The Box O' Truth #37 - The Deadly .303 British and The Box O' Truth - Page 1

My friend FreeWilly sent me a note asking if I would be interested in him sending me some assorted .303 British ammo to test. Of course, I said, "Sure!"

He was particularly interested in the bullet construction of these rounds. He had sectioned some of the bullets to allow us to see how they were constructed.

As we noted in an earlier post, the .303 British round is an old round with a lot of history. The British attempted to "improve" its lethality and accuracy in several ways. One was to cut off the nose of the bullet, as shown in the Dum-Dum Bullets O' Truth post.

This practice was outlawed by the Hague Convention, but the Brits didn't give up. They noticed that if you had a light-weight nose on the bullet, it would tumble (actually yaw) more easily. This would cause more destruction and make them more deadly. So, they often made bullets with a light-weight nose.

They also believed (correctly) that a bullet with a light-weight nose would be more accurate. (Modern BTHP rifle bullets like the Sierra 2200M, .30 caliber, 168 gr. bullet are also based upon this idea.)

The Brits were convinced that their bullets actually "settled down" at long distances and were actually more accurate at long distances. This idea was originally laughed at by American competitive shooters; until they watched the British shooters shoot tighter groups at long distances than at close distances.