How powerful is .50 bmg, really?

[Scorch]

This video is a little dark at first, but it clearly answers your ".50 BMG vs deer" question.

I watched a guy gut-shoot a deer with a 30-30 once, and it looked about the same except for the instant drop. Seems like someone with a high-precision sniper rifle should be able to do better than gut-shooting a little tiny forked-horn buck. Digging up a 2-year-old thread to post BS is ridiculous. Gimme a break.

Where is the "barf" emoticon when you need it?

 

[burnout002]

50 BMG was not developed to shoot people, it was developed in 1920 to shoot the then-new tanks, and during the past 90 years it has done many tasks well (including shooting tanks). IIRC, a 50 BMG will shoot through 6" of armor plate or 13" of reinforced concrete.

Here i have a link that a .50 bmg AP can penetrate 25.4mm of RHA at 200 meters.
http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/mg/50_ammo.html

here is a other link
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/23-65/ch12.htm#p7

As far as i know global security is pretty reliable.

 

[Deja vu]

Its about as powerful as you can get for a rifle that can be carried by a single person (only some models).

The one I shoot does not have bad recoil at all. Id say about the same as a 12ga. It does how ever have a big shock wave when you shoot it. It has been known to throw small boxes (such as a carton of 50 22lr) of ammo of the bench next to us when we shoot it.

Some times when I shoot it I feel like not only do I need ear plugs and muffs but that I should also have nose plugs. The shock for me is felt the most in my sinuses.

It is also very accurate. I have shot targets 1 mile away (at an informal competition) the target was 5 foot by 5 foot and while I did not win I was able to get all 5 rounds on the target... at 1 mile that target looks really small.

The reason you don't read about it much in Africa is that the law in most of the countries does not allow military cartridges so the 50BMG is illegal to hunt with.

 

[50 shooter]

It's funny to read this and see all the typical myths about the 50 BMG round. Then there are some posts with factual info about the 50 BMG.

The 50 BMG is not some uber weapon of death, it was designed to take out tanks but by the time WWII rolled around it was obsolete. When changed to the M3 aircraft version and had the cyclic rate upper to 1000+ rounds per minute, it ripped planes to shreds.

With new weapons and upgraded M2's along with better ammo like the SLAP and Mk-211 mod 0 Raufoss, these weapons will take out lightly armored vehicles. They will also punch through concrete walls, cars, sandbags... Then add in the fact that you can make hits on targets past a mile, that's pretty friggin awesome for a round that's been around for almost 100 years.

As for BC of the round, even ball ammo has a BC of .6+ which is still more then most other rounds. Another thing about the 50 BMG round is that it displaces so much air that you can actually follow it to the target and make corrections.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

Relative was a WWII pilot flying P-38's. Basically when they straffed the islands the soldiers below would be blown into pieces. Very powerful round and to compare to a "scaled up" .30-06 is ridiculous.

But the P-38's concentrated firepower didn't suffer from pattern convergence, and so soldiers were likely hit with multiple rounds, along with a 20mm cannon round at intervals which was also part of the Lightning's armament. A bit different than getting hit with a single round fired from a rifle, though I'm not detracting from the .50's awesome power.

 

[The Long Shot]

The only way a .50 BMG is going to turn terrorists into red mist is with a raufoss (mk211) hitting a target with body armor.

 

[Grizzdude]

Here is what the 50 BMG does to steel at long range, also a few other short videos of shooting concrete, ice chunks, and large rocks.

50 BMG tearing it up!

 

[boattale]

As an interesting aside, the .50 BMG has an almost identical trajectory as the 106 MM recoilless rifle.

 

[50 shooter]

You're thinking of the M48A1 Spotter Tracer round, the 106mm recoiless had a semi automatic rifle attached to it. The ST's were used to range the target by tracing out and then when they hit would smoke. If the rounds were within killing range the gunner would fire the 106 mm round.

I believe the semi that was attached to the 106mm was the M8-C.

 

[JohnKSa]

I watched a guy gut-shoot a deer with a 30-30 once, and it looked about the same except for the instant drop. Seems like someone with a high-precision sniper rifle should be able to do better than gut-shooting a little tiny forked-horn buck.

It was a "quartering towards" shot, and the gut wound was the exit. If you get an exit on a well-placed quartering towards shot, it's going to be pretty far back (in the gut) on the off side.

She said that the energy it had could tear off an arm just by grazing it.

It doesn't. Nothing without exploding projectiles does.

 

[James K]

The .50 was a scaled up .30-'06, or at least Browning said it was, and I think he should know.

But in the area of small arms, it is pretty awesome. It won't penetrate a modern tank, of course, but it will do serious damage to lighter armored vehicles.

Note: AP ammo does not penetrate armor through pure force, like a .22 punching a hole in a can. The bullet is stopped by the armor, causing a massive energy dump and melting the steel, allowing the AP core to penetrate. But to do that, the armor has to be thin enough that it doesn't act as a heat sink. If it does, the core will just stick in the armor as it "freezes". There was a German tank turret at Aberdeen with dozens of .30 AP cores sticking in it, sort of like a pincushion with sort pins.

Jim

 

[JohnKSa]

The .50 was a scaled up .30-'06, or at least Browning said it was, and I think he should know.

Indeed.

The shoulder angle is different, 17.5 degrees in the .30-06 vs 15.7 degrees in the 50BMG. Other than that, you'd be pretty close if you took every dimension in a 30-06 cartridge and scaled it up by 1.65 times.

It looks like there's a little more taper to the .50BMG, the base and rim diameters scale to about 1.7 times that of the .30-06.

The case of the .50BMG is proportionally slightly shorter than that of the .30-06, it's only a factor of 1.57 times longer.

Bullet diameter, Neck diameter, Case diameter at the shoulder, OAL, Neck length and shoulder length are all in the range of 1.62 to 1.68 times larger than the .30-06.

 

[dakota.potts]

Now for the next question.

How powerful is a 20mm Lahti?

 

[silvrjeepr]

Puny 50 bmg. The news station told me that an AR is the most powerful weapon known to man. Even Chuck Norris is scared of them. If they were around in WWII, we could have taken Hitler down with a single squad in a week.



Sorry couldn't resist.

 

[johnwilliamson062]

It does how ever have a big shock wave when you shoot it.

I thought it worth mentioning I was too close to a ported gun, although a couple feet away, and right in the ports path and received a slight concussion. I was very surprised.

 

[kinoons]

Just to add a little more to the .50bmg -- wasnt the bell X-1 designed after the projectile?

 

[50 shooter]

Yes, they used the design of the .50 BMG for it because they knew it was stable at supersonic speeds. If you look at a 50 BMG round and the front of the X-1 you can see the resemblance.

 

[natman]

Quote:
30-06 is about 60% of what .50 bmg is.

No, no it isn't. I'd say your buddy is closer to the truth than you are.

If you're going to quote someone, at least quote them accurately. Here's what the OP actually said:

According to Wikipedia .50 bmg is essentially a scaled up 30-06 and its dimmensions are about 60% larger.

A 30-06 case is about 2.5 inches long.
60% larger means 1.6 times as large.
2.5"x1.6=4".
A 50 BMG case is 3.91 inches long, close enough to 4" to be "about 60% larger".