Shooting into water

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mwerner

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Apr 23, 2002
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Anyone see the "Mythbusters" episode where they fired various weapons into water?
Pretty interesting. Hehe- being of advanced age, I recall my old buddy Mike Nelson (Sea Hunt) firing a revolver underwater "testing for the Navy".

Anyway, they made up a block of ballistic gel about a foot square, and submerged it in a long tank of water. First up, a 9mm pistol. Thing neatly zipped through 7 feet of water and the gelatin block! Eight feet stopped it. Next, a 12 guage shotgun with a rifled slug. Blew the tank up... Also penetrated the gel easily at 8 feet down.

So, off to a swimming pool for testing of some higher-velocity rounds. They tried an '06 (Garand), a .223 (M16 with FMJ military ammo), and even a .50 BMG.
All these high-velocity rounds exploded on impact, leaving only bullet fragments to drift to the bottom of the pool. One effective slow-mo shot with the .223 showed little flattened chunks of bullet slowly drifting to the bottom.

So, perhaps Elmer Kieth was right on; big, slow slugs tend to penetrate better than little fast ones! At least on water.
 
with armor piercing amunition the rounds should penetrate a bit better instead of fragmenting and breaking up
 
Were the weapons themselves underwater when fired?
Or did they shoot from the surface at an angle?

I don't know enough about this to say; my guess is that most cartridges wouldn't make as much energy underwater, for one reason or another (no oxygen, wet).
 
They were shooting from the surface. The premis was to check the old movie convention of diving into water to escape the enemy whatever...

There have been some tests done with weapons submerged. I recall one conducted by the NRA many years ago; they put a 1903 Springfield into a tank and cranked a round off. No damage to the weapon, and the bullet went through a lead plate that had been set up as a trap.

Gunpowders contain their own oxidizers, of course, and most small-arms ammo is quite waterproof; military stuff is really waterproof.
 
I would tend to think that the angle at which the round is fired into the water would also have an effect on how damaging it would be.
 
There is a considerable danger of ricochet. Many years ago, I recall reading an account of a shooting death from same.
An LA-area detective was driving along a coastal highway when the vehicle in front of him began to swerve back and forth, then ran off the road. The guy ran up to check what he thought was a DWI, finding the female driver shot in the head, on the side facing the ocean! The unfortunate woman expired in the hospital.
This detective spent nearly three years tracking down the shooter, a bored fisherman who decided to fire some rounds from his "shark rifle" (and Enfield, as I recall) at some floating debris. He was nearly a mile from shore.

The bullet was nearly spent, having just enough steam to penetrate the skull and kill the victim. If she'd have had her window up...

What are the odds?
 
That was a great MythBusters. Very surprising to see all those bullets disintegrate. Although I guess we shouldn't be too shocked since water is virtually incompressible.

What I couldn't get over is that they allowed someone to fire rifles, including a .50 BMG (12,000 lbs./ft. muzzle energy) at an indoor pool. That pool had to be at some sort of community center. Wonder if it was more than a mile from any other inhabited area? What if water had not stopped those bullets? Pretty expensive having the pool replastered! :D
 
mwerner said:
Anyone see the "Mythbusters" episode where they fired various weapons into water?
Pretty interesting. Hehe- being of advanced age, I recall my old buddy Mike Nelson (Sea Hunt) firing a revolver underwater "testing for the Navy".

Anyway, they made up a block of ballistic gel about a foot square, and submerged it in a long tank of water. First up, a 9mm pistol. Thing neatly zipped through 7 feet of water and the gelatin block! Eight feet stopped it. Next, a 12 guage shotgun with a rifled slug. Blew the tank up... Also penetrated the gel easily at 8 feet down.

So, off to a swimming pool for testing of some higher-velocity rounds. They tried an '06 (Garand), a .223 (M16 with FMJ military ammo), and even a .50 BMG.
All these high-velocity rounds exploded on impact, leaving only bullet fragments to drift to the bottom of the pool. One effective slow-mo shot with the .223 showed little flattened chunks of bullet slowly drifting to the bottom.

So, perhaps Elmer Kieth was right on; big, slow slugs tend to penetrate better than little fast ones! At least on water.
Click to expand...




This test discredits what the U S army told us in the early '50's. We were led to believe a few inches of water would effectively slow a slug down to pebble speed. Don't recall a situation with water but snow & ice don't do anything but maybe chill the projectile .

Uncle Alan
 
What are the velocites of the various rounds? The faster ones disintegrated and the slower penetrated. I wonder if the sound speed in water has anything to do with it?

"The speed of sound in water is of interest to those mapping the ocean floor. In saltwater, sound travels at about 1500 m/s and in freshwater 1435 m/s. These speeds vary due to pressure, depth, temperature, salinity and other factors." -- Wikipedia
 
mwerner said:
There is a considerable danger of ricochet. Many years ago, I recall reading an account of a shooting death from same.
An LA-area detective was driving along a coastal highway when the vehicle in front of him began to swerve back and forth, then ran off the road. The guy ran up to check what he thought was a DWI, finding the female driver shot in the head, on the side facing the ocean! The unfortunate woman expired in the hospital.
This detective spent nearly three years tracking down the shooter, a bored fisherman who decided to fire some rounds from his "shark rifle" (and Enfield, as I recall) at some floating debris. He was nearly a mile from shore.

The bullet was nearly spent, having just enough steam to penetrate the skull and kill the victim. If she'd have had her window up...

What are the odds?
Click to expand...
I was told once that under these conditions a bullet can spin off the suface like a stone skipping on a pond.
BTW I seem to recall reading that the Russians developed a firearm for underwater use, can't remember where I read it though :o
 
mwerner said:
There is a considerable danger of ricochet. Many years ago, I recall reading an account of a shooting death from same.
An LA-area detective was driving along a coastal highway when the vehicle in front of him began to swerve back and forth, then ran off the road. The guy ran up to check what he thought was a DWI, finding the female driver shot in the head, on the side facing the ocean! The unfortunate woman expired in the hospital.
This detective spent nearly three years tracking down the shooter, a bored fisherman who decided to fire some rounds from his "shark rifle" (and Enfield, as I recall) at some floating debris. He was nearly a mile from shore.

The bullet was nearly spent, having just enough steam to penetrate the skull and kill the victim. If she'd have had her window up...

What are the odds?
Click to expand...


There is a great book "Chief" that is is about the many cases of Albert Seedman,NYPD Chief of Detectives that tells one story of a 17 year old girl killed by gunshot while driving on the Belt Parkway.
Same deal,an almost spent bullet coming from a boater far away shooting at seagulls and,IIRC,entering the car through an open wind wing and hitting something vital(temple?),the closed window would have stopped the bullet.
An amazing piece of detective work solved it,the shooter was clueless that he had harmed anyone.
 
panella said:
Although I guess we shouldn't be too shocked since water is virtually incompressible.
Click to expand...


Exactly. Incompressible. A slower moving projectile will tend to essentially push the water out of the way. But a fast-moving projectile might was well hit a brick wall. I'm a bit surprised that rifle rounds didn't do better because they're pointed. But, it could be that the circular motion which helps the bullet travel in a straight line in air caused it to essentially screw into the water which, to a bullet traveling at these velocities appears, to be a solid object. Well, not to long ago I tried to screw a screw into a very hard object. I was using a power screwdriver and Torx head and the screw just snapped right off. With more energy, it might have torn into many pieces.

I'm told that with the right ammo, an H&K USP functions fine under water. The gun was originally designed under contract for the US Navy Seals (yes, actually, not just marketing hype) and they actually used them for years and may still for all I know.
 
I really think this may have everything to do with the velocity relative to the sound speed of water. Anyone have numbers for the speed of each projectile?
 
chuck taylor shoots a glock 17 underwater all the time, cant tell ya why though lol.

IIRC the thing will function, believe it or not.
 
They pretty much showed that shooting straight down into the water, didn't stop the bullets all that much. However, when shooting at an angle, they had all sorts of trouble getting hits because of deflection. It didn't immediately stop the bullets so much as to cause trouble hitting the target.
 
Lots of guns will fire underwater. The trick is making them continue to fire. The water restricts the movement of the slide (slows it down), so FTEs and FTLs are likely. The Glocks require special thingies to function underwater properly (they work fine out of water with these thingies too...I don't remember exactly what the thiingies are called though).

Gollnick, it wasn't the USP that was designed for the SEALs, it was the Mk.23 SOCOM. Quite a bit of the SOCOM did go into the USP though. The SEAL standard sidearm is a SOCOM or a Sig P226, although they have a lot more to choose from if they need to. I believe the first to use the HK USP was the German police or military.
 
reptilezs said:
with armor piercing amunition the rounds should penetrate a bit better instead of fragmenting and breaking up
Click to expand...




Many years ago an oldtimer said if you packed a hollowpoint slug with vaseline it would cause it to explode thus giving more shock effect. Something about the hydraulics theory,fluid under under pressure exerting equal force in all directions. Was unimpressed because WW II had just started & I only had .22 hollopoints for squirrels. If I didn't get a head shot, the dogs got it. I learned to make each shot count & those .22's lasted me a long time & I got a squirrel almost every time. Guess that's why I am a superior shot .

Uncle Alan :D
 
2 things:

1) There was a shooting sport, still practised in Europe IIRC, that either shotguns or rifles are used to shoot at targets suspended several feet above the water... the concept was to bounce the shot off the water and hit the target... It's been on TV, so I'm sure someone can Google up a site for it...

2) I realize it was only a movie, but in Saving Pvt. Ryan, the scenes from the beach landing included a heck of a lot scenes underwater showing MG-42 rounds killing lots of guys...

And I do believe one of Gaston Glocks' requirements for his gun was for it to be able to fire underwater without any special equipment other than a heavy duty spring... but that's only from memory, so don't go quote me! :rolleyes:
 
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