Could an American fighter plane blow up a locomotive in WWII?

So, there was a discussion (dormant for the past few weeks now) about Red Tails, a movie that came out a few weeks back about the 332d Fighter Group, also known as the Tuskegee Airmen. One of the complaints someone raised was about how unrealistic he found the results of shootings things in the movie were. Namely, a destroyer and a locomotive that both get blown up by strafing American fighter planes armed with .50 caliber machine guns.

So, the destroyer getting blown up actually happened, though in real life it appears to have been rather an Italian destroyer escort that was converted into a torpedo boat by the Germans. Turns out that smaller warships combine relatively thin or lacking armor with a tendency to carry things that go boom when shot enough.

What I’m curious about is whether or not an American fighter plane, armed with six .50 caliber machine guns as the Curtiss P-40 often was, would have had a serious chance at causing a locomotive to explode.

Trains would also carry lots of stuff that goes boom. I believe most of the long-distance heavy transport was done by train, so there would be plenty of trains carrying ammunition towards the front line. A boxcar full of, say, mortar shells could certainly make a big explosion, though I’m not sure that they would explode instantly after a few .50 cal hits.

Also, a steam locomotive could fail pretty spectacularly if the boiler was torn apart by .50 cal rounds.

Haven’t seen the film, what type of locomotive was it? If it was steam then rupturing the boiler could probably cause a big steam explosion, but not a big fiery Hollywood explosion.

Missed edit: After a few minutes search on Youtube, I found a video compilation of gun camera footage, and it has plenty of examples of train cars blowing up with Big Hollywood Fireballs (from about 3:47 to 5:10). Also plenty of steam explosions from the engines.

Everything in the movies blows up when it’s shot at, or falls of a cliff, except for the hero’s vehicle.

A tanker car of aviation fuel being hit by tracer rounds certainly sounds like a good recipe for fireballs.

Well, part of the issue is there’s a Hollywood trope that “mere bullets” can’t penetrate stuff. This was subverted a bit in one of the Dirty Harry movies, when someone facing Dirty Harry’s oversized handgun ducks behind a billboard for protection, and Harry raises one eyebrow, then shoots him dead through the billboard.

My father served in WWII in the infantry. He told two tales in which bullet penetration exceeded his expectations. One time his unit took cover in a cemetery behind headstones, and was dismayed to discover ordinary rifle bullets split the headstones and caused then to fall over, exposing the troops hiding behind them. On another occasion, he used a passing train for cover – standing up and running when it obscured him. A German machine gun opened up and the bullets came right through the train and out the other side, nearly hitting him. He dived down again and all he could think was “Hollywood LIED to me!”

The bullets in both those examples were smaller and weaker than the .50 caliber machine guns mounted on most American fighters (and specifically on the P-51s used by the Red Tails.) The M-2 was designed with penetrating vehicles in mind.

The Flying Tigers, flying P-40s equipped with six of these .50s (the same number carried by later-model P-51s), reported that when strafing Japanese destroyers broadside, other planes observed the tracers coming out the opposite side – cutting right through a 300-foot-long steel ship filled with machinery.

I was watching that same gun camera footage the other day thinking that this is probably where Hollywood originally got the idea that everything explodes when you hit it with bullets.

Hell, old-timey computers banks explode when you throw a chair at them in a fist fight. I’ve always called this “Gotham Technology.”

While the engineer said “dammit, I wish they’d put up orange cones when they’re going to be doing this!”

I was the person who raised this issue in the other thread.

Firstly, I recognize that .50 cal bullets can strike with enough energy to set off munitions, so (thanks also to Sailboat for an informative post) maybe the destroyer explosion was more plausible than it first appeared.

OTOH, I’ll continue to take issue the scene in Red Tails involving a train headed by a steam locomotive; which. like most of the flying sequences, appears to have been done mostly or all as CGI rather than practical efffects.

The train is strafed by one of the Red Tails P-40s; when the locomotive is struck by the .50 cal bullets from the fighter, it immediately goes up in a huge (presumably steam) explosion, lifting off the track and turning sideways, then rolling over.

Now, boiler explosions were not unknown events, but I contend it couldn’t have happened this way. A typical boiler explosion usually occurs when the crown sheet (a metal sheet over the firebox that must be covered with boiler water at all times) is allowed to run dry for an extended period. Over time, the metal softens and at some point the pressure in the boiler ruptures the sheet, indeed with spectacular (and usually fatal for the crew) results. It’s not impossible that the boiler may have been holed enough by the strafing to allow the the crown sheet to run dry, but those same holes would have vented most or all of the pressure from the boiler and there simply couldn’t have been an instantaneous, massive explosion.

In the Youtube link, there is quite a lot of released steam and smoke from a couple of locomotives in the gun camera footage, but if one looks closely these are just just that: smoke and steam vented out of the boilers rather than violent explosions.

Anyway, I wasn’t intending to make a federal case out of the issue, but just having a bit of a chuckle at a typical Hollywood juicing up of the action.

I would say plausible. You are not just talking about a tank full of hot water, its superheated water being held in a liquid state by the pressure vessel. Something damaging that pressure vessel enough will cause it to lose alot of its structural integrity and now you end up with 1000 or so gallons of water wanting to convert itself instantly to steam from the pressure loss and a tear in the tank.

Granted, it could be just as likely that the train just starts spraying steam out of a dozen or so gaping holes and just fizzles to a stop. This scenario would probably require more damage in less time to let all that pressure vent in a less catastrophic manner.

IANA Steam engineer but maybe Una Persson could better chime in. I’m sure in her biz she has a more than passing familiarity with superheated steam plants. My info is all just from fire academy, not from shooting trains with machine guns.

Aside from the special effects baloney, that movie shovels enough political baloney to set off baloney detection alarms world wide.

A 50 Cal in a boiler shell would cause the shell to fail and the boiler would be ripped apart. There would be no engine left to roll over.

There are lots of examples of trains and destroyers getting ripped to pieces by strafing planes. Gun-camera footage is available on youtube if you want to search them out. .50 cal rounds are nothing to laugh at.

I read a book written by a WW2 mosquito navigator, being of the rather fearful kind he tried often in vain to not point out any trains while on “Rhubarb” (a random patrol over occupied France with orders to shoot up anything) The pilot having a taste for the glorious explosions that locomotives made when hit with the Mosquito’s armament which was ": 4 × 20 mm (.79 in) Hispano Mk II cannon (fuselage) and 4 × .303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns (nose) " Six .5 seems eminently capable of doing the same.

( i think the book was “TERROR IN THE STARBOARD SEAT: 41 Trips Aboard a Mosquito - A True Story of 418 Squadron” well worth a read a view not often seen of a terrified navigator constantly drawing bigger and bigger red areas of flack on his map trying to stop his pilot getting him killed…)

Well, I’m still not convinced. I think this is something the Mythbusters urgently need to address. :smiley:

Steam explosions are spectacular in appearance, and I have no real reason to doubt that strafing steam locomotives wouldn’t cause seriously impressive explosions. IIRC there was a specific programme set up with P-51 Mustangs to strafe trains, called “Chattanooga” or something.

Correct.

The results of the operation were very impressive. Pretty much nothing rolled while the fighters flew.

There was a show on either History Channel or Military Channel called, IIRC, Gun Camera. The host had some WW2 fighter pilots there and they would watch gun camera footage and discuss what was being seen. The ex-fighter pilots said that shooting up a locomotive looked impressive because puncturing the boiler would send a plume of steam hundreds of feet into the air. They said a repair crew would have plugs welded in the holes and the locomotive back in service in a matter of hours.

They said hitting a boxcar full of explosives was dangerous to the strafing aircraft, and they showed films where the aircraft flew through fireballs of those explosions with flying debris visible on all sides.