What are the details of a .50 caliber, hollow point bullet?

Question

I'm in a forensic class, and I need all the relevent info on the bullet. How it works, what happens after impact (human and buildings), the works. The more specific, the better.

I need to know if it's an easily identifiable round after it's been shot. .50 AE Desert Eagle. With a semi-jacketed round. Maybe even Black Talon rounds. My teacher is asking us if we could identify a bullet shot from a .50 AE if it were in a body, in a wall, etc. If shot at close range, would it shatter, mushroom, what? And no, I don't sleep in class. This is just a hard question for me. Thanks so far for the answers, I hope I'm being specific enough.

Answer 1

.50 Desert Eagle, .50 BMG, muzzleloader...what? There's a big difference. I did see a picture of .50 BMG head shot once...not pretty! There was basically a face; the head behind it was gone!

Answer 2

The only hollow-point .50 I can think of at 5 in the morning is the .50 Caliber Action Express, a pistol bullet. I've never actually seen anyone shot with it but it should be way messier than the .44 Magnum. I imagine it would also defeat Level II-A body armor, or just kill from the traumatic impact.

Back in the Sixties I'd hear people say about the .50 BMG (fifty caliber heavy machinegun) that it was NOT an anti-personnel gun as it would always dismember or leave in two or more pieces even from a single hit. That was from the Viet Nam era, again, I've never seen anyone actually shot with a .50 BMG. That video that was making the rounds on-line showing a US Marine sniper with a .50 and a dead terrorist with the top half of his head gone, turned out to have been run over by a truck. If you look closely, the top of his head is gone and his legs are crushed and distance between injuries is consistant with the wheelbase of a truck. I thought that the head wound was too slight to have been inflicted by even an '06, much less a fifty.

Good luck with your forensics class.

H

Now that you specified .50 AE and whether or not the wound or hole in wall could be identified as such. The answer is, "Yes," a .50 AE can be identified by the entry wound or hole-diameter signature on a wall. I very seriously doubt that you would recover the spent bullet within a human body, but it would be easy enough to recognize from the diameter and bulk. The thing looks like its as big around as a US nickel!

H

Answer 3

If you want to move forwards from a terminal ballistics point of view, rather than backwards from a forensic point of view, you need to give a bit more information for a short, simple answer.
Lead hollowpoint bullets of perhaps 300 to 500 grains' weight will deform on impact if they hit something hard, but the hollow point is something of a moot point. They're typically launched by black powder at moderate velocity, and in human or animal tissue they'll cause the normal low-velocity type wound channel, but something that size doesn't need to expand (the purpose of the hollow point) to work, because it's so big to begin with. If it hits bone, it'll cause a lot of shattering and plough right through with little deflection in most cases.
There are a few 50 caliber handguns that shoot bullets of lead with a gilding-metal jacket. Typical would be the 50 Action Express with a 325 grain hollowpoint pushed to a velocity of 1000-1300 feet per second by modern smokeless propellants. They'll act very much like the solid lead bullet of the old-timers, but may sometimes separate the jacket from the core.
The big banger of the crowd is the 50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun) round, used in the historic M2 ("Ma Deuce") machine gun and now in the Barrett (and other) rifle by military snipers. It is a high-velocity round of considerably more weight and is better thought of as a small artillery piece than a personal weapon caliber in terms of its terminal performance. Temporary wound cavitation is massive, and it's capable of piercing light armor or chewing up concrete walls.
I think I'll quit there. If you work backwards from a forensic point of view, figuring which 50 cal. should be reasonably simple, and if you work forward from the gun, knowing which 50 caliber firearm you're talkin about, at least in general terms, will allow more specific answers without writing a book.

Answer 4

The 50 AE has a full jacket and none of the ones that I have seen have been frangible. It is an incredibly durable bullet. It would blow though a human body without much disfigurement at all. It would do the same to most residential walls.
They flatten when they impact heavy structural material to resemble a fat mushroom but (this is key) they do not open.

Answer 5

Do you mean 50 cal manum? 50 cal auto? 50 cal? various 50 cal machine gun and sniper rounds? or may be a 50 cal black powder rifle bullet?

Answer 6

do you mean .50GI, .50AE, S+W.500, .50BMG or some wildcat cartridge?

Answer 7

YOU SLEEP IN CLASS?