1941 Winchester .303

[togor]

Is someone that takes advantage of you your freind? Maybe, but there is nothing wrong with putting a stop to it.

These vague generalities are an outrage! Completely agree.

Have you anything to add about the topic of .303 ammunition?

[Strangely Brown]

The SS109 projectile was invented to better penetrate Soviet winter uniforms, but a sturdier bullet imparted less grievous wounds.

Shades of producing the No.4 spike bayonet to better penetrate Chinese troops winter clothing.

[Bill Hollinger]

Let's please stay on track and keep politics a breakfast table discussion and not a Milsurps discussion.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Not too sure about the "winter uniform" penetration bit. It take a LOT of cotton fabric and goose feathers to stop a bullet, even a pistol-calibre one. I recall that some lads set up cardboard "figures" swathed in half a welfare-store's worth of clothing and with blocks of Ballistic gel behind, to test this story. M-1 Carbine bullets fired at reasonable close-quarter battle ranges, flew through the frocks and drilled deeply into the Gel..

That the soviets were steadily introducing body armour on an expanding scale by the late 1960s was well known.

"SS109" is a composite cored bullet, not unlike a scaled-down .303 Mk7, but with a boat-tail.

The earlier M-193 55gn BTFMJ was designed back i the late 1950s. From a the original 1:14" twist barrels it performed well on "tissue". It would perform a 180 degree turn after striking "muscle tissues" and internal organs and sometimes continue to exit base-first. However, it appears to have been a little "unstable" in flight at Arctic-grade temperatures, so the rifling was adjusted to 1:12" twist. . "Field" results revealed a change in terminal performance; the "more stable' bullet apparently took a little longer to "tumble" in tissue, often drilling all the way through before starting to go wayward.. Sometimes, however, the M-192 bullet would break in two, with both fragments charting completely different courses.

SS109 was derived from a LOT of experiments with "heavier" (up to 77grain) bullets for extended range performance. This was primarily aimed at the new "Light Support Weapon" market.

SS109 and its "clones" will happily stabilize from a 20 inch barrel with a 1:10" twist. So, why the 1:7" twist as "NATO Standard"?


TRACER bullets. to obtain a useful "burn time" fir a tracer bullet in a bullet of such dinky diameter, tha answer was a LONGER bullet. This needed a 1:7" twist to stabilize it.. See also dinky short barrels which produce lower velocoies and thus LOWER spin-rates

At the rotational velocities of the SS109 / M855, etc bullet, terminal ballistics get "interesting". Shortly after impact, the bullet starts to tumble as it transits into a denser medium. The two-piece core can be "disrupted" and the bullet breaks into several separate "fragments. Supplementary, at short-ish ranges, the bullet will still be precessing (wobbling around the nominal trajectory) after it has just left the muzzle. Thus, it will be less-than-perfectly stabilized. We have been down this stability discussion route a few times in the last few years..

One of the reasons for the initial instability is that SS109, like .303Mk 7, is BASE HEAVY.

The old "wisdom" of .303 being "humane" and drilling neat holes is only partly true, and then, only in some circumstances..

If said bullet slips through a light-weight uniform and a few inches of muscle tissue, so far so good.

If the next order of business is striking a material like BONE, things change, rapidly. Think "thigh wounds"; big, meaty target, with a big BONE in the middles. A bullet striking that femur WILL shatter it. Two things:

When that bone is violently broken, the leg ceases to be a "strut", holding up half of the body's weight.two ends of sharp, fractured bone start "wandering about" . Adjacent to said damaged bone is the famous Femoral Artery.. Get a hole in that and you are in serious trouble. Holes may be generated by the slicing action of the shattered bone ends or by "secondary missiles", blasted off the parent bone by the bullet impact.

"Only a flesh wound"? It ain't like he movies .Ask your friendly First-Aid instructor about putting an improvised tourniquet on a "leaking", upper thigh wound.

[Alan de Enfield]

Various wound profiles :

[togor]

So back to the 1941 Win .303. Fired some of the "black label" stuff. Function was fine, if powder a bit dirty (judging from residue and volume of smoke per shot).

Primers are hard and I think this accounts for some leakage. Leakage is annoying and so the ability to screw on a "shooting". bolt head is handy. CCI #34 primers in a few of the cases (with same powder) sealed right as a drum. Cases themselves are right at .060" on the rim, and the cases were not too blown out.

If one doesn't mind the soot then I'd say swapping primers is the ticket and reuse the original powder. But I have the option of 41 gr. of BLC-2.