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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Reversing Rifle Bullets to Increase Penetration?


bob lembke

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I can't speak to use of reversed bullets for the purpose of inflicting greater injuries. I have never seen any evidence that confirms this explicit intent, but such evidence may exist elsewhere. The presence of reversed ammunition may be linked to this purpose, but there was an explicit requirement for armour piercing capability that pre-dated tanks.

Robert

And was adequately met with the K round

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Functionally adequate, but supplies were not.

Robert

In fact shortages occured much later as the introduction of tanks increased demand. The K round was intended originally for snipers only and enough were made - more than enough as rounds were also issued to ordinary infantrymen in anticipation of the first tanks (the secret of the French tank development had leaked out before the British use at Flers).

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Are you saying that, prior to the development of tanks being known, enough rounds were available to infantrymen to allow them to substitute K rounds for reversed conventional bullets?

Robert

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Snipers needed K rounds to deal with armoured loop holes, ordinary infantry men didn't need them until tanks materialised. There were obviously more than enough available for snipers if some could be issued to ordinary infantry men in anticipation of tanks. Since evidence of reversed rounds exists before the tank they were not needed for anti armour and would therefore be most likely used as a form of dum dum

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This old chestnut? The very idea is silly for about 40 reasons. Dum-dum effect? Yes. Armour-piercing? Absurd. Even if soldiers believed it.And the rifle would be unworkable and dangerous.

Bob

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This old chestnut? The very idea is silly for about 40 reasons. Dum-dum effect? Yes. Armour-piercing? Absurd. Even if soldiers believed it.And the rifle would be unworkable and dangerous.

Bob

As some of us keep saying

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Peter Barton discussed this in "Digging Up The Trenches",

here's a little clip I made earlier.........

Clickety Click

Steve.

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I think that the following from the shooters forum may be of interest (I couln't make a link work but I'm sure that unclenick won't mind me quoting him)

Originally Posted by unclenick Pointed bullets are inherently more stable in subsonic flight when reversed because their center of mass is put ahead of their center of pressure. This is the same principle that stabilizes a bottle rocket. Getting the heaviest part up front keeps if from whizzing off to the side. A bullet fired forward is less stable in subsonic flight because air pressure is always applying a wedging pressure to the nose that tries to steer it off course. Gyroscopic spin is needed to overcome that steering pressure.

So, what are the problems with firing backward, then? First, when the bullet exits the muzzle the propellant gases jet out around it, and at that moment the stability situation is reversed because the greater gas pressure blowing against the bullet is from behind, not the front. Moreover, the gases start blowing past the bullet as the bearing surface exits and most of the ogive is still inside the muzzle. Every tiny bit of muzzle unevenness and even the slightest hint of bullet tilt in the bore is acted on against the angle of the taper to tip the bullet. This gives the muzzle gas jet lots of time to inflict yaw. It is what gives boattails a harder time starting out. The net result is much more muzzle yaw is produced in a reversed bullet. Gyroscopic recovery occurs after the bullet gets clear of the muzzle jets, but by then it has had to jump to rotation around wherever the center of mass had been diverted to before the recovery. It's trajectory is then no longer exactly in line with the bore axis.

Ballistic coefficient of the reversed bullet is much lower than for one pointed forward. This means the difference in time between when the bullet arrives at the target and when it would have arrived had there been no atmosphere (a vacuum), is much larger. This time difference is what wind drift is proportional to. So, despite the bullets stable subsonic shape, wind drift will be worse when it is backward.

Finally, the center of pressure on the bullet is behind its center of mass only when air flows over the back of it. This, as I've been hinting, is true if the bullet is subsonic, but at supersonic velocities it will pull a vacuum over much of the tapered projectile back end formed by the reversed nose. This means the center of pressure is effectively moved forward at supersonic velocities, undoing stability advantage. At the same time, air resistance and muzzle jet yaw are still increased. Net effect: lower supersonic accuracy than a forward-pointed bullet.

To figure out trajectory of a reversed bullet, you will need to figure out its ballistic coefficient from its velocity measured at different ranges. It won't likely be in a book, but it should be similar to a wadcutter of the same caliber and weight.

In other words the accuracy of a reversed bullet is likely to be very poor - hardly something a sniper would want. There is an item on reversed bullets publisher in Jan 1915 that suggests the one could only hope to have the foggiest chance of hitting a man sized target at less than 100yards. It would seem as previously suggested that it was a mankiller at short range rather than an armour piercer at longe range (except by sheer chance). A sniper using such a bullet aimed at an armoured loophole across no mans land would be very unlikely to hit it. I'm afraid that clip is merely repeating a military myth

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Yeah, yeah, all of the above theory is fine to a greater or lesser degree, and only a fool would pretend that a reversed bullet would be of use at anything more than 100 yards or so. But if the emprical facts establish it could produce results at short range against armour that a point-first shot could not, our FWW ancestors were as capable of working that out as we are, and all the hoo-hah about dumdums could be contemporary flim-flam with variable degrees of substance.

Perhaps the old chestnut contains a kernel of truth.

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Yeah, yeah, all of the above theory is fine to a greater or lesser degree, and only a fool would pretend that a reversed bullet would be of use at anything more than 100 yards or so. But if the emprical facts establish it could produce results at short range against armour that a point-first shot could not, our FWW ancestors were as capable of working that out as we are, and all the hoo-hah about dumdums could be contemporary flim-flam with variable degrees of substance.

Perhaps the old chestnut contains a kernel of truth.

And just how do you get up that close to an armoured sniper plate (without the sniper who is using bullets that are accurate, not to mention all his mates also firing accurate shots) without getting filled with conventional rounds - come on. you cannot be serious! or are you just having a laugh

And by the way just how would the soldiers of that time worked out that a reversed bullet might have some effect (if you got ridiculously close) in the first place?

I think the old chestnut contains a load of dingos kidneys (to mix a metaphor)

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I don't believe that ordinary German soldiers deliberately sought to inflict wounds on their Allied adversaries more terrible than those caused by conventional 'point first' ammunition, so there must have been some proven or perceived advantage to using reversed bullets in special cases. If that advantage, whatever it was, was based on physics and empirical experience, it would presumably have been apparent to both sides. So are there any recorded instances of Allied troops making use of reversed bullets? And if so, for what reason?

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I have followed this thread off and on with considerable interest. Can someone tell me, is there real hard evidence that German troops had those doctored rounds in their possession? Is there reliable documentary evidence to that effect?

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Can someone tell me, is there real hard evidence that German troops had those doctored rounds in their possession?

Can only speak from past readings & chats,Tom but,from a Commonwealth point of view,that info would only have been found on POW snipers,& they weren't to keen to be identified as shooters,more than likely shot out of hand so,I reckon more myth than history.

Now to a wee fact.

I got back from Verdun last week & the range is now open again.As I said I'd do in the helmets thread,I did fire 4 reversed .303's from 400 & 200 mtrs.Cant speak for German rounds but the 303's were a bit naff at both distances.As a test,I'd cut off the point of the bullet on 2 rounds ,just to see if we got a bit more 'welly' compared to ,well.Just read Centurions bit & maybe you'll see what I was thinking of.

I wasn't aiming at a sniper shield for obvious reasons over a short range but,the 'pointy rounds' both span & 1 even entered the target obliquely.

As stated ,I cant speak for German rounds but,from a Brit pov,no.

Waste of time against armour(or plywood).

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Oh.As a brief aside,firing like that created something similar to the backflash(smeg in the eye) that you get from an FN with BFA on.

Wierd.

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Even an SmK round had to impact at 90 degrees to stand even a 30% chance of piercing the armour of a tank, so I doubt if reversing rounds was done for this purpose - certainly not systematically. German official direction was to employ the concentrated short range fire of machine guns, loaded with SmK for this purpose, though there are suggestions that massed rifle fire was worth a try because of the possibility of bullets passing through viewing slits. I suppose that it is possible that individuals might have risked tampering with their ammunition, but nobody would have wished to be caught with doctored rounds in their possession. Their life thereafter would have been nasty, brutish and short. The weapon of choice in close range clashes was the grenade, rather than the rifle, so if fire was being opened at longer ranges, it would have been essential to use normal ammunition to guarantee accuracy.

What are we to make of alleged discoveries of illegally altered ammunition? Here is a contemporary German illustration, with a caption saying that these were French Dum Dum bullets for use in a machine gun and found near Houthulst Wood during the battles of autumn 1914 north of Ypres. Certainly the cut off tips are clear to see, but who cut them off? The French as alleged, or the Germans attempting to deflect atrocity stories? Impossible to say - despite the fact that the main caption states that this is not a propaganda lie. Well, who says it isn't?

We have learned to cast doubts on almost anything reported. Those sufficiently credulous to believe 'Angels of Mons' stories or Belgian babies being bayonetted, would have no trouble with a few reversed rounds would they?

Jack

post-6447-1226996992.jpg

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Whether it was the Germans or the French it was a bit of an own goal. The French Balle D rounds in the picture had solid bronze bullets made from turning or swaging rod and have no core. Cutting the tips off will only ruin the aerodynamics of the bullet.

regards

TonyE

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Whether it was the Germans or the French it was a bit of an own goal. The French Balle D rounds in the picture had solid bronze bullets made from turning or swaging rod and have no core. Cutting the tips off will only ruin the aerodynamics of the bullet.

regards

TonyE

Yes - of course it says 'Keine Propagandaluege' (not a propaganda lie) - but in the light of the bullet structure that's pretty much exactly what it has to be. :D

Edit: - Though I suppose you might argue that the clipped point might assist in toppling the bullet in tissue?

Regards,

MikB

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Given that it took a recent carefully arranged experiment with a rifle fixed at a short distance from an iron plate to find any evidence that a reversed bullet could have an effect on an armoured plate its difficult to see how an ordinary German soldier would have empirical evidence that would lead him to reverse bullets for armour piercing effect. However the effect on a victim of a jacketed round that had the lead core exposed was well known (from the use of the British dum dum and hollow pointed rounds in the 1890s) and wounds from reversed bullets were reported from the South African war (see one of my earlier posts). Doubtless there were some examples resulting from ricocheting rounds quite early in WW1. The motives for using such rounds is more difficult to determine but there were accusations of the British and French using dum dum type rounds existed (whether propaganda or real is unclear) and this might have prompted some retaliation. Again as I've mentioned earlier such rounds were definitely a man stopper and their first use might have been intended to halt some of the French charges common in the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914.

As the existence of reversed bullets at all - well there are soldiers letters home that report finding them (at least one of which has been quoted in this thread) and these are very unlikely to be the results of propaganda. The report of Dr. Dr. Tuffier (vide Report of the proceedings of the Academy of Medicine; meeting of the 24th November, 1914) that I posted earlier also confirms the finding of such rounds and is again unlikely to be a propaganda exercise, especially since the good doctor has earlier refuted reports of the use of explosive bullets

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I got back from Verdun last week & the range is now open again.As I said I'd do in the helmets thread,I did fire 4 reversed .303's from 400 & 200 mtrs.Cant speak for German rounds but the 303's were a bit naff at both distances.
Thank you very much for reporting on this trial. It helps to ground the discussion. When you say 'a bit naff', how was this manifest? Could you hit targets? If yes, was there no penetrating power? Thanks again.

Robert

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I saw an example today on the History Channel, ?part of the 'Finding the Fallen' series but I didn't see the beginning. The bullets were pulled out, reversed and pushed back into the cartridges. No effort was made to crimp the edges of the cartridges. A Gewehr '98 was set up in an enclosed firing range. A metal plate (don't know if it was steel) was placed in the line of fire, looked to be around 20 yards away. The plate looked to be around 1/2 to 3/4" in thickness. A hole was punched clean through the metal plate, in line with the point of aim. The hole was the same diameter as the round. Slow motion photography, however, showed that the bullet disintegrated immediately on impact, so the hole was caused by the transfer of kinetic energy. Very impressive and left no doubt that a reversed rifle bullet could penetrate metal plate at relatively close range. It was not possible to say, on the basis of this test, what the maximum effective range was.

Been thinking about this - does anyone know if the bullets in this demo were lead with a jacket (as the German rounds were in WW1) or 'solid'? If the former much of the kinetic energy would go into melting the lead. The effect so described might work with a solid bullet (such as used by the French) but only at very short range.

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Dr. Alexander Fasse wrote his PhD thesis on the subject German efforts to combat tanks 1916-1918. Unless I missed it I didn't see any references to using reversed bullets in his paper. We discussed this topic while he was writing his paper, so I can only assume his findings were negative.

On the subject of using reversed bullets as dum-dums wouldn't it be easier to snip off or otherwise modify the end? Not definitive, but I've seen propganda photos of dum-dums captured, and none of the photos shows reversed bullets.

Paul

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centurion, I can't be sure but my understanding was that the bullets were lead with a jacket. The bullet disintegrated on impact. No part of the bullet appeared to penetrate.

Robert

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