What the Heck is a “Dum-Dum” Bullet Anyway?

Close to the top of the groundbreaking 1988 hybrid live-action/animation movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? hardboiled detective Eddie Valiant is in scorching pursuit of three villainous cartoon weasels, who escape by a tunnel into the animated ghetto of Toon City. Earlier than following them in, Valiant pulls out and hundreds a cartoon gun given him by none aside from Yosemite Sam, whose bullets look and speak like characters from traditional westerns – as a result of, positive, why not? Later, he fires this revolver on the weasels, just for the bullets to immediately halt mid-flight, go searching in confusion, and fly off within the fully unsuitable route – prompting Valiant to sigh and dejectedly mutter “Dum Dums…” Whereas this remark possible flew over the heads of each baby watching the movie, it’s, of course, a intelligent pun on an infamously damaging kind of ammunition: the so-called Dum-Dum bullet. However what’s a Dum-Dum anyway? What makes it so damaging? Why has its use in warfare been banned for over 120 years? And the place did it get its unusual title? Nicely let’s dive into it, we could?

From the introduction of sensible shoulder arms within the fifteenth Century, ammunition largely took the type of spheres or musket balls solid from strong lead. Lead had many benefits as an ammunition materials. It melted at a low temperature and was simple to solid; was dense and delivered important terminal power on impression and; when rifled firearms began appearing, was tender sufficient for the spin-stabilizing grooves or rifling within the barrel to chew into. Smooth lead bullets additionally tended to deform on impression, increasing past their authentic diameter and carving out bigger, extra damaging – and extra deadly – wounds.

Musket balls remained the usual type of small-arms ammunition for practically 400 years till, within the 1840s, inventors like Captain John Norton, William Greener, Colonel Claude Étienne Minié, and Colonel James Burton developed what got here to be generally known as the Minié Ball, a streamlined conical bullet with a conical or hemispherical hole within the base. This design neatly solved a key downside which had beforehand prevented the wide-scale adoption of rifled firearms. Up till this level, practically all navy firearms have been muzzle-loaders, which means a soldier first needed to pour a measured amount of gunpowder down the barrel, then insert a musket ball and push it down in opposition to the powder cost utilizing a ramrod. As musket balls tended to be barely smaller than the barrel diameter or bore, this course of was pretty speedy and a well-trained soldier may hearth as much as three aimed photographs per minute. Rifled firearms, nonetheless, require the bullet to be the identical diameter because the bore in order that the rifling can lower into it. This makes the bullet a lot more durable to ram down the barrel, considerably slowing down the firing charge. And this downside solely turned worse as powder residue constructed up contained in the barrel, progressively fouling up the rifling. For that reason, till the mid-Nineteenth Century rifles have been primarily issued to sharpshooters and different specialists, whereas the rank-and-file used common smoothbore muskets. The Minié ball, in contrast, was barely smaller than the bore, permitting it to be simply rammed down. When the rifle was fired, nonetheless, the stress of the propellant gases behind the bullet triggered the skinny lead “skirt” shaped by the hole base to broaden, sealing or obturating the bullet in opposition to the barrel and inflicting it to “chew” into the rifling. This design prolonged the vary of shoulder arms from 50 to just about 300 yards whereas sustaining their firing charge, revolutionizing warfare nearly in a single day. Certainly, in the course of the Crimean Conflict of 1853-56, it was estimated that 150 males firing Minié balls from rifled muskets had the equal firepower of 500 males utilizing older smoothbore muskets.

However the Minié ball modified warfare in one other, grotesque approach. Whereas earlier musket balls tended to be stopped by bone and grow to be lodged in troopers’ our bodies, the lighter, sooner Minié balls normally handed straight by. This, mixed with the tender lead bullets’ tendency to deform and broaden, usually resulted in shattered bones and huge, gaping wound channels. Such accidents in a short time turned contaminated, prompting subject surgeons to right away amputate wounded legs and arms. Certainly, in the course of the American Civil Conflict of 1861-65, Minié ball wounds accounted for practically 75% of all amputations – of which some 50,000 have been carried out by each side all through the battle.

However much more damaging weapons have been starting to seem on the battlefield. In 1857, British Military Main John Jacob developed bullets stuffed with explosive potassium chlorate that might detonate on impression, designed for blowing up enemy ammunition magazines at ranges of as much as 1,000 yards. Within the early 1860s, New York firearms vendor Samuel Gardiner Jr. tailored Jacobs’s design to suit inside a normal U.S. Military .58 calibre Minié ball. In contrast to the sooner Jacobs bullet, which needed to strike a strong floor to blow up, Gardiner’s design was set off by a delay fuse ignited by the rifle’s propellant cost, and may very well be set to blow up at any level alongside its trajectory. It was additionally solid from more durable zinc or pewter as a substitute of result in improve its fragmentation impact. In early 1862 Gardiner offered his invention to the Union authorities for analysis, whereupon President Abraham Lincoln, keen to amass the very newest in navy know-how for his military, pushed for its adoption. By December of that 12 months, an order for 100,000 Gardiner musket shells was positioned to be used in subject trials.

Nearly instantly, the brand new bullets attracted controversy and condemnation. Although meant, just like the Jacob bullet, to be used in opposition to enemy ammunition shops and different such targets, the Gardiner shells have been inevitably used as anti-personnel weapons – with predictably grotesque outcomes. Certainly, the Union Military’s Chief of Ordnance, Basic James W. Ripley, had been dead-set in opposition to the Gardiner shell from the start and repeatedly tried to dam its adoption earlier than lastly being overruled my Lincoln. Many others have been equally hostile, with Basic Ulysses S. Grant condemning the Gardiner shell as:

“…barbarous, as a result of they produce elevated struggling with none corresponding benefit to these utilizing them.”

…and Basic A.B. Dyer, Ripley’s successor as Chief of Ordnance, declaring the weapons:

“…inexcusable amongst any individuals above the grade of ignorant savages.”

In the meantime, comparable objections have been being raised in Russia, the place in 1863 an impact-sensitive explosive bullet much like Jacobs’s design was launched for blowing up powder magazines and ammunition wagons. By 1867, a extra delicate model was developed which might detonate on impression with even tender targets like people or animals. However whereas most nations may need exploited this technological edge to their strategic benefit, the Russians, fearing that this grotesque new weapon would set off a lethal European arms race, as a substitute sought to ban additional growth of explosive ammunition. In December 1868, delegates from 18 European nations – Austria-Hungary, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the UK, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Switzerland, the Ottoman Empire, and Württemberg – gathered in St. Petersburg to additional amend the worldwide legal guidelines of warfare. This was solely the second time such an effort had been undertaken after the First Geneva Conference of 1864, which laid out the principles for remedy of the wounded on the battlefield. The ensuing treaty, dubbed the Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of Conflict, of Explosive Projectiles Beneath 400 Grammes Weight or just the The Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868, was signed by all 18 attending delegates, and browse, partly:

“On the proposition of the Imperial Cupboard of Russia, an Worldwide Navy Fee having assembled at St. Petersburg with a view to look at the expediency of forbidding using sure projectiles in time of warfare between civilized nations, and that Fee having by frequent settlement fastened the technical limits at which the requirements of warfare should yield to the necessities of humanity, the Undersigned are licensed by the orders of their Governments to declare as follows:

That the progress of civilization ought to have the impact of assuaging as a lot as potential the calamities of warfare;

That the one reliable object which States ought to endeavour to perform throughout warfare is to weaken the navy forces of the enemy;

That for this goal it’s adequate to disable the best potential variety of males;

That this object can be exceeded by the employment of arms which uselessly worsen the sufferings of disabled males, or render their demise inevitable;

That the employment of such arms would, subsequently, be opposite to the legal guidelines of humanity;

The Contracting Events have interaction mutually to resign, in case of warfare amongst themselves, the employment by their navy or naval troops of any projectile of a weight under 400 grammes, which is both explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances.”

In different phrases, the delegates agreed that for projectiles weighing lower than 400 grams, kinetic power alone is sufficient to accomplish the duty of killing or wounding a single individual. Thus, including further explosives to such projectiles has no helpful navy impact and serves solely to unnecessarily improve struggling. Additionally, along with standard explosive projectiles which detonate on impression, the Declaration banned the navy use of so-called “fulminating” projectiles, which comprise a small cost of unstable explosive and are designed to shatter into fragments contained in the wound or whereas being eliminated throughout surgical procedure. Then again, bigger explosive artillery or autocannon shells meant to be used in opposition to fortified targets or to wound or kill a number of individuals have been exempted from the declaration.

The US, not thought of a serious navy energy on the time, was not invited to the St. Petersburg Conference and was not legally sure by its prohibitions. Nonetheless, many senior American navy officers like Chief of Ordnance Dyer agreed with its conclusions, and vehemently opposed the additional adoption of exploding or fulminating small arms ammunition. In the meantime, horrified by the nasty wounds inflicted by even standard-issue Minié balls, within the 1870s former Civil Conflict surgeons and different medical professionals pushed for a nationwide ban on tender lead bullets in warfare.

Although they have been finally unsuccessful, the times of the Minié ball have been nonetheless numbered – not as a consequence of any ethical outrage, however moderately the inexorable onward march of firearms know-how. By the 1870s muzzle-loading rifled muskets had given method to single-shot breech-loading rifles firing self-contained cartridges – which mixed the bullet, powder cost, and percussion cap into one handy bundle – whereas by the Eighteen Eighties repeating, magazine-fed rifles have been beginning to be broadly adopted by the world’s armies. Whereas the primary self-contained cartridges used plain cast-lead bullets, these have been quickly discovered to be troublesome to make use of in repeating rifles, because the motion of extracting a cartridge from the journal and inserting it into the chamber tended to deform the bullet, resulting in feeding issues, jams, and different points. Thus, in 1882 Swiss Colonel Eduard Rubin, working for the Swiss Federal Ammunition Manufacturing facility and Analysis Centre, developed the jacketed bullet, consisting of a lead core coated in a skinny layer of copper, or brass. This jacket was exhausting sufficient to forestall the bullet from deforming however tender sufficient to interact with the barrel’s rifling, permitting for a lot smoother operation of the rifle.

Moreover, the 12 months 1886 noticed a paradigm shift in firearms design with the introduction of the French Fusil Modele 1886 Lebel, the primary commonplace navy rifle to make use of the revolutionary new know-how of smokeless powder. In contrast to conventional black powder, smokeless powder didn’t produce the thick clouds of white smoke that beforehand obscured the battlefield, and left behind far much less thick, corrosive residue within the rifle barrel. It additionally burned hotter and produced a lot larger chamber pressures than black powder, permitting bullets to journey sooner and obtain flatter trajectories over longer ranges. Because of this, bullets additionally turned smaller. Beforehand, the actual chemistry of black powder had positioned an higher restrict on projectile velocity; thus, with a view to maximize kinetic power and terminal impact, bullets have been made as heavy as potential. Kinetic power, nonetheless, scales with the sq. of velocity, so as soon as smokeless powder appeared on the scene it turned extra environment friendly to make use of smaller, lighter bullets travelling at a lot larger velocities. Thus, whereas black powder cartridges of the 1870s tended to make use of heavy, strong lead bullets 13-15 millimetres in diameter, smokeless powder cartridges of the Eighteen Eighties and past had bullets half as extensive. Nonetheless, this elevated efficiency got here at a price: plain lead bullets tended to shed their outer layers whereas travelling down the barrel, rapidly fouling the rifling. Full steel jacket or FMJ bullets neatly solved this downside, and shortly turned commonplace for militaries all over the world.

However no sooner had they entered service, the brand new high-velocity jacketed bullets have been found to have an surprising flaw. Whereas preventing indigenous forces on the frontiers of the Empire, British colonial troops found that their bullets usually handed straight by an attacking warrior with out really dropping them. As Main Basic Sir Charles John Ardagh, a veteran of the 1881-1899 Mahdist Conflict in Sudan, defined in very dated language:

“The civilized soldier when shot acknowledges that he’s wounded and is aware of that the earlier he’s attended to the earlier he’ll get better. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off the sector to his ambulance, the place he’s dressed or bandaged. Your fanatical barbarian, equally wounded, continues to hurry on, spear or sword in hand; and earlier than you will have the time to signify to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the right course for the wounded man to observe—he might have lower off your head.”

This downside was additionally encountered by different colonial powers. For instance, in the course of the Philippine-American Conflict of 1899-1902, American troops found that neither their .30 calibre Krag-Jorgensen rifles or .38 calibre Colt 1892 revolvers had adequate stopping energy to halt a charging Moro tribesman. In April 1895, one Surgeon-Captain H. Hathaway of the British Indian Military noticed an execution by firing squad carried out utilizing the brand new .303 calibre Lee-Metford rifle. He famous that, in stark distinction to wounds inflicted by earlier soft-lead bullets, the holes produced by the .303 jacketed bullets have been clearly outlined, punching cleanly by bone as a substitute of shattering it and inflicting little or no harm to the encircling tissue. In his report on the incident he concluded:

“Though [the Lee-Metford] is a really humane weapon, it’s questionable whether or not it might cease a savage fanatical advance.”

Such studies triggered the British colonial authorities a substantial amount of concern, and strategies have been instantly sought to enhance the stopping energy of weapons utilized in colonial conflicts. At first, troopers field-modified their ammunition by slicing a cross within the tip of the bullet to advertise growth. Then, in 1896, Lieutenant Colonel Neville Sneyd Bertie Clay, superintendent of the Dum Dum Arsenal outdoors Calcutta, got here up with a course of for slicing away the entrance of the jacket on the usual Mk.II rifle bullet, exposing the lead core. Exams carried out on the cadavers of cows confirmed the effectiveness of the ammunition, and small numbers of so-called “Dum Dum” rounds have been subsequently modified for challenge to troops, first getting used in the course of the 1897-1898 Chitral and Tirah navy expeditions on India’s Northwest Frontier. Primarily based on this expertise, in 1868 a Mark III “Dum Dum” cartridge was launched with the entrance of the jacket lower away within the manufacturing facility. Nonetheless, as a consequence of manufacturing points, the Mark III was nearly instantly pulled from service and changed by the Mark IV, which had a hole cylindrical cavity extending again from the nostril of the bullet. On the similar time, a Mark III “manstopper” model of the .455 Webley revolver cartridge was additionally launched, that includes a totally squared-off nostril with a deep hemispherical cavity.

However whereas the time period “Dum Dum” would eternally be related to this sort of ammunition, this was not, the truth is, the primary time increasing bullets had been purposely manufactured. As early because the 1870s, high-velocity “Specific” cartridges for big-game looking had been fitted with hole factors to advertise growth and quickly take down harmful animals. Nor was this the primary time intentionally-expanding ammunition had been utilized in warfare; the .577 Snider cartridge, first issued in 1867, had a hole core and was noticed to inflict significantly nasty wounds.

The Mark IV “Dum Dum” cartridge was first used on the September 2, 1898 Battle of Omdurman outdoors Khartoum, Sudan, wherein an Anglo-Egyptian pressure of 35,000 defeated a Sudanese pressure of 52,000 beneath Mahdist chief Abdallahi bin Muhammad. The battle vividly demonstrated the grotesque effectiveness of the brand new British ammunition, with Main Hugh Mathias of the Royal Military Medical Corps describing the injuries inflicted on one Mahdist soldier:

“He had a bullet wound of the left leg above the knee. The wound entrance was clear lower and really small. The projectile had struck the Femur, simply above the inner condyle; the entire of the decrease finish of this bone, and higher finish of the Tibia, have been shattered to items, the knee joint being fully disorganised.

He had additionally been wounded in the fitting shoulder… The entire of the shoulder joint and scapular have been shattered to items. In neither case was there any signal of a wound of exit.”

Such studies horrified civilians again at house and all over the world, who questioned not solely the legality of increasing bullets beneath the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration however the morality of utilizing such “inhumane” weapons. Now, if it appears odd – if not oxymoronic – to sentence the “humaneness” of weapons of warfare particularly designed to kill, you will need to perceive the actual ethical framework upon which the Legal guidelines of Conflict as outlined within the Geneva Conventions and St. Petersburg Declaration have been constructed. Based on this framework, the purpose of warfare was to not kill as many enemy troopers as potential, however moderately to wound solely a lot as was essential to render them incapable of preventing – within the language of the time, to put them hors de fight or “out of motion”. Within the very best state of affairs, these wounds can be simply handled and fast to heal, permitting the troopers to dwell lengthy, wholesome lives after the warfare. Subsequently, any weapon which intentionally inflicted extra grievous and debilitating wounds than wanted to perform these ends served solely to extend struggling and was unnecessarily merciless and inhumane. Primarily based on these ideas, activists pushed for a world ban on increasing bullets. This trigger was additional spurred on by the work of Professor Paul von Bruns, Surgeon Basic to the Wūrttemberg Military, who in 1898 printed the outcomes of experiments carried out by firing fully-jacketed and hollow-point bullets at wooden, clay, human cadavers, and dwell horses. Von Bruns concluded that any limb struck by a “Dum Dum” projectile would invariably require amputation, and following the publication of his paper the German Congress of Surgeons issued a decision demanding that increasing projectiles be excluded from “civilized warfare.”

In the meantime, British navy and colonial authorities balked at these protests, arguing that since increasing bullets contained no explosive or fulminating materials, they have been nonetheless completely authorized beneath the St. Petersburg declaration. Moreover, they identified that bullets just like the Mark IV have been, the truth is, nothing new; certainly, previous to the introduction of jacketed bullets, all small arms projectiles deformed on impression, inflicting equally grotesque wounds. Thus, the Mark IV was, in a way, a reversion to older know-how. And in any case, such bullets have been by no means meant for “civilized” warfare in opposition to different western armies however moderately reserved to be used in opposition to “savage tribes” within the colonies. Lastly, the British claimed that the entire debate was nothing greater than an anti-British smear organized by Britain’s enemies, declaring that solely the British Mark IV cartridge was being singled out for criticism whereas the Swiss and Portuguese use of increasing ammunition was ignored.

Whereas most medical professionals pushed for a ban on increasing bullets, others sided with navy, with British Surgeon Alexander Ogston questioning the methodology of Von Bruns’s experiments and the very idea of the relative “humaneness” of fully-jacketed bullets:

“[The critics seem to believe that] one who has a limb injured by a totally mantled bullet has earlier than him however just a few weeks of nice sojourn in mattress, whereas the open-fronded bullets will price him his limb by amputation, if not worse.”

However, on Could 18, 1899, a Conference opened within the Hague to hammer out additional worldwide legal guidelines of warfare. Attended by representatives of 26 international locations – Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Siam, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA – the convention lined a variety of subjects, together with the peaceable arbitration of worldwide disputes, the remedy of prisoners of warfare, and additional limitations on the forms of weapons allowed in warfare. By the point the Conference concluded on July 29, the attendees had signed three treaties and three declarations: the Conference for the Pacific Settlement of Worldwide Disputes, which established a Everlasting Court docket of Arbitration within the Hague; the Conference with Respect to the Legal guidelines and Customs of Conflict on Land, which additional refined the legal guidelines concerning the conduct at warfare such because the remedy of prisoners and non-combatant civilians; the Conference for the Adaptation to Maritime Warfare, which required belligerents to deal with shipwrecked and wounded enemy sailors like prisoners of warfare on land; the Declaration regarding the Prohibition of the Discharge of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons or by Different New Analogous Strategies; the Declaration regarding the Prohibition of the Use of Projectiles with the Sole Object to Unfold Asphyxiating Toxic Gases; and, lastly, Declaration regarding the Prohibition of the Use of Bullets which may Simply Broaden or Change their Type contained in the Human Physique comparable to Bullets with a Exhausting Protecting which doesn’t Utterly Cowl the Core, or containing Indentations. Whereas the British delegates – together with Main Basic Ardagh – doggedly argued their case, in the long run the anti-Dum Dum crowd received out and all of the delegates besides the UK, Portugal, and the USA signed and ratified the declaration.

Nonetheless, the declaration was non-binding until signed and ratified, which means Britain was beneath no obligation to withdraw its Dum-Dum bullets from service. Nonetheless, when the Second Anglo-Boer Conflict in South Africa broke out in October 1899, the Conflict Workplace ordered all Mark IV rifle and Mark III pistol ammunition recalled from the battlefield. This was accomplished not in compliance with the Hague Conference, however moderately to counter accusations of inhumane warfare practices levelled by the Dutch, French, Germans, and Irish. Formally, no increasing ammunition was utilized in South Africa, nor in the course of the 1900 Boxer Rebel in China. Nonetheless, in 1903, British forces have been overwhelmed and annihilated by Somali forces at Gumburru, a defeat partially attributed to the ineffectiveness of the fully-jacketed Mark II cartridge in opposition to the Dervish warriors. Consequently, Mark IV Dum-Dums have been rapidly re-issued to British troops in Somaliland. United States forces additionally used increasing ammunition in the course of the 1899-1913 Moro Rebel within the Philippines.

In the meantime, British arms producers started searching for a bullet design that might have the identical stopping energy because the Mark IV whereas nonetheless complying with the 1899 Hague Conference. A Mark VI bullet with a thinner jacket was experimented with in 1904, however its efficiency proved unsatisfactory. Then, in 1905, Germany shook the arms world by introducing the 7.92×57 millimetres Mauser cartridge, which featured a light-weight pointed or “Spitzer” bullet that travelled at a blistering 884 metres per second. So quick have been these bullets that, regardless of not increasing or deforming, they inflicted disproportionately giant, gaping wounds through a phenomenon generally known as hydrostatic shock. At first the British tried to repeat the German design, however neither the .303 cartridge case nor the motion of the brand new Lee-Enfield rifle have been robust sufficient to resist the required pressures. As a substitute, in 1910 they unveiled the Mark VII bullet, which featured a light-weight aluminium tip forward of a traditional lead core, all lined in a full steel jacket. This design moved the centre of gravity to the rear of the bullet, which means that as quickly because it struck its goal, it might start tumbling end-over-end – tearing a wound channel simply as massive – if not greater – than the Mark IV Dum-Dum. However, as a result of the bullet didn’t really broaden or explode, it remained completely authorized beneath the 1899 Hague Conference and its 1907 follow-up. Ah, technical correctness: the greatest form of correctness!

At present, it stays unlawful to make use of increasing ammunition in warfare, although projectiles that wound by tumbling or hydrostatic shock are near-universal. And outdoors the navy, increasing bullets are broadly utilized by hunters and legislation enforcement for a similar purpose they have been initially developed: for rapidly and successfully taking down targets. Certainly, it’s notable that of the three declarations of the 1899 Hague Conference, the third banning increasing ammunition needs to be probably the most universally obeyed. For lower than fifteen years later, the prohibitions in opposition to air-dropped projectiles and poison fuel – arguably extra horrific weapons than Dum-Dum bullets – can be violated in spectacular vogue within the bloody quagmire of the First World Conflict.

Broaden for References