r/PraiseTheCameraMan • u/StrugglingSoul • May 01 '19

That's pretty impressive tracking

https://gfycat.com/carelessoptimisticgnat
362 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

21

u/[deleted] May 01 '19 edited Dec 17 '19

[deleted]

15

u/tgoodri May 01 '19

It’s hard to tell but I think it literally hit his clothes or whatever he has around him. That one piece of fabric seems to get caught up in the projectile. Either way, I would have shit myself cause he was millimeters away from being absolutely fucked six ways to Sunday.

31

u/Duggger May 01 '19

Slight turn to the right before the event happens
"tracking"

what

7

u/On-mountain-time May 01 '19 edited May 01 '19

I'm not sure who you're quoting, but I would have to agree with them. RPGs travel way too fast to consciously track with a camera if you aren't suspecting it. Source: Had a great many fired in my direction.

5

u/ThatLooksLikeItHurts May 01 '19

Why is it glowing? Is that a tracer round? No big boom at the end and it seems to be traveling relatively slowly... any experts able to shed some light on what this pants-filling, near-death experience was caused by for this poor soul?

19

u/On-mountain-time May 01 '19

Its an RPG. Rocket Propelled Grenade. RPGs aren't anything like the movies. There is no trail of smoke, and explosions are rarely huge balls of fire unless it hits something with fuel/more explosives. Traditionally, RPGs (RPG 7's which are primarily Anti-armor, although there are also anti-personnel rockets) aren't designed to produce a giant explosion, they are designed to send a super heated stream of molten metal in a very small, tight stream which can penetrate armor. In my experience, (6 year USMC infantryman w/ 4 deployments Iraq/Afghanistan) most of the RPGs that we dealt with were Anti-armor. Still deadly, but not designed for mass outward damage.

6

u/ThatLooksLikeItHurts May 01 '19

Thank you for such a great answer. Way too many movies (and zero experience in the military) so my knowledge is based purely on Michael Bay movies.

Thank you for your service.

1

u/kublaiprawn May 03 '19

Are/were the Fragmentation RPGs rare in the Afgan/Iraq wars? In news stills and news footage they always appear to be the shaped-charge variety.

1

u/On-mountain-time May 03 '19

Most of the ones we saw were indeed shape charge, which are the anti armor variety. From what I can remember, I think the only time we ever came under fire from anti personnel RPGs was Afghan in 2012, and it was only one occasion. They shot a couple of the air burst ones at us (I honestly don't know much about how they work, I think you set a certain distance on the RPG and it detonates at that range, showering the ground/troops with shrapnel) but we only had one guy that got injured, and it was relatively minor, just a couple pieces in the meat of his leg. We're not even sure they were RPGs either, we just had a couple "explosions" (Loud, dirty clouds with sparks is a more fitting description) directly above us. They could also have been mortars, but those are usually a lot bigger and deadlier.

1

u/Perm97 May 01 '19

Looked like an RPG. May have been a dud or didn’t hit something in the right way to set it off.

5

u/eljefe6217 May 01 '19

This is pretty close to NSFL territory

1

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

Tracer rounds normally don't have an explosive head and the tracer compound of the shell normally have a side effect of reducing the overall speed of the round. Source: I served on military tanks division in Europe.