.303 BRITISH
We call it, simply, the .303 but internationally the name ‘British’ is added for clarity. It started life in 1888 as a black-powder cartridge for the Lee-Metford rifle. It transitioned to Cordite smokeless powder in 1891 and, once adopted by the British Army, it became the standard military round from 1889 until the 1950s. The case is bottlenecked brass with a corrosive primer.
In service for 60 years of ammunition development, the cartridge was produced with a mind-boggling variety of iterations, from soft-nose, to round nose, to incendiary, tracer and armour-piercing bullets. Perhaps its classic form is the 1910 version, MKVII. This loads a 174gr pointed nose bullet in front of 37 grains of cordite, with a muzzle velocity of 2,440fps.
Though a military round, the .303 was…
