These cartridges are as dug. Bullets were reversed in hopes that they would penetrate the German sniper's shield. Before A/P was invented.
Unlike the Brit combo shovel and bullet shield....
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...letforAP-1.jpg
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These cartridges are as dug. Bullets were reversed in hopes that they would penetrate the German sniper's shield. Before A/P was invented.
Unlike the Brit combo shovel and bullet shield....
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...letforAP-1.jpg
I found this.:thup:
Reversed bullet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Box O' Truth #32 - Dum-Dum Bullets and the Box O'Truth - Page 4
I watched a program on History Television where they'd come accross the rumour that German soldiers were pulling and reversing the bullets in their 8mm ammo for use as armor piercing.
If I hadn't seen the show I'd have called utter bull****, but the reversed bullets did indeed completely penetrate the contemporary British tank armour they shot at.
IIRC the good folks at "No Man's Land" whom occasionally dig up WW1 battlefields have occasionally dug some up, confirming that this was indeed done.
This is a dead horse subject. Among collectors of imperial german arms it has long been established that the reversal of bullets in S patrone was not for AP - it was simply used to shred the parapet of enemy trenches which were almost always shored up with sandbags.
The reversed bullets will not function form the 98 magazine and to load them singly in the rifle you need to start the rimless end of the cartrisge in the magazine so it go underneath the extractor.
You will rarely see this done on any other caliber as the 303 loaded with cordite and it's long neck make pulling the bullet a major undertaking and the lack of room for a turned turtle bullet due to the cordite loaded therein as well. This whole thing is more like an urban myth and should die like one.
One thing I do know is my father who was a Lewis Gunner told me they would "nip" the end off .303 bullets and they did this quite frequentlly.
gew98 there was a program on the history channel a little while back, describing this situation. I think it was on "finding the fallen".
They described the reversed bullets and explained their function after finding a sniper guard plate in an excavated trench.
They arranged a demonstration of the effect of reversed bullets on a made up sniper plate. It was demonstrated that the bullets wouldn't penetrate the plate but they would cause heat to be generated at the impact point and spalled a piece of shrapnel off the back of the plate, into the snipers face.
A rather nasty way of doing things, but any means it takes I guess.
Well, I don't beieve even half of the crud they put on the History Channel, but if there's multiple "dug-up" finds of this odditity on WWI battlefields, it's still of interest.
The matter is also discussed at lenght in a book "Out of nowhere" which discusses the history of sniping.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmoore
RS, you're right. I have that book. I knew I had read about it but at this stage of the game, just couldn't remember where.
The idea of a composite bullet, using the jacket to stabilise the entire package and the following lead core to hammer a penetrator core through a chunk of armour, had to come from somewhere. This is how Jerry started the quest, later backed-up by the development of the anti-Tank loading, the JsS, which originally was restricted to machine-gun use. Of course, everybody in the german Army had friends in the machine-gun section, so the rifle-calibre AT ammo percolated down through the ranks rather rapidly.
The British approach was different, designing first the Mark VIIP and the later Mark VIIW loadings, the W serving as the genesis of the WII load of World War II after the ammunition nomenclature was changed in 1926/7.
There are numerous references to the use of 'reversed-bullet' ammunition on both sides to be discovered in older literature concerning the War and in a number of 'responsible' military books as well. IT did work, not as well as wished, but better than one might think.
Nice to see some contemporary confirmation of the old stories.
Sure wish I had a couple of chargers of those.... and a big box of Mark VIIB.