Talk:.400/375 Belted Nitro Express

.400 Nitro Express

Why the unusual ".400/.375" designation if the cartridge was designed as a .375? Doesn't the paired dimesions usually suggest it's based off of a larger cartridge necked down (or vice versa)? I would assume that the case was originally an untapered .400, but they necked it down to create a faster, smaller .375 using the same case dimensions. Why doesn't it say anything about this? There must be some explanation for the odd designation. If it was actually a .400cal bullet, I'd suspect that the ".375" was actually supposed to be "375", and referred to something different, like bullet weight or something. But it's a .375 round that for some mysterious was sold with the number ".400" in the title. One would assume that must have meant something, or it would be just confusing customers. Unless marketing was sophisticated enough back then that they recognized that a lot of buyers would buy the round just because adding a meaningless ".400" in there makes it seem more powerful than it is....45Colt 02:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

BTW, why is the article title say ".400/375" if the bullet is in fact a .375? shouldn't it be ".400/.375 Belted Nitro Express"?.45Colt 03:00, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The British has an unusual naming convention of retaining the caliber of a parent cartridge then the necked down caliber of the projectile, for instance .450/400 Black Powder Express was a .40" cartridge derived from the .450 Black Powder Express. This convention persisted with some newly designed cartridges such as this one, and the .400/350 Nitro Express. I have named this article .400/375 as opposed to .400/.375 to maintain commonality with other similar articles such as the .500/450 Nitro Express and the .577/450 Martini–Henry. Cavalryman V31 (talk) 00:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)