Sniper Ammo Selection

[Simon]

The information below is reproduced with the kind permission of Harry Furness and is extracted from a letter sent to me in July of 2003 in which he briefly covers how he personally went about securing ammunition.

Harry Furness served as a sniper with the Hallamshire Battalion (Yorks and Lancs) and landed in Normandy on D-day, serving on the front line right through until the capture of Berlin. It is believed, from remaining records, that Harry is the last surviving British Sniper who went ashore on D-Day itself.

Quote:

The combination of a really good Snipers' rifle has to mean that you use only the very best ammunition to ensure high precision results, second best is just not acceptable. As an operational Sniper I was in fact forever scavenging anyones ordnance supplies to get the best quality ammo I could find, so much so it is even mentioned in the campaign history of my wartime Battalion in action across North-West Europe. It's a long story, but briefly whilst still in the UK at Sniping Schools we were promised, as far as feasible, supplies of Match-Grade rifle ammunition for our Sniper Section. But the sheer logistics of a vast Army in the field once battle started meant that specilist supplies grew scarce, and everyone in the line was issued the same sort of general purpose ammo made by mass production methods. To be fair it was quite reliable on the whole, but it was certainly not good enough for the precision long range Sniper who demands competition grade ammunition. My only source then had to be looking through cases of incoming ammo and picking out a supply of those from the best factories. I scrounged good ammo wherever I could find it, when others slept from exhaustion I still kept going and searched out the best for myself and our Section Snipers.

Only a few years ago I was told about a re-union held by the support Vickers Machine Gunners to my Battalion, (the 2nd Bn Kensingtons). At their get-together in London the veterans retold old war stories, etc. Then it was remembered that a Yorks and Lancs Regt Sergeant-Sniper used to come to their slit trenches offering his cigarette supplies for ammo he could pick out from their supply of ordnance. I was after their special issue of long range .303" MkVIIIz. The MG NCOs' only received limited supplies reserved for special shoots, so mostly weren't overkeen to let me have the complete case. I recall being told by their Sergeant Major that I would be making the best use of it anyway, so by handing over a weeks supply of issue and purchased cigarettes I came away with my prize rounds, in reality it meant little to me to hand over all my cigarette ration as I kept them only for bartering anyway, as I am a lifelong non-smoker. I might mention that the use of very specialised .303" rounds such as Armour-Piercing, Incendiary, and the MG MkVIIIz are thought to be very corrosive to a barrel, but my thoughts on it were that I used it in moderation and I fired it only occasionally then my barrel would last, and it did of course.

End quote.

I hope the above is of interest?

Cheers,

Simon.

P.S. The picture of Harry below was taken just after the end war and is obviously a press photo. As Harry said to me about the Pic "I wouldn't have lasted long in the field with boots that shiny"

Information

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[Badger]

Terrific pic and post Simon ....

Regards,
Badger

[Peter Laidler]

That is a close to reality as you'll get. In the days of the last No4T's, up until the full issue of L42's in the mid to late 70's, all of the snipers in the battalion would zero their rifles with one batch of good clean ammo and leave that box plus another of the same date-batch on a separate pallet in the ammo bunker. This ammo was covered with an old blanket and marked as for SNIPER ONLY and left untouched unless by them. Obviously we as armourers would use it but even then, it'd only be with them in any case.

The accuracy and function testing of their rifles was done with normal off the shelf ammo but the zeriong was done by them, with this ammo. The snipers were overseen by the intelligence section who were overseen by the Training Major. They were his blue-eyed boys so you couldnt mess them around too much. As did the MT driver who ran over their 'hide' on the side of the old D range at Bulford and squashed it flat. He was up there on his own on Friday afternoon digging another!

[Alfred]

An article by a USMC sniper went into some detail on the effects of gas erosion when boat tail bullets are used with US 7.62 Match grade ammunition, even less radical boat tail angles than that of the MkVIII bullet exhibit similar increased blowby and resulting erosion. The difference in bore life is small but noticable.
A commercial attempt at producing a long range match cartridge using cordite propellant found that boat tail bullets could only be used if a flange were added to act as a gas seal. Otherwise the necessary lack of an over the charge card coupled with the high temperature of cordite left the barrel fully exposed to the worst effects of thermal gas erosion.
MkVIIIz ammunition fired in a bore already eroded at the throat gave very poor accuracy, if fired from a new barrel or one in which very little MkVII ammo had been fired the MkVIII could give great accuracy at a much greater range.

US Target shooters found that ammunition manufactured for use in aircraft sychronized guns often gave extremely good long range match accuracy.
The much tighter acceptance standards for primers is the given cause.

[bearhunter]

What about the MkVIII ammunition that was made in the US. My memory may be slipping a bit here but wasn't the US version along with the MkVII loaded with BL-C, ball bowder?

[Alfred]

I have run across a description of WW2 manufacture Winchester .303 ammunition linked for MG use that used Olin Ball powder.
I also ran across a New York times article about the sale by Winchester to the British government a complete powder manufacturing plant to produce Olin type Ball powder.

Remington mainly used single base powders while Winchester mainly used double base powders.

Post WW2 Winchester sold a complete ammunition plant to Greece to produce Ball powder for .303 and apparently .30/06.
HXP is basically a Winchester clone ammo.

[Amatikulu]

My take on Simon's and Peter's post is that the British Sniper in WW2 did not have specialized ammunition supplied to him. What he tried to do is keep the same manufacturer/type that he had shot previously in his rifle to minimize the effect of ammunition change on his known point of impact.

Seems like plain old common sense

[Alfred]

I just tracked down a thread on another forum where WW1 Sniping was being discussed. According to one poster there bandoleers of Mk8Z ammunition chosen for accuracy were marked with a Green paint spot and issued for use with P-14 rifles.
The Rifles were not scoped but used a match grade windage adjustable apeture sight, and only Winchester manufacture P-14's chosen for exceptionable accuracy were used for this purpose, the rifles was designated Pattern of 1914 (F) the "F" stood for "fine adjustment sight".

I seem to remember that Lord Cottesloe, a noted rifleman, had worked to encourage development of matchgrade ammunition for sniper use.
The MkVIIIZ ammunition, besides its superior long range accuracy would have , due it bullet construction, been much more effective against German Trench armor plates and the extra thick armored plating attached to the helmets of German Snipers and observers. A good reason to use it when possible until an effective AP cartridge was developed.

[jmoore]

MkVIIIz in WWI?

[Alfred]

MkVIIIz in WWI?

Thats what it said on the site I found.
Could have been a confusion with MkVIIz though.
I know that other sources give a date in the 1930's for adoption of the Mk8 ammunition, but boat tail bullets were already in use with the 8mm Lebel, and the ammo type may have been under development late in WW1.

I'll check into the ammunition Lord Cottesloe was working on.

found this

Lord Cottesloe continued the experimental work at Wistow after Sir Henry's death, directing it mainly to the development of the pointed bullet and then to the boat-tailed bullet for long range machine-gun work. Himself a very distinguished marksman, he was the foremost authority on firearms of his generation, for many years Chairman of the Small Arms Committee and of the National Rifle Association, as was also his son, the 4th Lord Cottesloe.

Doesn't give a date though.

Wistow.com | History of Wistow

Could be Lord Cotteslow's Boat tail bullets were adapted to machinegun use after field testing as a sniper round.

Hatcher's Notebook gives an example of the use of the balistic pendulum in which he lists an experiment with boat tail .303 ammunition by a fellow by the name of F W Jones, an associate of Lord Cottesloe , in 1922, so the bullet type was at least in the experimental stage for quite a few years before it was officially adopted for machinegun use.