Yeah, I ain’t afraid of snakes. Nor of Samuel Jackson. 
So not only are you cephalopodist, but you think that big-boned cephalopods are even less worthy than their slimmer counterparts.
See you in the pit, buster!
Well, yeah, but the crash was due to the loss of flight controls, not just decompression by itself.
Stranger
OK, so that would be Uncle Duke and… which three others?
Well, when they show that kind of anime as the in-flight movie, a squid’s gonna get frisky…
I reckon Dick Cheney would be one of them.
Are you Archie Bunker?
The idea that instant depressurization would cause planes to collapse originated with the story of the first commercial jet airliner, the deHavilland Comet. When, just a couple of years into its career, a couple of them fell out of the sky for no apparent reason, tests were done that suggested that it was an airframe failure due to decompression at a window, as noted in this aviation history site. Certainly, at the time that Goldfinger was being produced, just ten years later, it was “common knowledge.” However, as numerous other depressurization accidents have demonstrated, simple depressurization does not actually cause planes to break up if the cause of the depressurization does not include pieces of the plane hitting control surfaces or tearing out hydraulic lines or similar physical damage.
Wikipedia has a different take on the causes of those crashes, although the page is marked for a lack of citations.
But the loss of flight controls was due to the floor buckling due to the unequal pressure between the upper and lower part of the fuse. There were not enough vents between the upper and lower part of the fuse to prevent the floor from buckling.
On my good days! 
Here At What Altitude Does Altitude Start Being a Problem? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board is a thread with some more info on the topic.
Strictly speaking, the reason it failed was because (a) the door was not designed to operate in a failsafe manner, (b) the cables were routed, unprotected, in an area of potential hazard, and (c) the internal structure was not designed to withstand decompression. A similiar incident occured with the JAL 123 crash, though in this case the root failure wasn’t specifically design but a very poor, out-of-spec repair to a critical structural element.
Plus (from reading the article) it seems that correct latching of the door is dependent upon operator knowledge, which is a bad idea on anything simple enough that “any idiot can do it”, i.e. closing a hatch. “Make it difficult or make it foolproof” is a watchphrase in mechanical design (though they keep coming up with better fools, so that is a Sisyphusian task).
However, no single bullet puncture (or even a fusillade of small arms fire) is likely to cause this kind of structural damage without pre-existing failure, so in terms of the O.P.'s question, the answer is still no.
Stranger
Don’t you just hate it? Every time I see a giant squid in the preboarding area I just know it has the seat next to me.
Stranger I agree with you that the design of the door was shitty, I agree that having a complex design operated by morons is a bad idea. I agree that shooting at the squid in the next seat won’t cause a massive structural failure.
What I was responding to was your statement
Now maybe I am a more discerning flier than most, but I think I would notice the plane crashing due to the door blowing off. :eek:
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but in my mind the area of the door = a substantial amount of fuselage skin.
For an excellent book on this crash read The Last Nine Minutes by Moria Johnston.
The proximate cause was the door blowing off and subsequent decompression which caused the control lines to be severed, but if controls were still in place I don’t see any reason the decompression itself wouldn’t permit the plane to be flown and land safely. As an analogy, having the windshield fall inward won’t prevent you from driving, but if a chunk of it falls into the footwell and blocks the brake and accelerator petals, you’re in big trouble. From the cited Wikipedia article:*The section of the passenger cabin immediately above the door was sucked out of the open hatch and the control cables for the elevators, the rudder and the No. 2 engine (which were routed around the hatch) were severed. This left the crew unable to control those components and led directly to the accident.*However, I’m forced to acknowledge that the passengers who were in the failed floor section that was sucked out probably did notice, if but briefly, that they weren’t really getting the service one typically expects even in the economy section and were likely thinking of entering in a strongly worded complaint before the finality of the situation overtook them.
My essential point, and I’ll be the first to admit that it is pendantic, is that the underlying structure of the plane (its spine or bathtub, the wingbox, the rear vertical and/or horizontal stabilizers, engine mounts, and landing gear) are not themselves affected by the compression or lack thereof of the passinger compartment. Decompression, lacking attendance of any secondary complications, will not itself cause an aircraft to fly out of control, and decompression stemming from small arms fire is unlikely to cause a wholesale loss of pressure that would be considered ‘explosive’.
But you still shouldn’t play with popguns in the main cabin. For one, it disturbs the cephelopods.
Stranger
Just losing a cargo door in and of itself is not sufficient to cause a plane to crash, even with the resulting explosive decompression. Witness United Airlines Flight 811. Note that substantial damage was caused to the fuselage, including nine passengers being sucked out of the hole. Two engines were also lost and the flaps on one wing were also damaged. The crew was still able to execute an successful emergency landing with no further casualties.
I hate patio seating.
Tris
How large a hole is needed to seriously compromise cabin pressure, then?
I seem to recall some commentary here on the Dope, in the wake of last year’s Greek airliner crash caused by effects of losing cabin pressure, that there’s a period of one or two minutes for people to react and take corrective measures. And if they don’t, bad things happen.
I’m not saying that I doubt your estimate, Stranger, I’m just looking for some quantitative analysis, if you can point to it.
They’re all terrorists anyway. Why do you hate America?
The pressurisation system requires that air constantly be let out (while air from the engines is added to the cabin via the air-conditioning system.) There’re valves that regulate this. Something like a bullet hole is just going to cause those valves to close up a bit. I’m not sure just how big a hole you’d need to cause a problem though.