Dum-dum
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- This article is about ammunition. For other meanings, see Dum Dums.
Dum-dum or dumdum is the colloquial name for several types of expanding bullets used in ammunition for firearms. A normal (jacketed) round that has had notches cut across the top is one early example. The effect is that the bullet deforms and sometimes fragments upon impact due to the indentations. This creates a larger wound channel or channels with greater blood loss and trauma.
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[edit] History
In the late 19th century, the invention of Cordite ammunition permitted higher velocity than black powder, and corresponding higher hit probabilities. However the limit to the amount of recoil that was acceptable meant that higher velocity rounds needed smaller diameter, lighter bullets. Originally, dum-dum referred to a new type of ammunition produced in the early 1890s at the arsenal at Dum Dum near Calcutta in India. Soon after the introduction of smokeless powder to firearms, full metal jacket bullets were introduced to reduce stripping by the new, smaller caliber rounds with higher velocities. 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 bullets. Within the British Indian Army, the Dum Dum arsenal produced its now infamous solution - the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet. This could lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel and the British Army produced the Mk III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V (1899) Ball rounds which were of the hollow point design. These bullets expanded to a significantly larger diameter, producing larger diameter wounds than the full metal jacketed versions. Because the energy was roughly the same, none of these rounds actually produced more severe wounds than the then previous .45 Martini-Henry British service round.
[edit] Law
The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III, prohibits the use in warfare of bullets which easily expand or flatten in the body,[1] and was a expansion of the Declaration of St Petersburg in 1868, which banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams. These treaties limited the use of "explosive" bullets in military use, defining illegal rounds as a jacketed bullet with an exposed lead tip (and, by implication, a jacketed base). During the Convention, representatives from Imperial Germany provided evidence of severe expansion in flesh based on analysis of British hunting (not military) rounds. This provided a competitive advantage for the newly developed German Spitzer (pointed) rounds which did not have exposed lead at the tip. The United States and Britain disagreed with the German analysis, but declined to make a significant issue of it.
The competing small caliber Spitzer bullets, when at supersonic speeds, retain velocity better, giving a flatter trajectory, but have reduced terminal effect compared to expanding bullets. Spitzer bullets typically rotate or yaw after striking flesh, and then travel in a stable base forward orientation, and are referred to as "Latent Dum-dum" rounds. Theodore Roosevelt, writing about his experiences in Cuba noted that the 7 mm Mauser rounds used by the Spanish were usually significantly less lethal than the large caliber low velocity .45/70 Government rounds fired from the Allin Springfield trapdoor rifle. Unless a soldier was hit in the head, heart, or spinal cord it was very common for a soldier to take himself to the rear, and return to duty after a few days.
However, poorly informed soldiers of many nations occasionally try to increase the effectiveness of their ammunition by filing the gilding metal off the tip. Modified bullets are unlikely to have high accuracy. Modified bullets found on a soldier would be evidence that the soldier was not following the conventions of land warfare, and he could be treated as an unlawful combatant, and lack the rights accorded to a prisoner of war.
Thus, 'Dum-dum' came to mean a jacketed bullet illicitly or illegally modified to expand. This seems to be the most common current usage of the term - a dum-dum is usually taken to be a bullet which has been modified by the user in order to create greater injury rather than a factory produced hollow-point or soft-point round as might be chosen for hunting or law enforcement purposes.
World War I gave many soldiers their first exposure to high-velocity jacketed bullets of the modern type and many were unfamiliar with their sometimes dramatic effects on tissue. Wounds may be extremely large when compared to the bullet that causes them, particularly at close range, and this led some soldiers to accuse their enemies of using illegal "tampered" ammunition even when they were not.
The need to tamper with bullets to attempt to cause additional wounding capability is, in any case, questionable. All common military cartridges are usually considered adequately lethal for intended purposes, even when the bullets are non-expanding.
Controversy, however, does surround "intermediate" rounds such as the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO, especially when fired from short barreled weapons such as the M4 Carbine; this has led some soldiers to call for a return to more powerful .30 caliber class cartridges (e.g., .30-06 Springfield, 7.62 x 51 mm NATO, 7.92 x 57 mm) The experimental 6.8mm SPC and 6.5mm Grendel are one consequence of this controversy.
It may be of interest that true exploding rounds such as 40 mm diameter grenades, 20 mm cannons, 25 mm cannons, mortars, and large caliber artillery, or tank rounds are allowed by The Hague convention for use against military materiel, not for direct use against soldiers.
[edit] Cultural references
- In the movie Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle makes dum-dums out of what appears to be .44 magnum soft-points during the infamous training montage.
- In the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie shoots off three rounds near the end out of a cartoon gun. The rounds (which are intact completely) follow the target for a while but cannot seem to find it after rounding a corner. Eddie remarks that they're dum-dums, though this is a humorous pun on the usual term.
- The song “Lucretia My Reflection” by The Sisters of Mercy includes the line Dum-dum bullets and shoot to kill, I hear
- In the movie Lethal Weapon 3, Leo Getz is believed to have sustained a 'dum-dum wound' while receiving medical treatment at a hospital, after being shot. In reality, the dum-dum hit is used as a prank by Riggs.
- In the book, The Man With the Golden Gun, Scaramanga is found to be using bullets with dum-dum crosses.
- In the movie The Bear, the character Tom can be seen cutting dum-dum crosses into his ammunition.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- The .303 British Cartridge, with information on the original Dum-Dum bullet, and the subsequent MK III through MKV hollow point bullets.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Hague Convention Declaration III - On the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body July 29, 1899
