Oh yeah, that's definitely not the lore. It does make more sense of the physicals design through, such as the bolt ejection lining up with the smaller barrel.
Warhammer 40K Plausible 40K equipment: "Imperial" Bolter
- Thread starter JagerIV
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 40k bolter headcannon
Oh yeah, that's definitely not the lore. It does make more sense of the physicals design through, such as the bolt ejection lining up with the smaller barrel.
I mean there's only so much explosive (And fragmenting casing) you can fit in a 75 caliber bolt, even a relatively speaking 'petite' 40mm grenade for a Space Marine would be outputting much more oomth in a single shot.
That Warrior Prime might not care too much about bolter shrapnel smacking into it, but it might feel quite annoyed with a 40mm Krak round.
Of course you don't fire frag rounds, .75 or 1 inch, against an armored target like a Warrior Prime. Small frag weapons are meant against hordes of gaunts, boyz or crazy cultists.
And even with modern technology a 20mm frag ammo can be effective enough to be worth using, see: all the WW2 20mm and similar autocannons with their HE-FRAG rounds.
I'm not even convinced a shrapnell bolt round would be too effective against those targets.
Even something as pathetic as a Gaunt is basically a target covered in kevlar with lessened pain receptors and other biological advantages over a human, Boyz are superhumanly durable and cultists might be so mentally deranged or chemically stimulated as if to ignore most non-lethal damage from fragments.
In real life humans are...Pretty squishy so even 20mm fragments can work (really you want 25mm+ as demonstrated by US developments with HE weapons)
But 75 caliber isn't even an inch, let alone 20mm.
You are underestimating the utility of such ammo. Originally, after all, they aren't even made with manpower as their main target, but a weapon against aircraft and light vehicles. They don't need to drop the target where it stands, they are however plenty effective enough in inflicting lots of small, performance reducing wounds on everyone in a large area, not to mention damaging supplies, equipment and so on.
And if you are referring to OICW 20mm grenades, those had the problem of having part of their payload taken by electronics. Hard to find specific figures, but some material says it has less than quarter of a 40mm grenade's HE load... That's in line with worst WW2 20mm shells. Others had third to over half of that for German mineshells, so of course, not all 20mm is equal.
Meanwhile 40k, especially in ammo for Astartes and their fancy bolter ammo, certainly wouldn't spare technological advances like thinner, more efficient fragmentation material/shell, and denser explosives.
Umm, pretty sure that's 19mm, so close enough.
Last edited:
Mine Shells were a bit of an oddball where they were designed to penetrate the skin of an aircraft and explode when about halfway in or all the way in. In effect their massive HE payload turned parts of the airplane itself into fragments which could cause further damage. Their actual fragmenting ability themselves wasn't too great because there was very little mass to explode everywhere in terms of metal.
A 75 caliber shrapnell round might be useful against unarmoured targets but I hardly think they'd cause major damage to anything wearing a good flak vest and up, outside of limb hits (which many 40k enemies are pretty much head to toe in armor)
I understand why it's effective in 40k, because sci-fi writers have no clue how weapons actually work and so the shrapnell bolts get a magical +10 to kinetic energy and penetration for no reason.
I just fail to see the purpose of such a round when bolts are already APHE human-torso-exploders. Maybe some sort of fletchette salvo round could be more useful? Similar to the CAWS weapon program?
A flak vest doesn't cover the entire body.
Your average cultist or boy is not decked out in armor like a stormtrooper.
As the saying goes, if it bleeds...
Sure it wouldn't work against all opponents, but metal storm bolts are considered specialist ammo against masses of mooks, they have other bolts for decently armored targets.
Because the APHE rounds can kill one, perhaps 2 crazed cultists in a hive world uprising. A metal storm round can kill half a dozen and cripple again as many.
It's like asking why 20mm cannons of pretty much all types have HE-FRAG rounds when they also all have AP and even sometimes APHE rounds too.
Last edited:
They are supposed to be useful against masses of mooks but given the specifications of such a bolt I just don't believe they would be as useful as the universe claims they are.
Ultimately yes, they are exceedingly useful bolts because 40k says so, but there's far, far better weapons to use against masses of mooks than shrapnell rounds.
Historically Shrapnell was used to attack trenches, making as wide a field of fire as possible with field guns.
Recently they got more popular due to "AHEAD" ammunition for use against...Well all kinds of targets including missiles, light vehicles, infantry, etc. But those are 30mm+, not 20mm.
I'm not convinced a single 19mm shrapnell bolt could kill 6 people, not unless you line people up in a very specific manner and by that logic even a 12 gauge is going to be killing 6 people per shot.
20mm cannons have HE rounds, but they don't use shrapnell rounds. I am not aware of any fuzed 20mm rounds designed to explode in front of targets aside from the OICW projects which were upped to 25mm.
Even worse is that these bolts are described as 'flak-like' which is not how shrapnell actually works, instead of the more effective AHEAD design which are proper shrapnell weapon.
Actually, there are a number of specialty bolter rounds in the Imperium.
For anti-nid use a specialized needle round containing a 'mutagenic acid' which was especially effective. Curiously enough, it was found equally effective against ANY organic target.
Then there's the Kraken rounds which went for more armor penetration and longer range. No real explosive charge though.
Hell, the Imperium even uses Implosion rounds upon occasion. Anti-matter charge replaces the explosive core.
...and many more flavors of death to choose from!!!
"Buy all your favorite ammunition stocks from Hal's Ammo Emporium!!! If what you have won't do, we've got a way to kill it!!!"
All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. Any issues with ammunition performance, accidents or mishaps should be addressed with the manufactorum responsible. Hal's is not liable for misfires, lack of performance or death.
I know there's all sorts of bolts, but because sci-fi writers are silly people (and I seriously don't mind silly sci-fi at all, it just makes it very hard to translate to 'reality') they have no clue how most weapons actually work.
Lets look at bolt design.
The main principle of the standard "Bolt" is to operate as an APHE round, penetrate the target and explode within. Very effective against fleshy targets and mechanical ones.
Except of course this is all nonsense because the way how a bolt is designed would almost guarantee a failure to high-order detonate because the damned HE charge has a thin casing which will cause its payload to be deformed, destroyed and otherwise rendered mostly inert.
There's also nowhere near enough propellent to get the thing to a good speed anyways, and if that tiny little 'pocket' of propellent is sufficient you might as well use that stuff to power everything because god DAMN is it potent!
You're assuming they're working with tech and materials we have access to. The IoM has had lots of time and alien tech to examine in order to get to where they are...mostly courtesy of previous eras, but they still have access to it.
There's only so much you can stretch things with sci-fi materials.
And if we assume they do have wunder-materials, wouldn't the armor be made of equally tough stuff, so you're back to square one?
In a nutshell if you want an explosive payload to survive the impact of going through armor, you need the penetrator to basically shield said payload, you don't stuff it inside a thin casing behind said penetrator.
Of course HE-FRAG autocannon rounds are not meant for attacking trenches...
In WW2, aircraft, light vehicle and SPAAG mounted 20mm autocannons they were always noted to be downright scary effective against infantry.
If those worked, why do you think some of higher level 40k technology can't do it?
Exploding on impact is good enough, most historical 20mm HE-FRAG ammo was impact fuzed.
As i said, the 20mm OICW lethality problem translates poorly to 20mm in general due to its electronics badly cutting the payload in terms of explosive and fragmenting shell.
No electronics = more payload for killy stuff.
AHEAD rounds are modern programmable anti-air rounds, which i guess could be used against infantry, but aren't even designed with that as primary role.
Last edited:
WW2 20mm HE rounds still relied upon direct hits to cause damage, yeah in theory their fragments could kill a nearby person but this class of weapon was still about hitting exceptionally close if not directly hitting people. Germany made great use of these weapons in various forms including a quad mounted AA system but there's no documentation that most of casualties from these weapons were from fragmentation.
But WW2 infantry aren't the giga-chad beefy humans in 40k, or Orkz, or Nids, and so on.
Edit: Also the German's typically didn't like firing HE against ground targets out of their 2cm weapons, they were primarily intended for AA usage.
These fragments are relatively small, and a significant fraction aren't going in the most ideal pattern. Additionally due to their non-uniform shape they will lose velocity very rapidly. This is also from a projectile larger than a bolt, potentially much larger depending on the exact bolt picture used for comparison.
If fragmentation wasn't doing much of the damage, why would they even bother using anything other than AP rounds, especially on the armored car mounted autocannons?
Also for living targets often a wound that doesn't kill often takes out someone from the fight for a time.
And they definitely weren't loading AP rounds for shooting at infantry.
And yet for some reason they put 20's on light tanks and armored cars that can't even aim at aircraft, how silly of them...
Silly Germans and French even did that after WW2 with their first IFVs...
AMX-10P - Wikipedia
Marder (infantry fighting vehicle) - Wikipedia
Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 - Wikipedia
On the other hand 40k giga-chad mooks tend to fight bunched up like a bunch of idiots begging to be shot at with small fragmenting rounds, oh, wait...
Tyranids, khornates or orks won't scatter to 10m loose skirmish line to limit losses from such.
Combine that with 40k explosives, materials and so on, not to mention bolts not being some cheapass ammo made for guardsmen, would definitely have better frag effects than a WW2 round of similar size.
Again, why do you assume that 40k Astartes can't get ammo with even a bit better design and materials than WW2 shells? One of the modern advances in frag weapons is the use of tungsten for significantly more effective fragments that take a longer distance to lose velocity... It's a bit pricey for us now, but hey, it's ammo for the Astartes.
Last edited:
Because AP poke lil hole in stuff, HE impact fuze causes beeg hole and launches fragments to a localized area, but only localized!
Because when you're producing a 20mm AA weapon already it's pretty logistically simple to shove it into a tank or armored car, give it some AP rounds, and enjoy it's effect against anything less armored than a French heavy tank. Their main purpose was punching holes in things, not blowing them up. That is what the larger tanks like 75mm short cannons were for, ;D
I wouldn't want to be an infantryman up against a 20mm firing ANY projectile at me, HE, AP or anything else. But there's only so much radius a 20mm HE shell can have and it's going to be very much limited due to cover and other factors.
>lil hole
A bigger hole than a fucking .50 cal rifle.
Against infantry, why even bother at that point, while a plain AP rounds is much cheaper.
Then why is every single one of them noted to carry a combination of AP and HE rounds, and usually more HE than AP while at it?
And? Do not underestimate the power of "close counts". It doesn't need a 20 meter lethal radius like an artillery shell to be effective. The point is that with plain solid AP rounds, some wall and sandbags can be effective cover from those.
Now imagine what happens when even a small calibre HE ammo is fired in the same position... especially an enclosed one. Even if the targets take cover behind their sandbag reinforced wall, the whole room can be filled with bouncing fragments, now everyone has to worry not only about cover but also about not having any "backstops" to detonate the rounds or bouncy surfaces within 5-10 meters of their back, and trust me, bunkers aren't known for being the most spacious places.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
I am pretty sure that the canonical definition of 'Bolter' is frigging automatic rocket launcher.
It's a little exaggerated, a bolter is at most a handheld 20mm autocannon. Penetration can't be much more than 80-100mm while even the most petite of rocket launchers exceeds 200mm.