Rifle bullet

“ We use two sizes, one with .45 bore for the Navy, which takes an all-lead bullet weighing 480 grains, and the other with .303 bore, the ordinary nickel-coated [Pg 101] rifle bullet for the Army. But as the Maxim gun can be adapted to every rifle-calibre ammunition it is patronised by all governments.
The gun itself weighs 56 lbs., and is mounted for use in various ways: on a tripod, a field stand, or a field carriage with wheels. This carriage has sixteen boxes of ammunition, each containing a belt of 250 cartridges, making 4000 rounds altogether. ”

“ Successive improvements in firearms altered the nature of the cover which it was necessary and practicable to provide. A bullet-proof parapet has always been an essential feature, but whereas a few inches of earth sufficed to stop a musket-ball, the modern rifle-bullet will penetrate a thickness of nearly four feet. ”

“ The military rifle carried a spherical bullet, and, like all others of the period, it necessitated the use of a mallet to strike the ball, which, being a size larger than the bore, required the blow to force it into the rifling of the barrel in order to catch the grooves.
Sporting rifles were of various sizes, but they were constructed upon a principle generally accepted, that extreme accuracy could only be obtained by burning a very small charge of powder. ”

“ High against the chimney, on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and to load again with the flat neck of the bullet set in the palm of the hand and covered with powder. ”

“ The problem, then, seems to be to combine the shock, or killing power, of the old, big, lead bullet with the high velocity and extreme accuracy of the modern military rifle. With the Mauser and the Lee-Enfield one can hit his man or his beast at a great distance, but the shock of the bullet is much less than that of the old, round, lead one. The military bullet simply drills a little clean hole which disables the soldier, but does not bring down the beast, unless it passes accurately through some vital spot. ”

“ Common sense will suggest that although such a bullet will kill, it is not the sort of weapon to stop a dangerous animal when in full charge. Weak men generally prefer the hollow Express because the rifle is lighter and handier than the more formidable weapon, and the recoil is not so severe, owing to the lightness of the bullet. ”

“ You then discover that although you can see the dim shadow of your game, your bullet will have to cut its way through at least twenty twigs before it can reach its goal. A solid bullet may deflect slightly, but it will generally deliver its message direct, unless the opposing objects are more formidable than ordinary small branches. A hollow bullet from an Express rifle will fly into fragments should it strike a twig the size of the little finger. This is quite sufficient to condemn the hollow projectile without any further argument. ”

“ The tremendous range of the modern rifle, single arm, or rapid-fire gun, and the development of more powerful explosives for ammunition have wrought this change. The bullet will travel a longer distance at a horizontal position than in the old days when ordinary black powder and a smooth-bore gun were used, and so at hundreds of yards distance the soldiers can aim direct to kill, without making elevation allowances. ”

“ More than twice the size of the service rifle .30 calibre bullet, more than three times as heavy, and with a tendency to flatten out and hit still harder, the single ball for the shotgun, while not high in accuracy, is capable of knocking a man flat on his back if it hits him fairly. Five such huge pills, slung rapidly into an opposing aircraft, at a range of one hundred yards or less, would be like throwing five half-bricks into the machine with the velocity a half-brick never attained in this world. ”

“ Any bullet is considered an expanding bullet if it be so made as to spread or mushroom on impact with its objective. But it is more usual to restrict the term to bullets having some special provision artificially to assist or facilitate their expansion, and, generally speaking, the objective is assumed to be game or other living quarry of some description. Evidently, if the target be hard enough, every bullet will expand to some degree. The means usually adopted in the case of the solid-lead bullet is to drill or form a hollow in the nose, as familiar to all who have used the sporting rifle. ”

“ In loading a rifle the powder is first measured in a “charger,” and then poured down the barrel; next comes the patch, which is usually a piece of new and strong cotton cloth, most commonly the kind known as white drilling. This, having been tallowed upon one side, the tallowed side is spread over the muzzle of the gun, and the bullet is pressed upon it into the muzzle, the side from which the “neck,” formed in moulding, has been cut, must be directly downward. Generally with the handle of a knife the bullet is pressed into the bore as far as it can be sent by such means ”

“ The small-calibre rifle shoots straighter and hits harder than the large bore one, and the recoil is less, and so is the weight of the weapon. Lead is found to be too soft a material for the bullet of the small-bore rifles, as it does not keep in the rifling, which has a sharper turn than that in the older weapon; hence the bullets are now cased in steel or nickel. These bullets have remarkable power of penetration. Some will go through a steel plate 11⁄4 inch thick, making a clean hole in it, and the Lebel bullet penetrates 15 inches of solid oak, at a distance of 220 yards. ”

“ There is a peculiar sound or thud when a bullet enters a human body, different from that which it makes when striking other objects—a sound, once heard, not easily forgotten. I ordered two men to take the wounded man a few yards to the rear, down the incline, out of the line of fire, where they left him in the shade of some bushes and saw to it that he had his canteen handy, and then they took their places again in the firing line. When the wounded man was removed I picked up his rifle, took off the bayonet and affixed it to mine, thinking I might need it if we came to close quarters. ”

“ A hollow bullet fired from an express rifle will double up a deer, but it will be certain to expand upon the hard skin of elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotami, buffaloes, &c.; in which case it will lose all power of penetration. When a hollow bullet strikes a large bone, it absolutely disappears into minute particles of lead,—and of course it becomes worthless. ”

“ The spinning bullet is virtually a gyroscope and maintains its axis in the line of flight. Hence it is possible to use a long pointed bullet instead of the round ball of earlier days and to give the projectile a shape that will enable it to cut through the air with comparatively little resistance. The same bullet fired from a smooth bore gun would begin to tumble and would encounter so much air resistance that it would fall short in the space of a few hundred feet, besides which it would wander far off its course.
MACHINE GUNS
A rifle is really a machine for hurling small projectiles. ”

“ But the question is, whether in a well-constructed rifle, the bullet does strip? and if not, then a gaining-twist is unnecessary and objectionable, as it offers to the ball’s progress a continually increasing opposition, while the ball itself is subjected to a continually increasing urging force from the inflamed gunpowder in the barrel, so that, as the velocity of the ball increases, so also does the resistance to its escape. ”

“ So far from the friction being enormous, it is less than that generated in any other kind of rifle. It is also utterly impossible for the bullet to act destructively on the barrel in the way suggested. ”

“ The Express rifle is a term signifying velocity, and this is generally accompanied by a hollow bullet which is intended to serve two purposes— to lighten the bullet, and therefore to reduce the work of the powder, and to secure an expansion and smash-up of the lead upon impact with the animal. ”

“ With this I contrast my bullet of 1841, at page 354, and a very slight inspection will be sufficient to satisfy any one of its superiority: every practical rifle-shooter knows that the smoother all the surfaces of the bullet, the more extensive and accurate is the range. That the French experiments should have given unsatisfactory results I am not at all surprised: the flat surface on the point of the bullet must offer a large space for the resistance of the atmosphere, during 1,000 yards of flight. ”

“ The original object of grooving or rifling the barrels was to find space for the reception of the foul residue produced by discharging the rifle, and thus to diminish the friction of the bullet as it was forced down by the ramrod. During the next twenty years a spiral turn was given to the groove, and bullets were used with projections to fit the grooves, the degree of twist or spiral varying as the skill of the gun-maker thought best. ”

“ The hard covering is employed to enable the bullet to take the grooves in the rifle, and to prevent it stripping as it passes through the barrel. It also increases the penetrating power of the missile, but diminishes its "stopping" power, unless a vital part or a long bone is struck. By removing the covering from the point of the bullet, as is done in the Dum-Dum bullet, or by splitting the end, the bullet is made to expand or "mushroom" when it strikes the body, and its stopping power is thereby greatly increased, the resulting wound being much more severe. ”

“ The mantled or metal cased bullet has undoubted advantages in rifle ammunition, in which low trajectory and extreme long range are desiderata that can be obtained only by high velocities. In ammunition for magazine pistols and revolvers, however, the prime object is to deliver the most effective blow possible at comparatively short range. ”

“ It is quite plain to any unbiassed person that any grease which might be upon the bullet when it is placed in the chamber of the rifle would be completely wiped off during the passage of the tightly-fitting projectile through the barrel, from which it emerges as clean as when made, and bearing the marks of the grooving. ”

“ When a champion rifle shot fires blindfolded at a wedding-ring, or a penny held between his wife's thumb and finger, or, seated back to her, shoots, by means of a mirror, at an apple upon her head or on a fork held in her teeth, the danger of using a bullet is obvious. ”

“ On striking a hard steel plate the outer envelope breaks up, but it and the lead lining appear to perform the function of a cap, and the hardened steel bullet perforates the plate.
At ranges up to 60 yd. with a good rifle, and more than this with a rifle in which the rifling has been worn, the armour-piercing bullet is not effective, owing to unsteadiness in flight, but at longer ranges nothing less than half an inch of the best steel is of any use as a protection against a direct hit at the normal. The action of the armour-piercing bullet, however, differs from that of the reversed bullet. ”

“ So firmly do I believe this that I generally take the rifle from my shoulder between each shot. Even aimed rapid fire is of no great value as compared with better aimed slower fire. The first bullet delivers to an animal's nervous system about all the shock it can absorb. If the beast is not thereby knocked down and held down, subsequent shots can accomplish that desirable result only by reaching a vital spot or by tearing tissue. ”

“ A small part of the gas generated by the explosion of the individual cartridge operates the mechanism, discharging the bullet, throwing out the empty shell and making ready for the next shot.
A machine gun is designed to enable one man to fire the equivalent of a volley, or series of volleys, discharged by an entire platoon (one-third of a company) of infantrymen. As at present developed, it represents a step toward the evolution of a shoulder-rifle that will throw a continuous stream of bullets. ”

“ The ordinary sporting rifles have invariably too much spiral; the amount of friction generated by an expansive bullet in a rifle of this construction is enormous, absorbing in many cases one half the power of the expellant. The result of this is most unsatisfactory: the bullet suddenly loosed from this immense friction, and freed from the column of air in the tube, rushes so wildly forward as entirely to destroy equilibrium in its flight ”

“ Nothing shot out of a military rifle—outside of the rifle grenade—gives the tremendous shock and blow of the big .70 calibre, five hundred grain, round lead bullet that is used in the 12-gage shotgun. ”

“ The weight of the bullet is reduced from 480 grains to 384, the powder charge being the same as in the former rifle, 85 grains. A wooden hand guard is fixed over the breech end of the barrel to protect the hand of the soldier when the barrel becomes heated by rapid firing. ”

“ When the force of penetration is equal to 1.2 inch, the wound is very dangerous. A plate of wrought iron three-sixteenths of an inch thick, is sufficient to resist a rifle-musket bullet at distances varying from 20 to 200 yards. Iron of thickness, however, will not resist bullets of the present day. That a rope mantlet may give full protection against rifle-musket bullets, it should be composed of five layers (three vertical and two horizontal) of 41⁄2-inch rope.
Projection. In mathematics, the action of giving a projectile its motion. ”