The stability gained by a nitro-glycerine powder was purchased at a very high cost in other directions. The hot flame of the cordite explosion is very wearing on the barrel, and rifles in which cordite is used suffer from gas cutting and erosion to an extent far in advance of the same trouble in rifles in which nitrocellulose powders are used. Service rifle users in Britain very quickly became aware of this disability. The following paragraph from "Arms and Explosives " of August, 1894, teNs its own tele :
"The War Office authorities are always informing us that cordite is making rapid strides in popularity in the Services, both for small-arm and ordnance purposes. Such a statement is practically impossible to controvert so far as the Regular branches of the Services are concerned. These have but little opportunity of preferring one powder to another, inasmuch as they are, in a vast majority of cases, bound to use Service explosives. Even here it is well known that those officers who go in at all largely for rifle-shooting very often employ their own private fancy in powders, without, however, giving such publicity to the fact as to lead the authorities to believe that they dislike cordite. It is very different with the case of the Volunteers, and the Bisley meeting affords a far better criterion of the popularity of cordite than any of the naturally prejudiced statements of War Office officials. It is, therefore, interesting to learn that where cordite had to meet with full, fair and free competition with other powders it came out very badly. Particulars have appeared in the public Press, which tally pretty accurately with our own information, as to the powder used in one of the leading M.B.L. competitions at Bisley—the Duke of Cambridge prize. Although cordite was served out gratis to the competitors, only two out of twenty-two used it. All the others seem to have preferred one or other of the various guncotton or nitro-cellulose powders now on the market. Indeed, it is claimed by the representatives of one of these that it won all the M.B.L. long-range competitions. When men of the experience of Sir Henry Halford, not to mention many others, publicly show their preference, and justify it by their success, for other powders than that officially adopted for the Services, something more Is required to convince us of its growing popularity than the asseverations of the War Office. So far as we could gather at Bisley, the feeling was that the man who respected the bore of his rifle should be very chary of subjecting it to the heat developed by cordite, and that as a shooting powder the latter was not to be relied upon."
It is certainly true that in the early stages of the development of cordite it was not as accurate as it might have been; but this unfortunate feature of cordite has now been removed to so great an extent that it can compete on equal terms with the most highly developed nitro-cellulose powders. As regards the destructive effects of cordite, recent modifications in the specification have done little or nothing to remedy the complaint. The shooting in the 1914 match rifle competition at Bisley demonstrated to admiration that, though M.D. cordite can be made to shoot with wonderful regularity, its destructive effects increase rapidly when charge and velocity are put up. Five hundred rounds of .280 cordite ammunition leave the barrel very worn and badly gas cut at the breech end.
The history of the British cartridge-case and bullet in the first few years after its adoption is interesting and instructive in that, when considered together, they indicate the growth of knowledge and the adaptation of design to cope with difficulties which presented themselves in practice.
It has often been said that the correct method of procedure is to evolve a cartridge which will give the desired results, and then produce a rifle to fire it. We believe that Major Rubin did follow this course, but he is apparently the only man who has ever done so. Certainly in 1888 the Lee-Enfield rifle was chosen first, and the cartridge evolved with much trouble and expense subsequently. In this case, there was the excuse that the main point of the Committee's deliberation was the adopting of a magazine rifle, and that it could not be expected to think of the cartridge first. Neither could it know that black powder was so soon to be tumbled from the position it had occupied for centuries, and its place taken by a more complete and less easily understood propellant—one which, whilst solving some of the Committee's difficulties, would upset a great number of their carefully worked out calculations.
The original cartridge-case was almost an exact copy of that of Colonel Rubin. It had a rimless base, and the bullet was held into the top of the case by means of a split ring,
PM
Originally Posted by ireload2
