If you ship it, we shoot it!

My friend C-4 sent me a note, "Hey O_P, I see guys with AK-47 mags carried in pouches on their chests. I wonder if that would really stop a bullet. I've got some old mags. You want to try them to see?"

What could I say? Sure!

This is a typical pic of a guy in the Sandbox wearing a chest pouch full of AK mags. This also happened in Viet Nam with the VC carrying mags in this manner.

They probably couldn't get quality body armor and felt that the mags might at least help stop a bullet.

Here's today's question: Will loaded rifle magazines provide any protection to the wearer from rifle fire?

This is the set-up.

We mounted a cross member on a backer board and tied the mag in place.

Turned out we didn't really need the paracord. The mag was loaded with Wolf 7.62 X 39 ammo.

We backed up at least 50 yards, as we weren't sure exactly what would happen and didn't want to be too close in case of bounce-back.

Here's Tman shooting his AR15 with a scope to help with careful shot placement.

He's shooting XM-193 Ball.

We were surprised that at the hit, there was an obvious fire in the mag for about 3 seconds.

You can see the scorch marks on the board.

The 5.56 had gone through the mag like a dose of salt.

A few of the rounds inside had cooked off.

Let's stop for a minute and discuss "cook off".

If a round of ammunition is not surrounded by a firearm chamber, but is set off, the powder begins to burn. But since it is not contained within a chamber, it quickly pushes the primer out or pushes the bullet out of the case. The powder then just "burns" and does not "explode". In all cases today, we saw many "cooked off" rounds, but no bullets left the magazine.
In some cases the primers were pushed out, and in one instance, we could plainly hear the primer "Pop".

This is the damage behind the mag.