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How Pilots Should Talk

That is how pilots would talk, but only if they were idiots and knew nothing about pressurized aircraft!
 
Yes I do sometimes. I am always in awe at their total lack of standard scientific method!

A few years ago, a slight crack in a door doubler led to a 40x20' section of a hawaii aircraft roof departing the plane. Imagine what a .357 bullet hole would do?
 
Yes I do sometimes. I am always in awe at their total lack of standard scientific method!

A few years ago, a slight crack in a door doubler led to a 40x20' section of a hawaii aircraft roof departing the plane. Imagine what a .357 bullet hole would do?

Puleaze! Don't show your ignorance of modern aircraft design. A <insert handgun caliber here> would have little to no affect on airframe integrity. This conversation is just stupid.
 
Yes I do sometimes. I am always in awe at their total lack of standard scientific method!

A few years ago, a slight crack in a door doubler led to a 40x20' section of a hawaii aircraft roof departing the plane. Imagine what a .357 bullet hole would do?

With all due respect there was a lot more to that failure of the airframe than " a slight crack"

The failure of an epoxy bond, corrosion due to salt air, and the second most pressurization's of any plane in the sky at the time ( 89K+) and a 19 year old airframe were the root causes, and the way the flight attendants body blocked the hole for a moment causing hydraulic ramming were the causes. It was far more than a simple crack, it was full blown fatigue of the aircraft, something not seen since the Constellation aircraft failures of the 1940's.

And the cabin attendant that was sucked out of the aircraft had blocked the opening for a short period of time, and that partial blockage contributed greatly to the further failure of the airframe.

"Investigation by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion (the plane operated in a coastal environment, with exposure to salt and humidity).[5][6] The root cause of the problem was failure of an epoxy adhesive used to bond the aluminum sheets of the fuselage together when the B737 was manufactured. Water was able to enter the gap where the epoxy failed to bond the two surfaces together properly, and started the corrosion process. The age of the aircraft became a key issue (it was 19 years old at the time of the accident and had sustained a remarkable number of takeoff-landing cycles — 89,090, the second most cycles for a plane in the world at the time — well beyond the 75,000 trips it was designed to sustain). Aircraft now receive additional maintenance checks as they age. However, several other aircraft operating under similar environments did not exhibit the same phenomenon. A deep and thorough inspection of Aloha Airlines by NTSB revealed that the most extensive and longer "D Check" was performed in several early morning installments, instead of a full uninterrupted maintenance procedure.

According to the official NTSB report of the investigation, Gayle Yamamoto, a passenger, noticed a crack in the fuselage upon boarding the aircraft prior to the ill-fated flight but did not notify anyone.[7] The crack was located aft of the front port side passenger door. The crack was probably due to metal fatigue related to the 89,090 compression and decompression cycles experienced in the short hop flights by Aloha."
 
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Not many people are versed in modern aircraft design. That said, a bullet hole would not be good. Might not hurt the airframe, but would depressurize.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't pilots already carry anyway?

And if punctures were really a concern, couldn't they use some type of highly frangible projectile?

On topic: Hilarious vid, thanks for posting.
 
some pilots can carry, it is a real PITA, and you should read up on the stupid holsters they are required to use. Many ND's because of them

 
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Yeah, but it sucked Goldfinger out of the jet!

goldfinger-auric_goldfinger-3.jpg

preview-large.jpg

goldfinger-suction_l.jpg


More on that:
http://www.thegunzone.com/091101/goldfinger.html
http://www.moviedeaths.com/goldfinger/auric_goldfinger/
 
I was ready to call BS on this one, but just did a quick search for "reputable" data (nasa reports, etc) on bullet damage, and I guess in many cases a bullet hole will not cause much of a problem.

If you just shoot at the fuselage, and cause a hole, it is not that likely to rip the skin, and you just have to deal with the air leak. You would have many minutes to get the plane down below 18,000 feet, and the pilots would simply use their quick don oxygen masks.

It would get more interesting if the bullet caused more of a glancing blow that tore the skin in a longer line. Found one report where they were really concerned about a bullet piercing the 2000 psig hydraulic accumulator, but the statistical likelihood of that is small.

I still stand by most mythbusters shows as being hogwash of the lowest order!
 
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Um, didn't planes get hit all the time during the wars?? And don't they still fly? I've seen video of older aircraft that landed full of bullet holes from either a dogfight or ground fire...and they flew, landed and the didn't fall apart.

I would think that yes, you might lose pressure, but I don't really think people are going to be sucked out of the plane from one little hole.

Then, I'm not a areo-engineer, and don't really know for fact, so I'm pretty much talking out my ass.
 
All most like the very smart American engineers who designed these planes in the first place had things like bullets, bird strikes, runway debris, etc..., in mind before they put pen to paper!

Like others have said the B-29 never fell out of the sky from a few 50cal hits. I think the B-29 was the first pressurized bomber and rapid depressurization was a concern. Much testing was done before they would let it fly. To bad they didn't put as much testing into the engines catching fire. If they did we'd have many more examples of these beauties with us today!
 
Not many people are versed in modern aircraft design. That said, a bullet hole would not be good. Might not hurt the airframe, but would depressurize.
Apparently you're not versed in modern aircraft design as well. A bullet hole would have a negligible effect on pressurization.
 
Not many people are versed in modern aircraft design. That said, a bullet hole would not be good. Might not hurt the airframe, but would depressurize.

No, it wouldn't. You are aware that the cabin is not sealed, correct?

...To maintain the pressure in the cabin equal to that at low altitude, even while the airplane is at 30,000 feet, the incoming air is held within the cabin by opening and closing an outflow valve, which releases the incoming air at a rate regulated by pressure sensors. Think of a pressurized cabin as a balloon that has a leak but is being inflated continuously...

http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/cit-larson.html

Rapid Depressurization

One of the most misunderstood aspects of cabin pressurization is rapid depressurization. Often inappropriately referred to as "explosive decompression", movies have depicted scenes where a single bullet shot through the fuselage has sent people flying about the cabin. It makes for high drama but it is pure nonsense. If you can have a fairly large outflow valve open to the atmosphere, what difference would a small bullet hole make? As long as the bullet hole remains small, the outflow valve can compensate instantly...

http://books.google.com/books?id=A0...wADgK#v=onepage&q=bullet hole fuselage&f=true

ETA: IANAE (I Am Not An Engineer)
 
The problem is that if you are in a pressurized plane (say there is a 5 psi differential between cockpit and ambient air pressure) and you put a bullet thru a plastic window (say it is 2 square feet of plastic), you have just traumatized the plastic while it has 2880 pounds of force on one side of it. If there is a crack that propagates, that window will explosively decompress.

Same for the fuselage of the plane. Lets say the bullet hits the fuselage in a way that starts a crack to propagate. A 5 x 5' piece of aluminum would have 18000 lbs force on one side just itching to peel that aircraft wall away.

The math is pretty impressive.
 
A friend of mine was a crew chief on a C5 Galaxy during his time in the Air Force. One of the routine maintenance items he did was to repair holes, cracks, and gaps in the body of the aircraft. To make them easier to spot, he would walk the plane at altitude with a bucket of red rags listening for wind. When he heard it he would toss a rag in the general direction of the sound. The rag would get partially sucked through the hole so when they landed he could spot the holes from the outside by the hanging rags. He would sometimes have dozens of them. It's a wonder he survived.
 
A friend of mine was a crew chief on a C5 Galaxy during his time in the Air Force. One of the routine maintenance items he did was to repair holes, cracks, and gaps in the body of the aircraft. To make them easier to spot, he would walk the plane at altitude with a bucket of red rags listening for wind. When he heard it he would toss a rag in the general direction of the sound. The rag would get partially sucked through the hole so when they landed he could spot the holes from the outside by the hanging rags. He would sometimes have dozens of them. It's a wonder he survived.

The only reason C-5's fly is because they're so ugly the ground rejects them.
 
The problem is that if you are in a pressurized plane (say there is a 5 psi differential between cockpit and ambient air pressure) and you put a bullet thru a plastic window (say it is 2 square feet of plastic), you have just traumatized the plastic while it has 2880 pounds of force on one side of it. If there is a crack that propagates, that window will explosively decompress.

Same for the fuselage of the plane. Lets say the bullet hits the fuselage in a way that starts a crack to propagate. A 5 x 5' piece of aluminum would have 18000 lbs force on one side just itching to peel that aircraft wall away.

The math is pretty impressive.

You've done a lot of maintenance on pressurized aircraft I see.
 
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