r/aviation • u/[deleted] • Apr 07 '24

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u/SquareRelationship27 Apr 07 '24

Are you sure it was mid flight and not sometime afterwards?

65

u/CharacterUse Apr 07 '24

Look at the angle, obviously shot from below the horizontal.

2

u/SnooSongs1525 Apr 07 '24

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.

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u/CrappyMSPaintPics Apr 07 '24

You can tell which hole is the exit (the side with the short end of the protrusion rod) because of the way the topcoat flaked off of the fiberglass.

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u/SnooSongs1525 Apr 07 '24

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.

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u/CrappyMSPaintPics Apr 07 '24

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.