File talk:MH17 cockpit right window frame bullet holes.png

Sorry if I've seemed less than enthusiastic about this point so far. I'm not sure, and I see some people are keep wondering if these are just rivet holes. Until it's shown clearly they're not, ignorance plus reasonable caution will lead people to keep thinking that.. Petri, what do you think we're seeing here? I was never an expert and have gotten rusty, but I think there should be the rivets to hold the skeleton together, and a different set to hold the skin on. That looks like skin on part of this, with the primer visible. Actually, it's intact all across, isn't it? We should see one size of rivet only, mostly intact, a few on the left pulled free. And then there are these bigger holes that must be either shrapnel or bullets. One can just see how it could be bullets/rounds. Can we show how these are not possibly consistent with the type of shrapnel in question? --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:21, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I believe these are the holes the Canadian-Ukrainian chief of the OSCE mission called "machine gun like". If they had been over 20 mm the correct word to use would have been "autocannon". The holes on the left side are larger and they have been described as autocannon.


 * Despite the difference in size the two hole types could come from the same weapon. Here are some examples of 20 mm and 30 mm sabot rounds. I do not know why anyone would use armor piercing rounds like these for shooting down an airplane, but a Su-25 might typically carry a mix of HE and armor piercing rounds. As to why use a ground attack aircraft to shoot down airplanes? I don't know! Maybe the Interior Ministry and National Guard have access to Su-25s while the Su-27 fighters are in the hands of the professional military and air force. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 22:25, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. – This page lists Soviet / Russian 30 × 165mm ammunition. Type BPS "Kerner" / APDS-T is armor-piercing with a sabot, but it is only intended for ground based weapons. Airborne weapons use electrical priming, so the ammunition is not interchangeable. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 01:11, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * One comparison image, left side - "American’s first Boeing 777-300ER under assembly at Boeing Everett in 2012."


 * I've studied aircraft construction for some time from a hobby aircraft engineering viewpoint. The image has plenty of rivets showing - the small round disks and the neat small round holes of approx the same size. Typically 1/8"


 * The larger holes are not remnants of any rivets or bolts and indicate to me the were formed by very high velocity impacts - far higher than normal gunfire and more in line with shrapnel from an immediate explosion. Note, the image I uploaded of known shrapnel damage looks in part very much like gunfire, but isn't


 * [[File:Shrapnel_sample.png]]

--Charles Wood (talk) 07:07, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * You say the velocity is "far higher than normal gunfire." That includes a 30 mm autocannon of course, right? You did say that was shrapnel over at Forensics talk. A non-expert like me can think of hand grenades, and think shrapnel is all jagged, nut bullet-shaped. The images you posted of SA-11 warheads (the kind under discussion, as far as we know, right?) seem to have angular block shrapnel. (image 2 image 1) That could explain the picture above - I can see an angular object creating a circular dent in metal sheet. But to cut through the metal with a circular hole right through? Well, it looks like the Australian jet has that. The variation might be from mostly single shrapnel fragments in most spot, with unexpanded chunks hitting in other spot making the bigger holes? Maybe that's a pattern to look for. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:05, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Edit to add: a detail of the full-res colse-up to show the SA-11 shrapnel's texture --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:03, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * 30mm 'autocannon' have holes a minimum 30mm i.e. inch and a quarter. None of the holes in the image are anywhere near that big. In addition 30mm rounds usually fly at sub 1000 m/s (3000 feet per second) - around the same speed as a military bullet- i.e. fairly slow. If you are extremely imaginative the holes shown could be 30-cal i.e. 7.62mm or 0.3 inch. This is not any ammunition used by present military fighters and even then the bullets fly at sub 1000m/s speed.


 * Given the obvious high velocity impacts (cratering) a much better explanation is shrapnel from a very close high explosive warhead driving hypersonic particles through the panels - as shown in the reference image where hypersonic shrapnel presents as round 'bullet' holes in the target.
 * --Charles Wood (talk) 11:10, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I must say, that sounds like a pretty good counter-argument. I'm leaning away from the bullets theory. Another issue it had, besides looking bad, is sounding bad on the CVR and giving your coverup friends at the AAIB more to work with than they need, sowing minor resentment. --Caustic Logic (talk)


 * Charles, would you agree that whatever the holes are, the projectiles were coming in perpendicular to the skin? If so, the source of these must be in the quadrant defined by the upper frame of the right side window. We would thus be unlikely the see entry holes on the underside of the left side of the cockpit? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 23:22, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * For the record, we've moved on, I think, to seeing it as partly perpedicular, partly oblique, altogehter suggesting a blast from ahead, above, and to the left. --Caustic Logic (talk) 07:48, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I went back to the shrapnel "caliber" issue, as explained here. Tentative call - the blocks are something like 13 mm or about 0.5 inches square. Holes should be at least that size and not much bigger, usually. If the type shown here was the type used, I don't see much sticking together in larger chunks happening. It's all distinct iron blocks and pegs (which would make the really small marks). --Caustic Logic (talk) 07:48, 10 August 2014 (UTC)