volume 11.4

Terry Wieland’s On Ammo

The .475 is so similar to Rigby’s original .450 Nitro Express (shown here) that they are indistinguishable unless you put the two side by side.
From a gunmaking point of view, the advantage of the .475 NE over larger-base cartridges like the .470 is that the rifl e can be made on a
slimmer frame, trimming one to two pounds from overall weight. The .475 my be the most under-rated of all the nitro-express cartridges.

Some cartridges are born to greatness (.577 Nitro Express); others have greatness thrust upon them (.470 NE); still others achieve their due after years of obscurity (.500 NE).

And then there are those that deserve a measure of greatness and never receive it. To whit: the .475 Nitro Express.

If ever a cartridge was great on paper and just as good in the fi eld, it is the .475, a straighttaper case similar in shape to the .450 NE and the .500 NE. Firing a 480-grain bullet at 2175 fps, and delivering 5040 ft.lbs. of energy at the muzzle, it is the ballistic twin (and predecessor) of the .470, the most popular nitro-express cartridge of all time.

Beyond that, very little is known of the .475 NE. It is believed it was introduced around 1900, well before the fl owering of the .475- diameter cartridges at the time of the .450 ban in India and the Sudan (1905-07). As to who designed and introduced it, no one knows. Certainly, no rifl e maker adopted it and made it a standard chambering.

Rifles chambered for the .475 are few and far between, and are generally lesser-known names such as Army & Navy and Manton of Calcutta. A combination of companies going out of business, and records lost or destroyed during the blitz, make it very likely that the .475’s origins will never be positively known. For several reasons, the .475 has not shared in the last decade’s renaissance of the nitro express. First, of course, is simple lack of demand – not many rifl es were made, so demand for ammunition is small.

The second, and more serious, problem is dimensional variation. Bullet diameter in rifl es and cartridges varies between .474 and .483 inches, which is quite a wide spread. Understandably, most ammunition companies prefer to make cartridges that are standardized, for safety and legal reasons. This is not to say that, if offered a good .475 NE, one should walk away. It is an extremely fine cartridge whose design practically guarantees low pressures and no extraction problems. It is also easy to load.

One should take the precaution, however, of slugging the bore to determine exactly what diameter bullet it takes, and ensure that these are available, along with suitable loading dies. Handloading data for the cartridge is not readily available, and of course one immediately encounters the problem of barrel regulation. Leaving that aside for the moment, the most pressing requirement is a starting load from which to work either up or down. Because the case is virtually identical to the .450 Nitro