Cold Case JFK & ballistics

[Sprouticus]

Did anyone else watch NOVA on PBS last night.

There have been a lot of documentary's recently due to the anniversary.

But this has to be one was one of the best.
Lots of info on firearms and ballistics.

Watching that 6.5 mm Carcano bullet pass through the ballistic gelation, wow

The only caveat is at about the 12:00 mark they describe how a spitzer bullet is not as stable as a long round nose bullet. I always thought the opposite was true.

Here is the link, it is about 53 minutes.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365118537/

[3Spaniels]

I watched the entire show. Given the testing that was done and the evidence from the scene, it makes sense to me.

[smurfman]

A spitzer is not as stable going through tissue as a round nose, the former follows the path of least resistance while the latter just plows on through. That is why the bullets used to for elephants, rhinos, and the like are not pointed and some are even flattened to some degree. That is providing the bullet length to bore diameter ratio is appropriate, too long or too short and even the round nose can begin to have some stability problems though at a lesser scale than spitzers for the most part.

The wiping out of elephant herds with 308 and 7.62x39 rifles have relied heavily on full automatic fire and high capacity magazines. Put enough spitzers into an elephant and eventually it will go down. It helps greatly if there are more than one shooter too.

Velocity and toughness of bullet also plays a part with too much velocity necessitating a tougher bullet and even then the bullet may travel off course with some more rounded bullet profiles. The 375 H&H has had some issues with this as it is a rather high velocity cartridge compared to the other heavy game rounds. The Weatherbys are especially notorious for this, as well as noise and recoil, and bullet selection is especially important with them.

This is for non-expanding bullets such as solid or FMJ and not meant for correlation to expanding bullet types.

[Big and Tasty]

I watched the whole show the other night and was impressed at the level of detail. Hats off to PBS for the quality of the JFK coverage.

[jspace]

Nova is awesome.

[gun_fan111]

36" of wood board penetration without much deformation - I am impressed! Is that unusual?

[smurfman]

With the 160 gr, round nosed FMJ military round I would expect this to be normal. The old military rounds often hand a steel jacket covered with a thin layer of copper to prevent the steel jacket from prematurely eroding the barrel. It is ammo like this which W.D.M. Bell used to great effect on elepants, often needing to penetrate nearly 3' of skull or more on body shots.