Waterloo limbs

[Simon21]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/0 ... loo-field/

Grim stuff. The Germans kept up this obsession with amputation into WW1

Captured Allied medics were horrified by the tendency of German doctors to hack off a limb rather than try to save it.

[Minimalist]

Most battles were grim. Generally, the wounded had a rough time. The dead were luckier!

[Minimalist]

You might find this interesting, Simon.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6139913/

War and Trauma: A History of Military Medicine

[kbs2244]

One of the reasons for the large number of wounded vets from the relatively small number of men (Napoleon’s Russian invasion force was 600,000 men) in the recent wars in Asia and the Mid-East has been the pushing of wounded care to the battle front.

Fast modern medicine has made the number what had been fatalities into “walking wounded.”

[Simon21]

Very good recommendation - trust the Americans to have a journal for everything.

My dear departed father was a medical orderly at Kohima in 1944. Apparently the Japanese IA had very simple and effective ways of treating the wounded.

[Minimalist]

Nasty battle, that. I recall reading about it in John Toland's "The Rising Sun."

[Simon21]

Indeed it was.

The pater once remarked that on turning over the body of one of the Japanese emperor's finest he felt sorrow to think that this individual had lived on a series of islands thousands of miles away and had been taken from his family to die nastily in Burma of all places.

He then reflected that much of this applied equally to him ( not the last part) and his pity dissipated somewhat.

[Minimalist]

This photo taken after the Battle of Cold Harbor ( 1864) shows that things had most likely not changed much since Waterloo.

[circumspice]

Wasn't the 'machine gun' invented to kill outright, rather than maim human bodies like grapeshot did? I seem to recall something along that line of reasoning.

[kbs2244]

I am pretty sure that is why the M-16 has a 3 shot position on the fire control.
The FMJ .223 cartridge is less than lethal.

[Minimalist]

It's the speed of the bullet that does much of the damage. The M-16/AR-15 fires what is called a High Velocity Round.

Watch the video for a demonstration in a ballistics lab.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ar-15-used ... 019-06-23/

Some of the worst massacres in recent memory have had something in common: the AR-15 style rifle. Scott Pelley reports on why the high-velocity rounds used in the gun makes it so deadly

[kbs2244]

Typical CBS video
Show one thing while talking about another.

(Aren’t they the ones that put a blasting cap in a GM pick up truck to show how easy they caught fire?)

In this case it is talk about, and blame the gun, when the difference is in the ammunition.

The Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullet, the part of the cartridge that is sent out the barrel, is designed for penetration without shock. It was designed by an international treaty as a “less damaging” bullet for use in war.
If it doesn’t hit bone, it is possible for an FMJ round to go completely through a body leaving a clean channel behind.

(A case of this happening was described to me by a local Sheriffs deputy when he was involved in a gun fight. He had an AR15 with the required FMJ round. He hit the bad guy just below the left shoulder. He got a “Wow, that stung” reply from him before he fainted from blood loss from previous hand gun hits. The autopsy showed that wound to have nothing to do with the death, The wound channel was clean and had small entry and exit points. It performed as designed.)

The video shows the results of using a hunting cartridge.

In this case the bullet is designed to expand and/or fragment. It is designed for a quick, humane, kill.

Just the opposite of an FMJ.

Because of their hunting use, this type of cartridge is what is most common in gun and hunting stores.

Unfortunately, the bullet works just as well in a human as in a deer.

But back to CBS. It is not the gun. It is the ammo.

And that type of hunting ammo is available for hunting guns from AR15s to single shot antiques.

[Minimalist]

The video speaks for itself. I don't need a narrator to show the difference between a handgun and an Ar-15 round.

When the founding fathers wrote that stupid-assed 2d Amendment the maximum muzzle velocity of a musket was 1,200 feet per second and you'd better have your bayonet fixed in case you missed. The AR-15 fires at about 3,300 feet per second. A significance difference that is completely lost on NRA buffoons.

[Simon21]

Anyone who sees the sketches of wounds caused by the Martini Henry in the Zulu war will realise that you do not need high muzzle velocity to inflict devastating damage.

Good pic from Cold Harbour. Am reading Grant's memoirs at the moment. Interesting man quite clear sighted in his way. Given he was dying when writing them and broke it is a remarkable achievement

[Simon21]

In this case the bullet is designed to expand and/or fragment. It is designed for a quick, humane, kill.

Just the opposite of an FMJ.

Because of their hunting use, this type of cartridge is what is most common in gun and hunting stores.

Unfortunately, the bullet works just as well in a human as in a deer.

If you were found with expanding bullets in WWII the rule apparently was to put you against the nearest wall.