The .475 Nitro Express is a British
rifle
A rifle is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a gun barrel, barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus o ...
cartridge developed in the early 20th century.
Design
The .475 Nitro Express is a slightly tapered, non-bottlenecked
rimmed
A rim is an external flange that is machined, cast, molded, stamped, or pressed around the bottom of a firearms cartridge. Thus, rimmed cartridges are sometimes called "flanged" cartridges. Almost all cartridges feature an extractor or headspaci ...
cartridge very similar in appearance to the
.450 Nitro Express, that is designed for use in
single-shot
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have ...
and
double rifle
The double rifle, also known as a double-barreled rifle, is a rifle with two barrels mounted parallel to each other that can be fired simultaneously or sequentially in quick succession. Synonymous with big game hunting found primarily in Africa an ...
s.
Original loadings fired a projectile at a listed speed of , these loadings are still available, additionally
Westley Richards
Westley Richards is a British manufacturer of guns and rifles and also a well established gunsmith. The company was founded in 1812 by William Westley Richards, who was responsible for the early innovation of many rifles used in wars featuring t ...
have a loading with a listed speed of .
[Wieland, ".475 Nitro Express".]
History
It is believed the .475 Nitro Express was introduced around 1900, well before the British Army
1907 ban of .450 caliber ammunition into
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
and the
Sudan
Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...
which saw the development of the ballistically very similar
.500/465 Nitro Express,
.470 Nitro Express,
.475 No 2 Nitro Express, and
.476 Nitro Express.
Firearms historians remain unclear who developed the .475 Nitro Express,
[Wieland, "Nitro Express".] it is likely that a combination of companies going out of business and merging, along with records being lost or destroyed during the
London blitz
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Tha ...
will mean the origins of this cartridge will never be known.
The .475 Nitro Express has never enjoyed the success of any of the cartridges listed above, largely because it was never adopted by any of the major rifle manufacturers. Due to this, rifles in this calibre have always been rare, generally from lesser known makers such as W.W. Greener, Army & Navy and Manton of Calcutta.
Use
The .475 Nitro Express is considered a good large-bore round, suitable for all big game, its power is very similar to the
.470 Nitro Express. Ballistically it is almost identical to the
.450 Nitro Express, with a larger diameter bullet; whether this is an advantage remains in dispute.
See also
*
Nitro Express
The Nitro Express (NE) series of cartridges are used in large-bore hunting rifles, also known as elephant guns or express rifles, but later came to include smaller bore high velocity (for the time) British cartridges.
Name
The term "Express" was ...
*
List of rifle cartridges
List of rifle cartridges, by primer type, Caliber, calibre and name.
File:Cartridge Sample 2.jpg, 350px, From left to right: 1 .17 Hornady Mach 2, 2 .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire, 3 .22 Long Rifle, 4 .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, 5 .17/23 SMc, 6 5mm ...
*
13 mm caliber
This is a list of firearm cartridges which have bullets that are to in caliber.
*''Length'' refers to the cartridge case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Instances
* Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design
* ...
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
* Barnes, Frank C, ''Cartridges of the World'', ed 13, Gun Digest Books, Iola, 2012, .
Kynoch Ammunition, "Big Game Cartridges", ''www.kynochammunition.co.uk''
18 January 2017.
Wieland, Terry, "Nitro Express: The Big Bang of the Big Bang", ''ezine.nitroexpress.info/NickuduFiles/''
retrieved 31 December 2014.
Wieland, Terry, "The .475 Nitro Express: A mysterious and under-rated orphan", ''ezine.nitroexpress.info/NickuduFiles/''
retrieved 22 November 2016.
External links
".475 Nitro Express (")", ''www.cartridgecollector.net''
retrieved 16 December 2016.
{{DEFAULTSORT:475
Pistol and rifle cartridges
British firearm cartridges