Flechettes

[lundloader]

Has anyone had good experiences with 12-guage flechette cartriges? My brain says this is the greatest thing that has happened to self-defense sotgunning but I am unsure about the hard steel flechettes damaging the barrel. I also need some load data as that I am willing to sacrifice the barrel on one of my Win-1300 defenders testing their capabilities.

 

[C Philip]

If you do a search on flechette rounds you'll come up with few threads that should answer your question. Basically buckshot is alot better for home defense than flechette rounds. Flechettes do tend to go farther than buck shot, thus increasing the effective range of the shot gun. However, from what I hear flechettes have almost no knockdown power. This means that the person can be shot with flechette rounds and still run away or attack you, only to die later of blood loss. Not a good thing for home defense where you want to drop the bad guy right away. It will not damage your barrel, but there is really no use for them. Even the ones with fins to stabilize flight tend to go sideways at ranges as close as 25 yards from what I have read. Flechette rounds are also very expensive. Stick to a good factory 00 buck or likewise.

 

[DPris]

Impractical for a number of reasons.
They spread rapidly, each individual flechette may have more penetration than a buckshot pellet at close range, but less actual tissue trauma and nervous system disruption, they do not necessarily stabilize at close distances, they lose effective velocity quicker than lead buckshot pellets, they can be hard on a shotgun bore, and you'd be torn to pieces in court if you used a flechette load for self defense.
They were a military experiment that wasn't kept in inventory for long.
You can find MANY better 00 Buck loads that will perform much more reliably for self-defense uses.
It's really a bad idea.
Denis

 

[Dfariswheel]

Flechettes were tried in Vietnam, where they proved to be a failure.
The idea was to offer longer range use of the shotgun.

Most of them were nail-like aluminum needles, with tiny formed fins.
Half were loaded in the shell backward to allow fitting more in the shell.

In actual use, they were deflected or stopped by brush, and have no striking force.
Although they did carry farther in a denser mass than buckshot, they failed to penetrate.

The big problem is, they have no mass, so they fail to have any stopping power.
It's sort of like being stabbed with needles, instead of impacted by shot.

The worst failing of them is, people shot with them in the stress of combat often don't even know they've been fatally hit until they bleed to death internally.
There were too many cases of even tiny Vietnamese shot with them, who continued to attack for some minutes.

The bottom line is, these are NOT "stoppers", and although people are often killed by them, they die.........eventually.

"Eventually" is not something you want in your face in your bedroom at 3:00 am.

Bottom Line: Another good idea that just failed to pan out in the real world.

 

[leadcounsel]

Buckshot is about as cheap and perfect as it gets for HD shotgunning. What's to improve??

In other words, "Flechettes, what's the 'point'?"

 

[DPris]

When I tested them about ten years ago, I wasn't impressed. Didn't use 'em on people, but the loads used steel finned flechettes, half packed backwards as mentioned, and not all would turn around and stabilize at 7 yards. Shot at half-inch plywood, none completely penetrated, several hit sideways, one bounced back & hit my leg.
For maximum terminal effectiveness in a self-defense situation you want major tissue disruption and massive nervous system shock, not a lot of little needle holes that will bleed out eventually.
Denis