Would a 9mm pistol round bounce?

[Strip]

no i just understood him to mean the 9x19mm 9mm "luger" round instead of say the 9mm winchester magnum round ...

Come on...

Who wouldnt want to fire a 9mm Magnum through a pistol?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lzri8dn7p0

Okay...it wouldn't be quite this bad but fun to watch!

Strip

[Chalenge]

I think even if the 9mm was something like the .35 Remington round it would lack the knock down power need for a WWII era fighter. I think the classic formula for lethality is (weight of fire for one minute in pounds x muzzle velocity in ft/sec squared x 10 to the minus 8) or something close to that. Im guessing the 9mm would come out to 1.1 whereas the .30 cals are something like 1.7 and WWII era .50 cals are 6.5 (approximately). So a gatling gun version of the 9mm firing at 6000 rpm would be about the equivalent of the .50 cals but with 1/20 the effective range.

[Charge]

What Dave already said:

"More importantly, would they lose their energy so quickly that the pilot who fired them would have to fly through them?  I just don't think a 9mm round would have enough power to even consider using in an aircraft.
I'm sure someone will come along soon and give you a nice muzzle velocity/energy comparison between a 9mm pistol round and a US .50 Caliber round.  There is a huge difference in mass and power."

9mm Para W:9.5grams, MV:368m/s, E:643J
.303        W:12grams, MV:783m/s, E:3574J
.50BMG    W: 52grams, MV: 883m/s, E:20,195J

Considering the added speed of the aircraft of, say, 300mph/480kmh/133m/s, the aerodynamic shape and how rapidly the bullet would lose speed after leaving the muzzle Dave's idea of running into your own bullets is not too far fetched at all. While you could punch a hole in aircraft skin from very close range the bullet simply would no have enough energy to do serious harm. As a defensive weapon it could do something since the attacking aircraft would "collide" with the bullet but even then the effect would be no more than a punctured radiator or a cut ignition cable etc.

In fact sometimes the observers in light bombers were armed with submachineguns, but that only had a function of a moral boost, at best. 

-C+

[Chalenge]

After running the numbers it seems I was a little off.

Converting the figures Charge gave the following.

9mm in pounds = 0.020943
.303 in pounds = 0.026455
.50 in pounds = 0.114640

9mm cyclic rate 650 rds/min
Browning .303 cyclic rate 1140 rd/min
Browning .50 cyclic rate 750 rds/min

            Muzzle Velocity                        Squared
9mm 368m/s = 1207.3490813648293 ft/s   : 1457691.804272497201286847018 1385
.303 783m/s = 2568.8976377952754 ft/s   : 6599235.073470145961280922561 8452
.50 BMG 883m/s = 2896.9816272965877 ft/s  :  8392502.548893985364476340063 7913

Weight of fire (one minute):
9mm = 13.61295
.303 = 30.1587
.50 = 85.98

Therefore lethality falls like this:

9mm = .19
.303 = 1.99
.50 = 7.2

Fantasy 9mm Gatling gun: 1.8

Therefore a single .303 is better than a 9mm Gatling gun.

[ZZee]

some one please lock this thread before they talk hitech into spears and catapults for base defense.






Z

[Angus]

At 100 yards he's well out of effective range, and has a better chance of spitting at you than hitting you.

We're not talking 9mm RIFLES here, we're talking handguns.

Average effective range for revolvers is 30 feet, if I recall my old-west history (and these guns are normally more accurate than auto-loading pistols because the barrel does not move).

I would not even sit behind a cessna door if the shooter had a .22. A barrel would do though. And guess how I know
Where is Tony Williams these days?

[Angus]

Oh, here is a cool link

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot17.htm

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot15_2.htm

Not all rounds are the same though...

[Die Hard]

I'm familiar with the varried use of 9mm ammunition. My point stands. He said "pistol" and asked if the rounds would bounce off, implying pistol-based ballistics.

No such implication to people who actually knows what "pistol round" means. You're only displaying your own ignorance.

[Angus]

9 mm round. Fired from a pistol. Same weight, same fuel. Just less spin perhaps, and may be slower due to the barrel being that much shorter.
But...vastly more kinetic energy than a 22. or even a .22 magnum which will easily penetrate something much thicker than an aircraft coating at....200 yards.
I know that because I tried it 

[Chalenge]

Even if the barrel were longer it would peak the muzzle velocity at 1320 fps and even if you upped the cyclic rate to 800 rpm the weight of fire would peak at 16.75 lbs which translates to a lethality of .28 and even the Gatling gun idea lethality would peak at 2.1 which is only slightly better than the .303s. The reduced range of the 9mm over rifle cartridges just makes it useless though and it would never knock down a heavy bomber (except in very odd circumstances where the bomber is almost dead already and without defensive weapons).

[Krusty]

A 4.5mm round out of a PDW can penetrade a kevlar vest.

A 5.7mm out of a P90 can punch through TWO kevlar vests...

It's not the diameter. Pulling in ".22 magums" is a false argument. Same difference between rifle rounds and pistol rounds of the same diameter.

He's talking standard casing PISTOL rounds here. Not magnums. NOT rifle rounds. NOT armor piercing. Never said anything about long-barrel rifles firing pistol rounds. Never said anything other than implying PISTOL ROUNDS...

Okay, let that sink in folks.


PISTOL



Once more for effect....

PISTOL

Doesn't matter if you want to compare it to .303 rifle rounds all day long, or .22 magnum rifle rounds, or ANY other round you want. That's a false argument.

You put a guy with a 9mm pistol on one end of a football field, and put a man at the opposite goal post. There's almost no chance in hell you can hit him. Only expert marksman snipers in the best of conditions might come close. 30 FEET is the average effective range for pistols, and you're all talking about hundreds of YARDS trying to shoot moving aircraft while flying (creating a headwind causing drag on bullets) of many hundreds of miles per hour.


Get real   

[Chalenge]

   We had an interesting debate today, and I thought I would bring it here.

   So the question is, if a plane was loaded with 9mm pistol rounds, and fired at another plane, would the bullets bounce off of the plane?

9mm pistol rounds do not indicate what type of weapon is used. In an aircraft it is only natural to assume that long barrelled guns of a mchine-gun type would be used. I cant see Lugers mounted on the wings at all.

Either way the lethality posts I have made above handles either situation.

[thorsim]

  We had an interesting debate today, and I thought I would bring it here.

   So the question is, if a plane was loaded with 9mm pistol rounds, and fired at another plane, would the bullets bounce off of the plane?

krusty the round has to hit something before it bounces off or penetrates in the first place ...

hitting is already assumed by the question, so sir the discussion is all about what would happen when the rounds hit the plane not if they can be made to hit the plane.

you are the one off discussion sir, there never was anyone asking if you could hit a plane from another plane with a 9mm handgun.

as to the question ...

the answer is obvious, since no conditions were stated about distance or gun type, then the only evaluation is whether or not a 9mm Luger bullet is capable of penetrating the skin of an aircraft.  the answer is of course "yes absolutely" ...

angle of impact, distance between gun and target, airflow forces, and all the other factors involved in air to air gunnery will all effect that answer as it effects every other similar discussion about any other type of ammunition you wish to consider.  

yes there are better choices in air to air gun armament but a 9mm would damage an aircraft, and most likely can be made to damage an aircraft out to a few hundred yards if not more.



  

 

[Krusty]

No...

It's not at all natural to assume some sort of frankenstein concoction where 9mm pistol rounds are fired through long barrels mounted on aircraft wings.


It's ENTIRELY natural to assume the pilot is flying holding a pistol and firing it. Especially considering that's how things all started in WW1 (recon planes taking potshots at each other).

As for thorsim: You're trying to deflect the conversation back to your own comments. I and several others first off questioned the ludicrous situation from the beginning of this thread. The answer is "the bullets would never get to the target, or if they did have no power to bounce let alone do damage"

You can put all these what-ifs up if you enjoy it, but you're no more on topic than anybody else. I could ask who would destroy the Statue of Liberty faster, Superman or The Flash, and you could all go off on the structural composition of the statue, of the strength required, the different strategies of taking it down, and how fast they would take.....

But you'd still be wrong, because it's a ludicrous question, and shouldn't be taken as seriously as some of you have (indeed) taken it.

[Angus]

I have actually hit a raven, - sitting on a fence-post, - from 100 yards, one-handed, with a single shot from a .22. Not 22 magnum, which I state again does not come close to the kinetic energy of a 9mm.
BTW, the danger-zone of a fired 9mm is rated higher than of a .22. And the slug is quite impressively bigger.
My .22 mag once gave me a goose for dinner. Shot through the heart at the range of some odd 200 yards.
So, shooting a glock at Krusty from some odd 100 yards would make crap...