Aluminium Bullets?

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Red Dragon

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I was just surfing the internet, as I am known to do from time to time, and I came across an exerpt for a book titled, "Notes on the Circumstances of a Moving Projectile" by Wirt Robinson. The page that caught my attention mentioned aluminium bullets. I'll include the small passage:

"...a western inventor has advanced a novel proposition. He proposes that the military when employed against mobs should be furnished with cartridges with aluminium bullets. At one hundred yards these would be just as effective as lead, but being almost one-third as light, they lose their velocity rapidly, and at two hundred yards are spent and harmless. The killing of innocent citizens at a distance would thus be avoided."

My question is, has anyone ever actually mass produced an aluminium bullet? Would aluminium bullets be an effective alternative for CQB or home defense?

Forgive my ignorance if these are already out there and very common.
 
1. What kind of mobs do we have in America that require being shot into?
2. Moreso, when has it ever been appropriate to control mobs by shooting and killing them?
3. When is a target group of people completely separated 100 yards away?
4. When would the military have to dispatch people with those kinds of weapons? I'm no serviceman but I don't imagine any kind of scenario like that, minus the lined-up fighting style of the American revolution and the like.

I guess it'd be kind of handy in a HD scenario- I'm sure someone knows about it.
 
I think Red Dragon was referring to "the mob" (as in organized crime), not a large crowd of people roaming the streets in a frenzy.
 
AFAIK there hasn't been a mass-produced aluminium bullet, reason being that at any reasonable velocity it will leave massive fouling into the barrel. Lapua used to make an aluminium-core 7.62 bullet, it weighed about the same as a regular .223 bullet and gave high velocity out of an AK, but drop and wind drift reduced effectiveness at long range, though not so much that it could be considered any "safer" than a standard load. For a very light bullet, one could use a thick hollow jacket filled with epoxy or some sort of plastic. Use of such ammo for combat would not be a good idea as the bullet would break apart easily and not penetrate cover.

Apart from the technical aspect, I think that this inventor should have his daily medications checked and doses increased if necessary.
 
Alimunum corrodes to form aluminum oxide, and abrasive found on sand paper. You'd want to put some sort of protective coating on it, at the very least.

There was a round called ThunderZap which used a plastic bullet for the same reasons cited above. It came and went quickly.
 
I think Red Dragon was referring to "the mob" (as in organized crime), not a large crowd of people roaming the streets in a frenzy.
Click to expand...

Being as he mentioned mobs (plural) and using the army, he is talking about a large crowd of people roaming the streets.

I am doubting the distances of effectiveness and safety.
 
I am unable to recall any aluminum-bulleted ammunition. I would surmise that a bullet made of aluminum that would still fit into the gun's action or the cartridge case would be too light, would come out of the muzzle like greased lightning but lose velocity/power very quickly, and would only penetrate sufficiently at near-contact range.

There is - or was - ammo loaded with a bullet made of zinc (a denser metal than aluminum): Aguila IQ. Stephen A. Camp tested some here: http://www.hipowersandhandguns.com/Aguila.htm Again, this is a much lighter bullet weight than typical for the caliber. It has a very high velocity and is also scored/grooved so it can fragment. Aguila's site http://www.aguilaammo.com is down, so I don't know if this load - or Aguila for that matter - is still produced.

I'm not going to address the issue of shooting into or at mobs. I do have my own thoughts on the subject.
 
The CETME rifle was originally chambered for an intermediate cartridge called 7.92x40mm, which had a jacketed bullet with an aluminum core. Not sure why aluminum was chosen, but it wasn't for any less than lethal effects.
 
Why lead? Because even lighter steel shot looses energy to quickly and has a rapid drop in performance. That's why steel shot used over water for birds has degraded performance.

Why I would worry about aluminum?

1) This material has a large coefficient of expansion. If I shoot a lot and have a hot weapon, will this jam? I would suspect that this could cause malfunctions.

2) You're handing out candy on this street block. Five blocks further down your shooting at bad guys. The battlefield like in Iraq is too dynamic for a round that is so limited. Issue Joe a bunch of bullets like this and it's only a matter of time until you get a breaking news story about ill equipped US troops in Iraq that got shot up because they couldn't gain fire superiority at greater range.

I have an idea of where this guy is probably got this brain-child from. In Iraq, in some units, we were using aluminum training rounds on the 25mm (Bradley) in urban fights. This worked very well! In fact, it worked better than the AP because that aluminum will deform and create far greater secondary fragmentation inside buildings. Unlike the DU AP service round (M919), it also won’t go through an entire city block, literally! The effect was actually greater and the collateral damage less, but the difference is that even with a training round on a 25mm I can effectively engage targets (real world) at >1000 meters! Once major combat operations were over, I’m not worrying about a BMP2 anymore and something like M919 that can peal him open at 1,700 meters is superfluous. Somethings only work when you achieve certain critical masses, either very large or small.
 
there are some silly people who think you can yank out a normal bullet and replace it with fancy bullet Z and everything will be pretty much the same.

It seems to me an aluminum bullet, being much lighter, would zip through the barrel much faster....leaving a lot of gunpowder still being burned when it exited the barrel. Obviously you would have to have a whole different gunpowder mix being used. This makes me think back to the old blackpowder days. You can't always just pour more powder in and expect velocities to increase or slap a lighter projectile on.

I suspect with current powders, even designing one for when a bullet is going to be in the barrel for half as long as normal, you wouldn't be able to have the same muzzle energy as good old lead. So right out of the gate you are hitting less hard. At 100 yards the very light aluminum projectile will have lost a ton of velocity. I know, that's the whole point, make it harmless at 300 because of the velocity loss. Still, 100 yards you are going to loose a lot. It is giong to have to be a pretty poor performer at medium range to be harmless at long range.
 
I think it'd be fun to pour your own bullets. I'd make solid copper ones, copper platted steel ones (legal?), and copper plated aluminum. But I don't have the stones to pour lead ones, let alone metal with higher melting temps...
 
Japan WW-2 used Aluminum bullets in guns given to home defense troops to wards the end of the war.
 
As for shooting mobs, i have just two words. Kent State.
Click to expand...

There been a few times this has happened. Ludlow in Colorado, Orangeburg in South Carolina, Jackson State in Jackson, Mississippi. Then there was Centralia in Washington State.

Most of these are going back at least a few decades however. They not really done much since the big trouble with Kent State.
 
I read somewhere the Canadian home guard during one of the world wars issued wood bullets in .303 Enfield for troops guarding bridges and facilities. I think what I read said it was to make a mistaken shooting less lethal by the less trained home guard and to limit the distance the bullet traveled in populated areas.
So I can see some kind of coated aluminum bullet.
 
Aquilla is most likely zinc.

Wooden bullets were essentially blanks, not some sort of secret weapon.

There was a handloader about 40 years ago who loaded some aluminum bullets in .30 carbine for his rolling block pistol. High velocity but terrible accuracy.
 
A bullet made of nothing but aluminum would be a disaster. Copper scores a three on the Mohs scale. Aluminum oxide is a NINE on the same scale.

You could use it as the core. I believe some kind of 5.7x28mm rounds use an aluminum core.
 
I believe the A-10 War rounds (DU) use an aluminum body surrounding the sub-caliber penetrator with a couple of driving bands made of ??? to engage the rifling. The aluminum actually acts as a high explosive when encountering the pressure/temperature of the DU impact. Wicked stuff....
 
Yes, there has been a partially aluminum bullet made for years. It is called the Winchester silver tip and I have used them in my 30-30 for many years.
 
RecoilRob.

The A10 DU (depleted Uranium) round does not use Aluminium for explosive effect, Uranium is a pyrophoric metal as well as 70% denser than lead.

On impact the DU projectile ablates and effectively self sharpens on the way in, the shed mass burns furiously.

Aluminium, if used would add little to this
 
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