Lanes Bango Bullets

Lanes Bango Bullets 

With thanks to John G. He says:

[There follows] my experiences with an example of the extremely rare Lanes Bango Bullets.  A packet of these pellets had surfaced from the collection of Keith Bayliss, and I was lucky enough to be sent two samples, one of which I sacrificed by test firing it, only to find that nothing happened. Since then I have been in discussion with John Atkins about these ‘bullets’, and some interesting new information has emerged.

Firstly it now seems that there is only the one box of these pellets in existence. The box discussed by John and illustrated in his December 2006 Airgunner article came from Ray Goodwin via John McCrossen and turns out to be the same box that came from Keith Bayliss’s estate in 2025.  This makes these pellets even rarer than we thought.

We were both perplexed by the failure of my test Bango bullet  to explode on firing at a steel target, and its flattening without showing any sign of an interior cavity where presumably an explosive composition would be contained.  We were also puzzled by the apparent lack of any seam or fill hole.

As the Bango bullets looked remarkably similar to Lanes Turbites, which are non-exploding, this led us to wonder if, perhaps many years ago, an empty Bangos box had been used to store some Turbite pellets, and what we thought were Bangos but had been Turbites all along.

Against this idea was the fact that John has found that Turbites were originally coloured green (although on samples seen today most of the colour has worn off and is now only just detectable), whereas the supposed Bango pellets showed no trace of colour whatsoever.  A Turbite review in the Dec.15 1904  Sporting Goods Review said: "The bullets present a very attractive appearance, being coloured with a non -poisonous green substance through which the bright lead in the corrugations shows, particularly in artificial light, with a sparkling effect.”   Perhaps the addition of colour to Turbites was used to prevent their confusion with Bangos – something that could have had unpleasant consequences.

 So the question was, were these Bango pellets actually Turbites, and so our attempts to explode and analyze the few examples in our possession doomed to failure?

What do we know about Bango Bullets?  John has accumulated various snippets of information over the years, which can be summarized as follows: 

In Feb. 1906 The Sporting Goods Review. Review of Bango bullets  concluded - 'great fun'.

In March 1906 The Sporting Goods Review stated: “ Bangos selling well but cannot be sent through the post.” 

March 1906 Arms and Explosives.  Lane Bros. Bango pellets reviewed, stating 'Should  prove popular.'

In the November, 1906 The Sporting Goods Review, it was announced: "Lane Bros, now selling Bangos in Nos. 1. 2 and 3 bore. All in great demand”.

The pellets were also sold by Gamages, London, and curiously in this 1910 advert they are described as “New” even though they had been introduced some years before.  The advert also says that the pellets can be posted  for 2d (two old pence). The Gamages advert tells us that the No.2 and 3 bore sizes had been discontinued, leaving just the No.1 size.

So we know virtually nothing about the technical background to the pellets, such as how they were constructed and what type of explosive mixture was used.

Are our sample pellets Bangos or Turbites?  One way of determining if the pellets have an internal explosive-filled cavity without actually destroying a pellet would be to measure the overall density of the pellet.  If a pellet is solid lead, it should have a density of about 10.5 (as normal for all lead bullets and pellets).  If however the pellet has a filled cavity, the density will be significantly less, as any typical explosive mixture will have a density of only around 2.  When I measured the density of one of John’s presumed Bango pellets, using a simple technique normally used for assaying gold samples, I obtained a density value of  9.4.  A simple calculation indicated the presence of a cavity filled with a composition of some sort, which took up about 15% of the total volume of the pellet. 

I then went back to my fired pellet, which had not exploded and had been flattened and gave  no external indication of any cavity.  Surprisingly the density measurements also indicated the presence of a filled cavity accounting for about 18% of the total volume. How could this be?  The pellet looks too flattened to be hiding a cavity, so were my density measurements wrong?  To answer this, I decided to carefully cut through the pellet and inspect the interior. Here is the result:

You can see that there is an irregularly shaped cavity within the flattened pellet, and it is filled with a dark grey composition.  I scraped out the grey powdery material and played a fine blowtorch flame on it. It immediately burst into flame and burnt rapidly with a bright white light.

So we can conclude that the few Bango Bullets that are known to exist are the real thing.  The one tested had deteriorated to the extent that the explosive composition inside had lost its impact sensitivity, though it was still combustible.  We still have no real idea how the Bango Bullets were made, as no seams can be found. However John did find one example that had what appeared to a be a fill hole on the surface, but neither he nor I have been able to find this feature on others.  The mystery continues.   Very clever people, these Lanes!