The Netherlands’ Defense Safety Inspection Agency (Inspectie Veiligheid Defensie) is investigating an incident during a January military exercise in which a Dutch Air Force F-16 was damaged by live fire from a 20-millimeter cannon—its own 20-millimeter cannon. At least one round fired from the aircraft’s M61A1 Vulcan Gatling gun struck the aircraft as it fired at targets on the Dutch military’s Vliehors range on the island of Vlieland, according to a report from the Netherlands’ NOS news service.

Two F-16s were conducting firing exercises on January 21. It appears that the damaged aircraft actually caught up with the 20mm rounds it fired as it pulled out of its firing run. At least one of them struck the side of the F-16’s fuselage, and parts of a round were ingested by the aircraft’s engine. The F-16’s pilot managed to land the aircraft safely at Leeuwarden Air Base.

The incident reflects why guns on a high-performance jet are perhaps a less than ideal weapon. The Vulcan is capable of firing over 6,000 shots per minute, but its magazine carries only 511 rounds—just enough for five seconds of fury. The rounds have a muzzle velocity of 3,450 feet per second (1050 meters per second). That is speed boosted initially by the aircraft itself, but atmospheric drag slows the shells down eventually. And if a pilot accelerates and maneuvers in the wrong way after firing the cannon, the aircraft could be unexpectedly reunited with its recently departed rounds.

As Popular Mechanics’ Kyle Mizokami reported in 2017, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. During flight testing in 1956, a Grumman F-11 Tiger flying from Grumman’s test facility in Riverhead, New York fired a burst from four 20mm cannons toward the Atlantic Ocean. The pilot then entered a steeper dive, kicked in the jet’s afterburners, and went supersonic—when suddenly the windshield blew in and the engine failed. The pilot had caught up with the shells and in the process shot himself down.

Inspectie Veiligheid Defensie Inspector General Wim Bargerbos told NOS that this latest F-16 incident is “a serious case...we therefore want to find out what happened and how we can prevent this in the future.”

Meanwhile, the Dutch Air Force is in the process of replacing the F-16 with the Lockheed F-35A; eight are scheduled to be delivered in 2019. The F-35A carries the four-barrel General Dynamics GAU-22 Equalizer, a 25mm cannon that carries a mere 182 rounds in its magazine—so about two seconds worth of shells. That might make for fewer opportunities for a self-kill.

Link
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...on-fire-from-itself/

I don't understand how this is possible. If the bullet leaves the airplane traveling at Mach three, how does a plane doing Mach 2 catch up to the bullets? Even if they could, their relative speed would be very low as they are traveling the same direction.

years ago, they had this problem with the F104 Starfighter

how do you ever get over the stigma of shooting yourself down...

does that count as a 'kill' for your record?

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't understand how this is possible. If the bullet leaves the airplane traveling at Mach three, how does a plane doing Mach 2 catch up to the bullets? Even if they could, their relative speed would be very low as they are traveling the same direction.

I think the article mentioned it. The bullets slow down due to drag.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't understand how this is possible.

As soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, it only slows down.

A plane has an engine and can maintain/gain speed, in addition to maneuvering.

Its standard in the Navy to brief to maneuver to avoid the potential when conducting live training - either from flying into them (as in this case) or getting hit from ricochets when strafing ground targets.

It's been know since WWII that you could fly into your own ricochets from ground (or ocean) targets. I was told by a friend of my father who flew F6F hellcats in the Pacific that you always turned during pullout from a strafing run, particularly against a ship.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't understand how this is possible.

As soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, it only slows down.

A plane has an engine and can maintain/gain speed, in addition to maneuvering.

Its standard in the Navy to brief to maneuver to avoid the potential when conducting live training - either from flying into them (as in this case) or getting hit from ricochets when strafing ground targets.

Even as it slows the relative speed would be low like a train going 30 mph running into a train in front of it going 29.5 mph.

The only way I could see it possible was if it got in front of bullets then turned so that it was now at 90 degrees to the path of the bullets and the planes speed relative to the bullets was zero. Are the planes running into the backend of bullets or are the planes getting in front of the bullets?

Hopefully without trying to sound too much like a professor in college, boring everyone, there are a couple of forces acting on the bullet. It will reach a terminal velocity as the forces equalize. If the plane is far away from the earth when it shoots the bullets, and travels towards the earth in the same proximate path as the bullets, the plane velocity may exceed the bullet terminal velocity and catch up.

The simplest example is when a man falls from the sky towards the earth, with a terminal velocity of about 122 mph. Drag = force of gravity acting on the human, so velocity is constant.

The famed firearms researcher Julian Hatcher studied 30 caliber bullets and found their terminal velocity to be 300 fps. If you can believe Google. 20mm bullets would possibly be about the same terminal velocity as 30 caliber; hopefully the analogy makes some sense.

If the F16 were traveling 600 mph, or 880 fps, the delta speed would be 580 fps, so in some time certain, the bullets could be at the same position as the plane in the sky.

On a little tangent, one of my HS teachers was a WWII P47 pilot and described this.

He said one of the most dangerous missions was attacking trains - not only did the trains have AA guns mounted on some of the cars, a hit to the engine of the train often caused a violent boiler explosion, filling the sky with parts loosely disguised a bullets.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't understand how this is possible.

As soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, it only slows down.

A plane has an engine and can maintain/gain speed, in addition to maneuvering.

Its standard in the Navy to brief to maneuver to avoid the potential when conducting live training - either from flying into them (as in this case) or getting hit from ricochets when strafing ground targets.

Even as it slows the relative speed would be low like a train going 30 mph running into a train in front of it going 29.5 mph.

The only way I could see it possible was if it got in front of bullets then turned so that it was now at 90 degrees to the path of the bullets and the planes speed relative to the bullets was zero. Are the planes running into the backend of bullets or are the planes getting in front of the bullets?

Not the first time this has happened:

https://www.popularmechanics.c...at-shot-itself-down/

Obviously if the velocity delta is only 0.5 MPH, the plane would never catch the bullets - the problem is the bullet continue to decelerate (just like all bullets) the entire time.

"fewer opportunities for a self-kill" ...

there's got to be a special meaning there...

maybe gun control for fighter jets. i guess that's more pc than fighter jet gun control is hitting your intended target. or don't shoot yourself. so yea, lets just limit magazine capacity, that should fix it. stupid -----.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Its standard in the Navy to brief to maneuver to avoid the potential when conducting live training - either from flying into them (as in this case) or getting hit from ricochets when strafing ground targets.

In the Marines too. Anytime we were going to be doing any strafing we’d make sure that we would jink to avoid overflying the target to lessen the chance of being hit by a ricochet.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't understand how this is possible.

As soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, it only slows down.

A plane has an engine and can maintain/gain speed, in addition to maneuvering.

Its standard in the Navy to brief to maneuver to avoid the potential when conducting live training - either from flying into them (as in this case) or getting hit from ricochets when strafing ground targets.

Even as it slows the relative speed would be low like a train going 30 mph running into a train in front of it going 29.5 mph.

The only way I could see it possible was if it got in front of bullets then turned so that it was now at 90 degrees to the path of the bullets and the planes speed relative to the bullets was zero. Are the planes running into the backend of bullets or are the planes getting in front of the bullets?

Not the first time this has happened:

https://www.popularmechanics.c...at-shot-itself-down/

Obviously if the velocity delta is only 0.5 MPH, the plane would never catch the bullets - the problem is the bullet continue to decelerate (just like all bullets) the entire time.

Under that scenario a bullet falling towards earth and slowing, I could see the plane flying into a bullet at a relative speed greater than the bullet. In that case the plane did not shoot itself it flew into the bullet and due to that relative speed difference and the fact that the bullet was falling which would increase the difference in relative speed. This would answer my question of if the plane flew into the back of the bullet or was struck by the front of it. I would also have to think that it would only happen at great distance and with a plane diving. ?eaning the bullet has lost enough energy by drag to both slow down to a speed sufficient for the plane to catch up as well as the bullet starting to fall so that the relative speed is affected both by the speed forward of both objects as well as the downward speed of the bullet.

In short he wasn't shot down he ran into something slower than himself, under really unique circumstances. It could have been easily avoided by maintaining altitude.

I should have read article title better. It says plane ran into bullets, but the body of the article said plane was shot by it's own bullets.

i can explain it to you but i can't understand for you...

I understand it. Pilot either flew into back of bullet or flew underneath of bullet as it was falling out of sky. He was not shot by his own bullet as I thought after first reading it.

If you are hit by gun projectiles and they damage your plane, it's a soft kill.

If you fired those very same rounds then ergo...

quote:

Originally posted by Otto Pilot:
If you are hit by gun or artillery projectiles and they wreck your plane, you are shot down.

If you fired those very same rounds then ergo...

Exactly.

Damn, you copied me before I could edit and properly express myself. LOL

quote:

Originally posted by Otto Pilot:
If you are hit by gun projectiles and they damage your plane, it's a soft kill.

If you fired those very same rounds then ergo...

If you run into a bird are you shot down by birdshot?

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

If you run into a bird are you shot down by birdshot?

If you shot that bird out of your plane then yes, I suppose you are shot down by bird shot.

If you just hit a bird then likely you are only inconvenienced by bird shit.

If you hit a bunch of birds, then you are truly flocked.