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Old January 22, 2010, 08:20 PM   #22
Lee Lapin
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Join Date: September 7, 2004
Location: SE NC
Posts: 1,239
Someone's selling nails, it seems. A newly developed load, it seems. Interesting. See attached, below.

There were some Vietnam era shotgun flechette loads that worked reasonably well, up to a point. Not all of them loaded flechettes base to point- the better performing rounds (Whirlpool, Winchester, Remington, AAI) all loaded their payloads all point forward.

The AAI L-L1 (AA-32) round did well in testing- but was never used in combat, apparently. Its 32 flechettes had fins that were angled to provide an optimum rate of stabilizing spin, and nested very compactly within the hull and sabot assembly. The round produced patterns of 6- 8 feet at 100 meters, and would penetrate the then-issued flak vest at that range, despite its relatively low muzzle velocity of 1260 fps.

Remington's Beehive shotgun round found a good deal of favor among USMC shotgunners, but was not so well received by the US Army. The Remington Model SP-12F-20 load pushed 20 7.5 grain flechettes at a tested MV of 2200 fps, produced patterns of 6 feet at 100 meters, and could be combat effective out to about 275 meters. It was found that penetration with this load actually improved beyond 35 yards, as yawing had ceased and the flechettes had stabilized. One other thing was discovered- this load did not like choked barrels, and the tighter the choke, the more open the patterns.

These flechettes did not do well at penetrating intervening vegetation in the jungles of Vietnam, however. The light weight of the individual projectiles meant they shed velocity quickly in brush, and were easily deflected. In open country, their flat trajectories and high initial velocity meant that they could still produce wounds at 500 meters, though there was no way of guaranteeing what might be hit at such ranges. That sort of thing seemed to worry the Army much more than it did the USMC for some reason, one of the reasons flechette loads were not as popular with the Army.

Shotgun flechette loads have always exercised a certain mystique among some shotgunners, almost legendary in some ways. Yet their actual performance fails to live up to the legend in most cases when shotgunners have bought some of these legendary loads and tested them on their own.

Does Sabot Designs LLC have the design of their flechette round 'right'? It drives nineteen eight-grain flechettes at a MV of 1925 FPS- not a far cry at all from the old Remington Beehive round that the USMC used to like so much in the Vietnam era.

So it might well work as advertised, I don't know. As I see it, the main question prospective purchasers need to ask is, do they really need a round that offers these performance specifications in a defensive shotgun round, given that most defensive uses of shotguns occur at relatively short range? And secondly, do they really want to pay as much as these rounds cost (admittedly, these rounds certainly don't sound inexpensive to produce) to find out?

fwiw,

lpl

(info on specific flechette loads mentioned above comes from Swearengen's The World's Fighting Shotguns (c 1978, TBN Enterprises).
==============

http://www.antipersonnel.net/sdllc/006.html

//snip//

PRODUCT PRICES


FLECHETTE SABOT AMMUNITION, 12 GA, 200 ROUND DOUBLE CASE

PER UNIT COST $2.30

FA-12-200(INCLUDES 11% FET)-------------------------------------$510.60
SHIPPING---------------------------------------------------------$35.00
CASH TOTAL------------------------------------------------------$545.60


CREDIT CARD PURCHASE TOTAL------------------------------------- $567.77
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