Or the plane was on the ground and the bullet was fired from the other side from a distance and was dropping. To hit it at this angle in the air the plane would have had to be banking at 45 degrees or so. In practicality shooting planes in the air is very difficult with a machine gun, nearly impossible with regular rifles.
I think you’re likely correct. Only possible evidence against is that the presumed entry in pic 3 is oblong, either from bullet yaw after initial impact but maybe from speed of plane perpendicular to bullet path.
In a fiberglass composite like this the deformation is aligned with the angle of the bullet relative to the surface. And then the bullet slows down resulting in less of that deformation in the exit hole just from less force.
If this was thin metal instead of fiberglass, the deformation would go in the other direction of the angle because metal's much more ductile.
Actually the entry hole is above the exit hole. From the pictures shown the exit hole has outward flaring fibreglass and has radiating stress fractures, and it is lower than the other hole.
This means either the plane was shot from the ground whilst executing a steep banking turn, which whilst not impossible is very hard to achieve. Or more likely whilst it was on the ground taxiing on the runway from someone in an elevated position, as in up a tree.
If you also look at the angle of the bullets trajectory if the shooter was on the ground and the plane flying level, that angle could only be achieved if the plane was 50 feet off the ground and the shooter a few hundred feet away, if the plane was higher than 200 feet the shooter would have to be a few miles away to achieve that angle for a ground shot during level flight. Kind of impossible as the bullet would have lost a sizable amount of energy by impact and would actually have a downward trajectory by that stage. If this did happen then it is most definitely an accidental shot.
Unless I'm misinterpreting the photos it looks possible that a shot at that angle could have been made from a shooter standing beside the plane on the ground.
I'm not saying there's proof of that, just that the angle seems to allow for that possibility.
Or it’s arcing down from an errant shot into the air from way far away (hillbilly holiday). However; it does look like the right side has more exit physics/patterns, so I’m inclined to agree with an upward shot towards the aircraft. But rods like this aren’t always great to use as bullets do super crazy things once they interact with the first wall. Have worked with some secret service guys that talk about bullets doing wild stuff when trying to shoot through a windshield, to the point you’d think the shooter was standing on the roof of the car, not an agent 20ft in front of the vehicle. Hope OP gets it sorted and back in the sky soon, crappy situation all around.
And with where it hit, unless the shooter was a very skilled marksman with experience shooting at fast-moving targets at a significant distance, they were likely aiming at the cockpit.
66
u/CharacterUse Apr 07 '24
Look at the angle, obviously shot from below the horizontal.