Since he was decreasing in altitude (presumably at approximately a straight diagonal vector) and the bullets were traveling in an arc, I guess the linear distance travelled by the plane is less than that travelled by the bullets?
Either way, I think “out-ran” is appropriate here since the plane was necessarily ahead of the bullet on the horizontal plane since it was hit by the bullets.
He was going around 600 mph, fired the gun, then he dove down more and hit the afterburners to pick up speed and start leveling back out and was around 8 or 900 mph when he met up with his then, much slower than they were going bullets.
So he got faster and went low, while the bullets kept getting lower and slowing down from drag.
You don’t actually need to be ahead of them on the horizontal plane. The plane just needs to be able to cover the distance the bullet travels as it slows from drag before the bullet falls to the intercept point.
I was gonna say at least a portion of the plane had to be ahead of it unless it struck the very tip of the plane (which wouldn’t likely take it down).
But it is traveling at supersonic speeds. So yeah - the bullet could just be falling in front of the plane at that point and the plane could run into the bullet - so it’d be traveling faster than the bullet at that point, but the bullet would be in front of it. Weird lol
Since he was decreasing in altitude (presumably at approximately a straight diagonal vector) and the bullets were traveling in an arc, I guess the linear distance travelled by the plane is less than that travelled by the bullets?
Either way, I think “out-ran” is appropriate here since the plane was necessarily ahead of the bullet on the horizontal plane since it was hit by the bullets.
He was going around 600 mph, fired the gun, then he dove down more and hit the afterburners to pick up speed and start leveling back out and was around 8 or 900 mph when he met up with his then, much slower than they were going bullets.
So he got faster and went low, while the bullets kept getting lower and slowing down from drag.
You don’t actually need to be ahead of them on the horizontal plane. The plane just needs to be able to cover the distance the bullet travels as it slows from drag before the bullet falls to the intercept point.
I was gonna say at least a portion of the plane had to be ahead of it unless it struck the very tip of the plane (which wouldn’t likely take it down).
But it is traveling at supersonic speeds. So yeah - the bullet could just be falling in front of the plane at that point and the plane could run into the bullet - so it’d be traveling faster than the bullet at that point, but the bullet would be in front of it. Weird lol