Most Tank Kills

Executioner128 · 19 October 2005, 02:22 AM

Sorry for the off-topic, but just this question in between:

What is the most painful/destructive to receive: an armorpiercing bullet or the other kind? (more explosive)

Epee · 19 October 2005, 01:11 PM

As an educated guess I would suppose that armor piercing bullets pre-date the war. Certainly the ammunition for which they were made (standard rifle-caliber) pre-dated the war by a decade or usually more and bullet resistant targets have existed throughout time.

The wounding characteristics of AP are very similar to standard ball ammo. By the rules of war deliberately expanding or explosive ammo was forbidden so copper jacketed bullets with a soft metal core are standard. These do their most damage at close range where the bullet tumbles on impact due to the base of the bullet being more massive than the nose. This tumbling sometimes overcomes the tensile strength of the bullet causing fragmentation. Armor piercing bullets are constructed similarly to the standard bullet but have a hard metal core and nose but again at close range once they strike they begin to tumble although I would suppose that they have less a tendency to fragment.

NeilE · 19 October 2005, 06:39 PM

The simple answer is that none of them were welcome!

Regards

neil

Shipmodeler · 19 October 2005, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Executioner128

Sorry for the off-topic, but just this question in between:

What is the most painful/destructive to receive: an armorpiercing bullet or the other kind? (more explosive)

if you got hit by an armour piercing bullet, you would be dead before you hit the ground. an AP round would simply tear you apart, whereas a human body might be soft enough so the HE round would simply pass through a body with out exploding

Barrett · 20 October 2005, 09:27 PM

Epee is right; on a body there's absolutely no difference between a rifle-caliber AP round and a FMJ round. The same softness of organic tissue that permits through & through penetration by a ball round applies equally to AP ammo. (Think about it: what does AP do? It, like, penetrates!) Similarly, bones react little differently between the two, depending on what's struck. I've seen enough penetration and gelatin tests to know the difference.

However, I admit that I've never seen tests on AP & FMJ .50 cal and 20mm!

21 October 2005, 06:05 AM

I personally think that the phosphorous round sounds the most painful.I read in one of my books that the round would sometimes stay in the pilots body burning him internally,and worse still if it hits the gas tank it could send the pilot burning to the ground in flames a most scary idea.

Shipmodeler · 21 October 2005, 06:24 AM

I have read accounts of people getting shot in the head and living, but the bullets probably stopped after they penetrated the skull. not so with AP! Of course, you would probably have to see someone get hit with both to know.

Shooter · 21 October 2005, 08:39 AM

I have had a little experience with rifle-caliber machine guns and with the M-2 HB .50 caliber gun.

It does not matter what kind of projectile from the M-2 that hits a human body. The tissue damage is enormous and even non-torso wounds are fatal--if nothing else, most such victims simply bleed out from the severing of major arteries and veins when a limb is traumatically amputated by a .50 caliber projectile. Unlike the damage of blast from explosions--which seem to close down the circulatory system at point of amputation--the impact of .50 caliber bullets open up the major vessels and allow the escape of blood instantly, with death occurring before field medical procedures can be brought to bear.

I have never seen a .50 caliber round that hit a human body that was not through-and-through. Solid head wounds tend to be an instant evacuation of all brain tissue. The cranium is converted to a fine spray of blood and tissue.

These are gruesome wounds. There is nothing like them in the US small arms inventory. I have never seen what a 14.5mm Soviet round will do, but the 12.7mm Soviet (Дегтярёва Шпагина Крупнокалиберный) round is about the same--equal to the .50 in effect.

The impact damage of rifle-caliber machine gun fire on human bodies is vastly less. The .30 caliber NATO round (7.62 × 51 mm) is sufficiently lethal in combat, but I have seen NVA infantrymen who were hit three and four times before they stopped coming on. I hit them, so in a couple of examples I know this is so.

Not all those hits were through-and-through impacts, so the rounds indeed could have cavitated once through a human body, where the projectile yaws its base forward as it meets the resistance of human flesh, as Epee suggests.

The US Army's book, Emergency War Surgery, 2nd Edition, 1988 (NSN=0510-LP-100-4050), shows wonderfully explicit diagrams of different bullets cavitating through ballistic gelatin (Duk-Seal...same-same) to approximate human tissue. For the 7.62mm NATO projectile, it takes over 60 cm of resistance to fully cavitate once, so it would depend.

The 7.62mm projectile tends to badly deform when meeting massive resistance, like a major bone. Some break apart and form secondary missiles that rend more of the flesh surrounding that bone. The .50 caliber ball projectile seldom deforms and almost never break apart.

The examples of bullets circumnavigating a human skull rather than penetrating the bone would almost need to be pistol rounds. Regardless of how high-powered is your sidearm, pistols are anemic compared to rifles and there is absolutely no comparison to the big HMG's. I would be amazed of such a case occurring with the latter two. Human head shots with a rifle almost always pierce the skull. I have already described the effects of the big HMG's on a human head.

Is this answer graphic enough for y'all?

This discussion indeed belongs in Off Topic, except that it would get lost in the midst of the political fire-fights and other bitter fur-balls occurring down in the basement. Bar fights, you know. They never end.

Shooter sends