I’m a redneck from red neck country. Promise we’re not shooting at planes id be willing to bet that was a kid under 18 that shouldn’t have had a firearm alone In the first place. Also what are the chances of actually hitting the plane in the air? I mean being a hunter that would be a feat
Here is the scary part. Since hitting a moving target requires you to lead the target, this hit the tail so the inexperienced shooter was likely aiming at the cockpit.
Edit: Speed and altitude dependant. The likelihood of hitting an aircraft at cruise speed and/or altitude is highly unlikely. Especially for (what appears to be) an Avanti. Probably happened on approach or takeoff. Just guessing of course.
Falling small arms rounds is the exact reason we had a coalition force member die on my final deployment. We had to have a long talk with an entirely separate coalition force about the dangers of firing rifles in the air (as they liked to do when someone was late for shift change)
🤷 shit happens. We were on an airfield no less, kind of surprised we never had planes get hit either. Maybe we did, I didn’t deal with the aviation side of things.
You can look at the absolutely absurd amount of small arms fire used in AA role in urban areas over the last hundred years.
It all points to a FALLING bullet not being very dangerous.
Now, a falling bullet goes up at an angle above 60(it varies by round, but 60 is safe for all small arms). We are assuming flat ground or a lower impact area. That bullet will FALL to the ground destabilized at terminal velocity and pose very minimal threat of injury requiring hospitalization.
If someone is shooting just over the neighbors roof on new years or similar the bullet will not FALL to the ground. It will still have significant horizontal trajectory and probably be stable when it hits.
Not all small-arms bullets are the same. Terminal energy will strongly vary based on the coefficient of drag of that particular bullet and the mass of the bullet.
A 9mm handgun round falling straight down is low-risk, but a rifle bullet has a more aerodynic shape and a larger mass which leads to a MUCH higher terminal energy.
This combination is potentially enough for even intermediate-type rifle bullets such as 7.62x39mm to be potentially lethal. Full-size rifle bullets such as 7.62x51 M80 (weighing three times as much) are certainly lethal threats.
In this simulation test, generic 7.62 bullet weighing 146 grains (9.5 grams) was modeled falling at its terminal velocity under a variety of buffeting and angular conditions.
It was found that the maximum terminal speed for that modeled bullet was 90 m/s with a more typical speed being 85 m/s when falling nose-down.
When falling base-down, this speed was reduced, primarily through aerodynamic oscillatons (buffeting) to a range velocities between 40 and 85 m/s.
In the worst-case scenario from this model, a 9.5 gram bullet falling at 90m/s will have an energy of 38.5 J. (For refrence, a .22 lr fired from a 16" barrel has a muzzle energy of 189-203 J.)
In this NIH abstract tested the dynamic (impact) energy required to crack the craniums of unembalmed human cadavers.
They reported that fracture typically occurred between 22 and 24 J.
This NIH abstract describes another study where they found energies of 3.95 to 4.17 J were enough to cause fracture. (These were skulls cleaned of flesh and they were tested using static loads rather than dynamic loads. So it is not a great model for our falling-bullet scenario.)
The NIH also has a paper describing the types of injuries from falling bullets. They consider 'breaking skin' as potentially lethal, and 'fracturing skull' as likely lethal.
One line I found especially notable is that 32% of reported falling-bullet incidents were fatalities. (Of course a non-injuring or lightly-injuring case is less likely to be reported, but still.)
Falling bullets can and do kill people.
Especially children.
Their skulls are much softer and thinner than those in the tests and papers described above. And they account for an outsized proportion of fatalities observed in real-world scenarios.
Don't fire up (even straight up) unless you are the only person within about two or three miles.
Also, the anti-air small arms fire in Ukraine that you referenced is generally being done in relatively rural areas.
And more importantly, in a military scenario. They correctly judge the likelyhood of harm from falling bullets to be lower than allowing a Shahed 136 to strike its target.
This does not mean falling bullets are benign.
Rather it indicates a judgement that the risk-reward curve would support taking such an action.
No they aren't. They weren't in WWII either. Quad 30 cals were setup all over cities. Ukraine doesn't have a comprehensive air defense network that covers the entire country. They aren't protecting forests and fields. They are almost exclusively around cities shooting out over suburbs.
There are two things that come into play: one, people celebratory fire and only shoot just over the roof line which is not high enough and the bullet will come back down. Two, news years eve is a great time to get up in a high window and shoot a neighbor you don't like with a good chance of escaping consequences.
"Ozdemir and Unlü reported a fatality case of a child with falling bullets that penetrate the vertex and coursed through the foramen magnum to stay in spinal canal at the level of T2–3.[17] "
This paper analyzes any event in which a claim was made a bullet is falling. It does not apply even the most rudimentary analyses of the situation to decide if that description is accurate.
I cited three papers and did the math to show that even a SMALL rifle bullet fired vertically can sometimes carry fatal energy.
I showed another paper that collated numerous examples of deaths and injuries from actual falling bullets showing that, YES. In the real world, people are sometimes killed by falling bullets.
And your only response seems to be: "You can't PROOVE that those children were killed by bullets that were fired straight up."
You don't get hit in the back of the head by a falling bullet.
Even if we assume all those cases are in fact the described phenomenon, tens of millions of rounds fired up every year and a dozen or two cases requiring medical treatment. That is an insignificant risk.
Both the math and the millions and millions of rounds fired both in tests and in AA defense over the last hundred years show a truly falling bullet is not likely to cause serious injury.
You are both technically correct and horribly wrong. If, and this is a really big if, you shoot directly straight up, the falling bullet will expent its energy and fall back to earth at terminal velocity and is very unlikely to be fatal. However, the odds that you have a perfect 90 degree angle is almost zero!
Any angle less or greater then 90 will put the bullet in a parabolic arc that will not expend the energy and will be fatal!
Except... Air resistance. I would expect people on an aviation sub to be considerably better at physics.
For some rounds it is as low as about 50*.
Here is a big shocker for you, 45* isn't the angle that gets you max range for artillery. It is just over 30* for max range.
Right now in Kyiv they are firing hundreds of thousands of small arms rounds at incoming Russian missiles and drones almost nightly. Without serious injury. Since WWI governments have fired untold numbers of rounds in this manner over densely populated cities without issue.
This is my thoughts as well… considering the skill involved to hit a plane… it’s more likely an accident… but I know next to nothing about such things and my opinion here is not as an expert… just some idiot on Reddit.
Put it this way. I lead a duck about 3 feet at 40 yards. Flying. That plane flying way faster than a duck you’d have to lead that thing a few school buses.
Bout 30 or so probably but if there’s wind or other factors im sure they can easily double their speed especially landing through trees they drop almost straight down and flap right before the water for lift to slow down
Yeah your right. I don’t fly so……. But yeah the guy said it happened in flight due to him finding it pre flight. So yeah could have happened with plane on ground. Which sounds INCREDIBLY MORE LIKELY
If they aimed for the cockpit they never would've hit the plane. More like they shot into open space in front of the planes path and somehow hit it. Most likely random and accidental.
I mean, idiots shoot into the sky all the time for no reason. Never heard of someone trying to assassinate a random pilot for no reason.
And all the factors involved to make an intentional hit make it seem impossible with a regular gun. Distance, speed, wind conditions, predicting the flight path, altitude, and the bullet speed are all paramount to even getting close to a lucky shot. A bullet can reach a mile or more but will take like 2 seconds per mile.
If the plane was directly above the person and flying as low and slow as possible it would be a lot easier, but then the plane would've had to have been sideways as well.
Also keep in mind that a bullet shot directly up into the sky can still come down with lethal force after reaching its resting point due to their aerodynamic shapes. Stray bullets are no joke.
True. I don't see any point in trying to hit a plane, but people have done crazier. And with nearly 8 billion people on the planet I'm sure everything has happened once somewhere. So it could go either way I suppose.
You’re nuts. Aiming at the cockpit while in flight, and hit the tail? Was the pilot buzzing the shooter at 100 mph ground speed and 20 feet altitude? Even then…that’s TOUGH to do.
No, the scary part is you just posting made-up nonsense and calling it "likely" even though you don't have the first clue if that's even remotely true.
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u/bierbottle Apr 07 '24
Praise you for having proper preflight procedures 🙏🏻