From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 22/12/2025 2:40 am, Jeff Layman wrote:   
   > On 21/12/2025 05:08, Bill Sloman wrote:   
   >   
   >> This is roughly equivalent to insisting that petrol-engined car won't   
   >> catch fire if you shoot a bullet into the petrol tank.   
   >   
   > It won't catch fire. You can search for this yourself:   
   >   
   > bullet gasoline tank fire   
   >   
   > It's a myth, mainly as a result of many Hollywood movies showing cars   
   > exploding from a single bullet to the tank. Even multiple bullets fired   
   > into a tank won't cause the fuel to ignite. You need an incendiary   
   > bullet, and even then you might require more than one.   
      
   It's a bit more complicated than that. A half-full gas tank contains a   
   potentially flamable mixture of hydrocarbon vapour and air. There is   
   gear that extracts 99% pure nitrogen from air which you can use to   
   lightly pressurize the tank. Modern aircraft use it.   
      
   Operations research on WW2 bomber losses took a while to work that this   
   was a useful trick.   
      
   A single bullet may not always ignite a gas tank, but it happened often   
   enough over Germany in WW2 to take down quite a few bombers.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)