Spent Cartridges- Damage/Injury??

I would guess there were/are many incidences of injury or worse caused by spent ordnance. I well remember watching a Spitfire chasing a German fighter at low level and firing, no doubt in desperation, out of range. We watched his tracers lazily curl into the roof of a bungalow some distance from us. We hiked over there to find some 5 or 6 rounds had made quite a mess of the tiled roof.
One night a 40mm? Bofors shell fell in the road near us and I was horrified to see that a piece of shrapnel had gone clean through a wooden fence paling which was about half an inch thick.
Such incidents were doubtless repeated thousands of times.

Thanks for all the input so far folks, it’s turning into an interesting thread! Although I didn’t mention spent cannon shells and bits of flak etc in my first post, it’s “all good stuff” as they say so please feel free to carry on including it.

The Sabrinas on the Hunter collected the links, the cartridges were ejected headlong out of circular tubes just forward and under the lower lip of the intake. The logic was that the cartridges were heavy enough to fall away cleanly, whereas the links clattered along the belly of the early examples and were occasionally hoovered into the engine.

3lb of brass/1000 rds is pretty low recovery rate – about 115 cases would be enough 😉

Yes – I think it was a ‘generous’ allowance – hence the advice for QM’s to ‘hoard’ any surplus to make up for shortfalls when firing from a helicopter – or moving APC etc.

Ken

PS – Weren’t the ‘Sabrinas’ on Hunters designed to collect the cartridges?? – or was that the cartridge links??

3lb of brass/1000 rds is pretty low recovery rate – about 115 cases would be enough 😉

I believe Erich Hartmann was imprisoned in the Gulags by the Russians for war crimes due to the number of people allegedly killed and the damage to property caused by the fallout from his cannon and mg rounds; I dont have his book to hand to confirm this but if someone does and could reproduce what he wrote I would be most appreciative!
Matt

During the Pearl Harbour attack a great deal of the damage around the city was done by anti-aircraft ordnance of various types and calibres following the immutable laws of gravity, rather than the attackers. This was common to all built up areas defended by AA which were attacked. Even if an AA shell explodes at the height or the proximity intended there are large chunks of heavy sharp metal which have to fall somewhere – all the better reason for heading to a shelter than standing around watching the fireworks display.

Aside from that a conventional spent bullet or its case are probably not a great threat given their terminal velocity and low mass but a cannon projectile which relies on an explosive charge to do damage is a different kettle of fish, especially given that it relies on a detonator that needs little to set it off and it’s expended case is quite heavy as well.

I bet if the MOD collected all the spent ordnance, it would clear our National Debt up.

In a previous life, I used to audit British Army store accounts during the 1970’s.

Queens Regs stated that for every 1,000 rounds of 7.62 ammo fired, 3lb of brass had to be collected and returned to store – as it was a valuable commodity.

We had a query from an Army Air Corps QM about how he was supposed to collect spent shell cases from a pintle-mounted GPMG on his Scout helicopters?

Our unofficial answer, IIRC – any Quartermaster worth his salt should have a stash of spent brass hidden away somewhere in order to make up the shortfall.

In other words, when firing on the range, don’t always ‘declare’ anything over 3lb – keep the rest for a rainy day.

I’ll probably get arrested now – for contravening the Official Secrets Act 😮

Ken

See my post 13 for the link.

Ahh yes, didn’t spot that while I was flicking through the thread 🙂

On Mythbusters…

See my post 13 for the link.

I think I’m about to induce serious thread creep here but it is Christmas…:diablo:

…are Jets at danger of overtaking and injesting their rounds if fired at hi speed? Also didn’t a Lighning Jet shoot itself down when it hit, sheered off and injested the tow target?

BTW pulling back on thread a little…
… did any ww2 aircraft hit themselves? I’m thinking of turrets hitting tailplanes, B17’s hit in cross fire etc? As apposed to mistakenly shooting themselves down in friendly fire incidents of course.

Living where I do, I am very close to the RAF Holbeach bombing range, which has been in use since WW1. There has been so much ordnance in the ground, that many aircraft have shot themselves down, by firing on the range but not turning and climbing quickly enough, and their projectiles bounce off the buried ordnance, and thus they shoot themselves down.
I bet if the MOD collected all the spent ordnance, it would clear our National Debt up.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

On Mythbusters they did a test where they fired a bullet perfectly vertically up in the air. These bullets fell to earth harmlessley. Given just a slight off center and the rounds came down leathally if not to cause serious injury.

So I would expect a shell case to not do much damage (cannon shell might hurt I guess), but the rounds fired from the guns would probably smack into the ground with some force.

I’m surprised no one was killed on the ground by falling rounds rather than cases.

Something that has always puzzled me…..what about 20mm cannon shells fired at an aircraft that miss the target. I presume the fall to the ground but there is never any mention of this. If this is the case then they must be a potential danger?

I would have thought the actual bombs would be the biggest risk 😉

No they’re mostly fine, easy to dodge. It’s their explosions’ effects that was the problem generally.

I otherwise refer the Hon Gennleman to my Hon friend Smith’s response. 😉

Merry Christmas, everyone, even Tiny Tim!

Undoubted – biggest and bigger have different meanings. Don

The bigger risk is all the ack ack junk coming down in an air raid; as noted.

I would have thought the actual bombs would be the biggest risk 😉

In a book I have lying around there is passing reference to a solider in what was then Rhodesia being killed by a falling 30mm cartridge from a Hunter. Apparently it struck him on the back of the head and that was that. End of solider. It is in a paragraph about why wearing helmets is sometimes a good idea.

W E Johns (the Biggles author) gives an instance of an airman being killed by a case going through his pith helmet, but I suspect that may have been an erroneous recollection; smaller calibre shell cases as used in the Great War and lower than cannon size would max out at a terminal velocity lower than would be a serious risk. However there’s some interesting data explored by MythBusters on the bullets rather than cases, summarised here:

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50

The bigger risk is all the ack ack junk coming down in an air raid; as noted. As the distributor of the junk was always related to the civil authority, there doesn’t seem to have ever been a serious effort to collect the data on the death and injury rate with those items.

Ricochets downing their own aircraft are also well known ‘oops’.

Regards,

We had an aircraft written off because of a ricochet. It dented the main spar within 18 inches of an engine mounting, which was sufficient to deem the aircraft irreparable.

Seen the reverse effect too, one of our Jags concentrating on straffing on the range flew below the safe height whilst still firing and on climb out was on the receiving end of his work, one richocet hit the wing pretty flat and put a deep groove / dent in the underside of the port wing, another passed straight through the port intake and grazed the canopy right next to his head.. He didn’t do that again!
The Jag used to keep the links but jettisoned the cases.