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

COSteve said:
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More of a psychological weapon than a practical one but it worked...
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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 :D ) blast, the other requires Xanax and new underwear.
 
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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.
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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.
 
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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.

enecon.gif


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.
 
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.
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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.
 
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. :)
 
"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.
 
... In WWII, the ground mount M2s were fitted with a scope base plate riveted to the top of the receiver cover.
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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 …
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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.
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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.
 
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.
 
One Battery of the 50th AAA Bn was at the Chosin Reservoir. The M-16s were a very effective weapon against massed infantry charges by the Chinese.

I was told that the deal was to back up to a firing point and then after ten or fifteen seconds of fire, move out before mortar shells came in. Rinse and repeat as long as the ammo held out.
 
Art Eatman said:
One Battery of the 50th AAA Bn was at the Chosin Reservoir. The M-16s were a very effective weapon against massed infantry charges by the Chinese.

I was told that the deal was to back up to a firing point and then after ten or fifteen seconds of fire, move out before mortar shells came in. Rinse and repeat as long as the ammo held out.
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I’m pretty sure there weren’t any M-16s at Chosin.
 
"I’m pretty sure there weren’t any M-16s at Chosin."

Yeah, there were.

The M16 halftrack, aka the Multiple Gun Motor Carriage, equipped with a quad .50 caliber Maxon mount.

The Marine Corps and Army both used the M16 extensively during the Korean War, including during the advance to, and retreat from, Chosin.

There were also numerous M19s motor gun carriages employed... two 40mm Bofors on an M24 light tank chassis.


Some REALLY nice pictures of the M16 on this page: http://bemil.chosun.com/nbrd/bbs/view.html?b_bbs_id=10044&pn=1&num=210235

Captions are in Korean, unfortunately.
 
Funny you say that. I was shooting my 7mm Magnum from a bench rest one day, and a fellow club member has his 50BMG out that day. He asked if I wanted to try it, I said SURE! That is a HUGE gun! Laying prone, since I wasn't about to try and pick it up to shoot, I think he said it weighs 40 pounds, it was a pleasure to shoot. I took two shots, said thanks, then asked him if he wanted to shoot my gun. He said no thanks! I ain't hurting my shoulder with that damn 7mm Mag! :)
 
M4BGRINGO said:
Funny you say that. I was shooting my 7mm Magnum from a bench rest one day, and a fellow club member has his 50BMG out that day. He asked if I wanted to try it, I said SURE! That is a HUGE gun! Laying prone, since I wasn't about to try and pick it up to shoot, I think he said it weighs 40 pounds, it was a pleasure to shoot. I took two shots, said thanks, then asked him if he wanted to shoot my gun. He said no thanks! I ain't hurting my shoulder with that damn 7mm Mag! :)
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I have no problem shooting 30 rounds in 2 minutes out of my Barrett .50, with no pain.
On the other hand my BIL's 7mm Weatherby is one of the most painful rifles I've ever shot.

Yea, I'm with your .50 buddy.
 
I have no problem shooting 30 rounds in 2 minutes out of my Barrett .50, with no pain.
On the other hand my BIL's 7mm Weatherby is one of the most painful rifles I've ever shot.
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You just need find a way to make tha 7mm Weatherby weigh 40 lbs and then it'll be like shooting a .22 Hornet.:D

Well, not exactly, it'll still be deafeningly loud and expensive.
 
TXAZ said:
I have no problem shooting 30 rounds in 2 minutes out of my Barrett .50, with no pain.
On the other hand my BIL's 7mm Weatherby is one of the most painful rifles I've ever shot.

Yea, I'm with your .50 buddy.
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This is amazing. I'd better stop reading this thread before I end up buying a .50 BMG!
 
TXAZ wrote:
I’m pretty sure there weren’t any M-16s at Chosin.
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They were present.

My grandfather was at Chosin. My one-time girlfriend's father was also at Chosin. Interestingly, they ended up telling me the same war story about an M-16 with Quad-50s, but from the different perspectives of an officer and an enlisted man.

They also told me a story about a 155mm self-propelled gun that I had initially dismissed as unbelievable when my grandfather told it to me, but when I got confirmation years later, my jaw dropped - but that's a subject for another post.
 
As to the OP's question about what a 50 caliber BMG projectile will do when it hits a person, the only reasonable and consistent answer that we can reasonably offer is, "It depends".

If the bullet passes entirely through soft tissue with no perturbation (i.e. external forces causing the bullet to yaw) then the result could reasonably be expected to be a half-inch diameter hole. Of course, when we use 30 caliber hollow points to hunt deer, we hope the bullet will expand to about a half-inch in diameter and thus deliver a "clean kill". So, between tissue damage, shock and blood loss, we should probably expect the same thing from the 50 BMG.

On the other hand, if the bullet passes through differing tissue types so that it starts to yaw as it enters the body and then it strikes a bone, shattering it, but with the momentum imparted by the bullet propelling the broken ends of the bone, there is no reason to believe that the result would be anything other than what would appear to be an "explosive" exit from the body. The damage is caused by the broken pieces of bone, not the bullet, but without a detailed forensic analysis there would be no way to tell.
 
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