskrit: "Destroyer") is an Indian multi-caliber anti-materiel rifle (AMR) or large-caliber sniper rifle manufactured by Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli. It can be used in the anti-materiel role for destroying enemy bunkers, lightly ...

* Şer rifle (home made anti-materiel rifle) Machine guns * Slostin machine gun (heavy variant) *

** Chinese Type 56 (KPV) and Type 58 (KPVT) heavy machine guns * Type 02/ QJG-02 heavy machine gun Other * ZPU anti-aircraft guns * 2Kh35 inserted unified self-loading gun In addition to being chambered in multiple calibers, the Ukrainian Horizon's Lord rifle uses its own proprietary "12.7 × 114 HL" cartridge made by necking down a 14.5 × 114 mm cartridge case to accept a .50 BMG bullet. In essence, the 14.5x114mm cartridge is the parent case for the 12.7x114 HL.

References

External links

14,5x114 large-caliber cartridges
{{DEFAULTSORT:14.5x114mm 14.5×114mm firearms Military cartridges Pistol and rifle cartridges Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1941 Anti-materiel cartridges Soviet inventions

Cartridge dimensions

Ammunition types

Chambered weapons

See also

References

Further reading

External links