854 



Popular Science Monthly 



BULLET TRAVELS 



lOOO' YARDS 



SOUND [^SECONDS 

 BEHIND BULLET 



mingled with the irregular crashing of 

 the bullets — a. high-pitched whine, with 

 an occasional vicious yowl punctuating 

 the noise. This came from the ricochet- 

 ting bullets, striking the ground short 

 of the target and then glancing off and 

 pursuing their erratic course through 

 the air, their velocity much diminished, 

 their travel changed to an end-over-end 

 whirl, and the bullets themselves defaced 

 and battered by the impact with the 

 ground. 



Back of the target the bullets passing 

 through it went into the waters of the 

 lake several hundred yards out, with 

 the noise of heavy blows, almost as 

 hollow and heavy as the impact of a 

 well-swung carpet beater on a huge, 

 loose carpet. Almost the same sound 

 comes when a bullet strikes flesh, human 

 or otherwise. 



Normally the sound of the progress of 

 the modern military bullet up to nearly, 

 a mile, is the high-pitched, ear-splitting 

 vicious crash. At longer ranges it hums, 

 probably from an increasingly unsteady 

 flight. Or possibly it hums all the time, 

 but the sound is killed by the vicious 

 crash that accompanies the bullet while 

 it is traveling fast. 



Under some conditions of air and 

 background, not yet clear to me, bullets 

 hiss. The sound is noticeable at the 

 skirmish, on the six hundred yard range 

 at Camp Perry, and at the great matches. 

 It is never heard at the range of the 

 writer's club, situated in the hills with 

 every chance for sound to be echoed 

 back and reproduced, nor has the writer 

 heard it on any other range. However, 

 this hissing noise is audible only at the 

 firing point. Trial out along the flight 

 of the bullets developed that either they 

 did not hiss to the person so located or 

 else the hiss was covered up by the 

 usual crash, which amounts to the same 

 thing in the end. 



Never do bullets howl unless they 

 have been tipped out of normal flight 

 by striking some obstacle. The howl 

 is merely the noise of a more or less 

 jagged missile whirling end-over-end, 

 while the normal bullet, traveling nor- 



Sound is slower than a bullet. Bullet crash 



and rifle report are heard one after the other. 



The crash is due to air rushing in to fill the 



vacuum behind the bullet 



