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This is just something I wanted to pass on concerning stopping power of the 7.62 round. I was talking to a friend of mine last night. He's a Vietnam Vet. I showed him my S12, and then the Arsenal SGL21-66. I was hesitant to show him the SGL21 or get into a discussion about it, because of his past history with an AK, but he insisted it was ok. He was shot 6 times and left for dead in the jungle, half of his left hand is gone, the other 5 rounds went through his legs and torso. The only reason I am posting this is because of the questions about the ballistics of various rounds have been discussed here on the board. He agrees he was very lucky the the full energy of the rounds weren't absorbed by his body because they went cleanly through him. His opinion of the 556 vs 7.62 is that for jungle conditions the 7.62 was superior because it was heavy, and a little slower, so it would punch through the jungle overgrowth and maintain a straighter line of trajectory. The 556 was light, fast and caused major tissue damage because it would tumble. Just thought you might want to know the thought of a Vietnam era Vet on the subject.

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The round sounds like a buzz-saw going past your ear and it WILL go straight through an S-Band RADAR array that you are fixing from 400+ Meters.

The next round that hits YOU in your Level 3 Armor in the non trauma plate area breaks 3 ribs. The next round hits you in the back between #5 and # 8 Thoracic vertebrae breaking several bones. You'll take several months to fully recover from the rib shot. Your back is porked forever.

 

The good news is that body armor saved your life.

The BETTER news is that the GIRL on the Coast Guard Cutter moored next to the landing craft you are on opens up with a 25mm chain gun and obliterates the sniper's position along with the entire story of the building the sniper was firing from.

She's barely 20, cute and visits you at Bethesda Medical.

Edited by Etek
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The human body is a very intricate piece of "machinery" capable of great - or very little - abuse.

 

There are many stories of people who have been shot upwards of a dozen times and lived. There are stories of people who have been thrown from a car in upwards of 100 MPH crashes - that get up and call a tow truck. There are stories of people trapped under earthquake rubble without food or water for 8 days and live to tell the tale.

 

And there's people who slip and fall on a patch of ice in a parking lot and die instantly. There's professional athletes that go to sleep and die of an aneurism.

 

It's an unpredictable thing. Sure, you can get an idea with pics/video of ballistics gel, or various bullet vs. car door tests, or autopsy photos, or number crunching of all sorts of velocities and weights.

 

But little of it matters in the real world if you look at the big picture. It doesn't help that marketing and hearsay has greatly warped how most people view various guns.

 

.223, 5.45, 7.62, .308, they'll kill just fine. Don't worry.

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7.62 is by modern military standards overkill.. If you read the story recently posted on this site about an iraq veteran who was unfortunate enough to be hit in the armpit and have it bounce around in him for a few seconds and destroy his internals/ paralize him from the waste down.. Reckon you'll understand the effectiveness. Let's be honest, it's a .308 with a little less powder.. it's an extremely effective round (and I'm not just biased towards what I own, I own a bunch of saigas in a bunch of lower calibers and the 7.62 is the one I'd put my life on.. or the .308)

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FWIW...

 

Back in the day... military rounds were designed with full metal jackets and solid cores to pass through soft tissue without creating gaping wounds ( obviously if they hit bones, this will happen) The point being this... one dead soldier is left on the battlefield... a WOUNDED soldier requires assistance to be removed from the battlefield to a medical post... you have now effectively removed MULTIPLE enemy combatants from the battlefield albeit temporarily...

If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

If they wanted to kill enemy combatants, they would be using bullets made to mushroom and create HUGE gaping wound channels as you will find with normal hunting style rounds.

 

 

I am not saying a military round cannot do just that, just the reasoning WHY they made them the way they did back when...

 

 

:smoke:

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The 556 was light, fast and caused major tissue damage because it would tumble. Just thought you might want to know the thought of a Vietnam era Vet on the subject.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you get away from FMJ, 7.62x39 creates more damage than 5.56.

For some AK clones that can't utilize hollow points, either a better bullet

guide installed or plastic tip ammo like nosler ballistic tip or hornady vmax will feed like FMJ

, but expand fast enough that it may not even exit a human torso.

 

I recently made a comparitive video that sort of illustrates how cleanly a 7.62x39 FMJ can pass through water which should cause it to tumble

faster than human tissue because water is denser than human tissue. The whole concept of tumbling is based on the fact that if a bullet

hits some matter that is denser than what its spiraling from the barrel's rifling twist provides stability for then the sudden instability

results in loss of spiral which translates to uncontrolled tumbling.

All 4 shots in the video are 7.62x39.

Only the first shot in this video is FMJ.

 

In FMJ 5.56 has an advantage in that it tumbles, where a 30 caliber round usually does not.

This, however, is limited to FMJ apple to apple comparision. The average person has no obligation

to abide by worldwide warefare conventions. I am not saying FMJ is not lethal but obviously less lethal than

a well designed hollow point, softpoint, plastic tip, or even a segmented bullet like the quick shok design.

7.62x39 is inherently more lethal/damaging than 5.56/.223 its just a matter of letting the bullet actually

open up upon impact and work. Had the taliban fighters back in the 1980s seen russians shooting at them with

7.62x39 that really opened up instead of FMJ there would not be a poison bullet story to tell instead it might be more like

exploding heads and chest cavity bullets. Those damm warefare conventions.

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FWIW...

 

Back in the day... military rounds were designed with full metal jackets and solid cores to pass through soft tissue without creating gaping wounds ( obviously if they hit bones, this will happen) The point being this... one dead soldier is left on the battlefield... a WOUNDED soldier requires assistance to be removed from the battlefield to a medical post... you have now effectively removed MULTIPLE enemy combatants from the battlefield albeit temporarily...

If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

If they wanted to kill enemy combatants, they would be using bullets made to mushroom and create HUGE gaping wound channels as you will find with normal hunting style rounds.

 

 

I am not saying a military round cannot do just that, just the reasoning WHY they made them the way they did back when...

 

 

:smoke:

 

Beat me to it by 17 minutes.

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If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

 

 

 

:smoke:

 

and this is why I hate modern politics..

 

If your going to fight and kill people, please do it considerately! what the fuck.. like our enemies care

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If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

 

 

 

:smoke:

 

and this is why I hate modern politics..

 

If your going to fight and kill people, please do it considerately! what the fuck.. like our enemies care

Actually it was the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Not so modern as you might think.

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Something else to consider is that all modern 7.62x39 is designed with a hollow cavity in the tip like yugo m67. which does induce yaw and tumbling similar to the 5.45x39. The rounds that were being used in Vietnam were solid core I believe, so the reports how the 7.62x39 preformed in that era does not really correlate to the modern ammo that we shoot.

 

In my opinion (based and research and limited personal experience) the 7.62x39 has a huge advantage in penetration of cover/objects, and a smaller but significant advantage on living tissue (FMJ). I kinda think if you use HP/SP/BT ammo instead of FMJ you are reducing one of the key strengths of the 7.62x39, it's ability to penetrate cover. My approach is unless you have a specific mission that will be better served using expanding 7.62x39 ammo, use FMJ. After all if the situation is that bad as in combat, you probably need all the penetration you can get, think shooting through cover, body armor, vests/mags/weapon/limbs covering your enemy's body, and vehicles etc.

 

Modern 7.62x39 FJM is more than enough to knock a 'soft' target on it's ass, so why up the knock down up from 'more than enough' to 'exceptionally devastating' at the expense of reducing penetration? Maybe for hunting or home defense where you want to reduce the penetration of the round, but not for combat type use.

 

My 2cents.

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sounds like he was hit with a burst of fire,kind of spray and pray thing.A normal shooting in a combat zone.Had he been hit with aimed fire in the chest he would most likely not lived.That round is will kill deer at 200 yds no problem .I have shot them with one shot kills at that range.That round is close to a 30-30.Even with the FMJ its going over 2000 FPS and hits hard!

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If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

 

 

 

:smoke:

 

and this is why I hate modern politics..

 

If your going to fight and kill people, please do it considerately! what the fuck.. like our enemies care

And for crying out loud you better not do it with a Bible verse on your rifle because you might offend them....

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...Had the taliban fighters back in the 1980s seen russians shooting at them with

7.62x39 that really opened up instead of FMJ there would not be a poison bullet story to tell instead it might be more like

exploding heads and chest cavity bullets. Those damm warefare conventions.

 

The vast majority of Soviet soldiers were using AK-74s in that war and the "poison bullet" was the 5.45x39.

 

I agree with the rest of your post. :up: JHP 7.62x39 tears targets up.

Edited by post-apocalyptic
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[quote name=my762buzz' date='23 January 2010 - 05:37 PM'

 

 

 

timestamp='1264293330' post='462246]

...Had the taliban fighters back in the 1980s seen russians shooting at them with

7.62x39

[i agree with the rest of your post. :up: JHP 7.62x39 tears targets up.

Had implies if they would have. But we all know the 5.45 was in use at that point. Edited by my762buzz
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FWIW...

 

Back in the day... military rounds were designed with full metal jackets and solid cores to pass through soft tissue without creating gaping wounds ( obviously if they hit bones, this will happen) The point being this... one dead soldier is left on the battlefield... a WOUNDED soldier requires assistance to be removed from the battlefield to a medical post... you have now effectively removed MULTIPLE enemy combatants from the battlefield albeit temporarily...

If I am not mistaken the Geneva convention defined such bullets accordingly...

If they wanted to kill enemy combatants, they would be using bullets made to mushroom and create HUGE gaping wound channels as you will find with normal hunting style rounds.

 

 

I am not saying a military round cannot do just that, just the reasoning WHY they made them the way they did back when...

 

 

:smoke:

 

The Geneva Conventions are commonly cited as defining acceptable and unacceptable projectile design. That's incorrect, though.

 

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Geneva Conventions comprise rules that apply in times of armed conflict and seek to protect people who are not or are no longer taking part in hostilities, for example:

 

wounded or sick fighters

prisoners of war

civilians

medical and religious personnel

 

Its actually the Hague Convention of 1899, particularly Declaration III, which lays out the rules of using non-expanding versus expanding ammunition in war:

 

Declaration on the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body

 

I can't comment on how truthful it is, but I've read many sources that say at the time (1899), the common thought among academics, and law-makers was that expanding ammunition was more lethal, while causing greater pain/suffering for the recipient. So by that rationale, expanding ammunition was deemed less "humane" than non-expanding (ball) ammunition.

 

SS190 and 8m3 round designs seem to be effective work-arounds to Declaration III, IMHO.

 

What's ironic is modern hunters are barred from using anything other than expanding ammunition, because ball ammo has a greater likelihood of causing more suffering for the game harvested. Makes you wonder what the Hague guys were thinking.

 

To the OP: Great topic.

Edited by Kevin in Texas
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...

What's ironic is modern hunters are barred from using anything other than expanding ammunition, because ball ammo has a greater likelihood of causing more suffering for the game harvested. Makes you wonder what the Hague guys were thinking.

 

To the OP: Great topic.

 

At the time (1899) high velocity powders (cordite) and jacketed bullets were just coming into wide use. While mini-balls before that time often deformed on penetration their velocity was so low as to have little shock effect on the wound channel. Consider that the 303 British was introduced in the 1880s (IIRC) and the 7.62X54R was of course used in the 1891 Mosin Nagant. Before Hague the British at least were using hollow points and cordite in their empire with devastating effect. I imagine people were horrified at the nature of the wounds but it is more the ever increasing projectile velocity that is more to blame in my opinion.

 

Hague is outdated but who wants to be the first to propose eliminating this rule in a "peace loving" world?

 

Yes, thanks OP for a good thread.

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At the time (1899) high velocity powders (cordite) and jacketed bullets were just coming into wide use. While mini-balls before that time often deformed on penetration their velocity was so low as to have little shock effect on the wound channel. Consider that the 303 British was introduced in the 1880s (IIRC) and the 7.62X54R was of course used in the 1891 Mosin Nagant. Before Hague the British at least were using hollow points and cordite in their empire with devastating effect. I imagine people were horrified at the nature of the wounds but it is more the ever increasing projectile velocity that is more to blame in my opinion.

 

Hague is outdated but who wants to be the first to propose eliminating this rule in a "peace loving" world?

 

Yes, thanks OP for a good thread.

 

All of that makes sense. And I agree that velocity plays a large part in wounding potential.

 

Hague does seem outdated with regards to present-day warfare and armaments.

Edited by Kevin in Texas
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...Had the taliban fighters back in the 1980s seen russians shooting at them with

7.62x39 that really opened up instead of FMJ there would not be a poison bullet story to tell instead it might be more like

exploding heads and chest cavity bullets. Those damm warefare conventions.

 

The vast majority of Soviet soldiers were using AK-74s in that war and the "poison bullet" was the 5.45x39.

 

I agree with the rest of your post. :up: JHP 7.62x39 tears targets up.

 

You see, the term "poison bullet" doesn't really sound that intimidating to me. Mind you I'm not saying that I'd like to be hit with a 5.45x39, but think about it. Poison kills you over time. The 5.45x39 could be pumped into someone and leave extensive wounded tissue through the body, to which they would generally die after the battle was done. This was the poison part- you survive the bite only to die hours later.

 

Now, shoot someone with multiple bullets and they'll definitely go down, but I'd prefer the option of having to shoot a target with less bullets. The 45 ACP was known as the "knock em' on their ass dead bullet" because that's what it did- if you need to reach out and shoot something in the far distance, go 5.45, but if you want significant stopping power within 200 yards go with 7.62 (especially with those HPs). That 5.45 sure is great for cheap plinking though...

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This is an interesting thread. From what I have read and talked about in the past, HP seem to be the smarter choice these days for the military because it wont penetrate light to heavy cover(keeping innocents in urban environments that are hiding safer) and if it does hit the enemy it will most likely be a kill shot, not wounding them until they eventually die from the wound anyway.

 

 

However I use FMJ only, because like Krom said, you can't penetrate cover with HP and I would rather be able to shoot through cover than have instant death for the enemy.

 

Cool video smiley

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The main difference between a russian 7.62x39 FMJ and a russian 7.62x39 HP is a pin hole at the front with maybe the possibility of having

a slightly less dense lead/other metal mix in certain hollow points. US domestic hollow points and soft points are much more different than

the russian versions. In the past 10 years I have not seen one documented case of 7.62x39 passing through level 3 or 4 armor which has ballistic plates.

On the other hand, I have yet to see one report where 7.62x39 did not fully penetrate level 3 A armor which does not have plates and is only meant to stop handgun bullets.

All versions (fmj,hp,sp) 7.62x39 will pass through level 3 A. There was some guy on rimfire central years ago that proved that .22 magnum from a handgun with a decent length barrel

can penetrate level 3 A. Level 3 and 4 stops all forms of 7.62x39 even steel core. Also, there is a big difference between real armor piercing tungsten bullets which have not been

legal to manufacture for decades and the mild steel core chinese bullets of years past. And 6 inch sand bags seems to stop virtually most any round with maybe the exception of .338 Lapua,

.408, or .50 BMG. Box o truth did a sand test and came to the same conclusion that the military has for imploying the use of sand bags.

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot7.htm

I have shot plenty of pine and oak trees from 8 to 25 inches wide with both 7.62x39 fmj and HP. The trees served as a back stop to my paper targets. Any given tree that showed an exit hole for FMJ also had one for HP. A few years ago I shot iron weight lifting plates with both 7.62x39 fmj and hp and neither type made it through my 25 or 45 lb plates but both fmj and hp punched through the same thickness of plates fairly equally.I might be missing something in the practical application of FMJ but unless I see where russian fmj passes further into any given material(with the exception of water based media which is not really much of a form of cover) than russian hp then I personally will not be convinced.

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The main difference between a russian 7.62x39 FMJ and a russian 7.62x39 HP is a pin hole at the front with maybe the possibility of having

a slightly less dense lead/other metal mix in certain hollow points. US domestic hollow points and soft points are much more different than

the russian versions. In the past 10 years I have not seen one documented case of 7.62x39 passing through level 3 or 4 armor which has ballistic plates.

On the other hand, I have yet to see one report where 7.62x39 did not fully penetrate level 3 A armor which does not have plates and is only meant to stop handgun bullets.

All versions (fmj,hp,sp) 7.62x39 will pass through level 3 A. There was some guy on rimfire central years ago that proved that .22 magnum from a handgun with a decent length barrel

can penetrate level 3 A. Level 3 and 4 stops all forms of 7.62x39 even steel core. Also, there is a big difference between real armor piercing tungsten bullets which have not been

legal to manufacture for decades and the mild steel core chinese bullets of years past. And 6 inch sand bags seems to stop virtually most any round with maybe the exception of .338 Lapua,

.408, or .50 BMG. Box o truth did a sand test and came to the same conclusion that the military has for imploying the use of sand bags.

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot7.htm

I have shot plenty of pine and oak trees from 8 to 25 inches wide with both 7.62x39 fmj and HP. The trees served as a back stop to my paper targets. Any given tree that showed an exit hole for FMJ also had one for HP. A few years ago I shot iron weight lifting plates with both 7.62x39 fmj and hp and neither type made it through my 25 or 45 lb plates but both fmj and hp punched through the same thickness of plates fairly equally.I might be missing something in the practical application of FMJ but unless I see where russian fmj passes further into any given material(with the exception of water based media which is not really much of a form of cover) than russian hp then I personally will not be convinced.

 

 

Good point, I personally I don't have much experience with Russian HP ammo. I do have a bit with FMJ and I know that FMJ's penetrate a variety of cover very well. Since Russian HP's are a very similar construction to FMJ's they could offer a good blend of expansion/fragmentation and cover penetration. But it's only logical that the more a round expands/frags the less it will penetrate cover. I still believe that FMJ's have plenty of ass behind it.

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