tomfal@tr6.wes.army.mil (Tom Faller) (04/18/91)
In reply to Tom Stewart's letter about why .223 is seemingly o.k. for warfare, but not for deer hunting. >From what I understand about wounding balistics from discussions in magazines and books about the M-16 vs. the M14, there are several reasons why the .223 is now used as a battle cartridge. First, rifle bullets perform differently than pistol bullets in living tissue due to the shock wave genetated as a bullet moving faster than sound encounters water-filled tissue. The shock wave does a large amount of damage, whether or not the bullet does much besides enter and exit. For the last hundred years, Army policy had been to use a large bullet, in a cartridge designed mainly for long-distance marksmanship. The change to a smaller bullet was brought about by the recognition that most of combat occurred at ranges less than 300 meters, indeed often at ranges less than 50m. Second, it became known that a fast, light bullet would become unstable when entering a different medium than air. In terms of wounding, small, fast bullets would tumble when they entered the body, resulting in massive tearing wounds. It was found that these tearing wounds were more deadly than a wound from a larger, heavier, more stable round that would "drill" a "neat hole" with the associated shock damage. Third, the use of a smaller cartridge meant that soldiers could carry more ammo, could fire single rounds with more accuracy at close range, could use automatic fire better (the M-14 was all but uncontrollable in full auto), and could use a lighter rifle. These assertions do not carry over directly to hunting strategy. For one thing, hunters use different bullets, designed to mushroom and slow down, once in the body. For another thing, most hunting rifles use a tighter twist in the rifling than was originally proposed for the .223. (The twist in the Stoner M-16 prototype was less than the original M-16, and the present day M-16, and almost all hunting rifles.) The tighter twist results in a faster spinning bullet with less chance to become unstable, therefore, a bullet that drills "neat holes" again, only with less shock than a larger bullet. Third, military doctrine is that a wounded enemy uses up more resources than a dead enemy. You have to heal the wounded. You bury the dead. For the military, this is why a FMJ bullet is used. This does not apply to hunters, where a clean stop is preferred to wounding an animal and then tracking it. The current batch of M-16's have a different role than the original, and a different ammo. The M-16 has a tighter rifle than the older ones, and a heavier bullet to push. This is probably due to someone in the brass wanting a round that will shoot farther and penetrate more armor. This will probably result in lessened effectiveness against personnel targets. Time will tell. >From all of the above, if you use a 55-gr FMJ bullet at about 2700 fps >from a 20-in barrel with a 1-in-12-in. rifle, you will nearly duplicate Eugene Stoner's version of the original M-16, and should be able to drop a deer every time with massive internal damage. Going with a different combination, you will be relying less on tumbling wounding and more on shock effects. This is why the .223 is judged to be too light for deer. (Whether it is too light for people is a question that will take a lot of shooting to resolve, but best to say that present combinations of gun and ammo may be on the margin of lethality.) The automatic capability of the M-16 is of use only because you don't care about how many rounds your target takes, as long as one brings him down. The stopping power of the .223 supposedly drops off quickly after about 200 yards, although it can still penetrate a steel helmet at 400 yds. In the military, this is not as much of a problem, because of the large amount of fire support from the really effective calibers such as 20mm, 105mm, etc. :-) I've been up in Hill country, and have occasionally mistaken deer for large dogs at night, so a .223 should be o.k. on animals of that size. It would be good to have a friend along with a backup in something of .243 or larger. All of the above has been argued vigorously by proponents and opponents of the .223. There's a lot of people that still say a .30 cal rifle is the minimum for combat, but again, more than just the width of the bullet is involved. Two books come to mind, "the Great Rifle Debate", and "National Defense", but I can't remember the authors. Hope this helps. Tom Faller
marko@hutch (Mark O'Shea) (04/19/91)
In article <550@erb1.engr.wisc.edu> tomfal@tr6.wes.army.mil (Tom Faller) writes: >a dead enemy. You have to heal the wounded. You bury the dead. For the >military, this is why a FMJ bullet is used. This does not apply to The FMJ are used beacuse that is one of the Geneva Conventions accords. Mark O'shea marko@ijf1.intel.com