Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles

Rating:
Summary: I Want to Keep This Book
Review: Modern Exterior Ballistics
The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles.

I Want to Keep This Book. Thanks to the auspices of interlibrary loan, it's mine for three weeks. That's not enough. This book really has said everything there is to say about the subject, except for the classified data you would need to calculate trajectories of actual projectiles in the inventory.

Chap 1. A Brief History of Exterior Ballistics - nice shadowgrahs of near sonic and super sonic projectiles. Large drawings of several shell types showing how they are dimensioned.
Chap 2. Aerodynamic Forces and Moments Acting on Projectiles - you have to read this chapter if you are going to understand the symbols.
Chap 3. The Vacuum Trajectory-high school math with interesting examination of the effects of firing up hill or down hill.
Chap 4. Notes on Aerodynamic Drag - just what it says. There is a nice set of shadowgraphs showing a shell at successive mach numbers from sub sonic to transsonic to supersonic. Discussion of ogives, Meplats, burning tracer (provides a little thrust and more range), fins, and yaw.
Chap 5. The Flat-Fire Point Mass Trajectory-if you assume that the trajectory is fairly flat (such as with all small arms, rifles, and tank to tank combat), the effect of verticle motion of the down range motion can be neglected. Approximate the drag function by a simple (and useful) analytic function and you get some managable equations.
Chap 6. The Siacci Method for Flat-Fire Trajectories - More of the above, only the integrals are tabulated for several standard drag functions (about five pages for each drag function). Those tables plus pencil and paper and you too can calculate how far the 0.308 bullet travels and how fast it is going when it hits and at what angle it strikes.
Chap 7. The Effect of Wind on Flat-Fire Trajectories - head winds, tail winds, cross winds: pretty much what you would expect.
Chap 8. The Point-Mass Trajectory - the point mass doesn't yaw or pitch so we only have to worry about its three linear velocities. It only has to contend with the zero yaw drag function, air density, gravity and the Coriolis force. (These last three data sets are not classified). A 417 line basic program is included. With this you can calculate your rifle shots better than you can aim.
Chap 9. Six-Degrees-of-Freedom (6-DOF) and Modified Point-Mass Trajectories - The whole enchilada. Three linear velocities and three rotational velocities are considered. They are all coupled to each other by nonlinear functions, and the (ten or so) coefficients are functions of velocity and air density. Fascinating graphs of gyrating pitch and yaw of a 105mm projectile as it goes down range are included. Then come the modified point mass trajectories. This simplification allows some of the coefficients to be set to zero while still revealing considerable interesting behavior.
Chap 10. Linearized Pitching and Yawing Motion of Rotationally Symmetric Projectiles - ok, another simplification: assume that the pitching and yawing motions are small and linearize the functions. There is still a nasty differential equation, but you can (sort of) solve it and predict such things as the stability of the bullet as it goes down range without a numerical integration.
Chap 11. Linearized Swerving Motion of Rotationally Symmetric Projectiles - same idea as chapter 10, but applied to the position of the projectile's center of mass.
Chap 12. Lateral Throwoff and Aerodynamic Jump - what to do about unbalanced projectiles.
Chap 13. Nonlinear Aerodynamic Forces and Moments. - I don't know; I ran out of time.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Comprehensive Look at Ballistics to Date
Review: Mr. McCoy covers the fundamentals and the more esoteric theories of ballistics. I recommend this book to the layman, serious shooter, and engineer. Although there are some editorial errors (book was published after Mr. McCoy's death), the principles are sound and well presented. A must read for anyone interested in shooting long range or working in the field of ballistic design. Of particular interest is the 6-Degrees-of-Freedom.

Rating:
Summary: Superb book, but LOTS of typos and missing info
Review: This is ballistician's dream book. It describes all of the introductory and some advanced material pertaining to modern ballistics in wonderful detail, and the example problems are useful and illustrative. There is a wealth of information, such as drag coefficients and functions, form factors, and a beautiful derivation of the MPM yaw of repose that do not appear anywhere else in my experience. The experimental and computer generated plots are beautiful and informative.

Unfortunately, the book is also full of typographical and other errors, such as having the wrong variable in a place in several equations, having variables simply missing from equations or from an explanation in the text, having the wrong headings in some of the tables, repeating figure numbers on different figures, or even having multiple missing words in some explanatory paragraphs that make the sentences into hard to interpret giberish. Some of the citations,for instance in Chapter 9, do not appear in the Bibliography at all (Chapter 9 has references numbered up to 16 in the text, but only 10 appear in the Bibiolgraphy).

The bottom line: This is a GREAT BOOK if you are mathematically sound and don't mind deriving some of the equations yourself, and if you know enough to catch the errors and make the corrections. Don't get me wrong... I like the book a lot. It is well worth its price. Just be aware that you will have to work a little harder than usual to read and understand it.

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