.455 Webley Gel Penetration By Proxy...

[.455_Hunter]

In his review of the Charter Bulldog XL in .45 Colt, Patrick Sweeney does a Clear Ballistic synthetic gel test with the Hornady Cowboy 255 gr lead round nose at just over 600 fps- a very good surrogate for .455 Webley MK II 262 / 265 gr loadings. He achieved 22 inches of penetration!

https://www.gunworld.com/guns/handguns/charter-arms-bulldog-xl-45-colt/

Not bad!

 

[Chompiras]

Thank you for this. Hard to stop a freight train no matter how slow. I just wish a test(gel or Harrell meat target) better approximating the 455 bullet shapes or actual 455 would surface. One would think that mkII or, especially, mkI would have a potential propensity to tumble and soft lead mkIII would expand a good deal.

 

[manchester2]

This past week I tested .455 Webley on two blocks of clear ballistic gel. I used two loads: Fiocchi 262 grain at 655 FPS and Reeds 250 grain 'Manstopper' at 850 FPS. I tested these alongside various modern calibers (40, 9mm). Both the Fiocchi and the Reeds fully penetrated and exited an 18 inch gel block fired at six feet. With the two blocks placed end on end and covered in 4 layers of denim (two pant legs), the Fiocchi passed through the first block and embedded slightly in the second, totaling around 19 inches of penetration, and the Reeds Manstopper made it to about 22 inches. To my surprise, the Fiocchi did in fact 'tumble' in the gel, and in the process made a significantly larger wound cavity than any of the other ammo, including the modern rounds. Nothing to brag about from the Manstopper wound cavity, perhaps because it is too slow to expand? Not very scientific, but overall results were not too bad for a 100 year old round.

 

[Chompiras]

Just seeing this now. Thank you so very much for that test as those are exactly the two loads I would have liked to see tested. I'm happy to see that you experienced yawing with the mkII fiocchi which confirms my suspicions in that regard. Reed's probably casts it too hard and/or underloads it. Does Reed's do anything right other than 10mm? Well, thanks again so much for this test. Get 'em 455!

 

[Michael Tinker Pearce]

Thanks for reporting these results- I admit I've been curious as to how these old rounds would perform in a modern test!

 

[Old Stumpy]

Soldiers during the Civil War thought it would be fun to stop spent cannon balls rolling apparently slowly along the ground, resulting in amputated limbs. A slow heavy projectile has a lot more power than it might seem.

Look at the old .50-70 round.

 

[Rock185]

Manchester, Thanks for sharing those results. I have some of the factory .455 Fiocchi ammo with that conical, soft lead, bullet. Prior to your report, I would have bet the Fiocchi would not penetrate near as far as you tests indicated.

 

[Starter52]

Deep and reliable penetration is why the military kept the round nose bullet all through the revolver years.

 

[MaxP]

Deep and reliable penetration is why the military kept the round nose bullet all through the revolver years.

Round nosed bullets tend not to track straight and they don't create very large wound channels. There are much better profiles for deep, straight penetration that produce wound channels larger than caliber. A round nose is pretty much the last nose profile I would depend on, but that's just me.

 

[4v50 Gary]

I remember Fairbairn writing about the the Shanghai Municipal Police shooting a thief with six hits from a 455 Webley. The thief leapt over the counter and ran away. Lesson: bullets don't wrok or if they do, count your blessings and buy a lotto ticket.

 

[Jenrick]

Had a gentleman years ago give me a suspect description as we walked to the ambulance. The suspect had opened fire at point blank range with a revolver (LRN and probably a .38spl as best as anyone could call), and fired 5 rounds into the victim. Victim was back at this bus stop in approximately a month no worse for wear.

A round nose bullet has the habit of simply nosing tissue out of the way rather than cutting or crushing tissue. It seems to meander in a manner that leads it to take the least injurious path as well, probably due to them usually be loaded rather anemically.