AFTE Store - Bullet Entry Holes in Fabric: Fibers, Facts, and Fallacies

Common small arms projectiles passing through fabric often produce characteristics which can be used to distinguish entry from exit defects. The most reliable characteristic is the presence of “bullet wipe,” a carbonaceous and lead deposit surrounding the margin of the defect. Bullet wipe can be detected visually and/or with the use of a colorimetric reagent but there are cases in which bullet wipe is not detectable and other methods of analysis must be used. A bullet perforating fabric may generate a large number of severed fibers protruding in a common direction around the margin of the bullet hole. The direction of these fibers may or may not indicate the direction of bullet travel. In cases in which fabric alone is perforated, the fiber direction may indicate the bullet direction, but when fabric is backed by a human body, the fibers are subject to significant movement opposite the bullet’s direction of travel. Fibers may actually extend away from the body and back toward the source of the shot. While counter-intuitive, this phenomenon has been studied and documented through high speed videography. The same cloth or garment struck by the same type of bullet at comparable impact velocities while free-hanging or un-shored by soft tissue or a tissue simulant does not show this effect.