Ejected shell casings and FOD
Brian K. Kobleur
being sucked into the intakes of nearby aircraft? I guess what I'm really
asking is: is there any aircraft that catch their own ejected shell
casings to prevent FOD?
Thanks!
Brian
Urban Fredriksson
Hawker Hunter, but that's to protect its own tail, I think.
--
Urban Fredriksson u...@icl.se
My ferrets are not the mammals the Swedish navy thought were minisubs.
John F Carr
I don't know about shell casing but at least one airplane has shot itself
with its own cannon (fire the gun, go into a shallow supersonic dive,
catch up to the shells, oh no we're hit...).
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Isaac Kuo
Aircraft gatling guns cycle spent shell casings back into its feed
drum, but I'm not sure about revolvers.
--
_____ Isaac Kuo (isaa...@math.berkeley.edu)
__|_>o<_|__
/___________\ "Kunoo-chan, Kunoo-chan, kirai ja nai wa."
\=\>-----</=/ --Tendoo Nabiki
Daniel Hilliker
Hi There...
Nothing in the North American-made fast-air inventory drops the
casings. Note that I don't include the AV-8 a/c, as I regard it as
European-designed. Also, I don't know about pods as our air force here
in the Great White North doesn't have any.
In the M61 equipped a/c, the ammunition is stored in a drum and is
handled by an endless chain (linkless feed) system. The ammo exits the
drum, gets cycled through the gun, and the cartridges (fired or not)
return to the drum. There is a last-round switch to prevent any expended
cartridges from re-cycling through the gun. The fired cartridges are then
downloaded as new stuff is put in. This also applies to the GAU-8 in the
A-10.
The F-5s used M39 series of guns which used a linked feed after which
the cases were dumped into a box in the nose next to each gun. In some
cases, we didn't even use the boxes and the cartridges just rolled around
in the gun bay until emptied.
A lot of the European designs (Mirage, British Harrier, etc...) do eject
the brass overboard but as the gun is behind the intakes, it doesn't
matter (except if you're on the ground...).
Maybe someone can comment on the US Harrier with its 25mm gatling, but I
think it ejects...
As to shooting yourself down by shooting at supersonic speeds, nada...
The bullet at exit is moving at muzzle velocity and is going to take a
certain distance to decelerate, and it ain't that blunt. It'll probably
be some distance ahead so the chances of you overtaking it and running
into it are practically nil. There are some cases of bore prematures or
premature initiation of some HE shells pretty near the a/c, but they're
really, really rare.
<opinions are the author's only, not attributable to the Canadian Forces>
--
Dan Hilliker Engineers rule the World
ax...@freenet.carleton.ca Aerospace Engineers do it from above
Per Ardua Ad Astra
Conrad P. Drake
>In article <bkobleur-310...@dal24.onramp.net>,
>Brian K. Kobleur <bkob...@onramp.net> wrote:
>>Is there anything to stop ejected shell casings from a strafing run from
>>being sucked into the intakes of nearby aircraft? I guess what I'm really
>>asking is: is there any aircraft that catch their own ejected shell
>>casings to prevent FOD?
The A10 reportedly keeps its used casings in the nose of the 'plane as ballast.
CDrake
--
Sue Ralph Nader, too, he was supposed to have prevented this kind of
thing by now. Oh, and my fee is 40%
Ed "gettabike" Green, rec.motorcycles
"Email: con...@pico.qpsx.oz.au
Snail: QPSX Communications, Private Bag 24, West Perth 6005, Australia.
Numbers:(ph) +61 9 262 2000, (fx) +61 9 321 2984 (dod) 0604
Mary Shafer
DH> As to shooting yourself down by shooting at supersonic speeds,
DH> nada... The bullet at exit is moving at muzzle velocity and is
DH> going to take a certain distance to decelerate, and it ain't that
DH> blunt. It'll probably be some distance ahead so the chances of
DH> you overtaking it and running into it are practically nil. There
DH> are some cases of bore prematures or premature initiation of some
DH> HE shells pretty near the a/c, but they're really, really rare.
Every now and then, particularly during the Cat I acceptance testing,
you hear about a fighter "shooting" itself, although to my knowledge,
this has never resulted in downing the aircraft, only in superficial
damage. It's accomplished by slowing and descending just a little too
soon, so that the plane overruns the bullets. This usually happens
because the pilot is working through a series of test points and he's
hurrying on to the next one.
Actually, I've never heard of it happening at the operational level,
but I might not, since I don't hang out with those guys. There
weren't any stories about it at the F-18 RAG, which is a pretty good
indicator that it doesn't happen too often. However, absence of
evidence isn't evidence of absence....
--
Mary Shafer DoD #362 KotFR
SR-71 Chief Engineer NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
sha...@ferhino.dfrf.nasa.gov Of course I don't speak for NASA
"A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all." Unknown US fighter pilot
IanMaclure
>Thanks!
>Brian
No comment on empty casings, others have done so extensively.
The only incident I know about where an aircraft shot itself down
was an F8 Crusader sometime in the late 60s. The details I know not.
Of course back when aircraft had gun turrets, gunners were fined for
putting holes in their own a/c, usually the tail.
IBM
--
################ No Times Like The Maritimes, Eh! ######################
# IBM aka # Ian_M...@QMGATE.arc.nasa.gov (desk) #
# Ian B MacLure # maclure@(remulak/eos).arc.nasa.gov (currently) #
########## Opinions expressed here are mine, mine, mine. ###############
JST...@delphi.com
Quoting maclure from a message in rec.aviation.military
> No comment on empty casings, others have done so extensively.
> The only incident I know about where an aircraft shot itself down
> was an F8 Crusader sometime in the late 60s. The details I know not.
Dave: Believe on closer inspection you'll find that was a Grumman
F11 that shot itself down. The chances of it happening once were
too low to calculate.
`[1;33;45mRainbow V 1.05 for Delphi - Registered
Jerry Ennis
I remember the Navy pilot being on the old TV show "I've Got a Secret."
His secret was that he had shot himself down. His explaination was that
he fired his (machine gun/cannon, whatever) while in a dive and just
"caught up with the bullets," thus shooting himself down.
Gene Cash
> Every now and then, particularly during the Cat I acceptance testing,
> you hear about a fighter "shooting" itself, although to my knowledge,
> this has never resulted in downing the aircraft, only in superficial
> damage. It's accomplished by slowing and descending just a little too
> soon, so that the plane overruns the bullets. This usually happens
> because the pilot is working through a series of test points and he's
> hurrying on to the next one.
> Actually, I've never heard of it happening at the operational level,
> but I might not, since I don't hang out with those guys. There
> weren't any stories about it at the F-18 RAG, which is a pretty good
> indicator that it doesn't happen too often. However, absence of
> evidence isn't evidence of absence....
> --
> Mary Shafer DoD #362 KotFR
> SR-71 Chief Engineer NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
Oh boy! I get to (sort of) correct Mary Shafer! Almost as rare as correcting
Henry Spencer... and I even have docs to back it up...
A long, long time ago (oh, about spring 1986) there was a really interesting
newsstand special put out by the editors of "Air Combat" magazine, called
"USAF-USN Jet Fighters: 1950-1965"
One of the stories is about Grumman's first supersonic fighter, the F11F
Tiger, an upgrade of the F9F Cougar.
On 21 September 1956, company test pilot Tom Attridge flew F11F #17 (BuNo
138620) out of Grumman's Calverton, Long Island facility to test some
modifications to the gun's shell ejection chutes. It mentions the links and
cases (later, just the cases) were ejected overboard, but it doesn't mention
the gun type or caliber.
He was out over the Atlantic in about a 20 degree dive starting from 22,000
feet at 1.0 Mach (630 knots indicated), and when he passed 13,000 feet he
fired a four second burst, let the gun cool for three seconds, then held the
trigger down until the guns emptied. As he passed 7,000 feet at 670 knots,
something slammed into the windscreen and the engine started coming apart.
He had to keep the throttle under 75%, but he nursed it back to 13,000 feet at
200 knots, before the engine died at 1,200 feet, two miles from Long Island
Tower. Attridge made a fairly uneventful gear-up slide into the trees.
Turns out his dive had put him right through the "drop path" of his shells.
Crash investigators found three distinct strikes: the windshield, the nose
cone, and the lip of the right intake. and they found several shells inhaled
by the engine, which of course shredded the compressor.
They discovered he'd hit himself before, as an unknown scar found earlier on
the vertical stabilizer matched the known strikes.
This was a fascinating issue, as it had the ONLY info on the NF-104 that I've
seen outside of Chuck Yeager's book, complete with excellent photos of the
aircraft, firings of the AR2-3 rocket engine, a diagram of the "zoom" flight
profile, and an xray diagram of the modifications made to the F-104 and to
it's instrument panel. I wonder if Mary Shafer happens to know the
"Lt. Col. L. H. Lanier" who authored that piece. Who would be "the classmate
that died a few months ago when his glove came off at 70,000 feet in a
standard F-104?"
It's also the only place I've seen the Mach 2+ XF8U-3 "Super Crusader III"
prototypes, which lost out to something called the F-4 Phantom II... :)
These were later given to NASA, and flown at Langley, Wallops Island, and
Ames-Dryden for high-speed high-altitude and sonic-boom research.
In the article on the F-100, it mentions a shootdown of a SAC B-52B by a
sidewinder accidently fired from a F-100 from Kirtland AFB during interception
practice. It also has a description of the F-100A accident that killed George
Welch, but it doesn't really say much about the aerodynamics what caused the
accident. I think this was one of the first times someone ran into inertial
coupling, aggravated by too small of a vertical stabilizer, but I'm not sure.
Another good article is "Lost Century Fighters", talking about the rather
unique Republic XF-103, and the North American Aviation XF-107A and XF-108, as
well as the Bell XF-109 VSTOL fighter.
As you see from my .sig, I've given up on the high-speed test pilot stuff, and
decided to stick to motorcycles, as they're much safer...
--
Gene Cash (ca...@squirl.oau.org) (407) 380-7050 '81 Suzuki GS1100GL
Albert Dobyns
JS> Subject: Ejected shell casings and FOD
JS> Date: 5 Sep 1994 01:16:57 GMT
JS> Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation
JS> Quoting maclure from a message in rec.aviation.military
JS> > No comment on empty casings, others have done so extensively.
JS> > The only incident I know about where an aircraft shot itself down
JS> > was an F8 Crusader sometime in the late 60s. The details I know not.
JS> Dave: Believe on closer inspection you'll find that was a Grumman
JS> F11 that shot itself down. The chances of it happening once were
JS> too low to calculate.
I'll back you on that one, Dave. I heard it on the tv news back when
it happened! It seemed like an impossible thing to have happened but
with the right combination of the plane descending while the bullets
were slowing down and descending also.
I've seen other posts that say it has happened to other planes however
I haven't read any newspaper articles or other sources. But if it
happened once, it can certaily have happened again. I'll bet the pilot
was quite surprised when it happened. Would the incident have been
labeled as "self-inflicted wounds"? I do not remember what kind of
damages occurred.
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