Shotguns

[Guest R Pope]

In WWII the Brits used a Malay load , consisting of a ring of six shot, BB I think, then a 00 buck pellet, six more BB's, and so on. The theory being that the buckshot would go more or less where the gun was aimed, while the BB's would spread out, compensating for poor aim. Handy in the jungle.

Flechettes are touted by the urban survival types as being perfect home defence rounds, since two layers of wallboard will supposedly stop them, preventing you from blowing away Aunt Minerva in the next room while doing serious damage to the miscreant facing you. I've loaded them using brass welding rod sections, and they'll chop a railroad tie into toothpicks. Never tried them on a wallboard wall, but I can't see it stopping them.

On a bit of a tangent, the WWII battleships Yamato and Musashi were issued shot loads for antiaircraft use out of the 18 inch main guns! 2000 steel balls, 1" diameter. Never seen any reference to them actually being used, though.

[MikB]

How do you mean Mike??????????

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I'll try to explain. Even people writing on here with modern combat experience won't have had exposure to the sort of misery the Western Front represented. They would generally have been working as a professional soldier against either opposing professionals or people who could be classed as committed enthusiasts for whatever cause, and might expect to use the most effective weapons they could deploy, however gruesome their effects.

WW1 armies, however, were citizen armies, with lives they hoped to return to outside the military. Even H-P was a sportsman and hunter who was deploying his skills in the service of King and Country for the duration of the emergency, and probably expected to be back playing cricket and potting tigers as soon as the War ended. (He died in 1922, though, from after-effects of a war wound IIRC)

There was a limit to how much you could expect such armies to withstand. Even as it was, the huge casualties and rigours of the War brought mutinies and near-mutinies of various degrees of seriousness, from people drawn from some of the most docile populations in history.

If H-P thought shotguns too grisly to use in trench in warfare, he was reflecting the views of the time - that warfare was expected to be fought according to rules and that there had already been enough horrifying innovations in that particular war. Even if he himself couldn't describe the logic behind what he wrote, my guess is that his instincts were right. Shotguns would only have made worse a trauma from which many didn't recover psychologically as it was.

Regards,

MikB

[PhilB]

On a bit of a tangent, the WWII battleships Yamato and Musashi were issued shot loads for antiaircraft use out of the 18 inch main guns! 2000 steel balls, 1" diameter. Never seen any reference to them actually being used, though.

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IIRC, the British battleships used shrapnel shell at 12" & 15" calibre at Gallipoli? Would these have been the same balls as field gun shrapnel? Phil B

[MikB]

How do you mean Mike??????????

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...Or to put it another way, he was trying to keep alive a concept of combat honour that was already undermined at the time (gas, airborne bombing of civilians, unrestricted submarine warfare...) and has since become a subject of ridicule. But to a large constituency of his contemporaries, it still meant something very real.

Regards,

MikB

[NIGEL]

Has anybody got any of these Fetchlette cartridges they could send me i wouldnt mind trying a few out, or where i could buy them over here.

I also read that the French used to use a cartridge which was buckshot linked together with a single piece of wire so it went through the air like a flail and would cause horrific wounds. Some poachers used to use them on Deer.

[Chris Best]

...and by the British Army in Malaya

.... and later at JWS Brunei in late 70s as the pointman's weapon - for obvious reasons.

Chris

[johnreed]

I agree with you Chris, we used them in Malaya in very early 70's loaded with an SSG round with 9x6mm shot in the round.

John

[truthergw]

Personally, I think the idea of one weapon being "humane" and another not being is a little absurd.  If I was prowling around enemy trenches I'd much rather have a 5-shot Remington pump than a studded club any day of the week.

Paul.

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I agree almost one hundred percent. One little proviso, a club would make little noise and it doesn't need ammunition.

[PhilB]

I think gas was the most inhumane. Presumably it wasn`t covered by the convention as nobody thought it a possibility? Phil B

[DrB]

Although I was issued a .45 Colt which was great to throw at someone (I certainly couldn't hit anything with it) I carried an M-14 instead of an M-16 in 'Nam in '67-'68 because I wanted to cut brush and the '16 wouldn't do it.

A friend of mine who was the CO of Charlie Company carried a Winchester Model 12 in a 16 gauge, cut off, with no bayonet boss. I never asked Rip what the shells were, but I assumed they were just buckshot. I envied him, but I couldn't get one because the things were hard to get ahold of. I didn't particularily care to kill anyone, I just wanted them on the ground where it was easier to disarm them.

DrB

[Arnie]

The British Army used Greener shotguns initially for Crowd control. They were and still are used in Jungle warfare. They used to have a special cartridge that we called lethal shot, whether or not that the proper designation I don’t know. The Greener guns were replaced by a semi- automatic gun in the 50s

Arnie

[Doc2]

I don't have a copy of the Geneva Conventions which were current during WWI available, but Shotguns certainly do not appear to be prohibited by the current (1949) version. The only issue which might be of relevance is the prohibition on weapons designed to "cause undue suffering", into which category the shotgun doesn't seem to fit. One other issue which the Germans tried to raise was the prohibition on "expanding" bullets, since shotgun pellets were not full-metal jacketed. It was argued by the Allies that at the low velocity those pellets achieved, that they rarely expanded or deformed, and therefore shotgun rounds were not prohibited by the conventions.

Also I don't have a reference readily available, but I believe that the standard round used in the US "trench shotguns" was loaded with "OO" ("double ought") buckshot-- certainly not the rabbit or bird loads with which most are familiar. Doc2