Dum-dum
Encyclopedia
An expanding bullet is a bullet
designed to expand on impact
, increasing in diameter to limit penetration and/or produce a larger diameter wound. They are informally known as a Dum-dum or dumdum bullets. The two typical designs are the hollow point bullet
and the soft point bullet
.
, near Calcutta
, India
by Captain Neville Bertie-Clay
. There were several expanding bullets produced by this arsenal for the .303 British
cartridge, including soft point and hollow point designs. These were not the first expanding bullets, however; hollow point expanding bullets were commonly used for hunting thin skinned game in express rifle
s as early as the mid-1870s. The use of the term "Dum-dum", applied to expanding bullets other than the early .303 designs, is considered slang by some. Manufacturers have many terms to describe the particular construction of the various types of expanding bullets, though most fall into the category of soft point or hollow point designs.
Another early name was General Tweedie's "mushroom bullet", cited in the New York Times in 1892.
, which is a very soft material. These would often flatten upon impact with the target, causing a larger wound than the original diameter of the ball. The adoption of rifling
allowed the use of longer, heavier bullets, but these were still typically constructed of soft lead and would often double in diameter upon impact. In this case expansion was a side effect of materials, and there is no evidence that the bullets were designed to expand upon impact.
The earliest examples of bullets specifically designed to expand on impact were those fired by express rifle
s, which were developed in the mid 19th century. Express rifles used larger powder charges and lighter bullets than typical for the time to achieve very high velocities for black powder cartridges. One method of lightening the bullets used was to provide a deep cavity in the nose of the bullet. These were the first hollow point bullet
s, and in addition to developing higher velocities, they also expanded significantly upon impact. These hollow point bullets worked well on thin-skinned game, but tended to come apart on bigger game, resulting in insufficient penetration. One solution to this was the "cruciform expanding bullet", a solid bullet with an X shaped incision in the tip. This split section expanded to the depth of the incision, and then stopped, making it an early form of controlled expansion bullet.
In the late 19th century, the invention of Cordite
and other nitrocellulose
based "smokeless" propellants permitted higher velocity than black powder, along with flatter trajectories and correspondingly higher hit probabilities. However, to limit the amount of recoil
to an acceptable level meant that higher velocity rounds needed lighter (and thus smaller diameter) bullets.
Soon after the introduction of smokeless powder
to firearms, full metal jacket bullet
s were introduced to prevent lead fouling in the bore caused by the higher pressures and velocities when used with soft lead bullets. However, it was soon noticed that such small caliber rounds were less effective at wounding or killing an enemy than the older large caliber soft lead
bullet
s. Within the British Indian Army
, the Dum Dum
arsenal produced its now infamous solution—the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet, creating the first soft point bullet
s. Since the Mark II jacket did not cover the base of the round this could potentially lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel. This potential problem resulted in the rejection of the Dum-dum design and led to independent development of the Mark III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V (1899) .303 British
rounds, which were of the hollow point
design, with the jacket covering the base; while these were made in Britain, not at the Dum-Dum arsenal, the name "Dum-dum" had already become associated with expanding bullets, and continued to be used to refer to any expanding bullets. The expanding bullets expanded upon impact to a diameter significantly greater than the original .312 inch (7.92 mm) bullet diameter, producing larger diameter wounds than the full metal jacketed versions. The Mark IV was successful enough in its first use at Omdurman
that British soldiers issued with the standard Mark II bullets began to remove the top of the jacket, converting the Mark II bullets into improvised Dum-dum types.
In 1898, the German government lodged a protest against the use of the Mark IV bullet, claiming the wounds produced by the Mark IV were excessive and inhumane, thus violating the laws of war. The protest, however, was based on the comparison of the wounds produced by expanding and non-expanding bullets from high velocity sporting rifles, rather than a comparison of the expanding .303 British bullets with the previous, large bore service cartridge it replaced, the .577/450 Martini-Henry
. Because the energy was roughly the same, the wounds caused by the expanding bullet of the .303 were less severe than the those caused by the larger caliber, solid lead bullet used by the Martini-Henry.
The German protests were effective, however, resulting in the ban of the use of expanding bullets in warfare. The British replaced the hollow point bullets with new full metal jacket bullets, and used the remaining stocks of expanding bullets for practice.
During the Hague Convention of 1899, the British delegation attempted to justify the use of the dumdum bullet by pointing to its utility when putting down colonial unrest. Barbara Tuchman writes that, "Developed by the British to stop the rush of fanatical tribesman, the bullets were vigorously defended by Sir John Ardagh against the heated attack of all except the American military delegate, Captain Crozier, whose country was about to make use of them in the Philippines. In warfare against savages, Ardagh explained to an absorbed audience, "men penetrated through and through several times by our latest pattern of small calibre projectiles, which make a small clean holes," were nevertheless able to rush on and come to close quarters. Some means had to be found to stop them. "The civilized soldier when shot recognizes that he is wounded and knows that the sooner he is attended to the sooner he will recover. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off the field to his ambulance, where he is dressed or bandaged. Your fanatical barbarian, similarly wounded, continues to rush on, spear or sword in hand; and before you have the time to represent to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the proper course for the wounded man to follow - he may have cut off your head." However, the rest of the delegates at the Hague Convention 1899 did not accept this justification and voted 22-2 to prohibit the future use of the dumdum bullet.
of 1899, Declaration III, prohibits the use in international warfare of bullets which easily expand or flatten in the body, giving as example a bullet with a jacket with incisions or one that does not fully cover the core. This is often incorrectly believed to be prohibited in the Geneva Conventions
, but it significantly predates those conventions, and is in fact a continuance of the Declaration of St Petersburg
in 1868, which banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams.
Until relatively recently, the prohibition on the use of expanding bullets was only applicable to international armed conflicts. The International Committee of the Red Cross
's customary international law study contends that customary law now prohibits their use in armed conflicts not of an international character. The adoption of an amendment to Article 8 at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala makes the use of expanding bullets in non-international armed conflict a war crime.
Because the Hague convention applies only to the use of expanding bullets in war, the use of expanding rounds remains legal, or even required, in some circumstances. Examples of this are use of appropriately expanding bullets in hunting, where it is desirable to stop the animal quickly either to prevent loss of a game animal, or ensure a humane death of vermin, and in law enforcement or self defence, where quickly neutralizing an aggressor may be needed to prevent further loss of life, or where the bullet must remain inside the target to prevent collateral damage e.g. on an aircraft.
Bullet
A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...
designed to expand on impact
Terminal ballistics
Terminal ballistics, a sub-field of ballistics, is the study of the behavior of a projectile when it hits its target. It is often referred to as stopping power when dealing with human or other living targets. Terminal ballistics is relevant both for small caliber projectiles as well as for large...
, increasing in diameter to limit penetration and/or produce a larger diameter wound. They are informally known as a Dum-dum or dumdum bullets. The two typical designs are the hollow point bullet
Hollow point bullet
A hollow point is an expanding bullet that has a pit or hollowed out shape in its tip, generally intended to cause the bullet to thin upon entering a target in order to decrease penetration and disrupt more tissue as it travels through the target. It is also used for controlled penetration, where...
and the soft point bullet
Soft point bullet
A soft-point bullet , also known as a soft-nosed bullet, is a lead expanding bullet with a copper or brass jacket that is left open at the tip, exposing some of the lead inside and is thus an example of a semi-jacketed round...
.
Names
Expanding bullets were given the name Dum-dum, or dumdum, after an early British example produced in the Dum Dum ArsenalDum Dum Arsenal
Dum-Dum Arsenal was a British military facility located near the town of Dum Dum in modern West Bengal, India.The arsenal was at the center of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 regarding suspicion that cartridges distributed at the arsenal were greased with pig and cow fat.It was at this arsenal that...
, near Calcutta
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
by Captain Neville Bertie-Clay
Neville Bertie-Clay
Lieutenant-Colonel Neville Sneyd Bertie-Clay was a British army officer. He served in the Royal Artillery and in the Royal Garrison Artillery, but spent much of his career on secondment to the Indian Ordnance Department of the Indian Army...
. There were several expanding bullets produced by this arsenal for the .303 British
.303 British
.303 British, or 7.7x56mmR, is a .311 inch calibre rifle and machine gun cartridge first developed in Britain as a blackpowder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee-Metford rifle, later adapted to use smokeless powders...
cartridge, including soft point and hollow point designs. These were not the first expanding bullets, however; hollow point expanding bullets were commonly used for hunting thin skinned game in express rifle
Express rifle
The term express was first applied to hunting rifles and ammunition beginning in the middle 19th century, to indicate a rifle or ammunition capable of higher than typical velocities. The early express cartridges used a heavy charge of black powder to propel a lightweight, often hollow point...
s as early as the mid-1870s. The use of the term "Dum-dum", applied to expanding bullets other than the early .303 designs, is considered slang by some. Manufacturers have many terms to describe the particular construction of the various types of expanding bullets, though most fall into the category of soft point or hollow point designs.
Another early name was General Tweedie's "mushroom bullet", cited in the New York Times in 1892.
History
Early bullets were typically made in the form of spheres of nearly pure leadLead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
, which is a very soft material. These would often flatten upon impact with the target, causing a larger wound than the original diameter of the ball. The adoption of rifling
Rifling
Rifling is the process of making helical grooves in the barrel of a gun or firearm, which imparts a spin to a projectile around its long axis...
allowed the use of longer, heavier bullets, but these were still typically constructed of soft lead and would often double in diameter upon impact. In this case expansion was a side effect of materials, and there is no evidence that the bullets were designed to expand upon impact.
The earliest examples of bullets specifically designed to expand on impact were those fired by express rifle
Express rifle
The term express was first applied to hunting rifles and ammunition beginning in the middle 19th century, to indicate a rifle or ammunition capable of higher than typical velocities. The early express cartridges used a heavy charge of black powder to propel a lightweight, often hollow point...
s, which were developed in the mid 19th century. Express rifles used larger powder charges and lighter bullets than typical for the time to achieve very high velocities for black powder cartridges. One method of lightening the bullets used was to provide a deep cavity in the nose of the bullet. These were the first hollow point bullet
Hollow point bullet
A hollow point is an expanding bullet that has a pit or hollowed out shape in its tip, generally intended to cause the bullet to thin upon entering a target in order to decrease penetration and disrupt more tissue as it travels through the target. It is also used for controlled penetration, where...
s, and in addition to developing higher velocities, they also expanded significantly upon impact. These hollow point bullets worked well on thin-skinned game, but tended to come apart on bigger game, resulting in insufficient penetration. One solution to this was the "cruciform expanding bullet", a solid bullet with an X shaped incision in the tip. This split section expanded to the depth of the incision, and then stopped, making it an early form of controlled expansion bullet.
In the late 19th century, the invention of Cordite
Cordite
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. Like gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance...
and other nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to nitric acid or another powerful nitrating agent. When used as a propellant or low-order explosive, it is also known as guncotton...
based "smokeless" propellants permitted higher velocity than black powder, along with flatter trajectories and correspondingly higher hit probabilities. However, to limit the amount of recoil
Recoil
Recoil is the backward momentum of a gun when it is discharged. In technical terms, the recoil caused by the gun exactly balances the forward momentum of the projectile and exhaust gasses, according to Newton's third law...
to an acceptable level meant that higher velocity rounds needed lighter (and thus smaller diameter) bullets.
Soon after the introduction of smokeless powder
Smokeless powder
Smokeless powder is the name given to a number of propellants used in firearms and artillery which produce negligible smoke when fired, unlike the older gunpowder which they replaced...
to firearms, full metal jacket bullet
Full metal jacket bullet
A full metal jacket is a bullet consisting of a soft core encased in a shell of harder metal, such as gilding metal, cupronickel or less commonly a steel alloy. This shell can extend around all of the bullet, or often just the front and sides with the rear left as exposed lead...
s were introduced to prevent lead fouling in the bore caused by the higher pressures and velocities when used with soft lead bullets. However, it was soon noticed that such small caliber rounds were less effective at wounding or killing an enemy than the older large caliber soft lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
bullet
Bullet
A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...
s. Within the British Indian Army
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, officially simply the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj in India before the partition of India in 1947...
, the Dum Dum
Dum Dum
Dum Dum is a city and a municipality in North 24 Parganas district in the state of West Bengal, India. It is a neighbourhood in North-west Kolkata and the location of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, formerly Dum Dum Airport.Dum Dum is a well known place in greater Kolkata...
arsenal produced its now infamous solution—the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet, creating the first soft point bullet
Soft point bullet
A soft-point bullet , also known as a soft-nosed bullet, is a lead expanding bullet with a copper or brass jacket that is left open at the tip, exposing some of the lead inside and is thus an example of a semi-jacketed round...
s. Since the Mark II jacket did not cover the base of the round this could potentially lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel. This potential problem resulted in the rejection of the Dum-dum design and led to independent development of the Mark III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V (1899) .303 British
.303 British
.303 British, or 7.7x56mmR, is a .311 inch calibre rifle and machine gun cartridge first developed in Britain as a blackpowder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee-Metford rifle, later adapted to use smokeless powders...
rounds, which were of the hollow point
Hollow point bullet
A hollow point is an expanding bullet that has a pit or hollowed out shape in its tip, generally intended to cause the bullet to thin upon entering a target in order to decrease penetration and disrupt more tissue as it travels through the target. It is also used for controlled penetration, where...
design, with the jacket covering the base; while these were made in Britain, not at the Dum-Dum arsenal, the name "Dum-dum" had already become associated with expanding bullets, and continued to be used to refer to any expanding bullets. The expanding bullets expanded upon impact to a diameter significantly greater than the original .312 inch (7.92 mm) bullet diameter, producing larger diameter wounds than the full metal jacketed versions. The Mark IV was successful enough in its first use at Omdurman
Omdurman
Omdurman is the second largest city in Sudan and Khartoum State, lying on the western banks of the River Nile, opposite the capital, Khartoum. Omdurman has a population of 2,395,159 and is the national centre of commerce...
that British soldiers issued with the standard Mark II bullets began to remove the top of the jacket, converting the Mark II bullets into improvised Dum-dum types.
In 1898, the German government lodged a protest against the use of the Mark IV bullet, claiming the wounds produced by the Mark IV were excessive and inhumane, thus violating the laws of war. The protest, however, was based on the comparison of the wounds produced by expanding and non-expanding bullets from high velocity sporting rifles, rather than a comparison of the expanding .303 British bullets with the previous, large bore service cartridge it replaced, the .577/450 Martini-Henry
.577/450 Martini-Henry
The .577/450 Martini-Henry was a black powder, centerfire round used by the British and British Empire militaries prior to the adoption of the .303 calibre cartridge used in the Lee-Metford, Martini-Enfield, and Lee-Enfield series of rifles alongside the Nepalese Bira gun...
. Because the energy was roughly the same, the wounds caused by the expanding bullet of the .303 were less severe than the those caused by the larger caliber, solid lead bullet used by the Martini-Henry.
The German protests were effective, however, resulting in the ban of the use of expanding bullets in warfare. The British replaced the hollow point bullets with new full metal jacket bullets, and used the remaining stocks of expanding bullets for practice.
During the Hague Convention of 1899, the British delegation attempted to justify the use of the dumdum bullet by pointing to its utility when putting down colonial unrest. Barbara Tuchman writes that, "Developed by the British to stop the rush of fanatical tribesman, the bullets were vigorously defended by Sir John Ardagh against the heated attack of all except the American military delegate, Captain Crozier, whose country was about to make use of them in the Philippines. In warfare against savages, Ardagh explained to an absorbed audience, "men penetrated through and through several times by our latest pattern of small calibre projectiles, which make a small clean holes," were nevertheless able to rush on and come to close quarters. Some means had to be found to stop them. "The civilized soldier when shot recognizes that he is wounded and knows that the sooner he is attended to the sooner he will recover. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off the field to his ambulance, where he is dressed or bandaged. Your fanatical barbarian, similarly wounded, continues to rush on, spear or sword in hand; and before you have the time to represent to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the proper course for the wounded man to follow - he may have cut off your head." However, the rest of the delegates at the Hague Convention 1899 did not accept this justification and voted 22-2 to prohibit the future use of the dumdum bullet.
Law
The Hague ConventionHague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
The Hague Conventions were two international treaties negotiated at international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands: The First Hague Conference in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907...
of 1899, Declaration III, prohibits the use in international warfare of bullets which easily expand or flatten in the body, giving as example a bullet with a jacket with incisions or one that does not fully cover the core. This is often incorrectly believed to be prohibited in the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
, but it significantly predates those conventions, and is in fact a continuance of the Declaration of St Petersburg
St Petersburg Declaration of 1868
St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868 or in full Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight is an international treaty agreed in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, November 29 / December 11, 1868. It succeeded the First Geneva Convention of 1864...
in 1868, which banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams.
Until relatively recently, the prohibition on the use of expanding bullets was only applicable to international armed conflicts. The International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
's customary international law study contends that customary law now prohibits their use in armed conflicts not of an international character. The adoption of an amendment to Article 8 at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala makes the use of expanding bullets in non-international armed conflict a war crime.
Because the Hague convention applies only to the use of expanding bullets in war, the use of expanding rounds remains legal, or even required, in some circumstances. Examples of this are use of appropriately expanding bullets in hunting, where it is desirable to stop the animal quickly either to prevent loss of a game animal, or ensure a humane death of vermin, and in law enforcement or self defence, where quickly neutralizing an aggressor may be needed to prevent further loss of life, or where the bullet must remain inside the target to prevent collateral damage e.g. on an aircraft.
See also
- Hollow point bulletHollow point bulletA hollow point is an expanding bullet that has a pit or hollowed out shape in its tip, generally intended to cause the bullet to thin upon entering a target in order to decrease penetration and disrupt more tissue as it travels through the target. It is also used for controlled penetration, where...
- Military necessityMilitary necessityMilitary necessity, along with distinction, and proportionality, are three important principles of international humanitarian law governing the legal use of force in an armed conflict.-Attacks:...
- Stopping powerStopping powerStopping power is a colloquial term used to describe the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause a penetrating ballistic injury to a target, human or animal, sufficient to incapacitate the target where it stands....
- .303 British.303 British.303 British, or 7.7x56mmR, is a .311 inch calibre rifle and machine gun cartridge first developed in Britain as a blackpowder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee-Metford rifle, later adapted to use smokeless powders...
- FrangibleFrangibleA material is said to be frangible if through deformation it tends to break up into fragments, rather than deforming plastically and retaining its cohesion as a single object...
- Glossary of firearms terminologyGlossary of firearms terminology-A:*accurize, accurizing: The process of altering a stock firearm to improve its accuracy.*action: The physical mechanism that manipulates cartridges and/or seals the breech. The term is also used to describe the method in which cartridges are loaded, locked, and extracted from the mechanism....
External links
- The .303 British Cartridge, with information on the original Dum-Dum bullet, and the subsequent MK III through MKV hollow point bullets.
- Dum-Dum Bullet Testing, with tests of dum-dum rounds fired into jugs of water.