Expanding Bullet - History

History

Early bullets were typically made in the form of spheres of nearly pure lead, which is a very soft material. These would often flatten upon impact with the target, causing a larger wound than the original diameter of the ball. The adoption of rifling allowed the use of longer, heavier bullets, but these were still typically constructed of soft lead and would often double in diameter upon impact. In this case expansion was a side effect of materials, and there is no evidence that the bullets were designed to expand upon impact.

The earliest examples of bullets specifically designed to expand on impact were those fired by express rifles, which were developed in the mid 19th century. Express rifles used larger powder charges and lighter bullets than typical for the time to achieve very high velocities for black powder cartridges. One method of lightening the bullets used was to provide a deep cavity in the nose of the bullet. These were the first hollow point bullets, and in addition to developing higher velocities, they also expanded significantly upon impact. These hollow point bullets worked well on thin-skinned game, but tended to come apart on bigger game, resulting in insufficient penetration. One solution to this was the "cruciform expanding bullet", a solid bullet with an X shaped incision in the tip. This split section expanded to the depth of the incision, and then stopped, making it an early form of controlled expansion bullet.

In the late 19th century, the invention of Cordite and other nitrocellulose based "smokeless" propellants permitted higher velocity than black powder, along with flatter trajectories and correspondingly higher hit probabilities. However, to limit the amount of recoil to an acceptable level meant that higher velocity rounds needed lighter (and thus smaller diameter) bullets.

Soon after the introduction of smokeless powder to firearms, full metal jacket bullets were introduced to prevent lead fouling in the bore caused by the higher pressures and velocities when used with soft lead bullets. However, it was soon noticed that such small caliber rounds were less effective at wounding or killing an enemy than the older large caliber soft lead bullets. Within the British Indian Army, the Dum Dum arsenal produced its now infamous solution—the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet, creating the first soft point bullets. Since the Mark II jacket did not cover the base of the round this could potentially lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel. This potential problem resulted in the rejection of the Dum-dum design and led to independent development of the Mark III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V (1899) .303 British rounds, which were of the hollow point design, with the jacket covering the base; while these were made in Britain, not at the Dum-Dum arsenal, the name "Dum-dum" had already become associated with expanding bullets, and continued to be used to refer to any expanding bullets. The expanding bullets expanded upon impact to a diameter significantly greater than the original .312 inch (7.92 mm) bullet diameter, producing larger diameter wounds than the full metal jacketed versions. The Mark IV was successful enough in its first use at Omdurman that British soldiers issued with the standard Mark II bullets began to remove the top of the jacket, converting the Mark II bullets into improvised Dum-dum types.

In 1898, the German government lodged a protest against the use of the Mark IV bullet, claiming the wounds produced by the Mark IV were excessive and inhumane, thus violating the laws of war. The protest, however, was based on the comparison of the wounds produced by expanding and non-expanding bullets from high velocity sporting rifles, rather than a comparison of the expanding .303 British bullets with the previous, large bore service cartridge it replaced, the .577/450 Martini-Henry. Because the energy was roughly the same, the wounds caused by the expanding bullet of the .303 were less severe than the those caused by the larger caliber, solid lead bullet used by the Martini-Henry.

The German protests were effective, however, resulting in the ban of the use of expanding bullets in warfare. The British replaced the hollow point bullets with new full metal jacket bullets, and used the remaining stocks of expanding bullets for practice.

During the Hague Convention of 1899, the British delegation attempted to justify the use of the dumdum bullet by pointing to its utility when putting down colonial unrest. Barbara Tuchman writes that, "Developed by the British to stop the rush of fanatical tribesman, the bullets were vigorously defended by Sir John Ardagh against the heated attack of all except the American military delegate, Captain Crozier, whose country was about to make use of them in the Philippines. In warfare against savages, Ardagh explained to an absorbed audience, "men penetrated through and through several times by our latest pattern of small calibre projectiles, which make small clean holes," were nevertheless able to rush on and come to close quarters. Some means had to be found to stop them. "The civilized soldier when shot recognizes that he is wounded and knows that the sooner he is attended to the sooner he will recover. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off the field to his ambulance, where he is dressed or bandaged. Your fanatical barbarian, similarly wounded, continues to rush on, spear or sword in hand; and before you have the time to represent to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the proper course for the wounded man to follow - he may have cut off your head." However, the rest of the delegates at the Hague Convention 1899 did not accept this justification and voted 22-2 to prohibit the future use of the dumdum bullet.