Military Cartridges, and damage on targets.

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xxxleafybugxxx

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I know military rounds are tested on ballistic gel all the time, but what I'm curious about is the effects of standard military rounds on the human body.
5.56, 5.45x39, 7.62x39, 7.62x51, 7.62x54r Just to name the most basic military rounds...
So my question is, what is the actual effect of these rounds on the human body?
Obviously they put a whole in the target, as they are bullets, but what kinds of damage is done? Is there an impact shock type of damage done? Tumbling? What if a large bone such as the femur is hit? Do these rounds usually exit the body?
I know it's kind of a weird question, but if we were to be honest, bullets were made for fighting, so I figured I would ask the question as to what actual effects these specific rounds have? Ballistics is very intriguing to me, but I feel like there are many more factors then are just showed by shooting at ballistics gel.
 
I believe that around 75 years ago, the US military did some grisly tests on cadavers to try to answer these questions

Today's climate is well, not quite the same!

Bullets however in my opinion were made to be fired and that's it. Not every firearm was made for fighting. My Ruger target pistol was not made for fighting, certainly, and neither are the .22 target rifles the US Military used for marksmanship training. Many firearms are made for hunting, not fighting.
 
Without truly answering your question, I will throw out a stat/quote that I once read from a reputable trauma surgeon regarding gun shot wounds.

Something along the lines of 'roughly 20% of people shot with a handgun end up dying, but around 20% of people shot with a rifle end up living"

Rifle rounds hit much harder than slow moving (in comparison) handgun rounds, and that alone accounts for greater amounts of flesh/organ damage and deformation.

Think in terms of a baseball, launched out of a pitching machine, coming toward your chest. One is coming out of a machine calibrated for 65mph. The other is coming out of a machine set for 250mph. They will both hurt, they will both be dangerous, but one poses a MUCH greater risk.
 
You should join the military, go infantry and sign up for a tour. Then you will get the opportunity to find out. You will have to hurry though.

I will answer some of your questions in regard to 5.56/ 7.62X39 anyway. A large bone like a femur will likely break from a direct hit. Bullets will tumble around inside the body but not normally to an extreme. Some of it depends upon body position. Most of the rounds I have seen exit the body when shot at close range in soft tissue or a limb. A shot that penetrates the skull or center rib cage on a large person may not go through, or it might depending upon a host of things. I have never seen anyone with a penetrating wound to the skull survive.

The worst tumbling I saw was an entry wound in the shoulder that was deflected down into the lung (struck a bone) and exited out the lower back. Strange thing, it was a tracer and caught the guy on fire after a few minutes of sitting there. He was shot from about eight feet away.

Angle, energy of the target and other factors play different roles too. A head shot above the eye might penetrate one person and merely trace the skull and scalp of another shot in the same place.

The only thing I can tell you for sure is that the results are unpredictable. Because the results are unpredictable, everyone wants to go home and they have lots of training there is a tendency in combat to shoot the bad guy multiple times from different angles. This makes figuring out "what bullet" "did what" a little difficult in most cases. Most guys are not really interested enough to find out either.
 
So take a 7.62x39 or 5.56 for example, within 100 yds, if it the the femur, would it exit? Or would the femur have absorbed most of the energy and the round remained inside the leg?
I am going under the assumption that all of these rounds are FMJ, based on the fact that they are being used in combat. Also, do most shots to the skull exit in that distance too?
 
It's hard to say man the human body really is something amazing.

5.56 do tend to tumble when they hit an object. 7.62 and 5.56 both go completely through a lot of the time. Both do major damage to bone due to velocity alone. Generally speaking, 7.62 does more immediate damage (dispaces internal parts for very short periods or time and cause pretty major exit wounds.

Of course just one round on a target thats all hopped up and pumped up. Bad dudes buff out 2, 3, and more rounds to the torso of 5.56.

Major muscle and tissue damage, severed intestinal walls and so on...at the end off the day in a combat environment with out proper medical treatment (the bad guys) tend to die eventually.

Unless a round is put through their T-box they may not stop right away, but reports do come back of "scumbag" succumbing to there injuries within days of a firefight. Or you find them a few blocks down in a canal face down.

Either way the damage (even the temporary) is pretty major. Massive amount of blood loss rather quick. To be honest ALL bullets do the same to living flesh and organs, the physical damage increases with size and speed of travel. The ball ammo, for the most part, you can find anywhere.
 
So take a 7.62x39 or 5.56 for example, within 100 yds, if it the the femur, would it exit? Or would the femur have absorbed most of the energy and the round remained inside the leg?
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Yes, either could happen. You said direct hit however. Just hitting it is another thing entirely.

Also, do most shots to the skull exit in that distance too?
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You got to keep up. As noted earlier most penetrating skull shots I have seen did not exit. Some have however.

I am curious why you are curious?
 
Bullets however in my opinion were made to be fired and that's it. Not every firearm was made for fighting. My Ruger target pistol was not made for fighting, certainly, and neither are the .22 target rifles the US Military used for marksmanship training. Many firearms are made for hunting, not fighting.
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In the interest of saving you from using a poor argument on an anti, I'm gonna have to tear it apart.

Bullets are made to cause damage to what they hit. Be it paper or flesh. That is not debatable. Some were created solely to kill people. People may have found other uses for them over the years, but most military rounds were built from the ground up as fighting cartridges. Projectile design has evolved over the years. This is not accidental. This is to (usually) make it more lethal, be it through expansion or accuracy.
 
MTT, I am curious because it's never really talked about. Penetration tests are for cinder block walls, and ballistics gel. I figured there were some people here that had known a little more about it than I.
And to the skull shot comment, that is slightly surprising to me that most don't exit. Were helmets worn? I guess I just assumed that high powered rifles tore through most everything...
 
Most military cartridges in small arms are not what I would deem "high powered". Minimally powered and efficient I think. In the real world military rifle rounds do not shoot through everything and serve as a magic death ray.

I am curious because it's never really talked about.
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That is not really much of a reason.
 
Modern military cartridges are designed for best bang for the buck. Not necessarily the best for all applications but they work well enough to get the job done. Most cartridges have been adapted for hunting, because of the availability of surplus rifles and such. The cartridges have better performing counterparts, but in the end they do the trick.
5.56 is rumored to be derived from a Varmint cartridge, that's open to debate. The velocity of 5.56 makes it particularly damaging in pure flesh at the right ranges.
 
7.62x54

Heres the vest and helmet of of an Iraqi soldier that was hit in the face by an insurgent sniper. As you can see he was done for.....

4940_103462936959_2939817_n.jpg
 
***WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC***(Not HORRIBLE but bad enough that I should give a warning ... )

http://www.zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=84194

I don't know about any of the other calibers but that's the result of a 55 grain 5.56 bullet. Considering that the other calibers only get bigger, you can imagine what they would do.

Here's a link showing the muzzle velocity and energy of a 7.62x51 at several distances:

http://www.snipercentral.com/308.htm

As you can see, it still has more energy at 1000 yards then a 1911 does at point blank. Pretty impressive ...
 
Handgun bullets move slow enough and act like ice picks destroying flesh in wound paths that are similar to the diameter of the bullet. FMJ in larger pistol calibers have enough energy to pass through the body. Smaller rounds or hollow points may stay lodged in the body.

For Example, a .380 ACP fired at the head may not pass through the skull and remain lodged in the skull. If you want a more well known anedote just read about the poor AZ Representative Giffords who survived a 9mm headshot wound after months of rehab.

Rifles are significantly much more lethal.

Rifle bullets move much faster and cause tremendous damage to tissue not even touched by the bullet. Military ball ammo is limited from expanding by the Hague Accords. Instead of acting like laser beams destroying tissue in a straight line, they are actually designed to fragment and tumble causing as much tissue damage as possible over a wide area.

I don't think there are too many folks still walking around after taking rifle rounds through the chest. The damage is usually widespread and catastropic resulting in significant bleeding. If you lose just 10 percent of your blood volume rapidly you will pass out. 20 percent and you are dead.
 
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@xxxleafybugxxx - I agree. I think that anything moving faster then 2,000fps, regardless of bullet weight, is high powered. I think that the OP of that 5.56 thread said the same thing. I think that the effectiveness of a bullet is half skill and half luck. The best thing to do is to use the biggest caliber that your comfortable with, whether it's a .22 or a .50 BMG, and buy the best ammo that you can.
 
Go to M4Carbine.net and look at some of Doc Roberts posts/info in the Terminal Ballistics forum. You will see alot of gel shots with explanations there.

ALL FMJ spitzer bullets tumble. It is a effect of their shape. The difference is when they start to upset. That is a function of their weight and speed and weight distribution.

When they enter a medium that is more dense than air the bullet slows down the heavier back end of the bullet wants to move to the front end. It will turn over completely given enough travel time in the media.

Bullets like the 5.56 that have a cannelure (little checkered looking ring around the mouth of the case) are weak at that point, they tend to break apart at that cannelure because of the load on the bullet when swapping ends. This secondary missle dispersal is what makes 5.56 so effective.

Some cartridges take so long to upset they often exit the body before they tumble and only destroy the tissue that matches their frontal area.

Hollow point/exposed lead rounds have a different (and superior) wounding effect.

Terminal ballistics is extremely complicated because of the non-homogenous nature of the human body. i.e. The density of the lungs, liver, heart, fat muscle, and bone are all very different and since no one is put together exactly the same, you can't get any repeatability in live targets.

The best you can do is try to correlate performance in a specific test medium to actual results. Then you can try to extrapolate performance of different rounds based on comparing their results in a controlled medium.

No matter what, shot placement is the most important factor.:D
 
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