Some Ignorance Persisted Until Very Recently

Such confusion over gunshot injuries remained a part of Army medical gospel and was shared by some surgeons even as late as the 1950’s. During the Korean War the small-caliber high velocity (1,300 f.p.s. M/v)
Russian PPSH-41 submachine guns were in great use by the Chinese Communist Forces. It was not uncommon for an American soldier to be brought in by medical corpsmen with five or six bullet holes across his body, from the small .30 caliber Mauser pistol bullets the Russian burp gun fired. The relatively undamaged area about the holes, often appearing to be nothing more than little blue punctures, entrance and exit, caused a great many men to be given only temporary aid, when they needed a complete opening up and repair of the very extensive internal damage done by what was discovered experimentally to be the temporary cavity effect.

The death tolls from these insignificant-appearing wounds were out of proportion to their seeming severity, and extensive studies were conducted at Princeton University on the mechanics of gunshot wounds. High speed motion pictures using X-Ray film were hooked up to illustrate the passage of a steel ball through the leg of a live, anesthetized dog or cat; body shots were also studied.
The small bullet at velocities around 4,000 feet per second would create a prodigious cavity many times its own diameter. Enlargement of the photographs showed the ball to be tangent to the interior of this cavity only at one point: the point on the surface of the ball that was in the direction of the line of flight. The cavity extended actually forward of the position of the ball, the point of tangency internally appearing as a stem. The ball appeared to rest on this like a golf ball on a tee.
The presence of this cavity, and its form, was explained by the hydraulic nature of the mechanical damage being wrought by the bullet. Perhaps if hydraulic machinery manufacturer Colonel James T. Wilder had been approached by doctors as to why his Spencerarmed brigades were such butchers, he might have come up with an answer at least more scientific than Dr. Howard’s essay. For the fluids in the muscle are accelerated away from the ball, due to their lighter mass,

Modern skeptics are convinced of Minie ball’s devastation when exhibitions of shooting between military men armed with Garands conclude with victory to North South Skirmish Association members armed with Civil War rifle muskets. Target, 2x4 stake, is cut in half by bullets, recalls forests chopped off breast high by rifle fire in Civil War. Scene pictured is from annual fete at Ford museum’s Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich.

momentarily faster than the ball itself and hence the creation of the “stem” when the temporary cavity extended beyond the position of the ball momentarily. These phenomena were clearly visible at ultra high velocities, but that they existed in moderate form at lower velocities is indisputable. Nevertheless, that phenomena in physics which is known as the rate of propagation of stresses, or the speed with which the physical smashing effect (avoid use of the word “shock”) of the bullet is transmitted to the bones struck, created confusion in the minds of Dr. Howard and his contemporaries.