I have an idea for a film. At the end of the title sequence, a man is shot by a sniper who uses a Heckler & Koch rifle. I am of course familiar with the striations on the fired case that is caused by grooves in the chamber, which is why the sniper picks up the brass. But is there any way of identifying whether the bullet was fired from an H&K G3, PSG-1, SAR-8, CETME, or whatever? If so, what are the tell-tales?
The sniper will be firing from about 400 or 500 metres. The bullet will go through the victim’s left chest and exit on the lower-right side of his back. It will hit the gravel car park after leaving the body. The investigator will calculate where the bullet was fired from by using the heights of the entry and exit wounds, and the impact point of the bullet in the gravel. Fired under the conditions described, will the bullet be more or less intact? Or will it be shattered? In the story I think I’ll have the sniper use a hand-loaded JHP. I may or may not do a head shot after the victim falls, so the bullet will travel through the head and then impact the gravel.
The idea is still gestating (this was originally going to be a ‘title sequence’ for a non-existant film so that I can use my hostess tray and so that I could put the footage on my demo reel), so I don’t know yet if it will be useful to the story for the police to know the type of rifle the sniper used. I’m thinking it would be better if they didn’t.
The H&K rifles (and their modern pistols) in particular use what is called polygonal rifling, which makes markings that are quite distinct from conventional land and groove rifling. Although poly rifling is becoming more common in handguns, I don’t think any of the standard riflemakers use a poly barrel (Glock and Walther make pistols will poly rifling, but not longarms), though I’m sure aftermarket barrels are available.
Also, forensicists can reduce the number of guns the bullet could have been fired from by the twist rate; long range sniper barrels in particular tend to have looser twists, for use with a lighter and faster bullet, though HK seems to offer the G3/PSG-1 with a 1:12 twist across the board. And ejector and headspace markings on brass can positively identify a model; the roller locking system on the HK rifles in particular is distinctive, and a real pain in the ass for reloaders as it tends to overstresss the brass.
With pistols the short, stubby bullet tends to deform if it contacts a solid surface (bone, glass, et cetera) to a point of barely being identifable in caliber, and jacketed hollow points break apart and shatter as well as shed the jacket, increasing the size of the permenant wound channel but making idenfication of markings problematic. (So much for those CSI guys who can always identify the gun make, model, and serial number, plus the ammo lot from a few scratches.s) With rifle rounds, however, because they are longer (and especially with boat tail rounds) the base tends to remain intact, even if the round fragments.
BTW, snipers don’t generally use hollowpoint rounds; too much instability for extremely long range shots. Generally they use either softpoint (jacketed with an exposed lead tip) or fully jacketed hard core (so-called “armor-piercing”, though in fact any high velocity rifle round will pierce any soft body armor and some types of trauma plate). While they don’t expand significantly, these bullets do considerable damage outside the primary wound channel via hydrostatic shock; a fully submerged round will pretty much destroy tissue within a tennis-ball sized wound channel as it passes through, and if it hits bone will tumble and bounce within the body. Medium large-game hunters (deer, elk) often use hollowpoints, but their targets are at a more moderate range (200-300 meters), are more resiliant and tend to bleed out rather than drop from shock, and hunters don’t have to worry about shooting through windshields, plywood, or other artificial barriers, and they do want to reduce overpenetration.
Funny aside: I used to know a guy that was a gun wrangler in Hollywood (Francis Hamada…haven’t heard from him in years, actually) and one of his fellow wranglers provided weapons for Lethal Weapon. The H&K sniper rifle that Gibson uses in the desert was a real firing gun, a modded Model 91, and in order to get it to fire blank rounds they tapped the barrel in front of the chambed and inserted a screw to generate backpressure against the rollers. (This wouldn’t have been an issue with a gas piston rifle–you’d just open up the port.) Anyway, they gave it back…but neglected to remove the screw or tell the wrangler, who discovered it as he was setting it up for another film. It could have been awfully nasty if someone had fired a real round downrange in that thing. :eek:
Anyway, it sounds interesting. Keep us informed if you do anything with it. I’m following your other movie thread with great interest and amusement.
I was not aware of that. I thought that target shooters used JHPs, so I assumed a sniper would as well.
I remember that the 9mm pistol H&K made in the '80s (the one that looked like one of those disc-shooting ‘phaser’ guns) used polygonal rifling. I’ve pulled out my SAR-8 (which will be used for the sniper’s prop, and which has a bipod and a PSG-1 pistol grip – sort of a mongrel, really) and it appears to have plain old rifling. In any case, it sounds as if the bullet would be difficult or impossible to trace to a specific rifle; only that the rifle had such-and such a twist and barrel length, and here’s a list of rifles with that twist and length.
No way I’d modify the rifle to fire blanks, because I’ve been told replacement barrels are difficult to get and that it’s a bit of a process replacing barrels. If I need to show more than one shot, I can get a BFA for it and just not show the muzzle.
It’s going to be a while before I really get into this one. I have the hostess tray (finally found one for a reasonable cost!), but I need to wait for the MGB to be done. And we still have to finish Agony. I’ll probably shoot the ‘title sequence’ for my own amusement once Agony is finished and the weather is good, and then start actually writing a screenplay.
So to recap:
[ul][li]Unlikely the detective can say, ‘This bullet was fired from an HK.’[/li][li]The sniper would use a JSP or FMJ-HC[/li][li]The bullet found on the ground will only have a little copper on it, and the base will be more or less intact[/ul][/li]Right?
(I really hate getting the little details wrong, since I know there are people who really look at those things.)
Let me qualify my previous statement by limiting it to military snipers. Police/HRT/Special Tactics snipers in an urban environment with noncombatants around might use hollowpoints to attenuate overpenetration; I don’t really know. The accuracy problem is weight balance and aerodynamics; for longer ranges, especially where the bullet velocity might drop into transonic or subsonic velocities, a light-middle weight boattail soft point (BTSP) is preferred over a standard hardball or hollowpoint ogive, as the CG is more foreward and the taper of the tail maintains stability through the transition. OTOH, the Sierra Match King round (a match-grade accuracy bullet) is a boattail hollowpoint specifically to make it more accurate, so my info might be out of date. (I learned most of what I know about snipers from a Force Recon sniper who taught me to shoot in the 'Eighties, so don’t take me for an expert or on the cutting edge.)
The pistol to which you refer is the P9S or the VP-70/70Z, both of which were interesting and innovative pistols; the P9S used a delayed roller locking mechanism somewhat similar to that used in the G3/HK91&93/PSG-1rifle and polymer grip panels and trigger guard. The VP-70 models had a reinforced composite frame about 15 years before Glock offered the Glock 17, and were prized for their durability and ruggedness; the M variant was capable of three-shot burst, and all were straight blowback rather than a recoil or gas locking/retarding system. Several special forces units around the world adopted them, including the GSG-9 groups, the British SBS, and (reputedly) one or more of the US SEAL teams. Very futuristic, too; you see one appear repeatedly in James Cameron’s Aliens as the standard sidearm for the Colonial Marines.
The SAR-8 is an HK licensed design, manufactured by some Greek consortium and distributed by Springfield Armory. I couldn’t find any info on the rifling specs, but because polygonal rifling requires special tooling (the barrels are made by cold forge hammer technique) the Greeks may have used or purchased barrels with standard rifling. Poly rifling would definitely stand out distinctly; I’m sure that there are other differences between rifling tooling used by different manufacturers which a forensic ballistician could use to determine the gun. You might try calling up the police crime lab in the nearest large city to see if you can talk to someone who does that kind of work; they’d probably provide you with any information you need to know in trade for a credit on your film.
Oh, and you probably know this, but the G3-type rifles are just about as lethal to the right as they are to the front; the brass hits the edge of the ejection port and shoots off about thirty feet, hot and spinning like a ninja shurken. I’ve always wanted to see someone getting hit by brass, or better yet, having a piece of brass flight straight up and then fall down into their collar or get trapped in their glasses frame (the Glock is notorious for this) just like it happens on the range. If you’re looking for some physical comedy to break the tension, there you go.
Yeah, that’s probably the best move. I’m not sure what compelled those guys to drill the barrel on someone else’s equipment. And yeah, replacing barrels on the G3 is no joke; IIRC the think is press fit in with several hundred pounds of force, plus I think it might be welded to the reciever. I don’t know why they did that; the Steyr AUG barrel is free-floating (you can replace the thing in about ten seconds) and is a very accurate gun. It might have something to do with the way the bullet is chambered–it snugs right into the rifling with no lead distance–but it makes field servicing the gun with a damaged barrel impossible.
Just to summarize;
[ul]
[li]A ballistician probably would be able to discern the manufacturer (or a short list of mfgs), if not the model, especially if it is an HK rifle, if the bullet is sufficiently intact.[/li][li]A military sniper would (in my understanding, which might be out of date) use a JSP or a match grade full jacketed round, likely with a hard core (tungsten perhaps) for high penetration. A police or civilian sniper might use something else, depending on conditions, training, et cetera. As your local SWAT/Police Special Tactics group what they use. [/li][li]The front end of the bullet will probably be mashed, and might even break apart, but with a JSP or FMJ, the aft end is likely to be intact with minimal distortion and land markings clean, especially if it buries itself in something soft like a car seat cushion or pavement macadam. If it hits something hard–a solid hit to bone, or windshield glass, or somesuch–then theres a good chance that the jacket will seperate and fragment, which may or may not leave the markings intact enough to be reproduced. I’m sure forensicsts have some pretty advanced modeling technology that allows them to reconstruct the bullet markings from fragments.[/li][/ul]
Again, call up your local crime lab boys and offer them a couple of beers and a credit in trade for a tour and advice; they’ll give you more accurate and current advice than I can, and they might have a few other good ideas as well. I’m sure they’ll be happy to show off what they know to someone who’ll appreciate it.
That is news to me because every reference I have seen for 7.62mm ammunition used by US snipers specifies a 168 grain Sierra Match King hollow point boat tail bullet. This bullet is used by snipers and target shooters specifically because it is stable at long range. The most precision ammunition I have ever loaded was with these bullets.
Hollowpoint match rifle bullets are not to be confused with those designed to expand. There is no exposed lead, the jacket extends nearly to a point with a veyr tiny opening.
Normal FMJBT rifle bullets in cluding armor piercing have exposed lead at the base which isn’t uniformly finished and even minor imperfections can reduce precision.
The P9S is the one I was thinking of. I wanted one of those so bad back in the '80s!
I used to have an KH-91. (Sold it to get an FN-FAL, then sold that to get my first apartment.) I’m 95% sure it had regular rifling. I knew about the P9S at the time, and I’m pretty sure I looked down the bore of the HK-91 to see if it had poly rifiling and I’m pretty sure it didn’t.
As far as the SAR-8, the way I heard it is that the ‘hard parts’ – the barrel and the bolt assembly – were made by H&K in Germany and exported to Greece. The rest of the rifle was manufactured there, and assembly was done by Springfield Armory. No cite, just what I heard.
Okay, next question: How do I get a bullet that looks as if it went through a body and then hit gravel? I don’t know where to get ballistics gel. I thought I might rake the berm at the local range to clean out some of the old bullets. There’s a little gravel in the soil around here, so that should help. And raking the dirt would make it easier to see where the bullet hit so I could find it. I’m probably going for a little too much detail here, but I thought I should ask.
I’ll look for the 168 grain Sierra Match King hollow points. Do they sell them as rounds, or would I have to find someone with a die and press?
Sierra just sells bullets. Black Hills Ammunitio sells a .308 with a match hollowpoint but doesn’t specify bullet brand but I don’t think the difference would be apparent on a fired and damaged bullet.
Hey,Johnny, it appears all of your answers, so far are about the weaponry, I’ll interject a bit about the physiology. The bullet passing through the chest then hitting the gravel may be intact, depending on how deep the gravel is and what’s under it. If it hit a rib going in, it would be slowed slightly, and its direction changed. If it hit a rib going out, it could be shattered, deflected back into the chest and remain there, or it might exit at a tangent to the entrance wound. I know nothing about the specific gun, so I have to assume this is a high velocity round, right?
IANAFE, but I think it’s unrealistic to think the investigator could pinpoint the place from where the shot was fired. More realistically, the investigator could deduce a reasonably small range of angles, then check these and find just one place from which a sniper might plausibly have been operating.
I’ll stand corrected; as I said previously, my (secondhand) knowledge is somewhat out of date.
*Johnny, Remington loads the Sierra Match Point in their Premier Match round. Here’s a rec.guns newsgroup article about making ballistic gelatin; not hard, but time consuming. I’ve always used old phone books or newspaper, soaked in soapy water and tightly bound together, as a measure of relative penetration, though clearly you don’t get the visibility or simulation of the wound channel that you would with gelatin.
If you don’t want to go to all the trouble of firing and recovering a bullet, again talk to a local ballistics lab. They’ll no doubt have rejects from reference test articles, and may even be willing to set up and shoot the specific conditions. Remember, though, it’s not as if the film is going to show great detail of the bullet, even in closeup. It’ll be on screen for what, maybe a few dozen frames at most? I’m pretty particular about technical details and firearms in film, but as long as I see a bullet with actual rifling marks I’d be pretty satisfied. (I can’t enumerate how many times I’ve seen a “fired” bullet in film and on the televisor that looks like it just came out of the box.)
Oh, and if you want an example of all firearm- and sniper-related misconceptions to avoid, check out the movie Sniper with Tom Berenger and Billy Zane. From Berenger filing down the tips with a nail file to Zane taking perfect, motionless 500 yard shots from an out-of-control helicopter there isn’t one technical detail in this film that isn’t FUBAR. It’s even worse than Navy Seals in that regard.
If you’ve got two holes, you have a direct path. In Johnny’s scenerio, he can get the angle of incidence from the entry and exit wounds in the body (assuming the victim was standing up and the bullet didn’t deflect off of bone) and the position from the hole in the pavement, giving him a precise location of the shooter.
Much of the crap you see on those C.S.I. shows is vastly exaggerated, but a forensicist can often tease together the details of a scene from seemingly minimal information. Here are some links curtesy of the Association of Firearms and Tool Mark Examiners. This one and This one might be of particular interest to you. Here are more links.
