I can only imagine...:)
Anyone who will ever have heard just how much sound a normal, say 9mm,
hand gun already makes when it is fired, will probably look in awe at
how laughably small such a bullet is when compared to the 20mm,
27mm, and especially the 30mm rounds pictured on my page. I wonder
if the sound gets proportinally louder as the size of the rounds
(well, the casings, really) increases. Makes me wonder what the
sound would have been that was produced when the 120mm Howitzer
casing I have at home was fired. Then, to take things to the
extreme: I don't think I would have particularly liked being close
to the guns that were used on ships like the USS Missouri to send
the 800+ KG projectiles on a one way ticket towards the enemy. ;)
The bigger guns like that have a lower muzzle velocity than say a 20
or 30mm machine. Consequently you can almost hear the round
travelling up the barrel with a whoosh after the bank of the charge
firing. Then there is quite a long period of quiet as the round
travels towards the target - on a range for a firepower demo there
might be 3 or 4 km between gun and target.
You keep the sight just above the target until just before open fire
range when you lower it on smoothly, pause for half a second and fire
for half a second then recover at 4g to avoid the ground. You get
down to about 125ft above the ground, 250 above the target as you
climb out again. This is all quite exciting to think about it
again... but I'll never strafe again in my life unfortunately.
Sounds dificult indeed. What actually happened that you won't be
doing it again, is it failing eye-sight? I'm sorry to hear that...
Cheerio!
Olafo
No Olafo, not failing eyesight. I can still fly and shoot and bomb,
but it would mean having to live where I don't want to, to spend more
time away from my family than I want to. The boys on the frontline
squadrons spend between 120 and 150 days per year away from their
families. And when that includes defending the sand-covered oil
reserves for an oppressive regime which will not allow its guests to
carry on their own worship, I started to question my commitment to
the RAF. I shall continue flying little aircraft as an instructor
and be the person I want to be from now on...
Oly content: and when you're away in the desert, there is very little
to get the OMs out for - in my experience anyway.
Chris
--
~~~~~ ><>
Chris Barker
mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
mailto:chris_barker@xxxxxxxxx
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