The lead ball and it's lethality to man.

[dwave]

This is a reply to RyanM;

I have read over the article that you posted, all of it. I did not see any mention of a .44 mag but I have seen some interesting quotes from that article.

1. "Of the remaining factors, temporary cavity is frequently, and grossly, overrated as a wounding factor when analyzing wounds." Pg 8

2. "Only inelastic tissue like liver, or the extremely fragile tissues of the brain, would show significant damage due to temporary cavitation." "Temporary cavity has no reliable wounding effect in elastic body tissues. Pg 10

3. "Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration." Pg 19

All quotes from: Handgun wounding factors and effectiveness (the link you gave).

Cap and ball revolvers really don't have enough "power" to make much of a temporary cavity ("energy transfer" to you guys). Neither does any handgun short of a .44 magnum.

According to that article no handgun can cause damage by "energy transfer", penetration is the key. That means that a .44 magnum is no more an effective killing tool than the old Colt Dragoons are. Both give penetration. I believe that the article stated that shot placement was very important.

I mean no disrespect to you and hope that I have not offended you in anyway pointing out these few quotes, and there was many more, but that would be a waste because the article is available to all here.

As gmatov says, Cheers!

 

[sundance44s]

sundance44s

ok guys Cabelas is sellin balostic jell and the oven to cook it in ...lol they`ll make myth busters out of us .

 

[Lo.Com.Denom]

I was told the same thing whilst in the Army Cadets (National Guard for Kids!!)

You too? Our CCF had two Bren guns, which I coveted, but they got phased out before I could get a go on them. Got to play with the LSWs instead...

"B-B-Bang, B-B-Bang, B-B- (insert new and inventive way to jam here) "...

I never understood why a cadet-rifle could jam and FTF even more than the LSW, when there were less parts to go wrong...

And wouldn't a round designed to injure be in direct contravension of the Hague Accords -- causing "unnecessary suffering" etc? Even if it weren't, they always told us to leave the wounded where they were until after you'd won the firefight, to avoid taking soldiers away from the battle! Why would they believe that the enemy would behave any differently? They still tell this blatant porkie about "shooting to wound" to squaddies even now. The MOD seems to excell in "doublethink" sometimes.

Back on topic, I think the issue of leading in the barrels was offset by the need to clean a lot more regularly when using BP. A soldier wouldn't be able to fire enough rounds without cleaning to cause significant leading.

On the subject of "power", I remember a tragic incident in the news from a few years ago. A suicidal young man had taken his father's .44 "Army" revolver (the papers never elaborated on what type), loaded it and placed it to his head. The father and the young man's girlfriend returned home to find him in time and convinced the guy to drop the gun. Which he did. Literally.

The revolver went off as it hit the floor and the round went through the girlfriend, shattering her spine and leaving her paralysed for life. The young man went to prison (I think for "reckless endangerment of life", or somesuch) and I think that the father lost his gun-license for leaving the gun unattended (he was cleaning it at the time and was called away for some reason when the young man re-assembled and loaded it).

I remember finding a new respect for BP arms, after reading that. I always knew that they were lethal, obviously, but reading about the effects on an actual person, just brought it home to me.

 

[Duncaninfrance]

I never understood why a cadet-rifle could jam and FTF even more than the LSW, when there were less parts to go wrong...

Possibly because they were not as well looked after as Regular or TA pieces and also not being mounted firmly enough on the body of the cadet ( a sloution not a crit ).
I do remember one night taking a lesson on the then New SA80 and substituting my Baker. I took my platoon right through the weapon, sighting, aiming and some drill. Light relief but surprising how much they enjoyed it.
Duncan

 

[RyanM]

According to that article no handgun can cause damage by "energy transfer", penetration is the key. That means that a .44 magnum is no more an effective killing tool than the old Colt Dragoons are. Both give penetration. I believe that the article stated that shot placement was very important.

I mean no disrespect to you and hope that I have not offended you in anyway pointing out these few quotes, and there was many more, but that would be a waste because the article is available to all here.

The article is mostly about handgun cartridges used for law enforcement. Below a certain power level, the temporary cavity won't cause any additional wounding except to inelastic organs, like the liver and kidneys. And even then, the effect is slight, compared to a high powered rifle. The threshold is around a 5-6" wide temporary cavity, to tear elastic tissues. FMJ pistol bullets of any caliber make a 1 to 2" temporary cavity at the biggest. Modern hollowpoints in most calibers are 2.5 to 3.5".

But a .44 magnum can approach the 5-6" range with more powerful loads. Of course, high-powered rifles exceed it by a large margin.

Tissue damage isn't really an absolute. Not all handguns are unable to make a big enough temporary cavity to contribute to wounding effect. A Thompson-Center Contender in a rifle caliber will be nearly as effective as a carbine in the same caliber. .44 magnum, with powerful ammo, is somewhere between typical handgun levels, and high powered rifles. The .500 S&W probably approaches high powered rifle terminal effect levels. But for... let's say .45 ACP and below, temporary cavity is basically a non-issue. Unless you're shooting very small animals.

However, they are correct in saying that "energy transfer" doesn't damage tissue. It's force and stress which cause damage. And the temporary cavity really has more to do with a transfer of momentum than anything, even though there is a correlation between energy and temporary cavity volume. Physics is crazy like that.

 

[dwave]

Enen though this is about round ball ammo, I will make this comment, I would rather get hit my a 9mm anyday over a .44 mag! I don't care what that article states about handguns.

 

[Beartracker]

In Mec's book "Percussion Pistols and Revolvers' there is an article by Jim Taylor in appendix F . Jim witnessed a man shot in the stomach by a 1860 Army .44 in a kitchen.The ball went clear though the man, bounced off the kitchen table and went through a cupboard door and lodged in a loaf of bread.
The man dropped immediately . They got him to the hospital in time to save his life but he was in there for a long time and Jim don't know if he ever completely recovered.
One friend of mine shot a wild bore with his Remington .44 with 40g of Goex 3 fff and a .454 ball. The bore dropped on the spot and the ball tore up the bore so bad that it traveled clear through it but only after it had cut a large channel.
Steve, who is one of the members on here shot a hog not Long ago with his 44 and he never did recover a ball that went through the skull , down through the neck and into the cavity..... somewhere.
After taking several Deer myself with my .44 Remington's and 40g of powder and a .454 ball I know the wound these guns cause.
The idea that these guns are equal to a .38 is ridiculous. What works on paper by using someone calculations may not always give you the true facts, testing on humans and animals will.

 

[dwave]

"paper specs" almost never equal to the real world. I cannot believe that a .44 Remington only equals a .38. I think that they also say that a .36 equals a .32, am I right on that?

 

[Dave Markowitz]

I'd really like to know how anyone could design a bullet that could fly accurately 500 yards, then all of a sudden, touch skin, and become a whirling dervish, and spin all over the place and do so much corkscrew like damage.

This is not voodoo, just physics.

This is typical behavior of all FMJ spitzer bullets, which have a center of gravity towards the rear. The spin imparted to the bullet by the rifling adequately stabilizes it while it's travelling through the air. However, once it hits something the stability is lost causing the bullet to tumble end over end after penetrating a certain distance, which varies according to the projectile and impact velocity. Some FMJ bullets cannot survive the stress of the tumbling motion and as a result, fragment. The best example of this is the 55 grain FMJ-BT as loaded in 5.56x45MM M-193 Ball. As far as I know, this wasn't a design goal, more of a fortuitous result.

Generally, the higher the impact velocity the greater the tumbling and fragmentation. I recall reading a 1940s US Army manual on the M1903 Springfield, which discussed penetration of .30 caliber bullets in pine. The bullets penetrated less at 50 yards than they did at 100 yards or so, because the higher impact velocity at the shorter range caused more immediate tumbling.

The bullet in British .303 Mk. VII and Mk. VIII Ball was a 174 grain FMJ, which had an aluminum or fiber filler under the tip, with the remainder of the core being made out of lead. This was done to make a bullet which was longer than normal for its weight, and thus more aerodynamic. It had the secondary result of making it more base-heavy and therefore more prone to tumbling upon impact.

In the 1970s the Soviets designed the bullet for their new 5.45x49MM round similarly. There's an air pocket under the tip of the FMJ-BT. The bullet is very long for its weight. Upon impact the core tends to shift position causing violent tumbling.

 

[Burt Blade]

Sorry. Insufficent Irony Indicators on my last post. Is that five yards or loss of down?

I did not mean that the .44 Remington cap-n-ball was directly comparable to the .38 Special in real terms, merely "on paper". A hard lead conical .38 (.357) slug behaves a bit differently than a soft lead .44 (.454) sphere. Neither are energy titans, but both seem to have counted quite a few coup.

The "perception of adequate lethality" has certainly changed over the centuries.

 

[gmatov]

Is this THE Dave Markowitz whom I have read on numerous other sites?

I saw a post by you here, or on TFL a while back, and wanted to reply, just to congratulate you on the writings I have read.

Now, I have to step back a pace and ask myself if you really know wherefore you speak.

I have never done that with any of your other articles, but, as Elmer Keith said, there are shooters and there are writers who talk about shooting.

A well designed bullet is NOT designed, either intentionally or otherwise, to tumble after it hits a tissue mass. It is designed to continue on a straight line path through any game you shoot it at, as nearly on its axis as it started. WHILE retaining as much of its mass as it can from the mass it started out with.

Many bullets have been made that look good till they hit SOMETHING, whether tissue or bone, then go to hell, as you are implying that a "well designed" bullet does.

A well designed bullet WILL penetrate the length of the game it is designed for, and will do so in a straight forward path, keeping its axis as it does.

A "tumbling" bullet will wear itself out, use up its energy cutting stuff in the first 6 to 12 inches of wound channel. Try killing a Cape Buffalo, or even a whitetail, with a bullet that turns itself into a "whirling dervish.

You ain't agonna do it.

Jeez, the ammunition companies spend tons of money trying to make bullets that are stabilized. Core-Lokt and the like, they show you recovered bullets in pictures, brag that they are at least twice caliber, but still near original weight, and people say, "No, they want it to hit, flip all over the place and spray lead fragments for 3 or 4 inches of the total wound channel.."

They'll die in a while from lead poisoning, don'tcha know?

If the US Marines had been issued such ammunition in WWII, they would have been pissed. If it can't hit where I aim at 500 yards, and do damage when it gets there, I don't want it.

Contrary to popular belief, I think I can find the reference to a page that says the US is not a signatory to the fully jacketed ball. We do use ball ammunition, but not because of the proscription on open tipped lead, or even "dum-dum" bullets. The purpose of the US Military is to kill the enemy, not cripple and cause 2 or more suckers to drop out of action tending to the unfortunate one who couldn't get his ass out of the line of fire.

You're hit, you're toast, at least till we get this situation under control.

Cheers,

George

 

[355sigfan]

QUOTE
The idea was to use the bullets to actually knock the Filipinos over, breaking the momentum of their attack
END QUOTE

Actually this is fantasy. No small arm fired bullet will knock a man down or back. If it did it would have to do the same to the shooter. That whole laws of pysics issue for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And the only thing that reliabily stopped the Moro's was the 1897 12 gauge shotgun. Not even the Krags worked that great on them. The 45's did better than the 38 long colts but neither was all that effective.
Pat

 

[gmatov]

Dave,

"Upon impact the core tends to shift position causing violent tumbling."

That's the Soviet round, which, coincidentally, was designed so that it could not be used in a US made 5.56, but a 5.56 could be fired in it. Tricky, them Soviets.

When you shift the mass of the core from the rear to the front of the projectile containment case, the jacket, just why, since you have moved the center of gravity forward, would you say it would cause the thing to go to tumbling all over the place. Designed to do so or not.

It won't do it, but if you are the designer, and you can fake the results, well, mebbe the Soviets, bastards that they must have been, not constrained by physics, could have pulled it off. Could explain why they were fought to a draw in Afghanistan. Bad bullets. Couldn't kill people, just wound them, and I don't know if Afghanis would do as the major powers would, assign a couple riflemen to look after the poor unfortunate.

I wonder what would happen with a spear, if you attached the pound or so of blade to the back of it instead of the front. Would it fly as true, and would it go through a lion if it did manage to hit it? I mean, if you made it so it would slide along the shaft and change its center of gravity, it should tumble all over the place and give you a well cleaned out lion.

Bet them dumb Massai never thought of that.

There has never been a bullet, intentionally made, to spin all over the place, and chew flesh on its way to doing its job. I should qualify that, there may be some specialty law enforcement experiments gone awry that were followed up. NO military, NO hunter, wants a bullet that does not penetrate, on a stright line, as far as the kinetic energy of the ball/powder charge/rifle barrel characterics, will allow.

Shoot through an elephant end to end? Indeed. A Cape Buffalo? Indeed. A full grown Lion? You better believe it. The more dangerous the game, the better the bullet you want and the highest velocity you want, and penetration, without tumbling, is supreme
.

Cheers,

George

 

[ROAshooter]

knock down

Oh Patsy Patsy Patsy..........your obsessive/compulsive need to correct others......just never ends......as if stating the obvious..about "Knock
downs"....is not known by all....

 

[gmatov]

ROA,

A 1:38 Am post and makes no sense.

What are you smoking or snorting? Booze couldn't make you post that.

Cheers,

George

 

[Cosmoline]

By the 20th Century, this kind of thing started to seem a little cruel and unusual to people, so they made rules mandating smaller bullets with metal coatings that would keep them from "splattering". The basic idea is that a hit to the vitals is still likely to be lethal, and a hit to the extremities will still put a soldier out of action— but there will be many fewer people with missing pieces after the war.

Incorrect. The reference is to the Hague convention's ban on explosive or expanding bullets, which has nada to do with Civil War era lead bullets. The move to smaller rounds had to do with the development of smokeless powder in the late 1880's. They were given a jacket of gilding metal in order to prevent leading caused by their greatly increased velocities.

I do generally agree that soft lead handgun slugs are very much underrated. At the same time, fancy expanding rounds tend to be very much OVERrated. A .45 Colt lead slug will work just as fine as some HP. Probably better. Most handguns simply do not have the velocity needed to take advantage of fancy bullet designs. HP's and SP's tend to either fail or act like "fleshbrakes" preventing penetration.

 

[Low Key]

What works on paper by using someone calculations may not always give you the true facts, testing on humans and animals will.

Agreed! I thought a lot about the actual abilities of BP revolvers when I first started shooting them regularly about 8 months ago, so one of the first things I tried to find out was "what kind of velocity and energy do they produce?" I found that you can compare them to this gun or that gun on paper, but you are basically comparing dissimilar animals. Even though modern handguns and BP handguns do the same thing basically, they fire a projectile at high speed, they achieve their end results in different ways. Moderns bullets, ie fmj hollowpoints or semijacket hp or rn lead behave differently upon impact that does the round lead ball.

I take beartracker at his word as to how he has dropped several deer with the round ball from a 58 Remington and his account of his freind who shot a boar and dropped it in it's tracks, and I also believe steve who shot the domestic hog through the forehead and failed to recover the ball from the animal because of its deep penetration into the entrails, (guts). I haven't personally shot any deer or hogs with a BP revolver yet, but I have killed plenty of targets with it. Many of them were attached to a 12inch diameter log at the time, and I've recovered some of the balls that have penetrated 12 inches or more into the log itself. I wouldn't want to be hit with one of those! I don't think you can base all conclusions on what you can prove on paper. I can prove a cow has nine legs on paper, but I have yet to see one in the real world,

 

[Beartracker]

"I can prove a cow has nine legs on paper, but I have yet to see one in the real world,"

Low Key, You mean to tell me that you all have them there cows in Tenn too!? I always figured they only lived right here in WV

Yep, Lots of different thoughts, opinions, non-facts and facts when it comes to bullets , guns and which one is the best and which one will drop a man or animal best.
Many years ago I was hunting Moose and Bear in the wilds on Kenora Canada up above Minn.with a few friends. We were so far back in that it took us two days to get to the spot we wanted to hunt. One night sitting around the fire by a lake a guy and gal showed up in a canoe and they had 2 huge Moose quarters in the canoe. He were Indians and lived in the woods most of there lives. They had coffee with us and he got to looking at our big rifles, 30-06-270 and so on. We asked him what he used for Moose /Bear. You should have seen the look on our faces when he showed us him Remington .22!He said the ammo was much cheaper and he just shot them in the eye or as close to it as he could. He said they drop real fast.
We all know that a .22 can kill in a hurry and it travels and bounces all over the inside of the body if it hits just right. It was (is) one of the most used guns in execution style killing.
Bottom line is that if the bullet hits the right spot....size don't mean a thing, you will just as dead from the .22 as you would be from the .44 or .357 mag.

 

[dwave]

When shooting a .45 acp and my .36 navy, I was able to recover one bullet from each. Here are the results of the bullets:

The roundball expanded very well, but the .45 did not expand at all. Since the round ball is made from pure lead it will expand better, and if it would hit something hard like a bone could expand quite a bit.

 

[Low Key]

You mean to tell me that you all have them there cows in Tenn too!? I always figured they only lived right here in WV

We have more cows than we know what to do with, but so far I've only seen the 4 legged variety.

 

[Duncaninfrance]

COWS?

LK, Don't go near them with BP or naked lights - they produce METHANE and that goes BANG!
Duncan

 

[Beartracker]

"LK, Don't go near them with BP or naked lights - they produce METHANE and that goes BANG!"

Good advice Duncan! Mike

 

[JohnKSa]

A well designed bullet is NOT designed, either intentionally or otherwise, to tumble after it hits a tissue mass.

True with respect to hunting bullets, not necessarily true of military antipersonnel ammunition. I suppose there could be some debate about whether the 5.56NATO was designed to tumble or not, but the current Russian issue round definitely is.

I found that you can compare them to this gun or that gun on paper, but you are basically comparing dissimilar animals.

I believe that Elmer Keith would agree with you based on his experience with both BP and smokeless powder hunting.

 

[Chuck Dye]

Derek,

Lyman’s Black Powder Handbook puts the ballistic coefficient of a .562 roundball at 0.079. Run that into a ballistics program with the 150 grain load in a 32" barrel, muzzle velocity 1340 fps, and the ball has 292 fps remaining velocity and 100 foot pounds kinetic energy at 800 yards. It has a midrange height of 1016 inches if zeroed for that 800 yards. You do not cite the velocity Baird reached in his experiment, so let’s bump it 50% to 2010 (generous?). At that muzzle velocity the retained velocity at 800 yards is 348 fps, the K.E. is 133 ft.-lbs., and the midrange height is 747 inches.

While hitting a man at 800 yards with 4 to 5 minute of angle rifle (do you have a shotgun patterning board?) might be problematic, I do not want to be the target.

Oh, BTW, the points of impact at 780 and 820 yards, zeroed at 800, are 9 to 14 feet off.

 

[RyanM]

The purpose of the US Military is to kill the enemy, not cripple and cause 2 or more suckers to drop out of action tending to the unfortunate one who couldn't get his ass out of the line of fire.

Actually, that is precisely what the plan was, when switching from a battle rifle caliber (.308) to a low impulse, high speed, small caliber cartridge (5.56mm). Wound, but not kill. But because 5.56mm tumbles, fragments, and also penetrates quite deep (fairly similar to a hunting softpoint, but with more delayed expansion), they achieved the opposite effect.

There has never been a bullet, intentionally made, to spin all over the place, and chew flesh on its way to doing its job. I should qualify that, there may be some specialty law enforcement experiments gone awry that were followed up. NO military, NO hunter, wants a bullet that does not penetrate, on a stright line, as far as the kinetic energy of the ball/powder charge/rifle barrel characterics, will allow.

Actually, "spoon-pointing" FMJ bullets is a very common trick overseas, especially in Scandanavia. Spoon-pointing involves grinding, filing, scraping, or drilling the side of the tip of a bullet so that it's asymmetrical, but no lead is exposed. The bullet is still stable in flight, but on impact with an animal, it tumbles like crazy. Poachers over there will commonly take elk and moose with "spoon-pointed" FMJ bullets of pretty small calibers, like 6mm, 6.5mm, etc.