If i had a normal hand-gun and shot it into the sky…how high would the bullet go?
I don’t own a gun but i wondered whether i would hypothetically be in any danger of accidentally hitting a (low-flying?) aeroplane…
The chance of it accidentally hitting an aeroplane you hadn’t noticed would seem rather small - it’s hard enough to get a bullet to hit something you are aiming at.
But if you stood below the end of a busy runway and fired lots of shots in the air, the chance of an accidental hit would increase a fair bit; there’s nothing to stop a bullet hitting a low-flying plane.
Despite the low risks, it’s probably still not a great idea to fire a gun into the air without a good reason to do so; even small risks should be avoided if they derive from pointless actions.
Thanks for your reply Mangetout but what I’d like to know is what distance a bullet would travel if shot vertically into the sky? (the plane part was the result of me pondering this question whilst looking out of a plane window).
According to wiki the escape velocity from Earth is 11,200 m/s and according to some other site the muzzle velocity on a USP .45 is 420.624 m/s so that sucker is coming back to Earth one way or another.
According to my calculations it would take about 43 seconds to reach it’s greatest height, which would be around 17,800m. Those figures sound pretty excessive to me so they could be wrong but hey, at least I had a shot at it (so to speak). If those figures are correct(ish) then I would say you certainly could hit a plane, though of course it’s highly unlikely. I would be more worried about where the bullet is going to land when it comes speeding back to Earth.
Just saw somewhere I went wrong, the greatest height would be more like 9,000m, the design ceiling of a 747 is quoted as around 13,700m so it wouldn’t hit one flying at maximum altitude but could on take-off/landing.
That is assuming my calculations are accurate of course.
So we’re talking about 9km eh?
That’s quite high.
Thanks for that Mittu! 
On a side note people have been killed during “Mexican fireworks” type celebrations, usually at New Year. Of course it would be very difficult to arrest someone for the crime unless you did tests on the all the guns used and the offending bullet.
I know you said you don’t own a gun but I think a good piece of advice when dealing with guns is: If you don’t know where the bullet is going to land, don’t pull the trigger
mittu that does seem very high. Are you taking the atmosphere and the drag it causes into account?
I cannot answer the question posed in the OP adequately, but I can explain why mittu is way off in his calculations. A .45 automatic round that has a muzzle velocity of 1,000 fps will diminish in velocity rapidly; at 50 yards it will be down to 938 fps and at 100 yards it will have slowed to 888 fps. Obviously, the bullet will decelerate even more rapidly from there. Cite.
The maximum range of a .45 ACP fired from a pistol is estimated at 1,600 yards. The effective range of such a round (ie, the range at which it could still cause sufficient damage to a target) is 100 yards. Cite.
I couldn’t agree more Mittu. The question itself was the combination of too many hours looking out of the window of a passenger plane and an over-active imagination.
No I didn’t do anything fancy like that, just assumed a vacuum. The numbers seemed very high to me as well which is why I was careful not to quote them as being fact and pointed out that they may not be correct. The equations I used are:
* Final velocity = initial velocity + (acceleration x time)
* Distance = (initial velocity x time) + (½ x acceleration x time²)
Of course the friction caused by something moving so fast would be considerable but I don’t know how you work that out as you would have to take into account the shape of the projectile.
I would also like to note that there is no way in hell that a .45 ACP is going to penetrate the fuselage of a plane enough to cause significant damage, even at point-blank. I doubt that even if the round were to hit a window at 25 yards that it would break through. Normal handguns (that is, a handgun that isn’t a single-shot, bolt-action, rifle-powered abomination) are, as Eddie Vedder would say, “a glorified version of a pellet-gun.”
What about a .44 Magnum round? In that case, the airplane was estimated to be a few hundred feet above ground level, and the round went through the window and injured the pilot.
I’m no firearms authority but I would love to see the source for these claims.
Anyone who thinks this is true is more than welcome to stand behind a sheet of glass and let me fire a .45 at them from 25 yards. I would recommend updating your will and life insurance first.
The skin of an airplane is thin aluminum. While I have never shot at one I’ll bet you a beer that a pistol round will punch right through at close range.
Your link requires registration, but I imagine that this was not a commericial aircraft. Nevertheless, I almost certainly overestimated the thickness of an aircraft window. I would like to point out, however, that a .44 mag is really big gun. Check out it’s muzzle velocity and foot-pounds of energy here.
The .44 magnum produces around 1,200 foot-pounds of energy vs. a .45 ACP’s ~330 foot-pounds. We’re getting into the range of rifle-power with a .44 mag. As I said, I cannot answer the OP’s original question very well, but I was under the impression he was talking about a centerfire semi-auto of average capability.
Am I correct in assuming that aircraft fuselage is thicker than a car door? If so, a .45ACP in my experience will not penetrate it. And yes, I have shot broken-down automobiles with mine.
I hope people aren’t getting too hung-up on the gun needing to be a .45 because of what I said. I only used the USP .45 in my post because I know squat about guns and that happens to be a gun used in a computer game I play. The OP didn’t specify what type of handgun should be used so it could equally be a Desert Eagle .50 which if the game I play is anywhere near accurate packs one hell of a punch.
Gah, sorry about that. It didn’t require registration when I got to it via Google News. Maybe this link will work. The airplane was a Cessna 150, and the bullet apparently went through one of the side windows (not the windshield). I doubt if any bullet would have problems going through these; I don’t think they’re particularly thick or strong. Likewise, the aircraft skin is, as far as I know, primarily designed for aerodynamic flow and (in pressurizable aircraft) supporting internal pressure and is thus pretty thin (Googling says 0.016-0.032" aluminum is common).
Aircraft skin is very thin.
The skin of the aircraft is for aeordynamics… other than that an airplane is just a spiderweb of hydraulic lines and wires.
If it were as thick and heavy as a car door the aircraft would use most of it’s available power just getting off the ground… forget about adding passengers and cargo.
A .45 round would penetrate the skin of an aircraft easily if it’s within range.
as far as the energy in a round if it’s shot in the air… I’ve never done the math but i GUESS that it won’t pack much of a punch past 1 or2 thousand feet depending on the angle.
Eh. Well, given the information on aircraft skins, I’ll retract my statement. For some reason, I was under the impression that they were far thicker than that on commercial airliners. Likewise, I assumed that the windows were made out of thick plastic so as not to allow them to be easily penetrated.
Thanks for making me feel that much less safe when flying 