Beitrag aus "W wie Wissen" vom 06.05.2007 / ARD. Zeigt was mit einem Geschoss passiert, das 'in die Luft' geschossen wird und wieder herunter kommt.
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I made a rough translation of a transcript, it's not perfect but you should understand it in essence.
It's rather a word-by-word translation than an interpretation to fit the English diction. However, that way you get more of the original feeling of how the public-TV authors try to explain it to the typical gun-naive German in simple language like to a three-year old.
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It's called reconnaissance. Hearing gunfire isn't always a sign of war - salute is a military tradition and according to the rank, the number of shots differ. For the president of the U.S. you've got 21 shots, for his secretary of defense only 19, and in my motherland, Luxembourg, there are 101 shots on national holiday, with cannons - but without bullets, and that's for a good reason. But there are people, shooting into the air joyfully, with rifles. That brings us to a vital question: how dangerous is the rifle bullet when falling down?
It happened without warning, from out of nowhere.
"It felt like an iron bar striking my shoulder, like a real thick, heavy iron bar; but when I looked back, there was no one, (of course). I was wearing a thick pullover, which was damaged, too, with a hole in it, and even in the t-shirt below was a hole, and it was bleeding up here."
Touching his wound made him shiver - it wasn't an iron bar, it was a pistol bullet. But how can a bullet just fall down from the sky?
It can't be a direct shot from a pistol, impossible. With experts from the "defense-technical department for weapons and ammunition" we want to find out, if that bullet can originate from an indirect shot. Can you be injured by an indirect shot?
The experts are only left to this: they have to follow the way of the bullet: how high does it fly and how fast is it when coming down? With radar and infrared the technicians want to track the only 9mm sizing projectile.
Last preparations, (7,6..1) Velocity of the projectile at the start 1500km/h; the special ammunition leaves an path of heat, which the infrared camera can show. Then the bullet get's invisible for the infrared camera. Now it's up to the radar, the bullet is getting slower an reaches it's highpoint after 13 seconds, in 1km altitude. Then it's falling, an speeding up again, the radar measures 350km/h at impact, four times slower then at the launch. Is that still dangerous? To test on that, you need a slower bullet, the trick: a specialist prepares the ammunition. The less powder is in the cartridge, the slower it goes. Instead of the usual 1500, now only 350km/h, the falling-speed of the pistol bullet.
Now the weapons experts want to test the decelerated ammunition. The target: a block of gelatin which behaves like human tissue. High-speed cameras are recording what happens. Safety comes first, the experts protect themselves by steel doors. (On command, 3 2 1.) And that for good reason - even the slowed bullet pierces, deep into the tissue, a human would have suffered severe injuries. But what if the head gets hit? Does the bone of the skull resist against the impact? A plate of bone can simulate that. (On command 3 2 1)
And really: the bullet penetrates through the artificial skull plate.
The experiments show clearly: A shot into the air is slower when coming back down, but still deadly.
Mr. Leineweber had bad luck: "5cm more towards the head and I would have been dead".
There's one solution: The bullet has to leave the field of gravity of the earth, then it won't fall back down. But that means, it has to be really fast: escape velocity: over 40000km/h.
By this meaning, stay curios an go for some banging.
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GZDS_2ooqpU/mqdefault.jpg)