Bullet ID and more...

[depaor01]

Evening Gentlemen,

I'm in the position of assembling a "virtual archive" of items relating to Ireland's "Revolutionary period". This entails visiting various institutions and photographing and scanning their holdings of items. Here is one I'd like an opinion on. It is held in an archive in Dublin.

I believe it confirms the theory that the Irish Volunteers who instigated the 1916 Rising were in the habit of using Dum Dum rounds. It was allegedly found in the burnt out shell of the General Post Office and all I know is that the rounds are not Lee Enfield, and I believe they have been altered at the top to be "non-standard" to say the least.

Could any pals more knowledgeable that I confirm this or otherwise comment?

Thanks,

Dave

[MikB]

I can see charger clips and Berdan primer pockets that look very much like Lee-Enfield rounds to me. The bullet indicated by the red arrow could be a fully-jacketed roundnose Mk.VI Ball, or a softpoint where the lead core didn't melt, but it doesn't look as if it could be a Dum Dum hollowpoint such as Mk.IV Ball.

The bright tip of the bullet certainly looks as if there's something different about it - a softpoint like Mk.III or commercial equivalent would be regarded similarly to a 'dumdum' since it would cause wounds of great severity, but could have been legitimately manufactured and purchased as hunting ammunition. Some may have been disposed of by the British Army after the Hague Protocol outlawed them for active military service. Have you any better pictures? This one won't stand much magnification, and it's a pity you can't probe that tip to see if it's lead or heat-discoloured jacket material - though it looks almost too neat to be anything other than a softpoint. It's even possible there are small longitudinal cuts in the jacket behind the exposed tip, but I can't quite be sure what I'm seeing. If so, maybe TonyE would correct me, but I'd think they'd be commercial hunting rounds rather than any issued Ball mark.

Regards,

MikB

[depaor01]

Thanks for that MikB, the resolution is because of the 100k limit. I'll zoom the appropriate areas tomorrow.

Dave

[centurion]

I think you need more than one round with a damaged point to make the case. With one round in amongst the debris there is always the possibility that it could have been damaged post conflict. You won't get a conviction on that!

[TonyE]

As you say Mik, that looks like a normal 215 grain round nosed bullet, either Mark II or Mark VI. It is not a Mark IV or V (and certainly not a Mark III).

However, if Dave can post a close up of that area of the photo we can be more definite.

REgards

TonyE

[depaor01]

Thanks lads... More tomorrow!

[auchonvillerssomme]

The whole thing looks staged, that looks very much like a training round I have.

[MikB]

Looking at the picture again, I'm forced to wonder how the bullet tip got like that.

If it's exposed lead, why is it shiny instead of white-oxidised?

If that part of the exhibit's kept clean to show the type of bullet, there ought to be a caption somewhere declaring that.

Regards,

MikB

[TonyE]

I don't think the picture is staged, Mick. That is exactly the sort of slag i would expect to see after a fire. Ammunition in a fire does not burst the case but merely pops the cap and bullet since there is nothing to contain the pressure. I think the shine on the top of that bulllet is reflection from the cupro-nickel, but a close up picture will tell more.

With regard to your round, what is the headstamp please? It is not a training round as it is too like a ball round but it may be an Inspector's cartridge. Is there any trace of silvering on the case or in the cap pocket?

Regards

TonyE

[auchonvillerssomme]

Hi Tony, there aren't any markings, it is a .303 and basically what you see is what is there, there is no sign of silvering, there are 3 crimps but nothing to tell who what or where.

[TonyE]

Thanks Mick. I suspect in that case it is a factory dummy of some sort.

Cheers

tony

[auchonvillerssomme]

What would it have been intended for? Display or sample?

[shippingsteel]

I suspect in that case it is a factory dummy of some sort.

Probably the same type of dummies that stamped all those late-war Wilkinson and Sanderson bayonets ...

Cheers, S>S

[TonyE]

Yes, exactly that.

Whereas a training drill round is made to look as different as possible from a ball round by silvering, flutes, red wood bullets etc., a factory dummy for display or a give away sample is really just an unloaded ball round. I have them in various calibres.

Interesting that it is unheadstamped though.

Regards

TonyE

[auchonvillerssomme]

Apologies for the little hijack of the thread.

I think I may have posted this before, there seemed to be many statments made about the 'rebels' use of 'exploding' and soft nosed bullets I wonder if it isn't easy to place to much weight and emphasis into the statements. There is little proof one way or the other.

REBELS' SOFT-NOSED BULLETS.

HC Deb 31 May 1916 vol 82 cc2686-72686

§26.

Mr. GRANT

asked the Under-Secretary of State for War from whom the-soft-nosed bullets recently found amongst the rebel ammunition in Ireland were purchased, and by what firms they were made?

<a class="speech-permalink permalink" href="

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/may/31/rebels-soft-nosed-bullets#S5CV0082P0_19160531_HOC_61"

rel="bookmark" title="Link to this speech by Mr Harold Tennant">§

Mr. TENNANT

There is no official information as to the source from which these bullets were obtained by the rebels, but the hon. Member may have observed that the hon. Member for North Somerset, in a question he put to me yesterday, suggested that these bullets might be

2687

identical in character with certain flat-topped leaden bullets used by the Turks in Mesopotamia, Aden, and on the Egyptian front. I do not think, however, that my hon. Friend intended to charge the Turks with having anything to do with the supply of flat-topped bullets to the insurgents in Dublin.

Apologies if I sound a bit grumpy today, I have missed out on a very nice early Eley display board.

[depaor01]

Thanks for everything so far - here's the closeup. I suspect that the "shininess" of the tip is purely a result of handling over the years and isn't deliberate:

No problem with the hijack... All adds to the mix.

[TonyE]

It is as I thought, just a shine on the cupro-nickel envelope. That is no "Dum Dum" bullet, simply a British military 215 grain round nosed ball bullet. probably a Mark VI but possibly a Mark II (there is no external difference). If the headstamp on the cases is legible then that would resolve the issue. The bestr candidate for reading the headstamp appears to be the case to the right of the present close-up.

Regards

TonyE

[centurion]

There appears to be slight damage to the tip [ a small flattened or chipped 'facet' ] but more likely to be accidental damage at some time than an attempt to produce a dum dum effect.

[TonyE]

Yes, that could very well be a "snub" caused by a misfeed from the magazine.

Regards

TonyE

[depaor01]

There appears to be slight damage to the tip [ a small flattened or chipped 'facet' ] but more likely to be accidental damage at some time than an attempt to produce a dum dum effect.

It was that damage I thought was deliberate - an attempt to "whittle" the top to be more blunt.

Now this prompts another thought - I was unaware of the existence of round-tipped ball ammunition in WWI. Would this type have caused more severe injury (bigger exit wounds) than, for instance, modern day 7.62mm?

Thanks for all of your comments. As usual a treasure trove of expertise.

Regards,

Dave

[MikB]

Yes, agreed - most likely Mk.VI after all.

There is an admittedly rather weak literary angle on this subject - in the 1926 play 'The Plough And The Stars' the Irish Nationalist playwright Sean O'Casey shows British soldiers during the Easter Rising believing the rebels were using 'dum-dums' though commentaries admit that there was little if any evidence for this belief.

Of course it's just possible that gruesome wounds to British soldiers may in fact have been inflicted by the Mk.VII ball. Tommies of WW1 would not be used to seeing colleagues injured by this round.

Regards,

MikB

[centurion]

It isn't the bluntness that makes a dum dum. It's the explosive deformation of the soft lead core on impact. Snipping off the nose of a jacketed round exposes the core and allows this to happen.

Both British and German ammo was jacketed and could be "dum dumised" in this way. French ammo was solid and could not.

[TonyE]

It was that damage I thought was deliberate - an attempt to "whittle" the top to be more blunt.

Now this prompts another thought - I was unaware of the existence of round-tipped ball ammunition in WWI. Would this type have caused more severe injury (bigger exit wounds) than, for instance, modern day 7.62mm?

Thanks for all of your comments. As usual a treasure trove of expertise.

Regards,

Dave

The severity of wounds depends on a number of factors, and just because the bullet was round nosed does not per se mean the wounds were more severe. The study of gunshot wounds is a complete branch of medicine in itself and cannot be answered in any detail here.

What caused many people, doctors incuded, to assume that Dum Dum bullets were being used in WWI (and probably in Ireland as Mik says) is the fact that people were unused to seeing the result of high velocity bullet wounds. This applied to all pointed HV bullets and the Mark VII was perhaps more prone to this due to its tendency to flip over and break if it struck bone.

Probably the worst effect though was the cavitation these bullets produced as they passed through muscle,resulting in large amounts of dead tissue. Nowadays it is known that the first priority in dealing with GSW is to cut away as much of the damaged tissue as possible.

Returning to you post, Mark VI round nosed ammunition was used extensively by Territorial and Dominion units in the early part of the war. In fact Australia only switched production from Mark VI to pointed Mark VII in February 1918.

Picture attached shows a genuine Dum Dum round with the lead tip (i.e. one made at Dum Dum Arsenal India) and a British Mark IV hollow nosed bullet from 1899.

Regards

TonyE

[centurion]

Dave

I don't know if this will clarify or confuse but whilst the original soft nosed dum dum rounds were made at Dum Dum not all rounds made at Dum Dum were dum dums and not all dum dums were made at Dum Dum. When soft nose and hollow point rounds were outlawed for use in warfare (but not hunting). Dum Dum produced 'conventional' jacketed rounds. This sometimes gave rise to accusations that the British were using dum dums when ammo boxes stencilled Dum Dum were spotted by journalists (as happened apparently in the South African War). Other manufacturing plants would still produce soft nosed and/or hollow point for hunting use (effectively dum dums).

Unofficial dum dums could be produced by cutting off the point of a jacketed round to expose the lead (although I suspect that this may not have been great for the balistic qualities of the round). There was a general order issued in WW1 that any enemy soldier captured with rounds tampered with in this way on his possession who could not readily prove that he had been issued with them by a higher authority could be shot virtually on the spot without the need for too much formality. I believe that the Germans issued similar instructions.

[4thGordons]

I will have to dig for the reference but years ago when I led a student trip to Ireland and we went around all of the Easter Rising sites (and recreated a lot of the photos - which was great fun and a useful teaching tool) I remember reading that the ammunition supplied with the "Howth Mausers" (which I believe was 11mm) was of an obsolete lead type and this gave rise to these sorts of complaints.(as documented by Mick's Hansard quote)

it may have been in Max Caulfield's book or perhaps Tim Pat Coogan's book on the Civil War...

[edit - found what I was thinking of: Tim Pat Coogan & George Morrison - The Irish Civil War p 85: has a picture of a box of 20 Mauser-Gewehre M71/84 rounds and the caption: "outlawed by the Hague in 1900, this out of date ammunition was sold to the Irish Volunteers in 1914 by less than reputable arms dealers"

There is also a photo on the same pageshowing the rifles and a large crate of ammunition which appears to be marked WW&M 1390 Hamburg Patronen fur.....(the rest is illegible to me)]

Chris