For the Military Inclined

[Timerover51]

For those interested, here is a website giving a detailed look at what exactly kills and wound people in a war. The last section also covers the introduction and use of body armor in the Korean War.

http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/default.htm

One interesting item from the Korean War is that of those wounded, 92% were from fragments from artillery and mortar shells, or grenades, with 7.46% due to small arms fire. A substantial number of the Killed in Action were from small arms fire. Basically, if a soldier or Marine was hit by small arms fire, he had a pretty high chance of being killed. If hit by fragments, he was more likely to be wounded, rather than killed.

There is also this interesting comment:

From observations and interrogations, this first wound ballistics survey team was able to conclude that the maximum ranges at which wounding occurs are comparatively short. Thus, this team's report states: "Most wounds caused by shell fragments occur within 8 meters of the shell burst. Most wounds caused by small arms occur within 100 meters to 200 meters, rarely beyond 500 meters."

Note: Wound Ballistics was published by the US Army Medical Corps, and is a public domain document.

For those interested in speeding up the game, you might want to figure that if someone is hit by small arms fire, he/she is dead or at least incapacitated, if hit by fragments, he/she may still be able to fight.

The Body Armor discussion and its effects on wounding is interesting as well.

 

[mike wightman]

Very interesting stuff.

Thanks for the link, it's going to take a while to digest it all.

 

[Dragoner]

Recommended, this great, thanks for the link, I didn't know it was on line.

 

[Timerover51]

For The Hunting Community

For those interested in hunting and animals encounters, you might want to take a look at the two following books by John Taylor, aka Pondoro.

African Rifles and Cartridges
Taylor was a firm believer in the big-bore rifle, and has a lot of examples backing up his ideas.

Pondoro
A record of Taylor's hunting all over Africa.

Jim Corbett's books on hunting man-eaters in India are also very good reads for those inclined to lethal animal encounters.

 

[Hemdian]

Interesting. It’s going to take me a little while to read it all.

But while people are reading that, they should also read an article, “Lethality in Roleplaying Small Arms Systems” by Frank Chadwick, which appeared in Challenge 73. It analyses combat reports from the San Diego PD Border Crime Task Force and, as such, should be a closer match to non-military experience of combat. During five separate incidents (at close or point blank ranges), 29 of the 90 rounds fired by officers were hits. There were 32 hits in total ... 2 head and neck hits, 11 chest hits, 4 abdomen hits, and 15 limb hits. Only 1 of the head and neck hits and 1 of the chest hits were fatal.

 

[Timerover51]

Interesting. It’s going to take me a little while to read it all.

But while people are reading that, they should also read an article, “Lethality in Roleplaying Small Arms Systems” by Frank Chadwick, which appeared in Challenge 73. It analyses combat reports from the San Diego PD Border Crime Task Force and, as such, should be a closer match to non-military experience of combat. During five separate incidents (at close or point blank ranges), 29 of the 90 rounds fired by officers were hits. There were 32 hits in total ... 2 head and neck hits, 11 chest hits, 4 abdomen hits, and 15 limb hits. Only 1 of the head and neck hits and 1 of the chest hits were fatal.

And I would bet that the officers involved might have been using 9MM autos, based on the date of the magazine. Based on my research, if you are using a handgun, a caliber on the order of a .45 Colt is needed. Expanding handgun rounds are not reliable enough, as hollow points have been known to plug up with clothing and fail to expand. You might want to go back to the tests the Army did when choosing the .45 Colt over the 9MM back around 1910. They conducted them in the Chicago Stockyards, using steers weighing about 1,000 pounds as the targets, firing into the lung area until the steer went down. Generally, one .45 Colt slug would drop a steer, while it averaged four 9MM rounds. The .45 stayed in the steer, the 9MM were normally through and through shots. A better test would have been shooting at goats, as closer to humans in size.

The British preferred a .38 Special round with a 200 grain roundnose slug, which ballistic gelatin tests showed was an effective manstopper as the long slug tended to keyhole, or turn over on impact, massively enlarging the wound channel.

For evaluating stopping power, I use the Hatcher Relative Stopping Power Index, which does not take into account bullet expansion. That is because I am not a fan of expanding pistol rounds. For full caliber rifle rounds, my preference is for something on the order of the 30-06, the British .303, and the 7.62MM NATO rounds, preferably using AP ammunition, if I need to be shooting at people who may be wearing some form of armor. I am not a fan of the 5.56MM round at all. For anything much over 200 yards (meters), in a cross wind, the average shooter might as well be using a British Brown Bess flintlock.

For shooting at people, who probably are not wearing armor, and at ranges not exceeding 200 yards, I give serious thought to something like a smokeless powder 45/70, with 405 grain thin-jacket soft nose. Any hit in the chest or abdomen should be immediately incapacitating, and in the chest, fatal in short order. While I probably could make head shots at that range, with a scope, center of mass is a better proposition.

 

[dean]

Since the Hague Convention of 1907 specified that "The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions."

This was ratified by most nations in 1910; subsequently, the US military then tested all manner or weapons to determine which bullets they could use within the protocols that were most lethal, directly leading to the adoption of the .45 cal M1911 as the sidearm of choice, with it's heavy, wide, subsonic round.

The British .303 and .38 slugs were specifically designed to keyhole by biasing the weight of the slug to the rear so it would flip around upon impact. It technically met the spirit of the convention while still being designed to increase damage.

The 5.56 NATO round is similar, as it's small size and length causes it to tumble after penetration, especially after going through body armor.

 

[Timerover51]

Since the Hague Convention of 1907 specified that "The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions."

This was ratified by most nations in 1910; subsequently, the US military then tested all manner or weapons to determine which bullets they could use within the protocols that were most lethal, directly leading to the adoption of the .45 cal M1911 as the sidearm of choice, with it's heavy, wide, subsonic round.

The British .303 and .38 slugs were specifically designed to keyhole by biasing the weight of the slug to the rear so it would flip around upon impact. It technically met the spirit of the convention while still being designed to increase damage.

The 5.56 NATO round is similar, as it's small size and length causes it to tumble after penetration, especially after going through body armor.

Have you ever tried to hit something with the 5.56MM round in a cross wind?

Also, technically, the 20MM explosive round is also under the Geneva Convention ban as it is less than 1 inch in diameter. The 7.62MM NATO AP round sheds its jacket on impact, producing a large surface wound and then the AP core also tumbles and changes direct. There have been cases of post-mortems on enemy bodies showing the round hitting the chest and exiting right above the hip. I will let you image the wound channel.

However, first, most of your characters are not going to be in the active military, and second, whether or not the Geneva Convention applies in a Traveller Universe is up to the Game Master. For an example of the US massively ignoring the Geneva Convention rules covering shipwrecked individuals, I would recommend reading up on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in March of 1943.

 

[dean]

Have you ever tried to hit something with the 5.56MM round in a cross wind?

Also, technically, the 20MM explosive round is also under the Geneva Convention ban as it is less than 1 inch in diameter. The 7.62MM NATO AP round sheds its jacket on impact, producing a large surface wound and then the AP core also tumbles and changes direct. There have been cases of post-mortems on enemy bodies showing the round hitting the chest and exiting right above the hip. I will let you image the wound channel.

However, first, most of your characters are not going to be in the active military, and second, whether or not the Geneva Convention applies in a Traveller Universe is up to the Game Master. For an example of the US massively ignoring the Geneva Convention rules covering shipwrecked individuals, I would recommend reading up on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in March of 1943.

I was merely pointing out that the data you referenced was specifically related to milspec ammunition, FMJ and the like; that was your response to the assertion about what firearms the PD used in the quoted study (9 mms with hollow points). You assert that they chose the .45 jacketed because it was the best round; that's a fallacy. They chose it because it was the best round that fell in to the set of rules which had putatively been agreed upon to follow. Frankly, lethality in war is not the goal. You want to maim and debilitate the enemy enough so he's not combat effective, but will still need to be saved, evacuated, healed, and treated. Killing him means that the enemy has no further responsibility to him, so requires less resources. It's also demoralizing to troops with missing parts, and to the civvies at home who see them return. It's easy to write off a dead guy as a hero. A maimed and crippled person is/can be a big factor in removing the will to fight.

That said, there are studies out there that indicate that 1000's of rounds are expended by soldiers for each enemy fatality, so there's some cognitive dissonance when you pretty much discard that study's results in favor of your preferred method of comparing rounds - which pretty much only matters if you hit the target. PD officers operate alone, in pairs, or relatively small groups vs. small groups. There's some expectation that the perp will not automatically be violent, unlike what a soldier in a squad of 20 guys can expect from hostile forces. These cops firign and hitting with 29/90 rounds is pretty impressive when you compare it the average soldier's hit rate. At the same time, soldiers usually aren't engaging at those ranges either. Kind of an apples to oranges comparison you are making.

I personally don't have a strong opinion on which is better. If you are a crack USSF power-shooter that can hit a 3x5 card at 20 yds with your .45 I suppose it really doesn't matter which ammo is in your magazine if you are shooting at a bad guy. You'll likely "win". If you're some PD officer who puts maybe 1000 rounds through his service automatic annually and has never drawn in a combat situation, then probably you aren't gonna be quite so accurate. If you are a PFC and giving covering fire with your 5.56 M16 then I really don't think the enemy is gonna decide that YOUR round isn't lethal enough for him and charges you anyway.

Furthermore, I am not calling into question the "rules of war", who obeys them and who doesn't, I merely used the historical background to set your claims about the .45 into historical context. IE it wasn't chosen simply because it was the best round for the job - there was a lot of political reasons why the testing even occurred and adherence to the Hague Conventions (not the Geneva Conventions) was the primary reason the US military even looked at the ammunition/firearm situation.

So, please take these facts into account if you choose to make further replies. Thanks!

 

[Timerover51]

The US never signed the Hague Convention.

The main reason for the tests were the complaints from troops in the Philippines over the lack of stopping power of the .38 Colt that was the current issue revolver cartridge, leading a lot of troops to re-acquire the older .45 Colt revolver. The US did go with full metal jacket rounds, however, there were major complaints about the US use of shotguns loaded with buckshot during both World War 1 and World War 2, as the soft lead buckshot was not viewed in compliance with the Hague Convention. For that matter, the Hague Convention also barred the use of aircraft/airships/balloons for dropping bombs, and in theory, severely restricted naval bombardments to only military targets. Same thing with the use of poison gases.

As for the comparison between wounded verses dead, that, in my view, has very little validity to anything but a full scale war, and not a lot then. If you are talking a civilian situation, you want the target down, incapacitated or dead, as soon as possible. The longer a fire fight lasts, the higher the likelihood is that some innocent bystander is going to get hit. Therefore, in a civilian situation, if I hit someone, I want him/her down, out, with no further interest in the proceedings, preferably permanently, and I want a weapon that will do that reliably that I can shoot well with. For handguns in the real world, a .45 Colt auto answers that admirably. If you are talking a longer distance, then what the likely engagement range will be comes into play.

 

[BlackBat242]

Specifically, the problem was that the Philippine tribesmen would, after being hit with a lesser round, keep charging and kill the shooter... and THEN fall over dead or otherwise collapse.

Any round which did not put the enemy on the ground before he got to you was simply not acceptable.

The .45 ACP was designed to completely stop the enemy with one shot.

 

[sabredog]

Well, whenever this topic rears its head the flames start. The myths and realities of “stopping power”, “knock-down power”, and other gun fighting tropes always fall into two categories: are you shooting a pistol or “other”? If it is a pistol then you should be thanking the gods of Newtonian physics that knock-down and stopping power do not really exist as usually described for the pistol shooter or your wrist would be broken when firing the weapon. Equal and opposite, and all that. No matter what caliber it is the energy dump into the target is equal to the recoil of the weapon. Which isn’t much. What kills, preferably quickly since that is the only real stop to the threat other than disabling through pain or structural damage, is penetrating hits to the heart or brain. And really, according to the FBI’s numerous studies on the subject, only the brain hit will instantly stop a threat – a heart shot will probably only stop the threat after a 10-15 second bleed-out and onset of shock. In 10-15 seconds a task focused threat will put several rounds in your direction, or slice you up with a knife. So, the brain is where you have to hit. And really, any caliber will do the job provided the load can penetrate the skull at the range and angle it strikes it at.

As a firearms instructor for our local LE agencies, incl. my own, I taught that what really counts isn’t how big the round is (though, all things being equal a bigger hole is always better), if it’s a hollow point or hardball, or how many rounds you carry in your magazine (though that does help when spreading the love among multiple threats), but if you are familiar and skilled enough with your weapon that when you are shooting half as well as you do on your worst day on the range you still put all your rounds in the box the size of your fist centered in the chest and around the bridge of the threat’s nose. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t matter how big your pistol is, but if you can then even a .22 will do the job. I can put 3-4 rounds on target in the time it takes the average shooter to get 2 shots off with his .45. Personally, I think I’d rather have the 4 rounds impacting the threat than 2. Why? Because I’m only working half as hard to reacquire the target and able to better control my 9mm when engaging multiple threats in a stress-fire situation than when using a heavier .45 with less firepower available to it. Sure, a racegun IPSC shooter can do better, maybe, but his paper targets are not shooting back. And officers don’t get to carry zoomy race guns. Might make them look too aggressive or something.

That is really all there is to the equation: penetration plus accuracy so you are penetrating in the right spot as quickly as possible. That can be achieved through training and selecting a reliable weapon that will penetrate to at least 10-12”. The size of the hole only comes into play if it grazes major arteries or a load-bearing joint but neither of those is a reliable one-shot stop. Four rounds into the heart or one into the brain definitely will. Hydrostatic temporary cavities and such don’t really count as the organs and tissues in the human body are denser and more flexible than most people think. You would be amazed at how much trauma it can absorb – but the average mixed martial arts fight may give you an idea when you consider that most of the blows have more kinetic energy behind them than even a high caliber pistol round. I don’t even want to imagine the energy behind the punch of someone like a Mike Tyson – yet nobody died from it. What makes a difference is if you have deep penetration (which the 9mm excels at, and the .45 isn’t so sterling) tunneling through the heart or brain. That’s all. At least in pistols. Heck, three years ago one of our officers shot a guy three times with .40SW at 15’ with his Glock. The guy had come out of his car on a stop with an AK-47 in his hands so he kind of asked for it. He was adrenalized and task-focussed when he was shot. He was hit all three times in the abdomen and none did more than tear up his intestines because the temporary cavity created by the hollow point rounds just shoved his liver to the side; a hardball round would have perforated it. Anyway, the guy dropped his rifle and just stood there until the officer grabbed him and took him to the ground. He shouldn’t have done that but even trained officers do odd things sometimes under stress.

The point is that the threat was hit 3 times with a powerful pistol load at close range and didn’t even fall down. A .40SW is hotter than a .45 in terms of velocity and penetration (it weighs less, though), and 3 of them impacting close together has a greater energy dump than 1 or 2 .45 rounds. Yet the famous Moro Manstopper Effect didn’t happen. Why? Because as numerous agencies including the Secret Service and FBI have concluded people fall down, or are “stopped” by a round because more often than not they think they are supposed to be. TV and popular culture teaches that you fall down when you are shot and that contributes heavily to why civilians fall down when non-fatally shot. Among police and military personnel hit by non-fatal pistol fire it does not often happen because training overcomes this tendency. Unless you are hit in the brain or have your knee (or maybe hip) damaged you won't fall down due to the impact of the round by itself. The guy shot in my example didn’t fall down either because he was probably the exception to the rule, but he was shocked enough by the actions of the officer to drop his gun and just stand there. As the FBI pointed out in a couple of studies this is due to the shock of seeing the flash, hearing the gun go off in the threat’s vision, and the impact (though negligible and often not immediately painful) of the rounds as testimony of shooting victims bears out. Again, training overcomes this, but the average threat in civilian life isn't trained.

Anyway, that’s my 2 ½ cents on the subject.

 

[Gray Pennell]

While I am not a ballistic expert I was taught the main reason why the 1911 was the prefer choice wasnt just its ability to kill. It was favored in combat against the Filipino guerillas who attacked at close quarters. The 1911 was know for knocking down or back the attacker. This allowed the US trooper a chance to do something next without losing his head.

 

[dean]

Well, I will have to go with Sabredog's answer here; as I stated, I don't really have a personal preference, and I have come across those same studies about "stopping power" and it does appear to be more anecdotal than factual.

A friend of mine is a peace officer and had the misfortune to have to shoot a perp. He fired three times, as service Glock .40 using hollow points. The first two rounds went into the man's abdomen, as he raised a shotgun to fire at my friend. My friend's third round went lower and to the right and shattered the perp's hip, which caused him to collapse to the ground and drop his weapon. He feels that that third shot saved his life, possibly.

And yes, timerover51, the wounded vs. dead is more applicable to military vs. civilian discussion, but as I stated before, the data you point to is more applicable to the Military than Civilians. The point of the original example about PD Officers was that they were almost certainly using hollow points; most civvy departments do. Apple to Oranges.

 

[Dragoner]

I just posted the Quantico report in the T5 forum, it agrees with Sabredog. I also know this topic to be a flamewar topic on many forums, thus I'm leery of getting involved. The report does say that the knockdown power of a handgun is on par with getting hit by a baseball and it's penetration that does the actual work. Owning a Kimber Stainless II .45 APC and a CZ85B 9mm, I'd go for the 9mm for mag cap and controlability, though I have never shot anyone with either and hope never to have to.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

A combination is always good. Handguns are good for some things, rifles for others, batons for yet others, and dogs for yet others. Which is why you should always have a Vargr in your party.

 

[sabredog]

A combination is always good. Handguns are good for some things, rifles for others, batons for yet others, and dogs for yet others. Which is why you should always have a Vargr in your party.

He's right, ya know. And keep the liver snax handy to reward your crew member when he gets his bite on!

 

[aramis]

Several mechanisms can cause a target to drop...
1. psychology
2. break bones in leg or hip
3. rip tendons or muscles in keg or hip
4. impinge or sever nerves controlling leg muscles.
5. volumetric shock (blood loss)

I'll note that the .40 smith has a longer but narrower stretch cavity than the .45acp. whiche makes for less chance of spinal cord impingement...

 

[Carlobrand]

Several mechanisms can cause a target to drop...
1. psychology
2. break bones in leg or hip
3. rip tendons or muscles in keg or hip
4. impinge or sever nerves controlling leg muscles.
5. volumetric shock (blood loss)

I'll note that the .40 smith has a longer but narrower stretch cavity than the .45acp. whiche makes for less chance of spinal cord impingement...

Possibly: reflex? You take an unexpected force, you tend to reflexively yield to the force rather than resist. Someone shoves you in the shoulder, that shoulder goes back and you pivot rather than just getting pushed back. Someone punches you in the belly and you tend to fold over the punch even if it was rather light. A penetrating bullet wouldn't transmit its energy the same way a surface impact would (slightly more gradual since its penetrating flesh rather than being stopped suddenly), but it is transmitting energy, and the body might react to the initial impact in a similar manner - and it would seem to me that a larger caliber bullet would lose velocity in the body more quickly than a smaller caliber bullet of equal energy, thus more likely to be felt by the body as an impact.

Combine that with psychology and circumstances - you're running at someone, for example, or caught off-guard in mid-walk - it all might be enough to throw you off-balance and create a net effect as if you were "dropped".

 

[sabredog]

A penetrating bullet wouldn't transmit its energy the same way a surface impact would (slightly more gradual since its penetrating flesh rather than being stopped suddenly), but it is transmitting energy, and the body might react to the initial impact in a similar manner - and it would seem to me that a larger caliber bullet would lose velocity in the body more quickly than a smaller caliber bullet of equal energy, thus more likely to be felt by the body as an impact.

Combine that with psychology and circumstances - you're running at someone, for example, or caught off-guard in mid-walk - it all might be enough to throw you off-balance and create a net effect as if you were "dropped".

Correct, but counting on a culturally conditioned reflex or the target to even notice the hit and stumble thereby would be foolish. Task-oriented threats, or those on drugs/alcohol/or high adrenaline historically can take a lot of non-fatal damage before stopping. PCP, for example, doesn't make you the superman of popular misconception - it just allows you to ignore non-fatal injury so you will do things that pain would cause anyone else to stop doing.

All things being equal the heavier .45 will dump energy into the target much faster than a 9mm or even a .40SW. This isn't to be confused with a greater inherent ability to provide that "one-shot-stop", though, since penetration leading to critical damage to the heart or brain has been shown again and again to be the deciding factor in lethality. The .45 loses its ability to penetrate much faster than faster, lighter rounds so it has a lower chance of actually penetrating deeply as it bleeds off that energy so fast.

And deep penetrating lethal hits are the ones that tend to count in life or death situations since they are the only ones that will positively for sure stop the threat right away. So they are the only kind to be desired, all the trendy arguments for hip shots and such notwithstanding. Professionals don't generally train to shoot for anything but effective (and hence lethal) hits, even though they may not call them as such. Usually, the term used is "center of mass"...and that also just happens to be where the major circulatory and shock critical organs are located.

Pistols, with a few exceptions, only fire small, lightweight rounds very short distances and rely on being able to penetrate as deeply as possible to do damage. And you don't want to shatter your wrist when you pull the trigger. There is a reason the Desert Eagle, .454 Casull, and SW .500 are so massive...and pretty worthless for a gunfight. They are huge, clumsy, and difficult to re-acquire targets with.

The constant search for the heavier caliber in pistols is because of the search for that happy medium that hasn't really been found in a thousand years of gunpowder development: kinetic energy AND penetration (though IMHO the .40SW is pretty close to the sweet spot). It's pretty tough in a round as small as a pistols, fired from a pistol that won't hurt you when you shoot it, to do both equally well. The heavy rounds penetrate less than the smaller ones, but they hit harder. The smaller ones hit less hard but drill through much better. This is why real, actual gunfighters have always taught that while bigger may sometimes be better, if you can't hit your target in the right place it (or at all), it really doesn't matter how big your gun is. And, even if you hit your target in the ten-ring if it doesn't go deep enough it also doesn't matter how big your gun is.