Automatics

[Bill Stewart]

At 12:46 AM 06/11/2001 -0700, Tim May replied:
>>Well said, but:
>>In _The Irish War_ there's a description of IRA improvised recoilless
>>'rifles' which, like their .mil-industrial analogues, toss an equal
>>mass out the back end.  The reacting countermass is a bunch of flakes
>>which dissipate the KE against the atmosphere.


>How this Irish makeshift recoilless rifle actually works is unknown to me,
>but the dissipation of KE by the chaff is not germane.
>The expulsions of some mass (M) at some velocity (V) is germane, as above,
>but not the way the mass behaves once it has been propelled backward.


The military recoilless rifles are more or less bazookas -
their objective is to fire a relatively large and usually explosive shell
to blow up tanks, trucks, and other big hard targets,
while still being conveniently portable.
I'm also puzzled by the "flakes" comments - rapidly expanding gasses
are plenty of reaction mass, though perhaps there's some sort of
wadding to provide increased gas pressure that gets flaked in
the explosion.