Deadliest cartridge in history

I believe rcmodel has done it again!

Since this all a WAG...I'll go with the 9mm Para, too.

My guess would be the good ol' .22.

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I've read that the .22 may have accounted for more human deaths in murders or suicides than any other cartridge in the USA going back to it's introduction. I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. But I'd think there are others that have accounted for more if you include wars.

There were more deaths during the 2 World Wars than in any other conflicts, but I'd bet the vast majority came from artillery of aerial bombing rather than the German, American or Russian rifles.

More recent wars have been much smaller in scale with a higher percentage of the killing done with rifles rather than artillery or bombing. Based on that my SWAG is going to be the 7.62X39 as well.

I go with the guy that said 8 MM Mauser. The Germans killed millions
of Russians in WW2. The small wars we have now don't have huge
kills like that one did.
Zeke

7.62x39 it has been around and is common in all kinds of places if we are talking common people maybe 22lr

Uhmmmm, forget the world war losses. Lots more killed in the Soviet and Chinese purges. I think the answer is 7.62x54 or 7.62x39, but it depends on whether Stalin or Mao killed more people.

My guess would be 30-06 It been in a couple WWs

What military cartridge has killed more enemy soldiers than any other.

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So this is an interesting qualifier. First we'd have to define what makes something a "military cartridge" and then figure out if it is being used to kill enemy soldiers.
Lots of posts have suggested the x39 as being top of the heap, and while I'm inclined to agree, I have to as if we are only talking about military use by an actual military?
Lots of folks in Africa are being killed with AKs and SKSs. But how many of those killings are by the country's military vs. roving gangs, warlords' troops, and unofficial armies? Does Boko Haram count as a military? In the middle east, does ISIS? In either case those groups are killing many more civilians than they are killing "enemy soldiers."

What??? No one is going to say 7.5 French?

JFtheGR8 said:

7.62x39 without a doubt. That round is killing people that we don't even know about in places we never hear about. The body count is adding up as I type this.

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Just in Africa alone with all of the tribal wars and coups it would seem the 7.62X39 would be the deadliest.

Then throw in the Asian wars and "killing fields" and it doesn't seem to have any peer.

The 9mm in executions in both areas would seem a close runner up.

Kind of a creepy subject but still curious enough.

Well, if you want to add executions, don't leave out the .32 ACP.

It was favored by the German S/S for executing captives.

Probably more so then the 9mm.

rc

19-3Ben said:

So this is an interesting qualifier. First we'd have to define what makes something a "military cartridge" and then figure out if it is being used to kill enemy soldiers.
Lots of posts have suggested the x39 as being top of the heap, and while I'm inclined to agree, I have to as if we are only talking about military use by an actual military?Lots of folks in Africa are being killed with AKs and SKSs. But how many of those killings are by the country's military vs. roving gangs, warlords' troops, and unofficial armies? Does Boko Haram count as a military? In the middle east, does ISIS? In either case those groups are killing many more civilians than they are killing "enemy soldiers."

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In that case I'd say the 7.62X51 NATO. FN's...H&Ks...Machine and mini-guns...M-14s...again...a lot of militaries in Africa. "Enemy Soldiers" might be up for interpretation.

Probably the Federal 9BPLE deserves a mention here in terms of OIS. 93 percent one shot stop rate according to Sanow in 400 incidences of use.

Let's see...

8mm mauser had a good run, 2 world wars. I've read of the belt fed water cooled machine guns firing tens of thousands of rounds continuously.

7.62x54r has been in constant use for 124 years. It's bound to have racked up a high kill count.

7.62x39 has behind the AK behind it, most produced rifle. And it's still in prolific use today.

30 06 is pretty strong, and did feature in a couple wars, but I heard the garand would instantly jam up and explode if exposed to dust in the air, so it probably didn't kill many people.

It can't be 5.56 because if you believe it's detractors it is incapable of killing anybody beyond 50 feet or if they are wearing so much as a tank top.

.22 results in plenty of deaths, especially in US urban areas and trailer parks, notable for being more deadly at a mile than at the muzzle. But unless you count cats and squirrels, it's not even in the running.

12 gauge is nice, but I hear birdshot will not even penetrate skin, and buckshot spreads at three feet per foot traveled

10mm supposedly kills the person you shoot and one friend of theirs for every pull of the trigger, but I'm pretty sure they only chambered it in the Bren Ten, which doesn't have magazines, and the colt Delta Elite which apparently has a service life of 4 rounds.

.45 acp can stop a criminal if they even look at it, but I've heard the trajectory is so steep that you have to aim 43 inches high to hit a guy across a room.

9mm... well it isn't as good as .45 so... you should buy a 1911.

.40 smith and wesson... I'm pretty sure this is mostly used by police to shoot dogs when they raid the wrong address, and that always seems to take all the ammo they are carrying.

.45/70 is some sort of extinct thing used on buffalo... so... It's some kind of arrow?

.303 was used for a while when Britain had an empire, but that ended in 1776 when the Earth only had like 100,000 people.

In conclusion:

I'm guessing if it isn't 7.62x39 now, it will be soon enough.

I don't think there's the slightest doubt that the answer is the .303.

Those pointing to WWII casualty numbers should be aware that there are reports on the subject. Well over 75% of casualties were caused by artillery with about 50% of the whole total being just from mortars. They are deadly weapons. Less than 10% were from bullets. Soldiers in Vietnam were known to say that rifles were just to pin down the enemy so you could kill them with artillery. One good spotter can obliterate a large number of troops in a very short time from long range artillery. The same was true in Korea where the tactics of the enemy made the job of forward observer the most important of the war. They would parachute into a spot where they could find concealment and direct the big guns from there. It was far more effective than trying to shoot down a human wave with rifle fire. If you found yourself trying to do that you were in trouble. I knew a forward observer from the Korean conflict. He dropped in with 2 1911's and a radio. He had a pistol in each hand to use while coming down. He would shoot at anyone in the general area where he was about to land. The army didn't even try to bring rifles into the action at that point. It was all artillery.

In most modern battles about half of all soldiers don't even fire their rifles. In fact artillery has been the major cause of death in all modern wars starting with the first modern war, The Civil War. Those cannons they used to fire the canister of large pellets were said to be by far the most deadly weapons of that war. Soldiers were said to sometimes be vaporized when hit by one of those cartridges as they opened up.

So really it's tough to nail down a single cartridge that has been the most deadly because the same time period of the cartridge includes the canister round fired from a canon and the naval equivalent of grape shot (bigger pellets because they had to penetrate wooden hulls). It's basically a giant shotgun with each pellet being incredibly deadly.

So we have to look at one of the great wars right around the time of the Civil War to get the rifle that has killed more IMO. Even Napoleon liked his cannons. The one power that extended their reach through the use of things like the light infantry (think charge of the light brigade) was the Brits. And the one place they did the most killing by far would be in India. During the rebellion known as the Indian Mutiny about 10 million Indians were killed. The rebel fighting was done by small groups mostly so there wasn't time to bring in a lot of artillery. A fast response by riflemen was the way the UK dealt with rebel groups. You'll find that a lot of the history of that war was whitewashed by the Brits during their colonial days. So don't be surprised if it's hard to find info on that rebellion. And to be fair if it hadn't been the Brits it would have been the Russians or the Turks or some other power that would have conquered India. That country just wasn't ready to take on any modern army. So even though the main method of controlling the Indians was by holding the sole supply of salt captive (people die without salt) there was still a lot of fighting and it was done with cartridges. It was done with .303 cartridges.

I don't think any post-WWII conflict comes close to the number of casualties of the wars in India alone. And then there was South Africa and a lot of other colonies. I just don't believe all the small conflicts (by comparison) add up to the same level of mayhem. For example as bad as Vietnam was the US only lost beteen 50,000 and 60,000 men. That's not a small thing of course but compared to 10 million it is. It would take 20 Vietnam conflicts to equal that single rebellion in India. And even with the butchering of so many in places like Cambodia the total just isn't there and many of the casualties in those post WWII conflicts were brought about by other means than a rifle. In truth the casualties of the Indian Mutiny were brought about by other means like starvation for example. But there were lots of bullets fired too. Remember the sun never set on the empire. They did a lot of fighting all around the world in those days. Still the Martini-Henry, the first cartridge loading rifle they used, was often loaded with something other than a .303. Models were made to use the .577/450 among other rounds. But the .303 was very common.

I don't think there's the slightest doubt that the answer is the .303. Even though sifting through the different cartridges used by the Brits in that time period is hard I think they killed so many that clearly the .303 round became the leading killer. Of course it long survived those colony wars too being used in both World Wars. Yeah I think that's the obvious choice. It was likely that many of the Indian Mutiny casualties were caused by muskets too but there were other rebellions around the world. People often forget this stuff BTW when they think of the desires of Germany to expand. Things aren't so black and white as they would have you think in 5th grade world history class.

Probably not it, but this brings to mind the Katyn massacre where the .25 acp killed around one person every 3 minutes. One man killed 7,000 people in under 30 days. If I remember right the total number of people killed was close to 30K.

Statistically in warfare, artillery and disease kill far more soldiers than small arms ever have.
The muzzle loading rifled musket likely accounted for more casualties than any cartridge loading long gun because men still stood in rank and took the force of the fire using these weapons.
Once cartridge loaded weapons, and especially repeating weapons, became the common issue, tactics changed dramatically and again the artillery became the primary killer.
It really doesn't matter the specific caliber of the cartridge rifle utilized, once they became the norm of combat the average number of rounds fired to inflict a single casualty has been roughly estimated at between 1500 and 2000.

When looking at civilian casualties due to gun violence, one must also look at the geography of the events.
Here in the modern world small caliber handguns are used to inflict the greatest number of gun related deaths while in war torn and mainly third world regions the VAST majority of civilian casualties are inflicted using genocidal measures and the preponderance of killings are now committed with the ubiquitous AK47/AKM type firearm when firearms are chosen as the weapon of death and this is primarily based on the easy availability of the weapon to those bent on mass murder.
By rough estimates, the AK47/AKM has far and away been used to inflict more civilian casualties than it has been used to inflict actual one on one combat related deaths.

Taking one perspective - that it's a US cartridge used against our declared enemies in past history - it make the .30-06 the front runner. Right behind it would be the 5.56. The disparity of rounds used in modern warfare is due to the larger number of shots fired. The actual number of deaths in recent low intensity conflicts isn't that high.

On another perspective - since artillery fire causes most large scale deaths in combat, then the German 88 and American 105 are likely. They are fully encased metallic cartridges if it could be argued.

Worldwide as measured by the deaths of innocent peoples? Obviously the 7.62x39. Tool of oppression and murder.

In that case you would also need to put the Japanese cartridge in the running after China and the Philippines.

Probably the .303 British because of longevity

As others have pointed out small arms are not the primary killing machine in the big wars of the 20th century. I think the deadliest cartridge would have to have a record of use in many engagements where no artillery was available, and been used prior to and after the appearance of numerous fast firing breach loading artillery pieces and MGs being on the battlefields of the 20th century. I think the .303 British is a strong contender because of its use in rifles, and Vickers and Browning MGs from the 19th century colonial wars and rebellions on into the 21st century.

I would say those cartridges used in both WWI and WWII by some of the major combatants, which would be .303, 8mm., and the 7.62x54. Runners-up to those cartridges would probably be the .30-06 and 7.62x39.

If we count the buffalo as an enemy of America, as those killing them did, the 45-70 has gotta be pretty well near the top.

Barring that, the two cartridge ends of the teletype machines, whose use spanned a length of time from the civil war to the cold war mostly unchanged except in ink compositions, could arguably take the laurels with ease.

The muzzle loading rifled musket likely accounted for more casualties than any cartridge loading long gun

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That might be true but the question was about cartridges. I don't believe it's true anyway because the size of the wars were mostly much smaller and the really big wars before the cartridge were fought with something other than rifles. The one exception might be the Taiping Rebellion but most of the deaths in that war were due to plague and famine.

Onmilo said:

The muzzle loading rifled musket likely accounted for more casualties than any cartridge loading long gun because men still stood in rank and took the force of the fire using these weapons.

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Baloney!

The deaths due to combat in the Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815 and one of the bloodiest of the period) were 2,500,000 to 3,500,000, from all causes. About 291,000 per year.

The deaths due to combat in World war I were 8,400,000 (1914 to 1918) from all causes. About 2 million per year.

The deaths due to combat in World war II were 22,000,000 (1939 to 1945) from all causes. About 3.6 million per year.

Combat deaths in WW1 and WW2 were an order of magnitude higher than in the musket era.

Artillery has always been the queen of the battlefield. In fact in the musket age, if you were going to engage an enemy further away than 150 yards, you brought up the artillery. So, the percentages of the casualties due to artillery is probably the same +/- 10% or 15%.

No, musket are not the most deadly by a long shot.


Since, I can't be sure that disease figures aren't accidentally included, I will append with this: Medical science and general care about soldier's health and hygiene were much better in 1914, and further improved in the 1940s, we can safety say that the non-combat death due to disease were smaller.

6.5mm Japanese?