Anti-Aircraft Fire

Talking about people shooting at blimps got me to thinking about people shooting at aircraft with small arms. I remember hearing something about how small arms fire was ineffective against aircraft. This always seemed pretty thin to me, but then I've never been in a position to actually try it.

I remember hearing a story about a couple of guys who were goose hunting in Colorado one year. Normally, goose hunting is done with a shotgun. Hunters shoot at low altitude when the geese come in to land. These two guys had been sitting in a blind waiting for geese to come in and land in the field where they had deployed their decoys, but no geese came. They could see the geese flying overhead, but they were too high up to reach with a shotgun. I imagine anything over a couple hundred feet would be too far. So one of them pulled out a rifle and took aim on one of the high flying geese. They pulled their triggers together, one the rifle, the other the shotgun, hoping the sound of the shotgun would mask the crack of the rifle, which was, after all, illegal for goose hunting. And they got their goose. So you can hit flying objects with a rifle.

I was just reading a book about Iraq and they are flying a C-130 Hercules from Kuwait to Baghdad at altitude of 200 feet. They are flying that low so as to avoid small arms fire. Just before they land they go up to 500 feet to deploy flaps and landing gear. This would seem to be the most vulnerable portion of the flight, but as it is near the airport, possibly also the most secure. The flying at 200 feet doesn't make sense to me. Anyone with a gun who was ready should have been able to hit the plane. If they were flying at even 10,000 feet of altitude I would think they would be out of reach of small arms. Perhaps high speed and low altitude does not give people on the ground enough time to get ready. You hear the plane coming and think, "it's American Imperialists, where's my gun?" and zoom, the plane has come and gone. Also, if you were flying at a high altitude, it would take time to descend and you would be doing that over the Baghdad, in full sight of a city full of people with guns.

So I'm looking on the web for information and I come across this document:

THE TEST TECHNICAL RESEARCH OF SHOOTING PRECISION
ON ANTI-AIRCRAFT MACHINE GUN

from the:

23RD INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BALLISTICS
TARRAGONA, SPAIN 16-20 APRIL 2007

It's written by a couple of guys from China. The Chinese may not have stinger missiles, but they do have rifles and machine guns. Who said: "you don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have"? (It was Rumsfeld.)