Do you suppose they still make it in the original factory!?Over at Tam's there's a thread about expanding bullets that sent me off on a web-wander and here's some of the places I went and the thangs ah seen!
Over at The Box Of Truth I found this picture:
Caption:Apparently there is such a city in India, actually a municipality of the larger city of Kolkata. Dum Dum was the site of a British armory and jail. Gandhi was jailed there in 1946.
The one on the left is a round from the Indian ammo factory in Dum-Dum India.
The middle one is a round of WRA, loaded with Ball powder, surprisingly.
The one on the right is from the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich Kent, England.
It was loaded with the Cordite that you can see there.
You can also see the small piece of cardboard that covered the Cordite.
"Royal Flying Corps near Dum Dum, India, 1930"
They've got a modern rail station there.
FirstWorldWar.com says,
The 'dum-dum' was a British military bullet developed for use in India - at the Dum-Dum Arsenal - on the North West Frontier in the late 1890s.
The dum-dum comprised a jacketed .303 bullet with the jacket nose open to expose its lead core. The aim was to improve the bullet's effectiveness by increasing its expansion upon impact.
The phrase 'dum-dum' was later taken to include any soft-nosed or hollow pointed bullet. The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed the use of dum-dum bullets during warfare.
During the First World War the Belgian government faced German charges of having used dum-dum bullets in battle. Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote a telegram to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson on 7 September 1914 protesting such use; the Belgians strongly denied the Kaiser's charges.
The city of Dum Dum is still a going concern, as can be seen from this commercial notice I found, an RFP for Hewlett-Packard computers:
Street vendor in modern Dum Dum.
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2 comments:
I saw the title "Dum Dum", and assumed you were posting about D.C.!
My understanding is that Dum Dum, India and Washington, DC are sister cities.
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