Ricochets

[jimlongley]

Projectile shapes, distortion of the projectile by impact, and everything else notwithstanding consider this.

It would be a massive violation of the laws of physics for a bullet to strike the ground, rise some distance above it, and then travel parallel to it, or even "almost parallel." If the projectile bounced off the ground with some upward motion it would not stop that upward motion until gravitational acceleration defeated it, at that point it would travel parallel to the ground for some short period of time, and then it would begin to fall and thus travel less parallel to the ground until it made contact again.

Maybe this would be a good subject for "The Box O' Truth" perhaps with multiple paper targets behind the original object target to show the actual trajectory. How about a combined Mythbusters and Box O' Truth - COOL!

[txinvestigator]

I'd long ago heard the "parallel ricochet" tale, but I never saw it documented before. This is far from definitive, but it does show how the tale got started.

What I found interesting was the pistolcraft of the day. The "crouch/point" method was intriguing. All techniques shown were one-handed.

Kevin

Oh man, when my father went thru the Texas DPS academy in the mid '50's their combat shooting was done with the weak hand thumb tucked into the belt, standing bladed to the target strong side forward, tumb cocking the revolver, shooting arm locked, and you would breath, exhale, hold and fire.

They switched to the FBI crouch later too.