Didn’t the russians do this to? The GSh-6-30 was in theory catastrophically powerful being essentially a gargantuan flak cannon minnigun but had the unfortunate tendency to hit the firing aircraft with its own shrapnel… assuming the vibration from the gun didn’t literally shake the plan apart first.
I came across this years ago and I still love this section from the Wikipedia article.
The gun was noted for its high (often uncomfortable) vibration and extreme noise. The airframe vibration led to fatigue cracks in fuel tanks, numerous radio and avionics failures, the necessity of using runways with floodlights for night flights (as the landing lights on the plane would often be destroyed), tearing or jamming of the forward landing gear doors (leading to at least three crash landings), cracking of the reflector gunsight, an accidental jettisoning of the cockpit canopy and at least one case of the instrument panel falling off in flight. The weapons also dealt extensive collateral damage, as the sheer numbers of fragments from detonating shells was sufficient to damage aircraft flying within a 200-meter radius from the impact center, including the aircraft firing.
Different thing - shrapnel from exploding rounds vs hitting the actual bullets. Headline implies the plane ran into its own bullets by flying faster than them, but what happened was a single incident where a pilot fired a burst, did an high speed loop, and on the way down flew through the cloud of bullets - which had slowed down due to air friction, but the speeding plane flew through them faster than a bullet.
Didn’t the russians do this to? The GSh-6-30 was in theory catastrophically powerful being essentially a gargantuan flak cannon minnigun but had the unfortunate tendency to hit the firing aircraft with its own shrapnel… assuming the vibration from the gun didn’t literally shake the plan apart first.
I came across this years ago and I still love this section from the Wikipedia article.
My god that is a prize
Different thing - shrapnel from exploding rounds vs hitting the actual bullets. Headline implies the plane ran into its own bullets by flying faster than them, but what happened was a single incident where a pilot fired a burst, did an high speed loop, and on the way down flew through the cloud of bullets - which had slowed down due to air friction, but the speeding plane flew through them faster than a bullet.