THE .303 BRITISH – DEFENDING THE EMPIRE
This venerable old warhorse still soldiers on...
JOHAN VAN WYK
There can be little doubt that the venerable .303 British cartridge, in spite of its advanced age of 130 years, will be with us for many more years to come. I grew up in the old Northern Transvaal and remember that almost every farmhouse had a .303 rifle of sorts lurking in a safe. Even in the towns, many owned a .303 rifle. Most of these rifles had been “sporterised” – barrels shortened, scopes fitted and the vestiges of their former military career had been removed. A good number though were still original with heavy wooden hand guards and military-style sights. Some owners even had the original bayonets for their old warhorses. The .303 was and still is a faithful companion for many gun owners in South Africa.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
This old cartridge was originally introduced in December 1888 in the Lee-Metford Mk 1 rifle to serve as a battle cartridge for the British Army. The heartbeat of the Lee-Metford was an action designed by a Scottish-born
Canadian named James Paris Lee and it originally featured an eight-round detachable magazine, specially sloped to enable reliable feeding of the rimmed .303 cartridge. At the time European armed forces were somewhat obsessed with the mass firing of volleys at the enemy and the ten-round magazine of the service Lee-Metford, therefore offered a significant advantage over its predecessor, the single-shot Martini-Henry rifle.
The .303 was initially loaded with 70 grains of compressed black powder and the relatively shallow, elliptical Metford rifling of the first service rifles’ barrels were specifically designed to cut down on fouling. When the switch was made to smokeless propellant in 1892, however, it was found that barrel wear increased alarmingly. The cordite propellant of the time was highly corrosive and caused excessive wear to the shallow Metford rifling. The solution was to change the Metford rifling to the deeper, sharpedged Enfield rifling to cope with the wear and tear that the modern propellant caused. The rifles were now called Lee-Enfields, the name by which they are still commonly referred to, although to be fair, many different versions of the Lee-Enfield design were manufactured over the years, and they were mostly fitted with ten-round staggered box magazines.
The .303 cartridge’s big break in South Africa came during the British South African War (Anglo Boer War) that started in 1899 between the mighty British Empire and the two Boer republics, Transvaal and the Free State. For the Brits the big draw card in South Africa was the rich goldfields of especially the Transvaal (De Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek). Britain looked for excuses to start a war and soon thousands of their troops found themselves in South Africa.
Prior to the outbreak of the war, however, the .303 already had a foothold in southern Africa. A friend of mine owns a very rare .303 falling-block singleshot made in 1895 by Holland & Holland which was given as a gift to the Boer general, Piet Joubert in that year by a wealthy Pretoria-based Jewish businessman. By this time, just about every British manufacturer worth his salt was making double and single-shot rifles in .303 and these, along with military rifles, saw use in Africa in the hands of seasoned hunters such as Arthur Neumann and Walter Bell.
EXPANDING BULLETS
Along with the influx of British troops into South Africa in 1899 and 1900, a controversy of sorts involving the .303 and especially the ammunition used by some British troops started. The initial British service load for the .303 was a 215gr nickeljacketed bullet travelling at a rather sedate 2 050fps. British troops soon found that some of the enemy soldiers had to be shot more than once before bending to the will of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. The heavy 215gr bullets zipped right through bodies without doing much harm if a vital organ was not hit. The solution that one British armoury came up with caused quite an uproar. The Dum-Dum Arsenal near Calcutta in India started loading service ammunition with what was essentially an expanding bullet, with later versions even having a hollowpoint design. Compared to the normal military-style full metal jacket bullet, these expanding rounds caused massive damage and they were allegedly used for the first time in anger by British troops to suppress uprisings in India’s North-West frontier in 1897. »
» The expanding bullets would eventually be outlawed by the Hague Convention of 1899 but it is significant to note that the remaining stocks (after they were officially relegated to training and target shooting) numbered some 45 million rounds! During the early stages of the war in South Africa the British were accused by the Boers of occasionally using these socalled Dum-Dum rounds in combat which in turn resulted in the British being fiercely criticised internationally.
Officially, the Dum-Dum rounds used in South Africa were never actually issued for use in combat but rather came into the country for training purposes, although modest numbers certainly found their way onto the battlefields. One version has it that some of the Dum-Dums entered South Africa as part of the personal kit of troops shipped in from either New Zealand or India and was therefore used in combat without the necessary orders, but accounts on the matter differ. Evidence exists that the Boers had also on occasion used softnosed ammunition in battle, so it seems there were dirty hands on both sides.
After the war and with thousands of .303s already in the country it was a given that the cartridge and the Lee-Enfield rifles would be the obvious choice for many for hunting purposes. After 1910 the Lee-Enfield became the standard service rifle of the newly created Union Defence Force and many would-be hunters and farmers throughout South Africa were familiarised with both rifle and cartridge, thus cementing the car- tridge’s popularity even further.
LOW OR HIGH-VELOCITY LOADS?
Ammunition wise the .303 gained a fine reputation as a hunting cartridge with the 215gr load. Although the velocity was modest the bullet had excellent sec- tional density and penetrated well. It was used on all sorts of game and many an elephant and buffalo fell to hunters armed with .303s. What is interesting, though, is that the various British makers were not at all ad idem that the 215gr load was the best one for the .303. A quick look at a few of the vintage .303s in a friend’s collection shows that Rigby tended to fa- vour the lighter 150gr load that delivered 2 700fps, whilst Holland & Holland and Purdey stayed with the 215gr bullet.
Rigby made a speciality of regulating their .275s for a highvelocity load as well, so it is probably fair to assume that they recommended lighter bullets at slightly higher velocities to their clients. A 1902 vintage .303 Westley Richards double was, in turn, regulated for a load that fired the 180gr bullet. It is therefore no surprise that his particular rifle regulates well with most modern 174gr factory loads. Naturally, the principle of, the customer always being right, was applied throughout the British gun trade in the old days. So, if a Rigby customer wanted a .303 regulated for the 215gr load they would have been more than happy to comply with his request.
I have already mentioned the 215gr military load’s relative lack of killing power, and in 1914 the British authorities finally tried to solve the problem by introducing the Mk VII service round for the .303. The Mk VII featured a pointed 174gr bullet leaving the muzzle at 2 440fps. It had a flatter trajectory than the old 215gr roundnose bullet but that was not all. What also differed was the construction of the 174gr bullet: it was long for its weight and had a lead core coupled with an aluminium or fibre tip. This made the bullet somewhat unstable when meeting any resistance and caused it to tumble upon impact, increasing its wounding potential dramatically. Some claimed that the British breached the protocols of the Geneva Convention with the introdution of the Mk VII round but it is a fact that this load served Britain and its allies through two world wars and countless other skirmishes and was still in use when the .303 and the Lee-Enfield was replaced by the 7.62 NATO cartridge (or .308 Winchester in civilian guise) and the L1A1 rifle in the late 1950s.
Therefore many hunters deemed the .303 British an unfavourable cartridge for hunting and discarded it in favour of other calibres.
BULLET PROBLEMS
Although the Mk VII round was a successful battle round, many hunters did not like it, calling it a “wounder” of game. Kynoch, Dominion and others manufactured very good hunting ammunition, but the availability of military surplus ammunition (which often became “surplus” without the military in question being aware of the fact) throughout the British Empire made it inevitable that the Mk VII round would be used on game.
While the Mk VII round was deadly on humans it was woefully inadequate on game at times. Due to the bullet’s tendency to tumble upon impact it could not always be relied upon to penetrate in a straight line or deep enough to reach the vitals and frequently caused ghastly, non-fatal wounds when used on larger game species. When it did not tumble, which sometimes happened, the bullet would whip through say a springbuck without causing too much damage and the result was often a wounded buck. When the bullet did tumble on small animals, it caused a lot of meat damage.
Therefore many hunters deemed the .303 British an unfavourable cartridge for hunting and discarded it in favour of other calibres. The fact that this state of affairs was entirely due to the ammunition and not the cartridge itself seems to have escaped many people.
Despite the Mk VII round’s bad field reputation in Africa, India and Canada, there were simply too many .303 rifles around, so hunters just kept on using them. Such was the demand for .303 cartridges that just about every manufacturer imaginable turned out ammunition at some stage. To this day even major American manufacturers such as Hornady and Winchester are still offering .303 ammunition loaded with good expanding bullets. Locally PMP also manufactures ammunition loaded with 150 and 174gr bullets. In fact, PMP was responsible for the loading of something like 60% of all of the .303 cartridges expended by the British and their allies during World War II, which certainly translates into many millions of cartridges!
STILL GOOD TO GO
Ballistic wise the .303 is very much on par with the .308 Winchester, especially when the former is fired in a strong P-14actioned rifle instead of the LeeEnfield action which was designed for modest chamber pressures only. A P-14-actioned .303 can be hand loaded to deliver very good performance with bullets ranging from 130gr all the way up to 215gr. The heavyweights from Woodleigh in Australia and Claw, a local manufacturer, have bonded cores, thus provide controlled expansion and penetrate very well. With their superior bullet construction these are just as effective – if not more so – than the 215gr bullets of old which established the .303’s reputation in the field. If your .303 happens to be a Lee-actioned rifle, however, a few words of caution are probably in order.
The Lee-Enfield is without a doubt one of the best military rifles ever designed. More than 6 million examples were manufactured in factories in the United States, India, Canada and Britain, and as many were made under wartime conditions when time was of the essence, any newly-acquired Lee-Enfield should be carefully checked out before use. In many instances headspace and/or chamber dimensions tend to vary quite a bit and as mentioned earlier, the Lee action is not the strongest, so chamber pressure should be kept to a maximum of about 40 000psi or so. Neck sizing fired brass is also an excellent idea to avoid unexpected case head separations, and I would avoid the use of modern “hard” monometal bullets in really old rifles as a precaution against damage. Aside from these precautions, make sure the rifle in question is in good, serviceable condition and follow the normal safety precautions associated with reloading and all should be well.
Although old, battle-weary Lee-Enfields are common and plentiful. You do from time to time stumble upon an absolutely exquisite sporting rifle made by one of the famous British makers. These rifles often come with full engraving on the lockplates or the rib. They (either doubles, falling-block singleshots or even a bolt-action or two) were made to the highest standards possible and their owners clearly recognised and exploited the .303 cartridge’s fine sporting potential. I have seen and shot with a few such rifles, and they are treasures to behold. I have always wanted a nice old British .303, and someday I will own one, provided I can find a fine old single-shot falling-block, an owner willing to part with it, and a patient bank manager.
Although the .303 was designed with the defence of the British Empire in mind, it is a cartridge that has deep roots in the hunting fields of the world. It is as much a part of South Africa’s culture as a braai, sunshine and rugby, and I for one hope that it will still be with us for another 130 years or so. Long live the venerable .303!