From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Fri May 12 2000 - 08:38:42 MDT
"Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
> Zero Powers wrote:
> >
> > Sounds like Mike Lorrey is going to need a *much* bigger gun :)
>
> Oh, an F-16 is pretty easy to hit at 3000 feet, thats only 1000 yards. I
> already have a rifle that could hit that target. What I need is a bigger
> warhead...
Besides, all I really need is some good jamming equipment, and maybe a laser
dazzler.
However, given knowledge of speed and altitude, its not hard to hit an aircraft
given practice, with a firearm. When I was in the Air Force, repairing bullet
damage from cattle ranchers in the western US was one of the big sheetmetal jobs
that the airframe troops had to deal with.
FOr example: An F-16 is, as I recall, 47 feet long, or .0089 miles long. At 550
mph, it is traveling 806.6667 feet per second. A 150 grain bullet fired from my
bolt action .300 Win Mag Savage 110 Tactical rifle travels at about 3000 feet
per second. Assuming that it is a crossing shot, rather than a head on or tail
on shot (which are much easier), and assuming I want to hit the F-16 when it is
at a point tangential to me (i.e. the closest point in its path), I need to aim
roughly 16 plane lengths ahead of the craft, or else drift my sighting system so
the point of aim is that many plane lengths behind the point of fire. Getting it
precisely would require some more figuring, but all such results can be
tabletized, and were so by the NVA during Vietnam. There were a good number of
aircraft shot down by small arms fire.
Now, using leading techniques is not widely used with rifles, that is usually
used by shotgunners, but there have been some people who have taken the time and
are quite skilled at shooting flying objects with rifles. I recall that the
original Army test for the Browning Automatic Rifle (the BAR) back when involved
John Moses Browning hiring one man who was an exceptional sharpshooter. This
gentleman shot something like 75,000 1 inch blocks of wood out of the air
(typically thrown 50-100 feet in the air) straight over a period of several days
with that BAR (which is a really heavy gun with a serious kick to it). I think
he might have had something like a dozen misses or less in the entire string of
shots. The shooter claimed that he could teach anybody to shoot like that.
Mike Lorrey
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