Originally Posted by
Baldeep Inminj
Almost correct! I am a keen marksman and hunter (I live in North America so given that everyone aged 3 and up has guns where I live, I thought I should as well), and I am now schooled in firearms in a way I never was in the military. (An aside - I joined a gun club here and the instructor is ex US Marines Sniper and taught me about a 100 things about marksmanship that I never heard in 30 years in the UK military...just saying). You are just about there in your statement. To explain, the saying apparently comes from British Servicemen in WWI, who got hit and said 'I never heard the bullet'. It became a 'thing' - 'you never hear the one that get's you'. They were actually referring to the 'bang' of the shot. This is of course because bullets/rounds from almost all weapons travel considerably faster than the speed of sound, so the bullet that hits you does so before the sound reaches you, and the initial trauma of being hit probably dulls the senses enought that the sound a few seconds (or whatever) later is not registered. Equally, if you hear the 'bang' and have not been hit, the bullet has long gone past you.
Applying my knowledge of physics to the way people die is not something I dreamed of doing as a child.
Bit of a difference there between direct fire rifle rounds that generally are supersonic when they pass or hit (pass close enough and you get a supersonic crack) and arty rounds that generally never break the sound barrier as you don't want to deal with the transonic region that will destabilize the round.