Explosive rifle ammunition for WWII Snipers

Explosive rounds for rifles were developed in the interwar period for aircraft, which tended to use machine guns as their armament. The rounds were discovered to be effectively useless against aircraft, as rifle sized rounds were simply too small to contain a significant amount of explosives.

The British RAF introduced HE rounds for the .303 British round in the early 1930's, but stopped production and issuing such rounds within three years. I would imagine that most other countries did much the same, and I would not be surprised to find that some of these older rounds would have found their way into the hands of snipers later on. The machine guns on aircraft tended to use the exact same round as the standard issue rifles in most armies. In the case of the Germans it really wouldn't be that unexpected for HE rounds to have ended up being used by snipers, as by 1944 the Luftwaffe had more ground troops fighting on the Eastern Front than they did on their airfields.

The .50 cal round is the smallest caliber of rifle I know of that has an HE round (again, developed for aircraft use).

My elements inspector tells me that was an Apple Quicktime video, I wont play that, as I booted quicktime of my computer last century as being bloody awful...


As for HE rounds.
This is a good valid myth.... were they any good or not?...

As explained to me by some RAF "Boffin", a couple of ounces of lead have more potential than half that weight of "something else", and as HE rounds as rifle ammo are really only anti-personnel, what use?...
At that time, our "snipers" were attempting the long shot, as in, be in out and away before anyone else even knew where you were.
Being that far away, the mass of the round was important, lighter rounds just wouldnt travel that far, so HE was counter productive...

Ok, so, this was VERY last century.
I am sure technology has got a better grasp of it now...
But....

This is now a side myth.
Just how far will a round travel, and still be lethal.
Take a bog-standard .303 Enfield round, as much favored last century as a good bolt action rifle.
Its effective lethal range is....(In the field, half mile in calm weather before serious accuracy problems steps in, but in controlled circumstances?...I dont remember....)

If the round was shaved down to half its weight.....

Now try that again with most of its mass replaced by high explosives.

I think we may have a good one to test.

Question, are HE rounds "Legal".
In UK, unless you're military, I think major league anti-terrorism laws would have you arrested for even asking...

Effective range for the .303 British (and also the American 30.06) with a fairly decent scope is usually listed as some 800 yards/meters. This is the range usually given for most sniper rifles which use these (or similar) rounds, many of which were based on the Enfield or Springfield rifles. That said a very good target shooter in ideal conditions (static target, no rush to fire, little or no wind) is quite capable of hitting a human sized target with an Enfield rifle at a mile over open sights. The Enfield (and Springfield) were very accurate rifles indeed, especially those produced in the mid/pre war period, which is why there were used as sniper rifles or the basis for newer designs.

As I noted, the British .303 HE round was only in production for a couple of years in the mid 1930's. I'm guessing that the history of HE rounds in similar calibers was similar. They were designed and produced for aircraft that were armed with machine guns, but it was quickly realized that they were not all that effective and production ended. They probably ended up in the hands of snipers for no other reason than they were still sitting in stockpiles, no one else wanted them and there were not enough standard rounds available. The smallest 'rifle' round that I know of that has an HE version that was produced for more than a few years is the .50/12.5mm sized rounds; Which are borderline cannon sized rounds*. Even here though it is interesting to note that USAAF fighters seem to have used HEI rounds not HE rounds.

So the chances of finding viable HE rounds in the .303 caliber are low, and I doubt they would want to make their own.

Leaving out the question of if explosive rounds would be legal against soft targets (I suspect they might be illegal under international treaties such as the Hague/Geneva Conventions...which the Russians and Germans usually ignored when fighting each other). The biggest problem is that the fuses are designed to detonate when they hit a hard surface, not something soft and squishy; that is a human. There is a decent chance therefore that a HE round hitting a soldier is going to act like a normal bullet...if with less mass. Hitting body armor would probably set the fuse off, but that wasn't really issued to troops in WW2.

(*Techically guns of 13mm caliber and over are classified as cannons. The .50 caliber round is 12.5mm, and therefore just under cannon size. In practice I can't think of any cannon smaller than 15mm, and more practically the smallest cannon caliber is the 20mm. I *think* the Russians used both 13mm and 15mm cannons at one point.)

The balistic performance of tracer rounds differs from other types of round as it loses mass while it is in flight*. If you wanted to test the range and accuracy of HE rounds you'd need to create a round who's HE content was replaced with an inert substance of the same mass.

(*Tracer rounds differ so much that using them for aiming is only useful out to fairly short distances; a few hundred yards/meters or so. Beyond that the tracers follow a different arc to other rounds.)