what sort of damage does the .50 BMG do to living beings?

[seanc]

briandg

I didn't expect so see the absolutely devastated meat in the back sides. I alway thought that it was a lie whenever I heard people talk about the great big eight inch exit wounds that they got on deer with their .30-30 or such.

Last fall, the doe I shot with my 7.5x55 Swiss with a 174 gr SP had about an 8" blowout on exit. Lots of wasted meat. That's the 1st time I ever saw that. Supposedly, 30-30 and 7.62x39 are in the same class, but I've not seen that happen with my SKS or AK shooting SP and SST bullets. It may happen, but there's a big difference in speed and energy between 7.5x55 Swiss and 7.62x39, even though the projectiles are the same diameter. Obviously, most hunters don't want 8" exit wounds and that's not the norm, but you'll definitely see bigger than caliber exit wounds, even with FMJ.


603Country:

I’ll share a real world data point. My cousin has a 50. Naturally he needed to hunt with it, so he shot a doe (150ish pounds) at approx 600 yards. Later I saw the pictures. The doe was in chunks - the front half, the second half, and misc chunks. At that time he was shooting Hornady AMax.

That's just wanton waste...

[JJ45]

I have often heard the claim that the 7.62X39 is the equivalent to the 30-30 Winchester cartridge.

30-30-150 grain bullet at a nominal 2400 FPS, a little less in short carbine barrels.
30-30-170 grain bullet at about 2200 (maybe closer to 2100, real world)
X39- 123 bullet at about 2300 FPS depending on barrel length.

The 7.62X39, great cartridge that it is, for the purpose it was designed, does not equal the 30-30 as far as ballistic coefficient or bullet weight and has far less striking power. Cartridge producer have also had 100 plus years to get the bullet construction perfected so that the 30-30 is a very good medium game cartridge under 200 yards or so.

I know that heavier soft point and hollow point bullets are available for the X39 but you will then get a velocity loss. Not sure how this would effect bullet performance but probably would depend on bullet construction.

[Mike Irwin]

"what sort of damage does the .50 BMG do to living beings?"

No one knows. People shot with the .50 BMG mysteriously vanish without a trace. There is some speculation that they've been transported to an alternate universe...



I've heard the "material only" claim about the .50 BMG so many times over the years it's not funny. When I've asked for JAG/DOD guidance to support that claim, it's always "well, I heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend who said...."


Right.

Trying to justify it by saying "I wasn't shooting at the person, I was shooting at X equipment ON the person" is the kind of pathetic quibble and ludicrous explanation that would be followed by a conviction IF it were actually illegal, which it isn't.

It's a child's equivalent of "I didn't break the lamp, the floor broke the lamp, thus I shouldn't be punished!"



While I have no proof to back this up, I suspect that the whole "material only" myth was born out of field commanders not wanting their troops to waste .50 BMG ammo on opposing infantry with it might be the only thing that they had to engage aircraft or light vehicles.

[JJ45]

A little off topic but I have always been in awe of the WWII fighter P47 Thunderbolt. Nicknamed the "Jug" she was armed with 8 .50 Cal BMGs!...4 in each wing. I can imagine how the pilot felt when he pressed the firing button on those 8!

[TXAZ]

Originally Posted by JJ45

A little off topic but I have always been in awe of the WWII fighter P47 Thunderbolt. Nicknamed the "Jug" she was armed with 8 .50 Cal BMGs!...4 in each wing. I can imagine how the pilot felt when he pressed the firing button on those 8!

Well.... 8 .50 BMG's are "only" 100,000 ft-lbs of retro-energy / ~ 200 horsepower, but that's only 10% of the total Hellcat engine output.

[TXAZ]

Here's another interesting .50 point firsthand observation: The recoil from 12,000ft-lbs of energy can be bone-breaking to painful to very unpleasant or not bad.

A bolt action .50 BMG rifle without a muzzle break can seriously hurt your shoulder or bruise / break your collarbone / shoulder, where all of the recoil energy is released in a few milliseconds.

With a muzzle break, it can still be painful.

McMillian Brothers came up with a shock absorber that spreads out the rapid impulse and on their Mac TAC-50 from a few milliseconds to ~20ms.

A well timed .50 semi, that redistributes that energy over 100 milliseconds feels more like someone putting their hand on your shoulder and pushing moderately hard.

Newton was very clear before John Browning every conceived of the .50BMG: If you have 12,000 ft-lbs of energy going out the front of the rifle, you still have exactly 12,000 ft-lbs of energy also going out the back of the rifle into your shoulder. If you're lucky it's spread out over time and not a 1ms impulse.

And I'll take the kick of 3 magazines in my Barrett M107A1 over a single shot from a 7mm Weatherby Magmum ANY day of the week. That 7mm really hurt!

[stephen426]

Since you guys are mentioning aircraft mounted weapons, how about the 30mm Vulcan Canon that is mounted on the A-10 Warthogs? Based on what I read, firing extended bursts can cause the plane to stall. Kick things up a notch and you get the 105mm Howitzer on the AC-130, which causes the plane to gain altitude when it is firing (typically while banking). I certainly would not want to see what was left of any animal hit by that!

.50 BMG - Meat fully tenderized and animal bled out
30mm Vulcan Canon - Meat is already in pieces
105mm Howitzer - Fully cooked hamburger

LOL

[44 AMP]

What does the .50 BMG do? Think of something the mass of 5 WWII GI .30-06 rounds, at the same speed....

Spectre, Spooky, don't forget Puff, all VERY impressive. And so is the 30mm in the Warthog, just ask any Iraqi armored vehicle..oh, wait, you can't!

The P-47 impressed everyone. Except Mustang pilots.

I'm old school, a B-25 with a 12 gun .50 cal nose pack (14 if you include the top turret firing forward) is pretty impressive. Or a couple fewer .50s and a 75mm howitzer. Just don't let Stallone fly it!!

[Model12Win]

Originally Posted by stephen426

Since you guys are mentioning aircraft mounted weapons, how about the 30mm Vulcan Canon that is mounted on the A-10 Warthogs? Based on what I read, firing extended bursts can cause the plane to stall. Kick things up a notch and you get the 105mm Howitzer on the AC-130, which causes the plane to gain altitude when it is firing (typically while banking). I certainly would not want to see what was left of any animal hit by that!

.50 BMG - Meat fully tenderized and animal bled out
30mm Vulcan Canon - Meat is already in pieces
105mm Howitzer - Fully cooked hamburger

LOL

That's BS about the 30mm GAU-8 Avenger (20mm is the Vulcan). The plane can safely dump the entire magazine in one burst and won't stall. It also won't vaporize itself or explode either.

[TXAZ]

Originally Posted by Model12Win

That's BS about the 30mm GAU-8 Avenger (20mm is the Vulcan). The plane can safely dump the entire magazine in one burst and won't stall. It also won't vaporize itself or explode either.

+1 Model12, I don’t believe it either.
That didn’t sound right so I asked and got the following back from a current A-10 pilot early this morning :
“There’s no ops limit for speed when you’re shooting, it doesn’t slow down at all”

[Rob228]

+1 Model12, I don’t believe it either.
That didn’t sound right so I asked and got the following back from a current A-10 pilot early this morning :
“There’s no ops limit for speed when you’re shooting, it doesn’t slow down at all”
__________________

I may have some insight to the dawn of this myth. My father worked for Republic when they initially started building the A-10. There were allegedly some issues in early prototype testing where the smoke/muzzle blast etc would choke out the turbofans. The "stall" is not due to lack of airflow over the wings but the engines were literally put out by the lack of combustible air.

I'm fairly certain he told me how they solved the problem, I just can't remember what the solution was. For some reason I think it has to due with the placement of the engines.

[stagpanther]

Anything can stall at the right (wrong) angle of attack--even bullets.

[stephen426]

Sorry for the misinformation guys. I read that from a book on military aircraft a long while back. I guess we tend to believe what we read if we don’t have a way to verify otherwise. Let me see if I still have that book somewhere.

[TXAZ]

No worries Stephen. I just heard from Boomer the Barrett. He said he’d like to meet that book and go through every word on every page very carefully.

[COSteve]

When I was in the Army, I was told not to shoot people with the .50 cal... it's purpose was to disable or destroy equipment... so I aimed for their canteen. All I know is I wouldn't want to be hit by a .50BMG... whether or not it hit something internally or passed on through. 650+ grains of anything travelling 3000fps or thereabouts isn't something you can stand back up from.

Funny how times have changed. In WWII, the ground mount M2s were fitted with a scope base plate riveted to the top of the receiver cover. You would remove the rear butterfly plate and add a pistol grip/trigger plate, install a scope on it, and use it to shoot long range at the Artillery Officers directing the German field guns. More of a psychological weapon than a practical one but it worked.

In the Army in the late '60s, I had over 40 M2s in the arms room for use in trucks, M113s, etc., and all of them had the scope base on the cover. I even had a pistol grip/trigger plate plus a 10x scope set for one so the CO and I tried it once on a M2 on a ground mount. After sighting it in, it was pretty easy to hit a small tree (6-8" dia) at 400-500 yds. Blew a big hole in it when you did.

[TXAZ]

Originally Posted by COSteve

...
More of a psychological weapon than a practical one but it worked...

That's a serious understatement. A trained sniper with a .50 BMG and clear field of view can control 2-10 square miles.

I've been on both sides of a .50 BMG. Most often as a target shooter. The other was as a responder to an overseas bombing whose entry checkpoint was covered by numerous sentries and one very serious young soldier with an M2 about 20 yards away pointed at my CoM. That was a very serious pucker factor that I'm very proud the soldier was American and well trained.

One side is a (fun but expensive ) blast, the other requires Xanax and new underwear.

[B.L.E.]

Well.... 8 .50 BMG's are "only" 100,000 ft-lbs of retro-energy / ~ 200 horsepower, but that's only 10% of the total Hellcat engine output.

Horsepower is not a measure of energy, it's a measure of power. The difference between energy and power is like the difference between miles and miles per hour. A horsepower is 550 ft-lb of energy PER SECOND, not 550 ft lbs of energy.
So to figure out the machine gun's power, we need the cyclic rate of fire, let's assume 600 rounds per minute, that's 10 shots per second.
13,000 ft lb of energy times 10 shots per second is 130,000 ft lb of energy per second or 236 horsepower per gun. That's the power delivered to the bullets, not to the airframe.
Figuring the energy delivered to the airframe is rocket science. Literally.

[TXAZ]

You're correct BLE, we made slightly different assumptions and I (over simplified) the explanation as most don't understand or care about the relationship between 'work' vs work per unit time or energy, all which are tightly coupled.



Work
refers to an activity involving a force and movement in the directon of the force. A force of 20 newtons pushing an object 5 meters in the direction of the force does 100 joules of work.

Energy
is the capacity for doing work. You must have energy to accomplish work - it is like the "currency" for performing work. To do 100 joules of work, you must expend 100 joules of energy.

Power
is the rate of doing work or the rate of using energy, which are numerically the same. If you do 100 joules of work in one second (using 100 joules of energy), the power is 100 watts.

Newton and his Third Law didn't know about nor need rocket science, and would tell you the bullets imparted from the barrel, whose energy is transferred to the gun then the mount then... the airframe still have an equal and opposite reaction.

[B.L.E.]

Newton and his Third Law didn't know about nor need rocket science, and would tell you the bullets imparted from the barrel, whose energy is transferred to the gun then the mount then... the airframe still have an equal and opposite reaction.

Yes, but it's equal and opposite momentum, not energy.
A 750 grain bullet going 2800 fps has 300 lb-ft per second of momentum. A 10,000 lb airplane has 300 lb-fps of momentum when going .03 fps. So if the plane weighs 10,000 lb, the recoil of every shot should slow the airplane down by .03 fps. If it was floating in outer space, it would have to fire 1000 rounds for the plane to accelerate to a speed of 30 fps (about 20 mph)
Of course, it's actually more complicated than that because as the plane expends ammo, it becomes lighter, which is why rocket science involves calculus.

[44 AMP]

You do realize that rocket science is just ordinary science, applied to rockets, don't you??

[Art Eatman]

If you really want to turn money into noise, get a Korean War era M-16 half-track with a quad-.50 mount. Tune the solenoids to 600 rounds per minute. The ammo cans each hold 220 rounds. At five bucks a round, $1,100 goes away in less than half a minute.

[Mike Irwin]

"There were allegedly some issues in early prototype testing where the smoke/muzzle blast etc would choke out the turbofans."

Supposed this was also an issue with early American and British jet fighter designs that had engine intakes in the wing roots/alongside the fuselage and nose mounted guns.

A burst, especially at high altitude where the air is a lot thinner, would bog the engines. It took a bit of redesign of the gun ports to make the problem go away.

[44 AMP]

... In WWII, the ground mount M2s were fitted with a scope base plate riveted to the top of the receiver cover.

If this was ever done, it was a non-standard field modification

You would remove the rear butterfly plate and add a pistol grip/trigger plate, install a scope on it, ….
I even had a pistol grip/trigger plate plus a 10x scope set for one …

Again, a non standard issue item. Pretty rare, actually.

In the Army in the late '60s, I had over 40 M2s in the arms room for use in trucks, M113s, etc., and all of them had the scope base on the cover.

I'm pretty sure the scope base you are referring to was not "on the cover" exactly. It is part of the rear sight base. I was a Small Arms Repairman (MOS 45B20) during the 70s, and I handled, inspected, and repaired (when needed, which was seldom) hundreds of M2HBs. (want to know how to test to see if the trunnion block rivets are serviceably tight? I can tell you...)

Nearly all of them had the "scope mount" rear sight base, which was NOT used for anything at the time. I was given to understand that the "scope mount" was a post WWII modification to allow the use of an infra-red scope (for night use) and which, by the 70s had been long removed from service.

And just FYI, the rear sight of the M2 is mounted to the receiver with screws, not rivets.

The .50 BMG round was developed from the WW I German 13mm anti-tank rifle round. It was always considered an anti-material round, though I don't know of any printed doctrine that stated it was for that, only...

It is stupidly wasteful to use a .50BMG on individual enemy troops, but it can be very combat effective. Ma Duce is very good at turning cover into concealment. Using the .50BMG round in a sniper rifle is a different matter, and not "wasteful" since use against individual enemy soldiers is the designated purpose.

[gshayd]

So did Gunny Hathcock commit a war crime? He used a Ma Duece mounted with an 8x scope to take out a member o the Vietcong? Shot him in the chest at around 2500 yards on the second shot. The first shot hit the handlebars. As for the damage a .50 cal BMG would do? Dead is Dead id you get shot in a vital spot. I guess its possible to lose a limb to it also with a military round.

[TXAZ]

Carlos Hathcock is guilty of making an incredibly good shot. Nothing else.