Explosive Bullets

[petrick]

Sorry to say ive got nooh expireince what so ever iff explosive bullets were used, but iff they would make caroons were the soldier involved refers to exploding bullets there should be a truth in it, don't you think?

coo-ee

patrick

[NIGEL]

Very good point Patrick, as up to now all the evidence had gone the other way, one night i spent hours on the net trying to find stuff and failed, but this takes it in another direction now.

[robbie]

Absolutely agree. Can't do without the fags!!

Robbie

[orcgeneral]

I read in this one book about this ANZAC soldiers experiences in Gallipoli. In it the soldier said that the: "The Turks were very liberal in their use of explosive bullets."

[Max Poilu]

Nigel and others,

The following is a fantastic resource and will provide much first hand information on the effects and actions of bullets in the Great War - really worth a look:

http://www.ku.edu/carrie/specoll/medical/delorme.htm

[bkristof]

Nasty wounds, even when it is just a S or D bullet...

[Chris Boonzaier]

Any thoughts to this one ?

[Chris Boonzaier]

From the side

[Guest]

Any thoughts to this one ?

My thoughts are that this is a post production modification, probably unofficial. I can't see it being ballistically stable.

[NIGEL]

Giles

I did some poking around with Bullet manufacturers and think i may have cracked part of this.

The modern high velocity bullet, pointed and tapered at the back.= Long range and as to the report in the link you gave, will tumble on striking the target, and penertrating.

Round nose cylindrical type bullets made today, have mostly soft nose tips and will mushroom dramatically on hitting the taget thus expelling all the energy into the prey and a good chance of killing outright.== Hunting Bullets.

Now was this the thinking way back then, that a round nose cylindrical bullet would cause severe damage to the enemy when hitting them and obviously improved by the soldier himself with a hacksaw, even though the bullets range and velocity would be dramatically reduced.

[MikB]

The headstamp on the .303 round isn't visible, but it could be a commercial hunting round. I've certainly seen similar slotted jackets on much larger British big-game bullets, like .500 Nitro Express. Such a mod would be extremely difficult to do in the field without making a hell of a mess of the jacket.

Hesketh-Prichard believed that Germans occasionally reversed bullets for sniping - the comments that this may have been to emulate capped shot for AP purposes are interesting and have a strong appeal. Snipers usually shoot at a distance at which instantaneous stopping power is not a prize worth risking loss of accuracy for. Besides, the turnover tendency of many standard hardball bullets, as evidenced in earlier postings, is quite savage enough without any assistance - I've seen .303s recovered from a sandstop all bent into a vee shape, and some snapped in half by these forces. It's easy to imagine wounds from such bullets looking as if they were inflicted by something explosive.

Regards,

MikB

[Chris Boonzaier]

The round I posted has an "E" on the one side of the primer and a "B" on the other.

When I was a kid I visited the Boer war museum at Colesberg. it was in the old bank and as noone else was there the old lady that ran the museum showed my father the old bank Vault. The museum had a pile of stuff stored there including a box of shrapnel and bullets collected from the battlefield over the years. There was a lot of 303 rounds, all of them were this brown color. I was allowed to take a handfull, one of them was this one, all the others were round nosed 303 rounds.

I have always wondered if it was a factory dum dum or a field made one.

All the best

Chris

[truthergw]

I can't lay my hand on the reference at this moment, but were armour piercing bullets and 'elephant guns' not used from very early in the war against steel loopholes?

[N.S.Regt.]

German A.P. Rounds were used early but in limited numbers I do have 1915 dated examples but they were developed a little earlier. The Mauser anti-tank rifle was used in 1918 and again in limited numbers.

Regards

N.S. Regt.

[MikB]

I can't lay my hand on the reference at this moment, but were armour piercing bullets and 'elephant guns' not used from very early in the war against steel loopholes?

Could be Hesketh-Prichard "Sniping in France" again. He mentions testing German loophole plates with various heavy elephant rifles, as well as .333 Jeffreys, and finding they "pierced them like butter". The .333 seems to have been a bit of a favourite of his. I can't readily find details of its ballistics, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was fairly close to the .338s of modern sniping fashion.

Regards,

MikB

[Gary Samson]

I photographed this loophole plate at Vimy last summer. I didn't make a note of which line it was in so can anyone tell me if this is a German plate or one used by the Canadians?

Gary

[Edward_N_Kelly]

Nigel and others,

The following is a fantastic resource and will provide much first hand information on the effects and actions of bullets in the Great War - really worth a look:

http://www.ku.edu/carrie/specoll/medical/delorme.htm

Ah yes - Dr Miller.

Very knowledgable and runs the WWI list out of UKAS.

His points on death of von Richtofen have been quoted in another thread.

(A very pleasant chap to have lunch with....)

Cheers

Edward

[Max Poilu]

Gary,

That sniper plate you illustrate above is a British plate. I have one in my garden...there is an example in Le Tommy's 'trench' and also at the La Targette museum.

To see the topic with pictures click here.

[Doc2]

I have a group of medals to 283536 Pte. Antonios Martin which I had found a couple of interesting facts about him. The first is that he was born in Turkey and the second is he was wounded in the right arm by a explosive bullet. The wound was quite severe and he lost quite a bit of movement and feeling in it. I thought that these rounds were not used on personel like Dum Dums. Does anyone know anthing about their use during the war.

Best regards

N.S.Regt.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It appears that in this thread we are tending to get two totally different issues mixed up. Expanding bullets (i.e. soft-point, hollow-point, backwards loaded, or "dum-dum") are different from Explosive bullets. Most of the discussion has been about Expanding bullets. However, during World War (I don't know about WW2), there were actual exploding bullets in rifle calibers. These contained small explosive charges in the heads which exploded upon impact. They were designed and used primarily in an anti-aircraft role (in aircraft machine guns), but since they were of standard calibers they could have been fired in rifles as well. I agree it is unlikely that they were regularly used in an anti-personnel role, but it cannot be totally disproven. About 40 years ago (sorry, I don't have an index), the American Rifleman published an article on these rounds, basically trying to convince people not to shoot them in their rifles-- obviously, they existed.

This whole issue gets very confusing, in that poor writing and terminology tends to get the issues mixed up. Even medical texts occasionally refer to the "explosive" effects of small arms ammunition at close range-- this is a description of the effect, not necessarily an indication that the bullet contained any explosive. The press is extremely guilty in this regard. I can tell you for certain that many standard combat rounds (i.e. neither explosive nor expanding) can cause horrific wounds, which look as if they were caused by explosive rounds. The original AR-15/M-16 (5.56 mm) with its too slow barrel twist rate, and the AK-74 with its air space in the tip of its 5.45 mm round, both produce excellent examples of the massive damage that a non-expanding and non-explosive bullet can produce. Doc2

[Cnock]

The explosive munition used by the germans, was called L.E. Munition, Luft Einschiess (aerial ranging).

So the Germans didn't use the term 'explosive', they called it a signalling cartridge.

It detonated on a time baisis, and not from ilmpact on a target.

After the bullet had been fired, explosion follows after 1 second.(shock of discharge actives an igniting device)

It was originally an Austrian design.

British explosive ammunition :

Pomeroy, marked VIIY or VIIA (Pomeroy Superior Amm)

British Explosive Incendiary :

RTS (Richard Threlfall and Son)

RTT Richard Threlfall/Todhunter

Special Air Service Amm

Headstamp Pomeroy : VII.A.A

RTS : VIIG, VIIR

Regards,

Cnock.

[Cnock]

The Germans compaliendhat they amraedy found

[Cnock]

The Germans complained that they already had found British dum-dum ammo at Mons in sept.1914

See attach.

[Cnock]

The same went for the French

French M.G. ammo supposed to have been found in Houthulst Forest , november 1914, see att.

It has been said that bullets with cut-off tips were used in early stage of war to cut wire, as they tipped over during their trajectory?

Regards,

Cnock

[Cnock]

Hello,

Correction to my last post (nr.73) :

The bullets used for cutting wire were called 'balles fraisées' by he French, and had notches in the side. (see pic)

The Germans considered these bullets as dum-dum.

Regards,

Cnock

[gew98]

Ten rounds (two clips) of steel-core SmK rifle ammo was supposedly issued to every soldier at the front in case of Allied armor attack.

Loads of stuff going on in this thread.

Firstly , the british use of DUM DUM bullets was prewar and very limited due to their unkowningly faulty construction and were based on the MkVI bullet.

The very first incindiary bullets the british used were in .450 caliber bullets using on hand older 577/450 martini henry caliber maxims they had as they had problems designing anything reliable in their smaller .303 caliber.

The issue of 5 cartridges of SMK ammunition per soldeir was proposed but never carried out as it was deemed to expensive and the germans found that by having a belt or two on hand of S.m.K. ammo on hand for use in maxims was more effective in stopping british armor of the day at a savings of expensive ammunition with markedly better results.

The germans developed and used a semi armor peircing 7,92 bullet, which was still used thorugh WW2 and designated "Lechtspur" as it had a 400 meter trace element in it's base.

They also developed and used a phosphorus bullet - a copy of the buckingham bullet but with a larger charge and lacking the aluminum dust that made the .303 bullet a little better.

They developed an explosive bullet "L.E. Patrone" for use on zeppelins and aircraft for range estimation as it was designed to 'airburst' at 300-400 meters.

There are at least three other EXPLOSIVE german 7.9 bullets with rounded and one with a semi conical head that were recovered from various zeppelin and aircraft wrecks by the french and british where no german designation for those explosive bullets was ascertained. The germans were rather energetic in their use of explosive bullets in aircraft applications , but not so for ground use.

The WW2 B patronen was an observation round with a brilliant flash and NO trace element. But it is outside the scope here as it is post 1918.

German snipers of the great war were allowed to and issued S.m.K. ammunition due to it's penetration and stable accuracy - loophole shooting etc etc.

The explosive bullets had severe handicaps on reliability and accuracy foremost of all , so for snipers and ground use they were pretty much verboten in the great war by the germans.

British Mk VII bullets simply were not deisgned to nor did tumble. As typical of all pointed high velocity bullet od the day they tended to turn turtle when impacting a medium such as flesh , and fragmented relatively as easily upon bone or equipment in the mix.

Yes some british DUM DUM and french colonial issue expanding bullets were captured early in the war by germans - not much at all and likely most of it captured 'in store' as the germans advanced.

German and british soldeirs were known to have turned bullets around to expose their flat based 'open' lead cores , but these had to be single loaded properly as they would not feed from the magazine - not often done mind you as the accuracy to would be abysmal.

There were various tricks of cutting , nippin , filing and hole drilling of the tips of service bullets by all the belligerents , but these were all of marginal value as they were generally crude and effected accuray greatly. And often the bullet jacket material be it plated steel or cupronickel tended to resist expanding as a "hollow point" due to jacket thickness retarded such expansion if it all it occured.

Really the high velocity pointed bullets were in themselves more lethal than most previously had envisioned , hence the rude shock of wounds caused by high velocity rifle fire of the day.

For a sidenote the use of tracer and explosive ammunition during the great war came about originally to combat balloons and aid in their destruction ( later for any aircraft ) , and were never officially released for ground use. I am not aware of even any use of such expensive ammunition in the antiaircraft role from ground emplacements by any combatants in the great war.

So let us take with a grain of salt the grunt whom described any horrific wound due to an expanding or explosive bullet in the great war.

In WW2 the germans strictlylimited the use of B patronen , whereas the russians used explosive rifle bullets on a large scale.