Comments by "geodkyt" (@geodkyt) on "Black Hawk Down: Randy Shughart's M14" video.

  1. "Icepicking" means the round zips straight through the rather without leaving much more than a wound than an ice pick would leave, because it doesn't yaw, expand, or fragment noticeably before exiting the target. M855 was perceived to be a poor terminal effect round, particularly in Somalia (where, to be fair, the targets were significantly thinner than comparatively beefier Europeans). The problem is that spitzer bullets do the majority of their damage because they yaw in an attempt to transition from an aerodynamically stable "pointy end first* to a hydrodynamically stable "blunt end first" (like a whale or a modern submarine). The usual result is a spitzer rifle bullet flips end for end twice, before ending up traveling "butt first" the rest of the way (and many bullets - like USGI 5.56x45mm "ball" ammo - mechanically fail and fragment when going through the stress of the first time they hit about 90° of yaw and are going sideways for a moment) ... but this takes time*. M855 was (at the time) widely regarded as being more stable in tissue than the earlier M193, and thus didn't yaw as quickly (not really true- it yaws about the same as M193 *when comparing the same impact velocity , but it is slightly slower than M193, especially when comparing an M16A1 with a 20" barrel to a 14.5" rifle shooting M855 - basically, the impact velocity of the M855 round frim.the carbine barrel is roughly the same as M193 from a 20" barrel shooting a target 75-100 meters farther away.
    18