What's the truth about 50 cal guns vs. jetliners?

[DeseoUnTaco]

Would a .50 round even go 5 miles straight up?

Yes, if you attach it to the front of a rocket that's capable of going 5 miles up. I doubt it would go even one mile straight up.

Whoops! Anyhow great work DeseoUnTaco.

Thank you! By the way, Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column, written by Patrick Smith who is giving me the expert opinion here, is a great column. I recommend it for myth debunking, air trivia, and enjoying reading.

The simple fact of the matter is that you can shoot the hell out of any large plane (be it a bomber or passenger liner) with 50 cal and it will keep on flying.

Basically, that's what I assumed, and seems pretty obvious when you think about it.

Now here's the question: At the very top of this thread, I made a link to 50calterror website, so that readers of this thread have the opportunity to hear my side of the argument, their side of the argument, and the opinion of an expert who isn't an NRA member and doesn't get too worked up about the 2nd amend. I wish there were someone at 50calTerror.com who I could contact and who would do me the same courtesy: present a link to this thread so that visitors to 50calterror.com can make their own fully-informed opinions, too. It would be great if 50calterror.com got some expert opinions.

I love their quote from the brochure where it talks about using a 50 cal to destroy aircraft. What that means is that a sniper carefully targets the engine or some critical part of a helicopter, etc, while the thing is motionless on the ground, and shoots it, rendering it unflyable. That's a far cry from knocking one out of the air, which, as we can see in this thread, is close to impossible.

 

[Marshall]

Are the windows in commercial airliners bullet proof, passenger and pilot area?

 

[Harry Tuttle]

 

[Cavalry]

not .50 proof

 

[Kurush]

Are the windows in commercial airliners bullet proof, passenger and pilot area?

Airliners are not armored in any way. "Bullet proof" is a bad term BTW, not too many things other than sand dunes are really bullet proof.

 

[beerslurpy]

Small debris and birds get sucked into jet engines all the time and the engines dont explode. You have to remember that you can put a half inch hole in many parts of even the engines and nothing bad will happen. It isnt like a car engine where a fragment of metal can get wedged in the side of a piston or jam a valve open. Any damaged bits knocked loose will just get shot out the back of the engine.

Something that puncures a fuel line would be more serious, but that is why all airplanes since nearly the dawn of flying have had fuel cutoffs for each engine. And all airplanes today and earlier could fly with disabled engines. Remember that these were the same engineers that designed only slightly different planes to drop bombs over enemy territory while being shot to pieces.

In any case, it is stupid to assume that nothing on a plane will fail, malfeasance aside. Everything is redundant as hell including pilots and engines. Intentionally causing minor failures with projectiles is not more likely to cause an accident than accidentally caused minor failures.

And this is assuming that someone shoots the plane as it is taking off.

 

[Jrob24]

Would hitting the fuel tank with an incendiary round work?, or does the fuel need to be vaporized?

 

[beerslurpy]

Are the windows in commercial airliners bullet proof, passenger and pilot area?

It doesnt matter since the windows arent a structural component of the airplane. The whole point of the skin of the plane is just to make it aerodyanmic and make it easier to keep the plane pressurized. If you perforated it with bullets the inside would be noisier, but it would still stay mostly pressurized and it would still be capable of maintaining altitutde if desired.

In the past, bombings have only been successful when they actually severed one part of the airframe completely from another so that the main part of the plane was lacking a tail, wings or cockpit, all of which are needed to fly it. Even a plane with no engines can land without killing the passengers although it would be far from pleasant.

Anyone remember that plane that fell from the sky right after 9/11? Was it determined to be a bombing or not?

 

[Old NFO]

The only single shot weapon capable of shooting down a jumbo jet is a radar guided missle with a decently big warhead to break up the airframe. Even a heat-seeking missle will only go after one of the many engines on a jumbo jet, with only a chance of a one hit kill.

You're close Beerslurpy, however, there is what we used to call the "Golden BB". Having been on the receiving end of 50 cal and 20mm anti-aircraft fire while flying, I can tell you it is NOT pleasant, it is also very hard to hit even a slow moving plane like the P-3 I flew in (8 flights shot at with 1 round hitting the tail of 1 P-3).

Having said that, I also knew people that were shot down in Hueys and A-4's/A-6's/A-7's by a single AK-47 round in the "right" place aka "Golden BB".

Washing Machine Charlie (VC Sniper at Da Nang) shot down a C-45 flown by Air America taking off from Da Nang in 67 or 68 with a "Golden BB" that penetrated the windshield and center punched the pilot, so it can happen.

Also, windshields are tough, but not that tough- They cannot take a bird strike directly in the windshield without shattering, so a 50 would penetrate easily, assuming one could actually hit the windshield (the odds would be astronomical with anything less than full auto with tracer (obtw, tracer actually has a different path than a non tracer round in air).

You would really need someone like Dave M to take the shot, due to the lead required (good wing hunters make good fighter pilots/gunners as they inherently know where/how to lead a shot at a moving target).

And as Boats has demonstrated, if you don't get a Golden BB, you can get home with an amazing number of rather large holes in the bird and will continue to fly.

Having said all this, I agree with Tylden- Too many people automatically believe what they read/see on TV and "assume" it's correct.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

Crash: loss of vertical stabilizer and shedding of both engines on American Airlines Airbus Model 300-600, followed by crash into residential area shortly after takeoff from JFK International. Deaths: 265. Belle Harbor, NY, USA. (November 12, 2001)

 

[beerslurpy]

But there isnt a golden BB location for a single bullet to take out on a commercial jet. Even the pilot on a commercial jet is redundant.

Using a machine gun would help obviously, but someone lobbing enormous volumes of tracered 50 cal at airplanes taking off would probably draw a lot of attention really quickly.

 

[Cavalry]

Congress should ban all birds, they have been known to bring down jet liners

 

[Harry Tuttle]

Airliners are stout enough to stand up to some serious damage:

Aloha Airlines 737 airliner: blowout of upper fuselage skin
Maui, Hawaii, United States
April 28, 1988
Deaths: 1

No unusual occurrences were noted by either crewmember during the departure and climbout. As the airplane leveled at 24,000 feet, both pilots heard a loud "clap" or "whooshing" sound followed by a wind noise behind them. The first officer's head was jerked backward, and she stated that debris, including pieces of gray insulation, was floating in the cockpit. The captain observed that the cockpit entry door was missing and that there was blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been. The captain immediately took over the controls of the airplane. He described the airplane attitude as rolling slightly left and right and that the flight controls felt "loose."

 

[Old NFO]

Crash: loss of vertical stabilizer and shedding of both engines on American Airlines Airbus Model 300-600, followed by crash into residential area shortly after takeoff from JFK International. Deaths: 265. Belle Harbor, NY, USA. (November 12, 2001)

Harry, that one was actually caused by voticies generated by another large passendger jet, which caused the Airbus to shed it's stabilizer. Once that happened, there was no saving it.

 

[Marshall]

Yes I do remember that, I, to this day, am skeptical and I am not much of a conspiracy guy either.

I have noticed that everytime there has been an explosion or large roaring fire at a oil refinery, it's always been blown off to be something operational.

We have had no successful terrorist acts since 9/11, you think they would tell us and give the terrorist the media coverage and satisfaction if they didn't have to?

 

[Marshall]

I thought he was talking about the plane that blew up after take off from NY or somewhere. That's the one I was referring to.

 

[Old NFO]

BeerSlurpy, there is always a Golden BB- I'm not going to describe it here, but it does exist, including for airliners...

 

[beerslurpy]

Yeah marshall I meant exactly that one. It was right after 9/11 and I remember everyone saying how the airline industry was screwed if it turned out to be terrorism. They did some sleight of hand about waiting for an investigation and that was pretty much the last I heard of it.

I dont know what to say NFO. I realize you have a billion times more knowledge of being shot at in planes but I cant think of any glaring vulnerabilities in commercial airliners, at least as far as 50 cal rifle fire is concerned.

 

[Waitone]

Sarah and VPC needed a new boogie man since the last one (assault weapons) tanked. So the picked the .50 "sniper" rifle and began to invent fact.

 

[Marshall]

beerslurpy,

Yea, I remember the first reports were from witnesses that said they saw the huge explosion and someone said they thought they saw a missle of some kind. All that went away real quick. Wasn't there even a video of it all?

 

[Kurush]

People see all kinds of things that aren't there when they're scared. Remember the lady who said she saw wires sticking out of the Brazilian guy?

 

[DeseoUnTaco]

BeerSlurpy, there is always a Golden BB- I'm not going to describe it here, but it does exist, including for airliners...

That's what I'm trying to find out. Honestly, I don't believe there is a Golden BB-spot on a jetliner, that a single bullet (50 cal) could hit that could cause the plane to come down. I believe that if you thoroughly soaked the plane in bullets from a cluster of mounted 50 MGs, then yes, it would finally come down, but I don't see any evidence that there's some magic spot that will bring down the plane. Why would anyone design a plane with such a vulnerability? There's two of everything except the airframe itself, and it seems like all successful attacks (or disasters) that bring down a plane involve gross damage to the airframe. There's no spot on an airframe where one (or even a dozen) 50 cal bullets would break it.

 

[Kurush]

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2002/AAR0201.htm

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was a loss of airplane pitch control resulting from the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew assembly’s acme nut threads. The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airlines’ insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly.

Contributing to the accident were Alaska Airlines’ extended lubrication interval and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) approval of that extension, which increased the likelihood that a missed or inadequate lubrication would result in excessive wear of the acme nut threads, and Alaska Airlines’ extended end play check interval and the FAA’s approval of that extension, which allowed the excessive wear of the acme nut threads to progress to failure without the opportunity for detection. Also contributing to the accident was the absence on the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 of a fail-safe mechanism to prevent the catastrophic effects of total acme nut thread loss.

 

[beerslurpy]

No no no, there were two separate crashes, one before and one after 9/11. I remember them both because my mom was on a flight landing 5 minutes before the first crash at the same airport.

The first one was attributed to some sort of static electricity problem or a fuel leak or something even though multiple witnesses described a trail of fire/smoke before it fell apart. Some theorize that a nearby naval ship fired a missile at the plane as part of what was beleived to be a naval exercise. Didnt get to hear a lot of details on that theory either.

The post-9/11 one involved a plane taking off from JFK (I think) and falling into a neighborhood in brooklyn immediately afterwards. I think that was the one that got attributed to some sort of tail stabilizer failure but again who knows the truth.

 

[SMMAssociates]

I'm sure there's a "Golden BB" for about anything....

The fighter pilots and AA gun operators probably know some of them.

The sniper in Vietnam likely had a lot more chances to practice than the average terrorist would, too.

As we've been discussing, having R. Lee Ermey show up here at my place to criticize my typing is probably more likely than a single .50 taking out an airliner.

What's going on, of course, is something else entirely. When the anti's hear anything that's going to sound good - "super accurate", "long range", "super velocity", "can penetrate body armor", the jump up like my dog when I rattle the "treats" jar....

Then when it turns out that the weapon is somewhat marginal - like the .50BMG, which, regardless of the fun aspects, is seriously expensive to play with, or the little .17FN (or whatever it's called - notice that flap vanished?) which is kind of marginal (IMHO) as a varminter, then they try to demonize it, and get it banned.

The result is a list of guns that look nasty, so they are banned.... Or the idiotic "system" the Clinton AWB used. Traps for the unwary, mostly....

And we lose guns one at a time....

The "trigger locks" thing that looks like it'll be on the "frivolous lawsuits" bill, is another example of incremental disaster. First it's "must be sold with". Then "must have built in", or "must be used", etc. Eventually we get to DC's arrangement where the gun can't be easily rendered functional when stored in your own home....

Having failed to defeat us in total, they want to do it in detail. Logic has no place here.... Vote early and often....

Get rid of the "feel good" people who like to "do something" because it'll look good in the paper, but, in practice, will be, at best, worthless.