HMGs firing shells?

I don't think so. It's interesting if you're after all the nitty-gritty details like what metal each component is made of, that the brinell hardness of everything is, chemical make up of tracer fillings, etc.

The performance tests aren't really detailed apart from the visibility test for the tracers. Nine times out of ten they just summarize with 'no outstanding features, no advantages over British ammunition of same calibre'.

The Germans also used an explosive bullet for their 0.308/7.92mm aerial machine guns. Its purpose was as a 'strike' indication as feedback to the pilot or gunner. When Soviets snippers began using explosive bullets this ammunition sometimes found its way into the hands of snippers on the Eastern Front.

The 13.2mm German Heavy MG clearly also would have provided excellent strike indication furthermore there are some other possibilities: self destruct capability (standard for German C38 20mm FLAK guns) to protect the population below and the fact that an explosive filler saves precious metals which had to be imported. I suspect it might save 10-20kg of steel per mission.

Why would a Sniper use explosive ammunition. It will have completely different ballistic properties to the usual match grade ball ammo he would have trained with and as anyone who has fired regulary knows changing ammo can throw your aim out by anything from inches to feet. Plus why would a half decent Sniper need exploding ammo hitting centre mass with 12grams of Ball is enough and would an explosive bullet even light when hitting the target it would surely need to hit something solid.

Any properly trained Sniper who used explosive ammo would be a moron.

22 minute video - but worth a watch.

https://www.full30.com/video/82efb579fd3c93d177205966ef3d3c9d

Interesting video! Where does a person find 70+ year old Ammo used only on the Eastern front?

Cheers,
Biff

BiffF15 said:

Interesting video! Where does a person find 70+ year old Ammo used only on the Eastern front?

Click to expand...

Just to clarify - explosive rounds were used on all fronts, but only on the Eastern front were they used directly against human targets.

Officially, anyway.

Greyman said:

Just to clarify - explosive rounds were used on all fronts, but only on the Eastern front were they used directly against human targets.

Officially, anyway.

Click to expand...

I'd imagine most aircraft strafing my mid-war were using a mix of explosive rounds as far as most incendiary (and API) round used low-explosive flash powder-type compositions for their filler. The British .303 incendiary rounds introduced during the BoB and used extensively after were of very similar design and composition to the german 'explosive' 7.92 mm ammunition in question. (main charge being made of aluminum and/or magnesium powder mixed with Barium Nitrate as the oxidizer -particularly useful due to its high density maintaining closer bullet weight to standard ball ammunition while also offering a composition easily ignited by impact or with a small initiator charge -in british use they deleted the initiator due to impact being sufficient, simplifying construction and increasing incendiary capacity slightly)

That said, those simplified incendiaries might not have initiated when striking especially soft targets (like water, fabric, or flesh), while those with initiators/fuzes (not screw-in conventional fuzes, but embedded initiator capsules held within an otherwise normal spitzer bullet jacket).

The Japanese used white phosphorus incendiary rounds as well as PETN (or other sensitive high explosive) filled 7.7 mm ammunition, while the British had abandoned such pre-war.

http://i.imgur.com/3DfVTUl.png

also interesting diagram of Japanese 12.7 mm ammunition:
http://www.warbirds.jp/kunimoto/type51/5-00411.jpg

Interesting they bothered to fuze incendiary rounds of that caliber. (the british simply scaled up their .303 incendiaries to .5" Vickers with normal spitzer jackets, not sure about .50 Browning and if a similar incendiary round was introduced or not, but the .50 BMG API became the favored loading with the USAAF)

kool kitty89 said:

The British .303 incendiary rounds introduced during the BoB and used extensively after were of very similar design and composition to the german 'explosive' 7.92 mm ammunition in question.

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Not so, these rounds were very different.

kool kitty89 said:

Interesting they bothered to fuze incendiary rounds of that caliber. (the british simply scaled up their .303 incendiaries to .5" Vickers with normal spitzer jackets, not sure about .50 Browning and if a similar incendiary round was introduced or not, but the .50 BMG API became the favored loading with the USAAF)

Click to expand...

I think all incendiary rounds designed by the USA and Britain after the 'de wilde' type were based on that design.

from another thread. US .50 cal ammo.



Cross section of a "DeWilde" type round, really an .303 Incendiary B. Mark VI.

From Cartridge of the Month

Note the similarity to the US MI incendiary bullet with the steel sleeve holding the Incendiary composition, perhaps for better penetration?

A full list/description of British ,303 incendiary ammunition can be found here.
.303 inch Incendiary - British Military Small Arms Ammo

Please note that the older bullets were made of turned brass (made on lathes).

Please note that it is about 15.4 grains to the gram for weight conversion, so rifle caliber and even .50cal/12.7mm ammo had rather small incendiary/explosive charges compared to "normal" 20mm ammunition.

Putting the incendiary composition in front of an AP slug means you may get a good indication of hits but it means the incendiary material is not going to penetrate very far into the aircraft structure.

Please note the US M23 Incendiary was the round most commonly used in Korea although limited numbers showed up at the end of WW II.

Greyman said:

Not so, these rounds were very different.

Click to expand...

The only difference I can see is the fuze placement in the center on the German design vs nose of the British one. The simplified fuze-less variant of the British incendiary was further off the market and for whatever reason the Germans never omitted their fuze, but the incendiary compositions were very similar Aluminum/Magnesium powder + barium nitrate.

Shortround's above post shows the BoB era non-simplified Mk.VI incendiary with steel initiator, not all that different from the German designs:

Comparison of WW2 7.62x54 & 8mm exploding ammo - Page 2

In both cases, the initiators/fuzes were likely unnecessary, but the germans retained their's for whatever reason. (had it not been for the base-plug separation problem, the British might not have bothered simplifying their design either)


Interesting that the American .50 had an incendiary variant that did away with the steel sleeve and filled the entire cavity with incendiary composition (sans the lead base plug). That's quite a decent amount of low-explosive charge to cram in there. (I assume the US ammunition used similar impact-sensitive flash powder-like metal + barium nitrate compositions) The higher velocity/kinetic energy of the American .50 probably made the AP/I arrangement more appealing than pure incendiary though. (on the less powerful MG 131 or Vickers .5" that sort of mine-shell style filler should have been more attractive -and far better than the likes of those fuzed explosive loads ... or the MG 151's fuzed HE shells for that matter)

Hmm, for that matter, similar incendiary loads in the US .60 cal ammunition would have been very interesting for both the blast effects and incendiary properties (while possibly not losing quite as much of its raw kinetic punch compared to the .50). Of course, they'd need a gun to actually use that 15.2 mm ammunition in. (and the US Army had some odd aversion to scaling up the short-recoil Browning machine gun mechanism beyond .5" ... including decline to Colt's request to do so during the .9"/23mm cannon development program -and of course, the experimental reverse engineered MG 151 being employed for the .60 cal round experimentally rather than a scaled-up browning ... and the even later use in the prototype Vulcan predecessor -and possibly some early variants of the M39 as well)

Quite bizarre/ironic given what the Japanese managed.

The US Incendiary round that did away with the steel sleeve was the M-23 and while it did make the end of WW II it was taken out of production and/or the factory changed at least twice between the end of WW II and Korea in attempts to eliminate problems like projectiles bursting in the barrel or just in front of the muzzle. It was also a very light projectile and while this gave a high muzzle velocity it also meant the velocity bled off much quicker than the regular ammo ( which was all designed to have similar trajectories/times of flight at least to 600yds) so using mixed belts didn't work very well at all but short ranges. The projectile is also going to have lousy penetrating qualities.
Most countries seem to have tried to be too tricky as carrier shells (HE or incendiary) without tracer could very well double their capacity over combination carrier/tracer projectiles even with no other changes. Perhaps mixed belts with 20-30% tracer?

kool kitty89 said:

The only difference I can see is the fuze placement in the center on the German design vs nose of the British one. The simplified fuze-less variant of the British incendiary was further off the market and for whatever reason the Germans never omitted their fuze, but the incendiary compositions were very similar Aluminum/Magnesium powder + barium nitrate.

In both cases, the initiators/fuzes were likely unnecessary, but the germans retained their's for whatever reason. (had it not been for the base-plug separation problem, the British might not have bothered simplifying their design either)

Click to expand...

The British round had no fuze whatsoever. The German round used phosphorus most often (as far as I know), so the detonator would be required to break the envelope and scatter the charge (giving the smoke puff).

In my book the two rounds below are quite different.
EDIT: and most importantly, perform very differently.

Hmm, there appear to be different german incendiary rounds using similar fuzing. I'm fairly sure there's a variant that employed metal powder + barium nitrate (resulting in a dark blackish compressed material filling the cavity) which is functionally identical to the British rounds, even if they retained the striker+detonator. (the striker arrangement is fairly similar to the british steel ball + anvil arrangement, but adds a detonator downstream of the striker rather than a simple steel anvil -neither of which were really needed to initiate barium nitrate based incendiary/flash powder as it's impact/friction sensitive on its own)

White phosphorus would indeed perform very differently, but it would also not leave the 20mm (ish) wide explosive impact holes that many 7.92 mm rounds did on various early-war allied aircraft. (P-47Cs riddled with holes come to mind)

Or ... maybe I got information mixed up at some point and have been misinterpreting it since then. I can't seem to find any reference to barium nitrate based incendiary loadings in German usage.