This testrifle caliber 9,3 x 70 Magnum is for sale.

The rifle fea-

tures a take-down stock, 4-round magazine and is mounted
with a Swarovski 4 to 12 variable scope.
Prive ex works = US$ 4,500

Following are excerpts from Hatari Times Nº 2 by myself and

Jon Speed, which give detailed information on this caliber. jacket, and finally a 19,5 g (300 gr) Brenneke TIG soft nose.
Old original cartridges are extremely scarce, and if you find one
© Copyright. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole and/or at all, it will cost you up to $ 500 each.
part of text and/or illustrations without the written permission of I found it quite strange that such an advanced car-
Harald Wolf / Hatari Times is strictly prohibited! tridge, readily available from a major ammo factory, never
received any recognition through hunting literature. The only
Text by Harald Wolf exception I am aware of is the book "Elchwald”(Moose Forest)
Master gunsmith Otto Bock of Berlin, the most renown outfitter by forestry superintendent Hans Kramer, who was the director
of early German hunters bound for Africa, was due to receive of the famous German moose reserve in eastern Prussia.
the credit for having invented one of the world’s most success- Kramer received a test rifle chambered for the 9,3 x 70
ful big game cartridges back in 1905, the 9,3 x 62. But with the Magnum and spoke highly of its performance on moose.
advent of more progressive propellants during the 1920s and However, at very low temperatures he occasionally had prob-
30s, the Bock-cartridge proved unsuitable, due to its limited lems with hangfires, which indicates that the primers were
case capacity, for any significant ballistic improvements. obviously not hot enough to ignite the charge of 86 grain of
Between the great wars, the ballistic standards of this power very slow buring powder. As I mentioned in the previous issue
class were set by the British .375 H&H Magnum. Bock’s 9,3 still of Hatari Times, I did a lot of research work on the German .500
led the market as far as sales went, mainly due to the excellent Schüler alias .500 Jeffery, but by all means, the 9,3 x 70
Mauser rifles chambered for this round, but couldn’t compete Magnum was a much tougher nut to crack! The one and only
with the .375 H&H in the long run. rifle chambered for this round which I managed to trace down,
was built by the Berlin gunmaker Ludwig Schiwy on special
The call for a faster and more powerful 9,3 cartridge order for Hermann Göring. For many years this rifle was in pos-
was picked up by Germany’s most advanced ammunition session of a famous American Mauser collector, but since he
designer, Wilhelm Brenneke. In the late 1920s he introduced died its whereabouts are unknown.
his 9,3 x 64, which was by all means on par with the .375 H&H, The D.W.M. 9,3 x 70 Magnum even had a worse fate
in the late 1920s. Brenneke’s 9,3 mm was designed to fit the than the 9,3 Brenneke. The gun trade refused to pick it up. No
standard length Mauser action perfectly, thus eliminating the rifles were made and the cartridge production was discontin-
need of an expensive and heavy magnum receiver. The adver- ued at the beginning of the war, and never resumed later on,
tised ballistics found in early Brenneke catalogs are pretty opti- while Otto Bock’s 9,3 x 62 is still tremendously popular, and
mistic with some degree of "blue sky.” Nevertheless, even the 9,3 x 64 Brenneke is still available with several facto-
Brenneke’s round was definitely equal to the .375 H&H, and ry loads.
still much better suited for a standard length action. The ammu- One day, Günter Frères, the last director of sporting
nition was loaded to Brenneke’s specifications by D.W.M. ammunition research at D.W.M. made me a fantastic present in
(Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken). Surprisingly
though, the Mauser factoriy, as well as the bigger gun factories
of Suhl did not adopt this proprietary design, and the 9,3
Brenneke never went into the circulation it certainly deserved.
While the other big German ammo manufacturer,
R.W.S. was still in favor of Bock’s 9,3 and offered so called
magnum loads with light and sharply pointed bullets to gain a
better trajectory, their competitor, D.W.M. developed its own
high velocity 9,3 mm cartridge.
They designed a whole line of magnum cartridges
based on necked down .404 basic cases, a 7,62 mm (.300), 8
mm and 9,3 mm, back in the late 1920s. The biggest of the pro-
totypes was the only one, which went into commercial produc-
tion with the serial number 569 and the official metric designa-
tion 9,3 x 70 Magnum. Unfortunately, the exact year of intro-
duction cannot be verified any more. However, the D.W.M.
ammo handbook of 1930 shows five different loads for the 9,3
x 70 Magnum: 15 grammes (231grain) soft point, 17 g (262 gr)
Starkmantel soft point, 18,5 g (285 gr) soft nose and full metal
 of the magazine has a double purpose; it also serves as a
strong lever to unscrew the assembly front screw - a very neat
but reliable and simple setup.
Some strange theorists make a big noise telling that
the metric 9,3 mm is illegal to hunt dangerous game with, since
most African game departments require a minimum .375 cal-
iber (actually 9,55 mm) by law. I am a stubborn man, and hon-
estly, I couldn’t care less! No experienced hunter will ever
question the 9,3 x 64 Brenneke for the purpose of buffalo hunt-
ing, not to talk about the ultra powerful 9,3 x 70 Magnum. To
form of the original factory blue prints # 569 = 9,3 x 70 use the .300 Magnums on thick skinned game is a different
Magnum! It did not take much time to have a set of chamber- story though.
ing reamers made and a new pressure barrel fitted to the Unfortunately, the variety of bullets available for the
receiver of the firearms proof house. I necked down some new metric 9,3 mm is rather limited. The most popular German fac-
.404 Jeffery shells and started to shoot. I failed to duplicate the tory ammo is loaded with the 19 g (293 gr) Brenneke TUG soft
old top load with the 19,5 g TIG, but then those original figures point, which is available to handloaders as well. I didn’t try this
were taken from 28" barrel, while my pressure barrel is not bullet, because I personally don’t like it, I just had some
even 26". Nevertheless, without approaching the same high unpleasant experiences with this projectile, although many
chamber pressures, the 9,3 x 70 Magnum was ballistically sportsmen are very fond of it. For hunting the heaviest big
clearly on par with the .375 Weatherby Magnum. game in thick bush, I chose the 320 gr Woodleigh full metal
With a total length of 89 mm (3.50"), the 9,3 x 70 is jackets and weld core soft points. This bullet is a reproduction
considerably shorter than the .375 H&H and its blown out of the projectile for the old British .360 N° 2 Nitro Express. For
improved versions, due to the fatter case, has more powder long range shooting on open plains, I loaded the pointed
capacity. The short over all length makes the 9,3 x 70 Magnum SWIFT A-frame of 250 gr. Lastly I worked up a reduced load
more suitable for a standard length bolt action receiver. In fact, with the Woodleigh 285 gr weld core to employ the rifle on wild
the modern proprietary .375 Dakota is very similar to the old boar and stag hunting at home, thus making the rifle even more
9,3 x 70 Magnum. I have to admit, that I have always versatile.
been happy with the performance of my .375 H&H, but still, On safari, I was able to secure some wildebeest for
there were occasions when I wanted to reach out farther and their meat. These tough creatures are much better to test bul-
didn’t want to bother about aiming high in a hurry. Since I was let performance than a hundred wet phone books. If buffalo
scheduled to travel to Zambia, where long shots are common were as tough as wildebeest for every pound they weight, it
on open plains, and I didn’t want to take a second rifle with me, would come close to committing suicide to hunt buffalo at all! I
I finally decided to build myself a 9,3 x 70 Magnum just for fun found the Zambian wildebeest, far out on open dambos, quite
to see how it performs in the field. difficult to stalk. There was no shot closer than 250 yards. The
All my .375s had 24" barrels, which I considered a bit 250 gr SWIFT proved to be lethal Wildebeest medicine,
too short for the heavy powder charge of the 9,3 x 70, so I although after smashing heavy bones some bullets did not exit
rather went for a 26" barrel. I am a rather tall guy (more than 6 and were lodged, as usual, under the skin on the far side.
ft.), so a long barreled gun does not bother me. As a matter of These bullets produced some impressive one shot kills on
fact, a long rifle swings much better than a badly balanced wildebeest, which is saying a lot! A reproduction of the original
short one and the 9,3 x 70 Magnum was not designed to hunt pre-war 17 g (262 gr) Starkmantel-Geschoss with aerodynam-
the rain forest anyway. Next I milled a four-round-magazine ic shape, adding a little more sectional density, should be the
from solid steel and fitted it to a very nice model 1909 Argentine real forte for long range shooting. Anyway, even the light 250
Mauser action. To utilize the flat trajectory of the cartridge, I gr SWIFT produced a trajectory comparable to a high velocity
chose a very powerful scope a Swarovski variable 4 to 12 small bore magnum.
power with large light gathering objective and mounted it on The very heavy for diameter 320 gr Woodleigh bullets were dif-
custom made quick detachable low swing mounts. The ficult to beat at the normal shooting distances as they occur in
Swarovski people asked me on this occasion also to fit an Miombo forest and bush country. Suffice to mention that the
LRS-scope with integrated range finder to take it to a field test few recovered bullets, SWIFT and Woodleigh alike, showed an
with my 9,3 x 70 Mag. (see page 57). average of 95% weight retention.
I am not going to bother the readers with details of the The 9,3 x 70 Magnum turned out to be the perfect rifle for
trigger, open sights (any rifle should have open sights, I sup- Zambia, where buffalo, hippo, lion and some of the large ante-
pose!), safety etc., but the first 9,3 x 70 Magnum built
after 60 years - maybe the first one ever to see Africa, was
going to have another interesting feature. I like to travel hassle-
free and dearly hate those silly questions "Which type of musi-
cal instrument am I carrying in my long aluminum case to
Africa.” The 9,3 x 70 had to be a take down one. Now I deeply
mistrust detachable barrels on Mauser type actions. I am not
confident that these keep shooting straight if the barrel fitting is
loose enough to unscrew it by hand. The British gunmakers
used to alter the Mauser action, so that the barreled action
could be easily detached from the stock, and that was exactly
what I wanted. Barreled action and stock would fit diagonally
into my Samsonite case, and nobody would realize than I am
traveling with a gun. The most intelligent way of building a
detachable stock rifle, which can be taken down without the aid
of any tools, was invented by American genius Charles Newton
with the Buffalo-Newton Rifle back in the 1920s. The floorplate
ballistics
Load Bullet V0 E0 V0 E0 Trajectory (m : cm)
m/s Joules ft/s ft.Ibs 50 100 150 200 300
orig. DWM 15 gr SP 905 6,151 2,969 4,537 + 2,4 + 5,6 + 4,2 0 - 26
orig. DWM 17 gr StM 882 6,602 2,894 4,869 + 2,4 + 5,5 + 4,3 0 - 24,9
orig. DWM 18,5 gr StM 846 6,622 2,776 4,886 + 3,3 + 7,1 + 5,9 0 - 33,1
orig. DWM 19,5 gr TIG 850 7,034 2,789 5,188 (NA)
Handload 16,2 gr SWIFT 903 6,636 2,963 4,895 (long range load)
Handload 20,75 gr Wood. 795 6,559 2,608 4,838 (short range load)
Handload 18,5 gr Wood. 767 5,443 2,516 4,015 (reduced load)

lope are usually taken in thick cover at short distances, while

lechwe, sitatunga, wildebeest etc. mostly require fairly long
shots. There was really no need to take a large bore for bush
hunting and a high velocity magnum for open plains, the 9,3 x
70 Magnum did it all.
I never hunted the Altai Mountains of Kazakstan for
maral or the Rocky Mountains for elk, but I can imagine that the
9,3 x 70, with its flat trajectory, would be perfectly suited for elk,
moose and bear as well.
I don’t know why this powerful cartridge with its
advanced ballistics failed commercially. I have never seen it
advertised by any gunmaker. It’s still an up to date design after
60 years! To me personally, my experiments reproved my the-
ory, that you simply cannot design an entirely new cartridge or
rifle for sporting purpose today. Everything, and I really mean
it, had already been developed thoroughly in the 1920s and
30s. Modern designs are merely copies. There is no doubt
about the fact, that the 60 year old 9,3 x 70 Magnum will stand
its ground against any of the highly touted modern wildcat car-
tridges of the same .375 class.

© Copyright. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole and/or Göring was also an avid hunter and collector of sporting guns
part of text and/or illustrations without the written permission of and rifles. His older brother, Karl Göring, was a keen African
Harald Wolf / Hatari Times is strictly prohibited! hunter. He fought with Lettow-Vorbeck in the German East
Africa campaign in 1914-18. The photo shown here with a huge
The 9,3 x 70 Magnum of Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring Buffalo was taken in northern Tanganyka in 1913. Karl Göring
by Jon Speed is holding a Model B Mauser in 9,3 x 62, a very popular caliber
for African hunting in those days.
Besides being the head of the German Airforce, Prime Minister Hermann Göring’s rise in power in the 1930s made it
of Prussia, Minister of Civil Aviation, and generally being possible for him to obtain the coveted position as head of the
Hitler’s most loyal follower during World War II., Hermann German Hunting Association, the title "Reichsjägermeister”.
 was made by Berlin Gunsmith Ludwig Schiwy who made up
several other rifles for Göring. Schiwy used an Original
Oberndorf Double Square Bridge Magnum action to build this
most interesting gun.
This rifle has several unusual features. Because of the
long Zeiss 6X scope it was decided to place the front mount on
the barrel shank while the rear square bridge was milled down
and fitted with a typical double claw base. Mauser collectors
always question why the rear square bridges on many actions
were cut off by custom gunsmiths!
The barrel is some 27 inches long and has a soldered
on block front sight base and sling swivel. The normal magnum
Through this position he was managing the German state’s magazine box uses the typical straddle style floor plate with
forestry and hunting reserves like a despotic king, reserving all push button release. The photo of the floor plate shows the fine
the best trophies for himself personally. While thousands of engraving of the Göring family crest. Double set triggers are fit-
people, soldiers and innocent civilians alike, died every day a ted which are not often encountered on other Magnum
miserable death during the ferocious war, Göring only seemed Mausers!
to care about his own privileges. Before the war, the British There is a pop up cheek piece installed in the stock.
ambassador, who was a frequent guest at Göring’s favorite This ensures a correct head position for the fairly high mount-
hunting area Rominten, described him as a somehow not ed scope. The most unusual feature of this rifle are two, left
unsympathic but unscrupulous freebooter. and right, adjustable spring loaded spikes which can be
Hermann Göring always kept in touch with many of the extended and gently pushed into a tree trunk to assist in hold-
countries private gunmakers and had many fine guns made up ing the rifle absolutely steady! This mechanical feature has
to his specifications. Most of his arms were various double and been seen on some other German and Austrian custom guns.
combination guns. For his extensive big game hunting he Such a rifle was most suited for shooting big red deer at
seemed to prefer an over-and-under double rifle caliber 8 x 75 extreme ranges.
R, but he also owned several fine custom bolt action rifles Many of Hermann Göring’s fine guns were captured by
made up on Original Oberndorf Mauser actions. allied forces and occasionally turn up at auctions and gun
One of the most unusual examples was chambered for shows. This fine example was once owned by Lester Womack
the then new 9,3 x 70 Magnum, a high power cartridge (deceased), a well known Mauser collector. It then passed
designed by the "Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken” on hands and was sold two years ago for around $ 28,000.
a necked down .404 Jeffery case. The ballistics were notice-
ably superior to the British .375 H&H Magnum. The rifle itself