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Yeah...but since the tumbling effect was mostly observed on strikes outside of a couple of hundred yards, doesn't it make it a rather moot point on close range soft targets? I read some VERY bad statistics recently compiled in Iraq by a USMC Gunnery Sgt with the 1st Battalion out of Camp Pendleton about 5.56mm performance. A LOT of enemy soldiers were simply getting up and either running away, or continuing to fight after being struck in vitals outside of 300 yards with the 5.56.

The stats were better inside of 300 yards. He came to the conslusion that you probably shouldn't shoot at a hostile with the M4 if he's over 400 yards away.

They interviewed prisoners and discovered direct, center mass 5.56mm hits that had been stopped by loaded AK-47 magazines, wallets in shirt pockets, books (pocket copies of the Quran), radios...etc.. Granted, all these strikes had occured at several hundred yards.

Strangely enough, they didn't get to interview any enemy combatant who had been struck by a Marine using an M-14.

Go figure. :-)

Yeah...but since the tumbling effect was mostly observed on strikes outside of a couple of hundred yards, doesn't it make it a rather moot point on close range soft targets?

The effect I was talking about was for pre-mass-production rifles with the 1-in-14 twist barrels, from the field evaluation period.

They increased the twist for production models in the 60's in order to improve accuracy. So they got a rifle that would more accurately put holes in paper at 300 yeads -- a range there the bullet has lost so much energy that it doesn't have enough knock-down power to be effective