As far as I'm concerned, this ends it.
Carnaby, getting to the root of the question of whether the sales clerk was right, I would submit that, based on ballistic tables derived from many countries' actual firing tables, the salesman should be considered basically correct and justified in his statement --although he should not have been as absolutist in implying that there was no difference.
I set forth here the idea that your and my difference of opinion is simply a matter of degree --while boat tails in supersonic flight slip through the air slightly more easily, the effect of the boat tail is not very significant until the bullet drops into the subsonic range. I point out that Hatcher used the words "little difference" in his comments.
And those firing tables were derived from actual firing tests to determine long-range performance of the bullets.
I would not agree that Hatcher was "in error," or, by extension, that the Ordnance Department was "in error."
I would also go so far as to say, to repeat myself, that the sales clerk's remarks were "basically correct" --forgiving in advance the clerk's conceptual leap from Hatcher's "little difference" to the clerk's observation that "boat tails only do any good when the bullet is traveling subsonic."
His remark (as reported) would be basically true, at the very least, in terms of printed knowledge available to the common man (the military firing tables to which Hatcher refers) since the thirties and forties.
I find, therefore, for the sales clerk.
Case dismissed.
(Gavel.)
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John Bercovitz of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has complied a rather detailed list of errata (largely typos) appearing in "Hatcher's Notebook." However, there is no reference to any errors on the pages I cited in my previous post.
