"Nitro Express, the Big Bang of the Big Bang"

by Terry Wieland

Read more here on PDF in the Nickudu Files

In the world of rifles and shotguns, progress comes mostly in small increments, It is rare to pinpoint the exact date when a momentous change occurred, but those great old British Nitro Express cartridges are the rare exception.

The era of the nitro express began in July,
1898, when John Rigby & Co. unveiled
the .450 Nitro Express, and ushered in
the modern age of the elephant gun.

Although the introduction of the .450 was a
specific event, and the cartridge was quickly
accepted and changed the hunting world almost
overnight, it was not the product of a single
inspiration. Rather, it was the end result of a
number of changes that had been taking place
over the course of the previous 50 years - the
development of the breechloading rifle, the
perfecting of rifling techniques, the evolution of
the brass cartridge case and the jacketed bullet,
and most important, the development of
smokeless gunpowder.

Of course, necessity is always the mother of
invention, and the technical aspects aside, the
main impetus behind the development of the
.450 and, its offspring was the fact that British
hunters were going out to Africa to hunt
dangerous animals, and not all of them were
coming back. Given the intense competition
among British gunmakers in the latter half of the
19th century, and their dismay at losing
customers (either to each other or on the horns of
a buffalo), it is not surprising that firms such as
Rigby, Holland & Holland, and James Purdey
were all busy trying to perfect more effective rifles
and cartridges

...

More than a century has passed since the Nitro
Express era began, and there have been huge
changes in every aspect of ballistic performance.
On paper, the .450 NE, now looks decidedly old
hat. All kinds of newer cartridges, both larger and
smaller in bore diameter, deliver performance that
eclipses the .450 and everything in the .470 class.
But appearance can be deceiving.

...

The cartridges for which they were chambered
played a large part in this reliability. Features that
are sometimes sneered at by the uninformed were,
in fact, advantages. And, if you are hunting a
wounded elephant under a tropical sun, they still
are today, a hundred years later ... read more.

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