I'm skeptical - mercury filled boolits

Status
Not open for further replies.
4v50 Gary

4v50 Gary

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
22,510
I was reading Nicolai Linin's book, Free Fall, in which Linin wrote that in the Second Chechen War, his unit captured a gun loaded with mercury filled boolits. Never heard of it. From page 256:

"The bullets were polished to mirror shine, the tips painted black. These were very expensive special cartridges, it was definitely not the stuff meant for the army; the body was steel, covered with a light coat of varnish, and the tip was metal so it could go through Kevlar or iron the same as air. The matrix was liquid mercury, which made its trajectory extra precise; most important, the gunpowder charge was stronger than normal, because it had to create enough force to propel the bullets,which were much heavier than normal ones.

We didn't have ammunition like that in our possession, only the Arabs did. it came fromt he black market, through ties with America. People said that a special company in Texas manufactured them, and that they cost five dollars each. That type of projectile was famous and feared among the soldiers, because there was no bullet-proof vest that could withstand their force. In military slang they were called 'bye-bye mommas' -- if a round like that hit you were done for."
Click to expand...

I know that we had AP that were painted black. I doubt if anyone here in Estados Unidos makes steel cased boolits. That's something the Rooskies do. Mercury, being heavier than lead, will pack more punch but the bit about the gunpowder charge sounds like nonsense. Unless the gun is modified or better yet, designed for a heavier charge, shooting heavy loads will accelerate the wear and cause parts failure or in the worse case, a Kaboom. Also, if the boolits were made in Texas, why haven't we heard of them? Even if it was just the boolit and not the whole cartridge, wouldn't production of this be hard to conceal? OSHA requirements, EPA and all that. Export of military grade munitions would be regulated by the State Department, wouldn't it?

Thoughts?
 
This is crap. A bullet filled with mercury would rotate so slow after leaving the muzzle, it would never stabilize. It would be like when the core slips in the jacket of a bullet.
 
I have heard of people loading mercury in the hollow point cavity of a lead bullet and sealing it with wax. They were said to be for "anti-personnel" rounds, but I think they were more of an urban legend than anything. I don't see where they would be any better than a proper designed bullet for penetrating body armor.
 
Sounds like the kind of stuff they put in books to sell more books.

I've heard of folks who put mercury in hollow points and add a drop of wax. I guess the mercury amalgamated the lead and made an even softer alloy. Or possibly the kind of lore added to popular local culture to add a unsurvivability factor. Death by mercury poison!
 
There ya go, Black Talons stuffed with mercury...the ultimate urban legend buzz saw of doom.
 
I Googled for more information about this and found a Calguns thread about these 'boolits'. If it were possible to make these, it would be illegal according to the thread. Another thing to consider... if the mercury leaks out as you shoot it, you can get sprayed in the eye with the mercury and that is not too healthy.


http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/archive/index.php/t-787021.html


"Are you such a bad shot that you want mercury poisoning to kill them on their walk home? "

"then you shoot and get a kaboom and mercury gets in your eye. And you are done. Glad you came here first now huh? Make sure to wear glasses when you pull that trigger."



I think the 'mercury filled boolits' story is bogus
 
They fired those in .9mm automatic revolvers with half-ounce trigger pulls that had a pullback thingy to check the nozzle for boolits.

Pure BS, either the writer is spreading it or was told a story and bought it.

Jim
 
In the original Day of the Jackal book the assassin used mercury filled exploding bullets. That may be where all this started.

Jim Cirillo briefly mentions experimenting with them, but I don't think they worked for him.
 
Sounds like a lame ass story if it has stuff like that in it. If you are in a situation that a bullet is required to resolve, I doubt waiting for mercury poisoning to set in is a good option.

Crap
 
Now fill the tip of a hollow point with Mercury Fulminate and you'll get a response. :)
 
Shot some 44 mag rounds that I widened and made slightly deeper, filled with mercury and sealed with wax. Shot different things with it and would in basically explode on impact. Probably would have the same results minus the mercury, just using wax. Why waste the mercury, I quit ruining mercury switches to use on scope lights.
 
This is the kind of stuff told around a camp fire in summer camp... only these untrained, or little trained, misfits for soldiers never went to summer camp... nor do they even have so much as a Scout Leader.

If you go to war and your biggest fear is getting shot by "bye-bye mommas," what is that suppose to say???

Oh Lord, I do love it so...

CC
 
I think Phil Hendrie did a show on mercury filled bullets once. I know he did one on arrows tipped with anthrax.
 
Pretty silly idea for several reasons:

1) A steel bullet with a lead core would weigh about as much (possibly less) than a lead bullet, as mercury is only ~20% more dense than lead (while steel is ~20% less dense than lead).

2) The bullet would probably fragment (assuming the steel is soft enough to not immediately grind down the rifling). This would negate any magical armor-piercing capabilities.

3) There's no reason they'd be more accurate than a standard bullet (likely less so, because the liquid lead may disrupt the bullet's spin)

4) A lead bullet with a tungsten carbide core (copper-jacketed) would far out-perform a mythical steel-mercury bullet for this purpose. Not only would it likely be cheaper, it would certainly penetrate better, and the bullet would be more dense / weight more.

That's not to say it didn't happen though. Maybe there's some rich guy in Texas, content with selling ridiculous novelty bullets to the Arabs.
 
Not mercury but steel in the form of a .177 cal. steel BB.

I took out a small amount of lead in .38/.357 SJHPs, making the hole a bit wider and a tiny bit deeper so that the BB is at about the same level as the jacket material. I gently push the BB in until it is snug, then take a sharp knife and put 2-3 cuts across the entire top so it is split into 4-6 wedges.

Some people call these "dum-dums" but a true dum-dum is a LRN rifle bullet, not a pistol round.

I have not tried these in gelatin (don't have any), newspaper, phone books, etc., so I don't know how these will function. The theory is that the splits will let the bullet split & fragment more easily, spreading the damage, but the BB, being steel, will penetrate.

One other point - unlike liquid mercury, the BB is a solid and won't shift its weight while in flight. The rotation of the bullet in the barrel won't affect it.
 
From doing some Google searches I found some references to a company called Velet Cartridge Co. (that appears to not longer be in business) that made these bullets along with "exploding" bullets that had gun powder/pyrodex in the hollow point. They also apparently made a mercury-filled round similar to the above description. Now, that's not saying that the description of the round's effects are accurate, but it does appear that these were actually made at some point.

Here is an excerpt from a book that talks about this ammunition: http://books.google.com/books?id=dH...nepage&q=mercury filled bullets velet&f=false
 
I would take the mercury bullet story like the speculation in "Ordnance Went Up Front" 1948 explaining the Italian bullets jacketed with powdered metal core as being explosive rounds (supposedly the powdered metal was soaked in nitro which as the bullet spun through the air seperated from the powdered metal (beween the core and the jacket) and exploded on impact). No body tested the idea. I believe it turned out they were target practice ammo and had powdered metal cores to break up on thin backstops no explosives involved. Kinda tales told around the barracks to try to explain mysteries.

Nicolai Lilin, "Free Fall: A Sniper's Story from Chechnya", Canongate Books, 2011, 416 pp, ISBN-13: 978-1847679710.

The Amazon reader reviews include observations like it appears to be based on old army tales told by Linin and his buddies, the stories are not pinned to dates and places, it has detailed tactics and weapon descriptions w/o detailed mission descriptions, the publisher is no longer selling it as non-fiction but as based-on semi-memoir. I don't think it is possible to corellate the book absolutely to known history of the Chechnyan War.

I have heard the real "bye bye momma" for Russian soldiers were the "Army reforms" instituted by Boris Yeltsin.
 
Last edited:
I don't think this is so far fetched... I mean, I learned in Underworld that you can kill a werewolf with a bullet full of silver nitrate :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

N
  • Locked
Things you never thought you'd see on CNN...
Replies
2
Views
708
Standing Wolf
S
Obturation
  • Locked
No one loves me cause I'm wrinkled...
2 3
Replies
55
Views
2K
kmw1954
kmw1954
J
  • Locked
SAN JACINTO - - - 167 years ago today
Replies
8
Views
913
synoptic
S
C
  • Locked
Pennsylvania: "Police: Children using dangerous lookalike guns"
Replies
10
Views
964
MrAcheson
M
S
  • Locked
Disproving the myth of "Air Gap is dangerous" for Black Powder Cartridges
2 3
Replies
57
Views
4K
Black cloud
Black cloud
Back
Top