Shooting Guns Underwater

We’ve been on something of a gun science kick recently, exploring the bizarre physics of quirky shotgun ammo. Today, we’re not going to talk about firing silly putty out of a shotgun, but we are going to strap on our metaphorical scuba gear and dive underwater. What happens when you fire a gun underwater?

Luckily, Vuurwapenblog touched on this topic and can give us some insight about how well H2O holds up against a bullet. Check out this video of a Glock 22 Gen 4 firing a Federal HST 165gr jacketed hollow point under water.

We knew that the water would stop a bullet eventually, but holy cow – the bullet doesn’t even make it off screen before coming to a halt. You can see it stop and slowly drift down near the left of the frame. What’s particularly interesting, though, is the funnel-like bubble that explodes out of the barrel.

And did you guys notice the noise? It sounded less like a gunshot and more like a distant explosion, or perhaps a thud of somebody dropping something heavy in another room.

Some of you might have caught the Mythbusters episode that tackled this same issue. They fired a variety of different guns into a pool of water. As it turns out, that old Hollywood myth that you can swim under a hail of gunfire is actually fairly true.

Some guns were able to punch through ballistics gel at depths of 10 feet, but strangely enough a .50 caliber bullet was stopped by just three feet of water at a 30-degree angle. Who would have guessed?

It’s too bad that the Mythbusters didn’t take a camera underwater to catch the effects. The bubble plume from the Glock was pretty impressive. What kind of neat visual effects would a .50 caliber bullet produce?

Luckily, there a few other YouTube videos of underwater guns to satisfy our curiosity. This video features slow motion footage of a few different handguns being fired underwater.

That one goes into some of the quirky physics of shooting a gun underwater. Ever hear of a toroidal vortex? You create one every time you fire a gun underwater.