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The .303 British (7.7 x 56 mm R) is a rifle and machine gun cartridge first developed in Britain in the 1880s as a blackpowder round, later adapted to use cordite and then smokeless powder propellant. It was the standard British and Commonwealth cartridge from 1889 until the 1950s, when it was replaced by the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO round, and in the 1980s by the 5.56 x 45 mm NATO (.223 in) in most roles. It is a rimmed cartridge and is therefore not entirely suitable for use in modern automatic weapons, but remains popular due to the large number of surplus military rifles chambered for the round which have been released to the civilian market, some of which have subsequently been modified for sporting use. Photo taken by Moriori for Wikipedia, free to use by anyone This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...
Photo taken by Moriori for Wikipedia, free to use by anyone This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...
A rifle is a firearm that uses a spiral groove cut into the barrel to spin a projectile (usually a bullet), thus improving accuracy and range of the projectile. ...
A machine gun is a fully-automatic firearm that is capable of firing bullets in rapid succession. ...
Rimmed, centerfire . ...
// Events and Trends Technology Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ...
Black powder is a type of gunpowder invented in the 9th Century and practically the only propellant and explosive known until the middle of the 19th Century. ...
Cordite is a smokeless propellent explosive made by combining two high explosives: nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. ...
Smokeless powder is the name given to a number of gunpowder-like propellants used in firearms which produce negligible smoke when fired, unlike the older black powder which it replaced. ...
A propellant is a material that is used to move an object by applying a motive force. ...
NATO 7. ...
U.S. Military 5. ...
History The Cartridge, S.A., Ball, Magazine Rifle, Mark I Solid Case, .303inch was first introduced with the Lee-Metford rifle in 1889. In its original form, the round was a 215 grain (13.9 g) round-nosed cupro-nickel jacketed bullet propelled by 71.5 grains (4.63 g) of RFG2 Blackpowder, giving it a muzzle velocity of 1830 feet per second (560 m/s) and a chamber pressure of about 19 short tons force per square inch (260 MPa). Blackpowder is not very dense, and the charge had to be pressed into a solid pellet in order to fit inside the round. The rimmed cartridge made it easy to extract spent rounds from the chamber, although it did make them somewhat harder to stack in a magazine because the protruding rims would cause a jam if they were loaded incorrectly due to a double feed—that is the rim of the cartridge being fed by the bolt snagging the subsequent cartridge rim. The Lee-Metford rifle was a breech-loading British army service rifle, combining James Paris Lees rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford. ...
A grain is a unit of mass equal to 0. ...
Cupronickel is an alloy of copper, nickel and stengthening impurities. ...
A guns muzzle velocity is the speed at which the projectile leaves the muzzle of the gun. ...
The short ton is a unit of mass equal to 907. ...
The pascal (symbol Pa) is the SI unit of pressure. ...
Cordite was used as a propellant from 1891 and the first adopted cordite cartridge, the Cartridge S.A. Ball, Magazine Rifle Cordite Mark 1, used the same bullet but delivered 1970 ft/s (600 m/s) at a chamber pressure of about 35,000 pounds per square inch (240 MPa). Small changes to the bullet jacket resulted in the Mark II of both the black powder and cordite versions, the Mark 2 and Mark 2.C respectively. Cordite is a smokeless propellent explosive made by combining two high explosives: nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. ...
Pounds-force per square inch (lbf/in²) is a non-SI unit of pressure. ...
Nitrocellulose was first used as a propellant in 1894, but the higher temperatures and chemical activity was enough to make it unsuitable for use in the Lee-Metford, and the newer Lee-Enfield was introduced to address these problems. Although not officially adopted until 1916, nitrocelulose rounds were widely used during World War I, although cordited-loaded rounds were still produced for use in the tropics, where it was considered to be somewhat more stable. Nitrocellulose (Cellulose nitrate, guncotton) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose (e. ...
The Lee-Metford rifle was a breech-loading British army service rifle, combining James Paris Lees rear-locking bolt system and ten-round magazine with a seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford. ...
Lee-Enfield No4 Mk1 with bayonet, scabbard attached The Lee-Enfield was the British armys standard bolt action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle from 1895 until 1956. ...
Clockwise from top: Trenches in frontline, a British Mark I Tank crossing a trench, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the battle of the Dardanelles, a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks and a Sopwith Camel biplane. ...
The round nose bullet was found to be less than satisfying in combat, notably when compared to the Dum Dum rounds issued in limited numbers in 1897 during the Chitral and Tirah expeditions of 1897/98 on the North West Frontier of India. This led to the introduction of the Cartridge S.A. Ball .303 inch Cordite Mark 3, basically the original 215 grain (13.9 g) bullet with the jacketing "cut back" to expose the lead in the nose. Similar hollow point bullets were used in the Mark 4 and 5 rounds, the primary production versions. These soft nosed and hollow pointed bullets were later outlawed in the St Petersburg Declaration and the Hague Convention, and in 1903 they were withdrawn from active service and were afterwards to be used for target practice until stocks ran out. To replace them the Mark 6 round was introduced in 1904, using a round nose bullet similar to the Mark 2 but with a thinner jacket. It was generally agreed to be unsatisfactory. Dum-dum is the colloquial name for several types of modified exploding (more properly known as expanding) ammunition for firearms. ...
.357 Magnum rounds. ...
The longtime status of Netherlands as a largely neutral nation in international conflicts and the corresponding ascendance of The Hague as a primary location for diplomatic and international conferences has led to several negotiated conventions over the years being termed the Hague Convention: The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907...
In 1905 Mauser changed bullet design completely with the introduction of their "spitzer" rounds, the first of the classic design now referred to universally as "bullet shaped". In addition to being pointed, the round was also much lighter in order to deliver a higher muzzle velocity. It was found that as velocity increased the bullets suddenly became much more deadly, an effect later explained by hydrostatic shock and cavitation when the round hit. Mauser is the common name of German arms manufacturer Mauser-Werke Oberndorf Waffensysteme GmbH, as well as the line of bolt action rifles they built for the German armed forces. ...
Hydrostatic shock is the effect commonly believed to be caused by a high velocity object entering a body, such as a bullet fired from a weapon. ...
Cavitation is the phenomenon where small cavities of partial vacuum form in fluid, then rapidly collapse, producing a sharp sound. ...
The British took the opportunity to replace their Mark 6 rounds with the new Mark 7, using a 174 grain (11.3 g) pointed bullet that gave a muzzle velocity of 2440 ft/s (740 m/s). In fact the Mark 7 was considerably different than earlier designs, or the spitzer for that matter. In order to lower the weight they made the front 1/3rd of the interior of the bullet out of aluminium instead of lead. While similar weight savings could have been had by using a single lighter material, such as steel, the design was deliberate in order to make the bullet "tail heavy". When flying through air the stability of the bullet was marginal, but when it rapidly decelerated when hitting a target, the heavier lead base wanted to "swap ends", causing the bullet to tumble and greatly increase damage. The Mark 7 round remained the standard for the remainder of the .303 service life.
In 1938 the Mark 8 round was approved to obtain greater range from the Vickers machine gun. The primary change was the addition of a boat-tail and slightly more propellant, giving a muzzle velocity of 2550 ft/s (780 m/s) and somewhat better ballistics. Chamber pressure was higher, at 40,000–42,000 lbf/in² (about 280 MPa), making it suitable for firing only from the machine gun. The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled . ...
Tracer, armour piercing and incendiary cartridges were introduced during 1915, and explosive bullets in 1916. These rounds were extensively developed over the years and saw several Mark numbers. The last tracer round introduced into British service was the G Mark 8 round in 1945, the last armour piercing round was the W Mark 1Z in 1945, and the last incendiary round was the B Mark 7 introduced in 1942. Explosive bullets were not produced in the UK after 1933 due to the relatively small amount of explosive that could be contained in the bullet limiting their effectiveness, their role being successfully fulfilled by the use of Mark 6 and 7 incendiary bullets. Tracers are special bullets that contain a powder in their base that burns very brightly during their flight. ...
In 1935 the .303 O Mark 1 Observing round was introduced for use in machine guns. The bullet to this round was designed to break up with a puff of smoke on impact with a target or the ground. The later Mark 6 and 7 incendiary rounds could also be used in this role if required.
During World War I British factories alone produced 7,000,000,000 rounds of .303 ammunition. Factories in other countries added greatly to this total.
Today, military surplus .303 British ammunition can be found readily from any number of suppliers or most commonly, at guns shows. Care must be taken to properly identify the round before purchase or loading into weapons. Cartridges with the Roman numeral VIII on the headstamp were manufactured for Vickers machine guns. If loaded into weapons chambered in .303 British, this ammunition can potentially damage the rifle, as the powder used is hotter than the standard powder found in normal .303 cartridges.
Weapons chambered for .303 British The Bren, usually called the Bren Gun was a series of machineguns adopted by Britain in the 1930s and used in various roles primarily into the 1980s. ...
The Lewis Gun was a pre-WWI era American design of machine gun most widely used by the British and Imperial armies that continued to see service all the way through to WWII. It is visually distinctive because of the wide tubular cooling shroud around the barrel, and the top...
Lee-Enfield No4 Mk1 with bayonet, scabbard attached The Lee-Enfield was the British armys standard bolt action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle from 1895 until 1956. ...
During the Boer War the British were faced with accurate long-range fire from the famous Mauser rifles, model 1895, in 7 x 57 mm caliber. ...
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled . ...
The Browning M1919 was a . ...
Specifications - Maximum length:
- Case: 2.222 in (56.44 mm)
- Overall: 3.04 in (77.2 mm)
- Case trim length: 2.212 in (56.18 mm)
- Primer type: Large rifle.
- Boxer or Berdan primed cases may be encountered.
- Rim thickness: 0.064 in (1.63 mm)
- Rim diameter: 0.540 in (13.7 mm)
- Case capacity (water): 55.7 gr (3.61 g)
- SAAMI maximum pressure standard: 45,000 CUP (310 MPa) / 49000 lbf/in² (338 MPa)
The percussion cap or primer was the crucial invention needed to make fire-arms that could fire in any weather. ...
Saami or SAAMI can stand for: Sami peoples Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
See also .303 in. ...
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