rbwhatever1 wrote:Very interesting. Learn something new everyday. I wonder how long it took them to figure this out...
Not very long, it was merely an extrapolation of stuff that had been tried in the past, with added sophistication. Even relatively recently I have heard the unknowing state that if gunpowder could move a bullet only so fast, wouldn't a more powerful explosive work better. Such experiments were tried long before WWII, with the expected results, and turning a cartridge into a mini-bomb could not have been far from the minds of those whose job it was to think up such things.
Although the Nazis, officially, viewed Jews as sub-human and thus incapable of intelligence, many of those who were forced into slave labor and the camps were actually very intelligent. I was privileged to know, a very long time ago now, one of the survivors, a close relative of my (now late) wife's former landlord. He had been assigned to an ammunition factory. This gentleman had completed his degree and was working on post-graduate studies in physics and chemistry when the whole mess started. One of the things they would do was insert foreign material into the powder being placed in cartridges. It didn't matter much what the material was; the ragged edge off a rag they used to wipe the sweat off their brows; dead, and even live, bugs; basically anything that would effect the burning of the propellant. Ask any experienced handloader, particularly precision, long range, what effect voids, foreign objects, and moisture would have on the load.
The gentleman in question survived and decided to follow his passion and became a professor of music for the rest of his life.
