Ricochet: Bullet Departure Angle?

[RJ]

I came across this interesting 1974 FBI training film, Shooting for Survival, while browsing videos the other night.



One of the aspects of shooting I had not seen before was how it showed that bullet trajectory after ricochet was much shallower than I would have thought.

In this scene, the instructor actually shoots balloons laterally along a wall:



Which made me think a bit about the use of cover. If you stuck your head out just slightly, you might receive a round, even though the incoming trajectory is larger. In other words, it is not like a tennis ball.


1) I realize that this film is dated, so is this something still of concern in situations where use of cover is taught?
2) Generally speaking, does today's typical duty ammunition (JHP, say P9HST rounds) still exhibit this effect?

[Peally]

Bullets do fucky things. I would say their ricochet behaviour falls solidly under "it depends"

Surface, bullet type, calibre, angle, whether God is feeling giddy that day, etc. There's a million variables.

[olstyn]

There's a million variables.

No joke. Jacket fragments in particular seem to go in nearly random directions when bullets strike steel, for example.

[Poconnor]

I was taught that bullets follow walls so long ago that I don't remember from where. It depends on the bullet and the wall. I know when I was in ghetto apartment buildings with cinder block walls I thought about richocets. I experimented with it on the range. I would place steel targets on the ground and bounce bullets into the targets. It was very dependant on placing the ground plate a specific distance from the target. The only reasonable instance I anticipated was if a shooter was using a car as cover and I couldn't get hits on him I could try and bounce rounds under the car into their legs/ ankles.

[41magfan]

Bullet deflection has more to do with the laws of physics than it does any particular technology related to the projectile.

[scjbash]

Paul Howe talks about this in one of his Panteao videos. I don't remember the specifics and I closed my Panteao account but IIRC he was demonstrating similar shallow ricochets.

[txdpd]

Paul Howe covered cars and ricochets a several years ago.

http://www.combatshootingandtactics....f_cover_07.pdf

[Glenn E. Meyer]

We did a good deal of shooting and observing such in Dave Spaulding's automobile tactics class. One take away point was that if you were behind a car, a round fired at angle would make it under the car and into you.

[RJ]

Bullet deflection has more to do with the laws of physics than it does any particular technology related to the projectile.

Yeah, I was checking around and ran into this.

http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/?p=41

Might download this sdk and play around with it.

[RJ]

Came across my newsfeed recently, interesting:

https://www.facebook.com/TheSuarezGr...36110379838030