Why did the Germans make cartridges with wooden bullets during the war? – Russia today Publication in CHAT: Russia From time to time, military archaeological search teams working on the battlefields of World War II find strange cartridges with a wooden bullet for the German Mauser 98k rifle. For a modern person, such a product looks at least strange. Did the Third Reich really have such problems with industrial materials that they went so far as to start producing wooden bullets for their infantry, and later, with the beginning of the war, Germany began to produce unusual rifle cartridges with wooden bullets. For a modern person accustomed to metals and plastics, such a combination of materials in ammunition looks completely strange and even exotic. However, in the first half of the 20th century, such cartridges were used quite widely and not only in the army of the Third Reich. If you take one of these wooden bullets and carefully cut it along the vertical axis, you will notice one interesting detail: wooden bullets are hollow inside. This feature should make most people think of the strength of a piece of wood as a "damaging element". Wouldn't such a "bullet" fly apart under the action of powder gases? In fact, it will fly away anyway! Most likely, this will happen as soon as the hollow wooden projectile leaves the cavity. But why is it so necessary? The answer is simple: because a wooden bullet is, in fact, a "plug". And as you may have guessed, cartridges with wooden bullets are blank ammunition. Probably, those who served in the Soviet army are accustomed to the fact that blank cartridges, for example, for the Kalashnikov assault rifle, simply do not have a bullet in their design. And this is true. But not all blank ammunition can be made using this technology. For example, today for the same AK, blanks with an easily destroyed bullet made of white plastic are used. In turn, the Germans sometimes failed to make a blank Mauser cartridge 7.92x57 with a pressed-in tip. Therefore, I had to use a plug in the form of a wooden, easily destroyed, hollow bullet. It is interesting that such “wooden cartridges” for Mauser 98k rifles are occasionally found by archaeological search teams on the battlefields of World War II. . and the Great Patriotic War. The question arises: why would the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS need blank ammunition directly at the front? The answer is actually simple: empty cartridges were used to fire rifle grenades. A special device with a fragmentation or explosive grenade was installed in the rifle barrel, for which it was necessary to shoot a safe empty cartridge. Source link Source link