2012
Lucien C. Haag
Buffalo, NY
Certain terminal ballistic events at shooting scenes result in situations where no recognizable bullets or bullet fragments survive despite obvious bullet damage at the scene. This is a consequence of the very high decelerative forces exerted on bullets that encounter hard, unyielding surfaces during essentially orthogonal impacts. This can occur with both jacketed bullets possessing lead cores and plain lead bullets. Caliber and bullet weight are not a factor in the outcome; lead air rifle pellets through .50 caliber lead bullets all performed similarly once the impact velocity exceeded approximately 600 feet per second. A frame by frame study of bullet impacts with a hard, unyielding target via high speed videography allowed the average decelerative force acting on each bullet to be calculated.