A few years ago I did a series of posts where I fired a variety of common rifle and pistol rounds into a car to see what would penetrate  different parts of the body. Today, we did a little PM on a Barrett M82A1/XM107 and decided to fire some round into the same car to see what would happen. We used plain ball and armor piercing.

We all have hear about the 50s power and ability to make scrap metal out of some pretty heavy cover. I have also heard claims it will shoot  through the engine block.  So today we put it to the test.  We went the extra mile with it and even shot from only 25 yards.

I set a “Q” target on the back side of the car to simulate some one taking cover behind the engine  and also to show any round that would go through and what it would look like.

And then one in front for the aiming point.

As you can see in the picture, the AP round hit in the kill zone.   But it did not make it through the engine. Which also had been shot to pieces over the last few years anyway and was not in its best shape to begin with as can be seen in the picture.  Of course, ball did not even come close. and AP failed completely as well.   We did move the target more toward the front so the shot would not hit the engine and only rake through the front bumper and radiator.

Even as little as that barrel showed anything on the target. Mainly some shrapnel.

We did put some targets behind the car door and got spectacular results as expected.

Above picture shows opposite side door after AP had torn through the passenger side door and targets, then passed through drivers side door.  The damage is  impressive.   Of course that is no surprise since we fired four 690 grain armor piercing rounds through it.

With this limited test, in this limited environment of shooting from 25 yards showed the 50BMG even using AP certainly is not the ultimate weapon some may think it is.