Saddam's rifle firing
To the experts - (as I have forgoten my physics)When Saddam fires his rifle in the air, as we witness on TV, and the bullet falls back to earth can the bullet cause injure to a person should they be struck by the falling bullet? What would be the calculated force of the bullet?
Dr. J. Curtis Lane
Dr. J. Curtis Lane
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If it hit them yes.. Would penetrate the skull and go clear out the other side most likely. 0 -
It would lose a good fraction of its energy, but bullets fired like that have been known to kill. 0 -
But, then, what does Saddam care? He shoots his own people like fish in a barrel anyway.
Are we going to war?
To quote Nike, we need to "Just Do It".0 -
Something similar as an interesting side note - In WWII there was an anti personnel device dropped from planes that was simply a little bomb shaped projectile. I used to see these little bombs at gun shows when I was a kid. About 1 1/2" long, steel with little bomb-like fins. Some of the vendors had buckets of them, I never bought one. I was told that they were capable of piercing light armor just by being dropped from the air. I haven't seen any of these lately. 0 -
In WWI, planes carried flechettes which looked like large darts that when dropped from the plane could go through a horse. 0 -
Surprising little difference in the velocity of the bullet when it leaves the muzzle to when it hits the ground. Injure? You bet! But as Newman said "what me worry"!
cbxjeffIt's too late for me, save yourself.0 -
Like everything else there is a mathmatical formula to determine the velocity and energy of a bullet fired into the air and returning to earth. The last time I went into a formula in depth I was quickly challenged as to its validity due to some irrelivent information that this person wanted included in the calculation. So lets just forget the formula, here is what happens when you fire a bullet into the air.
We will use a standard .30-06 180gr pointed bullet as our sample. If you fire the rifle holding it straight up the bullet will climb to about 10,000 feet. This is a better distance than over land because the air is thinner as altitude increases and offers less resistance to the bullet. Even so the air offers considerable drag and it takes our bullet about 20 seconds to reach its maximum altitude. This is why firing a machinegun from a fixed ground position at a moving aircraft seldom scores a hit; the plane is long gone before the bullet even reaches where the plane once was!
Now that our bullet has reached its maximum altitude it begines its fall to earth. It now has only the force of gravity acting to propell it and with wind resistance it will achieve only a fraction of the velocity it had at the muzzel (no powder=no speed). These are light weight projectiles and cannot hope to maintain the same velocity on their return to earth- a cannon shell yes, a .30 caliber bullet- no way. Projectiles fired straight up tend to return to earth base first. Bullets fired at angles will simply turn over and return point first. Sometimes there are problems such as high winds at altitude or a defect in the projectile itself and the bullet is knocked out of balance and will begin to tumble. The direction the bullet returns to earth will determine just how lethal it is when it strikes an object on the ground.
A tumbling .30 caliber bullet takes a little less than one minute and a half to return to earth with a velocity of about 180 fps. By way of ballistic calculations (not included here due to popular demand) that means an impact force of about 13 foot pounds- as a rule, not enough to kill you- although it will hurt you. If our bullet returns base first it takes about 58 seconds for it to hit the earth with a velocity of 320 fps. This generates about 41 foot pounds of energy and will certainly kill you. If our bullet returns point down it takes about 50 seconds for the return to earth at a velocity of 460 fps. and generates a force of 85 foot pounds of energy. This is more than enough force to penetrate the roof of your house and at the least scare you, if not injure you.
Mark T. Christian0 -
The chance of it hitting some one is so low it is off the scale, but if it did it would be capable of serious injury. I would guess the velocity would be between 700 and 1000 fps. That is just a guess, not knowing the factors to give the 'computed' answer. I do know of a case where a person was killed from a 38sp fired into the air (4th of July) and it went aprox 5 city blocks (aprox 600 yds) and struck a person in the chest and perferated the heart (no exit). Exterior ballistics are very interesting!!!
Self defence is an ablsolute and natural right. Keep your powder dry! J. Rau, Alaska0 -
I found a .38 Spl. slug in my garage roof and a .45 ACP in the house roof, both with 2 or 3 layers of compositon shingles. Both penetrated less than the length of the bullet and were deformed and corroded.
Of course they never reached the altitude of the .30-06.0 -
I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. The 'shot' I saw was at about 65-70 degrees, not straight up (90 degrees) so the bullet would not stop and come back to earth, it would follow a normal path or trajectory (unless or until it came in contact something with a greater mass than the atmospher). The return trajectory would be near vertical though. That is why I estimate the terminal volicity at 700 to 1000 fps. The gun was a manlichier stocked bolt action unk cal. [?]
Self defence is an ablsolute and natural right. Keep your powder dry! J. Rau, Alaska0 -
What I want to know is, just what rifle is that Saddam fires into the air. I have seen him shooting that thing at three different rallies. 0 -
How did you get invited to his rallies?[8)]
Self defence is an ablsolute and natural right. Keep your powder dry! J. Rau, Alaska0 -
Thanks to all and especially Mark Christian. It has been 66 years since my physics so your explanation took me back a few years. I had forgetten but remembered that when the bullet reached its vertical height (fired at 90 degrees) it starts down from zero and factors of temp. mass and other factors played a part, Appreciate the lesson in physics as that is the point of my interest
Dr. J. Curtis Lane0 -
The answer can be found in a Q&A on the FriarFrog web site and is here reproduced for your pleasure:
Q. What happens when a bullet is fired straight up?
A. A lot of shooters have wondered what happens when a bullet is fired vertically. Popular lore includes such mis-ideas as the bullet burns up falling back down, it comes down at the same velocity as its original muzzle velocity, and probably one that says it disappears in a time warp.
The two best references on the subject are "Hatcher's Notebook", (by Julian S. Hatcher, 3rd edition, June 1962, Stackpole Books, ISBN: 0811707954) which includes a chapter on bullets fired vertically, and an article titled "Terminal Velocity and Penetration Studies," by Lucien C. Haag, which appeared in Vol 2, No. 1 of Wound Ballistics Review. This information is excerpted from both.
First, it must be understood that recovering vertically fired bullets is difficult because wind causes them to drift from the expected vertical line. (This probably accounts for many of the myths.)
Hatcher's tests indicated that on the average, vertically fired rifle bullets reach about 9000 feet in altitude (slowed from their muzzle velocity by air drag and gravity to zero velocity), taking about 20 seconds to reach maximum height. Then, pulled by gravity, and slowed by air drag they take about 40 or so seconds to return. Bullets fired vertically come back base first. Why? Read on!
Hatcher describes one experiment with the 150gr M2 Ball bullet fired vertically. When it came back from vertical (round trip time was about 42.9 seconds) it left only a 1/16 inch dent in a soft pine board that it happened to hit. (Not exactly what it would do at 2700f/s, eh?) Based upon this and similar tests Hatcher concluded that the impact velocity was about 300 f/s, which from additional testing appears to be the terminal velocity (the maximum free fall velocity which is limited by air drag on the body in question) of that bullet falling from any height in the atmosphere. (If I remember correctly from my limited parachuting experience the terminal velocity of a falling person is somewhere around 130 mph or about 200 f/s.)
What does not substantially change, even at extreme range, is the rotational speed of the bullet that was imparted by the rifling (around 300k rpm) since the effect of air drag on the rotational velocity in negligible. Thus the gyroscopic action, once the projectile is stabilized, tends to keep the bullet oriented in the same direction, thus the base first (well ok, original position trailing end) return. It is interesting that this was not commonly known until just before WWII. The British had lots of dud antiaircraft rounds that all came back base down, or more correctly oriented to the same elevation as shot from the gun. BTW, this is what raises hob with traditional long range small arms ballistics. With lots of elevation on the bore (past 2,000+ or so yards) at the far end the bullet is actually falling sideways and all frontal air drag algorithms are out the window.
Interestingly, Hatcher describes an experiment that shows the gyroscopic stability at work. They loaded the 150gr M2 flat based bullet backwards and found that the round trip time was a bit shorter (about 30.4 seconds) due to the bullet being "streamlined (point down) on the return trip. The drag on the upward trip was not as greatly effected due to the high muzzle velocity. No estimated impact velocity was given but it would have been somewhat higher due to the lower air drag on the bullet since it was coming down point first.
The Haag article used a ballistics computation program to calculate vertically fired bullet performance and came up with results comparable with Hatcher's work. Using bullets ranging from the .22 rim fire to the 180gr .30 caliber spitzer in the .30-06 the time of flight (up & back) ranged from a low of 25 seconds for the .25ACP to a long of 77 seconds for the M193 ball. Maximum altitudes ranged from a low of 2288 feet for the .25ACP to a high of 10,103 feet for the 180gr .30-06. Terminal velocities ranged from 134 f/s for a tumbling .22 Short to a high of 323 f/s for the 180gr .30-06.
Haag calculated the performance of the .30cal 150gr M2 ball round fired by Hatcher as a maximum altitude of 9330 feet and a round trip time of 57 seconds which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Hatcher's observations.
As a point of interest a velocity of about between 160 and 200 f/s (?) is needed to penetrate skin. However, one could still be seriously injured if struck by a falling bullet.
Those interested in learning more about vertically fired bullets may want to obtain a copies of Hatcher's Notebook and the Haag article.0 -
Some folks in New Orleans think its a tradition to fire guns in the air on New Years Eve. Enough people have been killed by being in the wrong spot that the last two years the city has gone to great lenths to stop this tradition. Most of the deaths were caused by 9mm and .38 rounds penetrating the skull. Several years ago I found a .45 round on the sidewalk. The first half of the round was flattened while the back half was intact. I'm no physics expert but I have to think Saddam's rifle round would fall even faster. 0
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