No matter how good the weapon may be, the lion's share of its fighting qualities are the characteristics of the cartridge. You cannot make a bad bullet of a successful shot. And the topic of this article will be an expansive bullet - a real record holder for striking action.
A bit of history
The achievements of chemists led to the creation of smokeless gunpowder, which allowed weapons designers to move to a new level, creating breech-loading rifles that shoot with unitary cartridges. The caliber of hand weapons has decreased significantly, and the accuracy and range of the battle have also improved significantly. In order to perfect the ballistic properties of the bullet, it began to be placed in a metal shell. And here there were dissatisfied. For the first time, English soldiers spoke about the insufficient lethal force of new bullets during an expedition to Chitral (Pakistan). Using the 1889 Lee Metford rifles, they noticed that the Lee Spide cartridge bullets (7.71 mm) did not have an immediate stopping effect on the enemy. They had nothing to compare, because they were shot from old muskets with 20-30-gram pieces of lead, and the wound from the lead ball looked incomparably more terrible than the "hole" from the English bullet. The way out was quickly found, and right on the spot. The bullets of the Lee-Spide cartridge simply began to file. The "incised" bullet when it hit the body opened, greatly increasing the wound channel, more than blocking the requirements for lethal force. So the first expansive bullet appeared. The English were put on stream in the workshops of the town of Dum Dum, located near Calcutta. From here came the name - "bullet doom-doom."
Modern expansive bullet
Since the end of the nineteenth century, many variants of such a bullet were invented. Conventionally, they are divided into deformable, crumbling and completely collapsing.
Deformable, which, incidentally, includes the “doom-doom bullet” described above, when hit by a target, crumple and increase in diameter. This is achieved either by the complete absence of the shell, or only part of it. Semi-collapsing and collapsing bullets have transverse folds of the shell or funnel-shaped recesses. Such bullets are torn apart when hit in the body, and their effect is comparable to a fragmentation shell. Of course, an expansive bullet does not have an ideal ballistic form, and therefore is effective only at relatively short distances. In order to eliminate this drawback, plastic bullets are used in modern bullets, which give it the necessary streamlining, and at the time of contact they do not interfere with “opening up”. In addition, the so-called bullets with a displaced center of gravity, about which many legends are composed, have spread. Meanwhile, the principle of their action is very simple: due to the center of gravity shifted to the end, these bullets have a tendency to tip over when they hit an obstacle, which ensures their high damaging effect. True, they have poor accuracy (at large distances) and poorly penetrate the defense.
Scope of application
The ability to instantly stop an attacker with the exception of ricochet or penetration through right through is most in demand in law enforcement. It was there that the most widespread expansive bullets. The 45th caliber with such a “gift” is capable of knocking anyone off with one shot. In addition, they are actively used in hunting for large animals. And recently, even expansive bullets for pneumatics have appeared, allowing the efficient use of such systems in the hunt.