An Odd Characteristic of the SMLE

[Patrick Chadwick]

As the rifle bolt on the .303 is locked at the rear, there would be a crossover of shots at between 900 and 1200 yds.

I see no connection between the rear locking and any recurving of the sideways drift in the air - but I await enlightenment. As Peter has delicately hinted, once the bullet is in the air it has no "memory" of being fired from an Enfield or anything else. What it has are solely the ballistic characteristics of its form, plus the velocity, spin, yaw etc imparted on firing. Which may also be influenced by the deformation of the system on firing. But once the bullet has left the barrel, it is hard to imagine that a bullet thinks "OMG, I was fired from an Enfield and now I'm past 900 yards, time to start curving back!"

The phenomenon of a bullet fired from a rifled barrel drifting one way or the other, depending on the direction of twist, has been know since blackpowder days. This results from the attitude of the bullet in flight, not the locking lugs in the system that fired it, and hence will increase in a non-linear fashion with distance, depending also on the tractabiity i.e. the way the attitude of the bullet alters during the curve of the trajectory.

Take a look at the Buffington sights on a Trapdoor, and you can see that the backsight leaf is angled very slightly to compensate for this effect. Which is the same effect as used by spin bowlers to make the ball curve in the air. Surely every Aussie knows that, unless they live a highly secluded existence and have never heard of Shane Warne!