Ok..now i am really really puzzled...
the 22 years of working in an industry where high pressure flasks were present suggests that putting any kind of hole in any high pressure flask is a definite no-no. even the low (low?) pressure flasks for firemen in their scba set ups are treated with quite a bit of respect by their wearers.
I agree holes in high pressure vessals are a
no-no. High pressure is considered over 500lbs, this includes scuba and firemans breathing apparatus.
a military round in WW II wasnt anything to sneeze at. this ammo was designed to bring down aircraft. the german cannon rounds even had explosive heads.
do you think for one second if you shot at a high pressure cylinder that something nasty wasnt going to happen?
http://www.spirig.org/fileadmin/media/pdf/IT2SF_Gas_storage_detonation.pdf heres a link to a accident that happened with high pressure bottles. now, all this bottle did was torpedo. 200 meters. thats a lot of energy. and this was just a bursting accident. it wasnt mechanically brought on.
Do you think for one second that a fighter shooting at another plane did not expect something nasty to happen?
the shark in jaws wasnt blown up by a shot at tank exploding. the shark blew up because a charge on the tank from a special effects man liberated all the gas (air) stored at 4500 pound per square inch at once. its quite a release of energy.
"the shark in jaws wasnt blown up by a shot at tank exploding."
That is what the scene was. (Special effects are supposed to be spectacular not necessarily accurate to real life)
It was supposed to be a scuba tank cylinder.
It was not a 4500lb charged cylinder it was a
special effect to look like a high pressure cylinder. A Scuba tank is normally charged to no more than 1800lbs. And the cylinder was not a real charged scuba tank. Special effects people maybe crazy, but we are not stupid. Plus the fact that the safety of everyone on a set is paramount. (If we kill the stars the movie stops shooting and we loose our jobs.)
now imagine all that gas in a tank, trying to escape in an aircraft. if the flask only torpedoed, it would just punch through the side and go out the side of the aircraft. if they werent lucky, then it might burst and release all the gas at once. ever over inflated a ballon with high pressure air? although most aircraft in WWII werent pressurized, the holes in the fusalage wouldnt be big enough to allow all that expansion to be released gently...something else would blow.
You miss the whole point. A fighter was shooting at the plane to bring it down. It wasn't shooting at bombs. What the fighter hit to destroy the plane did not matter.
Since the topic is about fuel/air bombs, it should be noted that the
first test of a fuel/air bomb was done by the Germans in 1944. By then they had no time to get it into production and no delivery systems left to use it.
Just for information having worked in the special effects industry for years I am perfectly aware of how most effects are accomplished.
Cylinders having their valves broken off can torpedo.
Cylinders properly restrained will go no where. Bombs in bomb bays are restrained until released.