Lucky guys. Source: T-34 via Does the Armor of a Tank get degraded

Why?

Because protective armour plate can turn on you:

When it spawns a scab. Source: WORLD'S STRANGEST TANK SHELL | 76.2mm BR-350A | APHEBC Armour Piercing Simulation

Scabs are hot, fast, sharp and lethal.

So lethal that German artillery designers devoted a lot of resources to producing scabs:

And a lot of their alphabet. Source: after Does the Armor of a Tank get degraded

And they were successful:

Scab from HMS New Zealand's armour plate. Source: Spall - Wikipedia

Viewed from the side, HMS New Zealand's scab is a flattish cone. It's slightly thicker in the centre, feathering to a knife-like edge. The thin radial ridges are rips. They are where impact and blast forces ripped the armour plate apart around the sides of the cone.

Cone-shaped scabs can be explained with a simple diagram:

And simple math: bang = cone. Source: after A Study of the Ballistic Performance of Lightweight Armours Against Small Arms Ammunition

Curiously, scabs have a lot in common with certain meteorites:

Lafayette Meteorite, Indiana. Source: Meteorites and Ballistics, John S. Rinehart, Air Force Technical Report No. 8.

Actually, scabs have a lot in common with quite a lot of meteorites.

From Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, Oliver Cummings Farrington, 1915, p60:

the cone-shaped or conoid is the most common and typical. The cone of such forms is usually low in proportion to its breadth

Meteorite scientists don't blame artillery for creating cone-shaped meteorites.

They blame air-resistance.

From Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations:

The forms of meteorites seem to depend chiefly on the amount of shaping which they undergo in their passage through the earth's atmosphere.

The form is evidently due to the greater exposure of the forward corners of the falling meteorite to the heat and friction of the atmosphere. These corners, as represented in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 17), are worn away more rapidly than interior portions.

This is Fig 17:

Though it is a wind-up. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations

It explains 10-ton nickel-iron alloy cones like Morito:

Allegedly. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, Oliver Cummings Farrington, 1915, p57

It also explains why you shouldn't put your hand out of the window of a moving car. The wind will wear you hand away.

From the edges inward.

Allegedly.

Air resistance theory also tries to explain why Lafayette has radial streaks that look so like the radial rips on HMS New Zealand's scab.

And why other meteorites have them too. Like Algoma.

From Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, Farrington Oliver C., 1915, p69:

Its thickness varies from about one inch near the geometric center, to knife edges at several points.

a more remarkable feature is a complete series of radial furrows extending over the surface from the center outward. These are knife-like edges from one-fifth to one-tenth of a millimeter in width at the base, separated by furrows from one to two millimeters wide. The ridges are modified somewhat in their course by the structure... but in general pursue a rectilinear direction with a slight curve to the left.

Sadly, Algoma's more remarkable than photographable. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, p69

Air resistance theory doesn't have an explanation for bent edges like Algoma's

While the arms industry does:

When rips can't quite pull it off. Source: The effect of shear strength on the ballistic response of laminated composite plates

Does air-resistance theory have other holes?

One hole is that aerodynamics says trailing streamers from those molten former 'forward corners' should create lips around rear edges. For the same reason the back of a car gets as dirty as the front. You should see traces of slipstreamed meteorite in the photographs of Morito, Lafayette and Algoma.

But you don't.

There's an even bigger hole in air-resistance theory:

Oh God! He's brought out The Ring. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, p75

For scale, the hole is about 60 cm (2 ft) in diameter. It's big enough for most adults to squeeze through.

This nickel-iron alloy ring-cone is 124 cm (49 in) wide, about 25 cm (10 in) deep and despite being mostly air, weighs about as much as six or seven adults.

Curiously, this exotic nickel-iron alloy ring has more names than photographs. And also curiously, its names became less descriptive over time. What was the Signet Iron, the Ring meteorite and many other descriptive names became 'the Ainsa-Tucson Meteorite', then just 'the Tucson Meteorite'.

A name like 'the Tucson Meteorite' suggests it was a single meteorite.

In reality, it was one of two similarly sized nickel-iron alloy chunks found among many nickel-iron alloy chunks on a Mexican hillside.

Now an American hillside but the find-site remains the same:

Area of find-site of Tucson ring Meteorite

Key:

• Red area: Probable find area
• Blue marker: Likely find site

Back in 1861, Tucson's other nickel-iron alloy chunk had its own name: the Carleton-Tucson Meteorite.

Guess what it looked like.

From The Carleton-Tucson and Ainsa-Tucson Meteorite Masses, MW Ritter von Haidinger, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Classe, Band 61, 1870, p507:

It possesses "a flat, bowl-shaped or shield-shaped form"

Carleton-Tucson was a lot more interesting than that. Which may explain why you don't see photographs of it. And why you don't see photographs of its hard-to-explain micro-structures.

Both the Mexican and American public were once very familiar with how the two Tucson meteorites looked. Being the same length - 124 cm (4 ft) - both Tucson Ring and Tucson bowl were planted in the centre of Tucson for all to see. And use as beer bottle openers. And - officially - anvils.

Which meant the public were very familiar with their dimensions and their shapes. It is likely they were especially familiar with the Tucson Meteorite's distinctive ring shape.

Until 1860 and then 1862 when first the Tucson Meteorite and then the Carleton-Tucson meteorite disappeared into closed institutions. And while laboratories began poring over the two artefacts - especially the Carleton-Tucson artefact - meteorite experts began to spread strange stories among the public.

Austrian scientist WM Ritter von Haidinger stepped up first, explaining in 1870 how the Tucson Meteorite came to be ring shaped. This he did by perverting both logic and air-resistance theory.

From The Carleton-Tucson and Ainsa-Tucson Meteorite Masses, MW Ritter von Haidinger, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Classe, Band 61, 1870, p509:

Obviously, the iron must have been drilled through, starting with a small hole that became ever wider. Until balance was achieved.

And on page 512:

The Ainsa-Tucson meteoric iron ring offers an example of an iron plate that has been drilled by air resistance.

Recognising that a public familiar with manual labour, construction techniques and the resilience of their former beer bottle opener might be skeptical of "air-drilling", American meteorite expert Oliver Farrington steered Haidinger's theory away from the ridiculous toward the whimsical. Farrington proposed the Tucson Meteorite had previously contained a big stone that had fallen out.

Like an engagement ring that had lost its diamond.

And this is what today's public apparently believe. Especially the air resistance theories - the one that explains rings and the one that explains cones - despite the theories being utterly divorced from reality.

However, as with any divorce, it takes a third party to initiate the final break up.

That third party is the arms industry:

Introducing 'the Second Cone'. Source: A Study of the Ballistic Performance of Lightweight Armours Against Small Arms Ammunition

Almost all 'second cones' - technically: 'annular rings' - break up immediately after the first cone spalls away. They often crack into the long, curved shapes we associate with shrapnel.

Shapes like this:

M-21OF rocket shrapnel. Source: Shell fragment isolated - Dreamstime

And like this:

Kokstad meteorite. Source: The Meteorite Collection of the Imperial-Royal Natural History Court Museum on 1 May 1895, p283

And this:

Hex River Mounts meteorite. Source: The Meteorite Collection of the Imperial-Royal Natural History Court Museum on 1 May 1895, p292

The arms industry knows that jaw-shaped shrapnel is created when second cones fracture.

The meteorite industry also worked out a long time ago that jaw meteorites are created when, well, when ring meteorites fracture.

From Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich-königliche geologischen Reichsanstalt, Aristes Brezina, Nr. 15, Sitzung am 8. November 1887, p288:

Two other incomparably beautiful irons, of which one is complete and the other nearly complete, represent the final stage of bursting of a ring formation; these are the two South African irons: Kokstad, Griqualand East, found 1884, 43 kilograms heavy, and that of Hex River Mounts, Capland, found 1883, weighing 60 kilograms. Both [Kokstad and Hex River Mounts] allow, according to their form, the definite assumption that they are fragments of burst rings.

Brezina suspected 'the jaw-like Kokstad iron' had once been attached to this particular metal pretzel:

The utterly natural-looking Matatiele Meteorite. Annals of the South African Museum = Annale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Museum, p20

And that together they would have formed most of another hefty ring meteorite.

	Weight (kg)	Weight (lbs)
Matatiele	306.0	675
Kokstad	42.6	94
Total:	348.6	769

Brezina's suspicion sat unconfirmed until Vagn Buchwald published more evidence for it in 1975.

While appreciating what the Hex River Mounts and Kokstad meteorites may really have been, pay attention to another characteristic the Kokstad meteorite shares with many, many meteorites.

From Handbook of Iron Meteorites: Kokomo – La Caille, Vagn Buchwald, 1975:

It is difficult to understand these structural details, unless we imagine that shock melting occurred and caused a localised heat peak of short duration in the compressible sulfide phase, while only influencing the surroundings to a minor extent.

You don't have to imagine.

You don't have to understand.

You just have to watch the video at the top of the page.

A question worth asking is: did any meteorite experts ask any arms industry experts how these nickel-iron alloys might have acquired their 'shock melt' and 'localised heat peaks'?

Or how these nickel-iron alloys might have acquired their exotic shapes?

Or why so many events that dump nickel-iron alloy chunks on the ground sound like aerial warfare?

From Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, Oliver Cummings Farrington, 1915, p14:

At the fall of Tabory, Perm, Russia, August 30, 1847, a fiery mass appeared in a clear sky... Two or three minutes later, sounds like the firing of many cannon were heard.

And at Sokobanja, Serbia, October 13, 1877:

two explosions like salvos of artillery, accompanied by a brilliant display of light such as attends the bursting of shells... The noise lasted for some time and resembled the firing of musketry.

And at New Concord, Ohio, May 1, 1860:

a strange and terrible report in the heavens... followed by similar reports with such increasing rapidity that after reaching the number of twenty-two they were no longer distinct but became continuous and died away like distant thunder.

Well, yes, apparently the meteorite industry did ask the arms industry about these things.

You remember that divorce we talked about? About how, often, it takes a third party to initiate the final break up?

That's exactly what seems to have happened. The meteorite industry had a ring, the arms industry had money, one asked the other the question and before you know it, the two parties were in bed.

Or, more prosaically the meteorite industry shipped the Tucson Meteorite to the Smithsonian Museum. There, eventually, the Smithsonian's Assistant Director for meteorites John S. Rinehart trawled through his employer's exotic dowry and began publishing technical reports... under Air Force Contract AF18(600)-1596.

One of the reasons the public still doesn't associate meteorites with artillery, with scabs or with technologies like Composite Ceramic Armour is because publications like Rinehart's Meteorites and Ballistics weren't intended for the space-rock loving public.

They were intended for a different partner altogether.

Outside the bedroom door, the public are not privy to the intimate secrets of meteorites. Instead they are treated to labels like 'Iron meteorite', 'Stony-Iron meteorite' and 'Stony meteorite'.

In fact all categories of meteorite are either nickel-iron alloy or nickel-iron alloy with ceramic composites:

pie
title Iron Meteorite Composition
    "Metal (Fe-Ni)" : 95
    "Troilite & Accessories" : 5

pie
title Stony-Iron Meteorite Composition
"Metal" : 50
"Silicate" : 50

pie
title Stony Meteorite (H-group Chondrite) Composition
"Metal" : 17
"Silicate" : 83

They are very advanced technologies hidden under primitive labels.

Which is why the meteorite industry still uses Farrington's 'lost stone' theory to explain the curiously circular holes found in various nickel-iron alloy meteorites.

Like the curiously circular 70mm diameter hole in Matatiela above.

And the curiously circular hole in this fragment from Arizona:

219 lbs perforated Canyon Diablo fragment. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations

These aren't bullet holes. The Canyon Diablo fragment above is big. It weighs more than most men. These holes are the size of small artillery rounds.

Many meteorites show similar circular holes, cylinders and elliptical holes where part has split away. They support ear-witness accounts of artillery in the sky.

And yet some meteorites are much more advanced than armour plate and composite ceramic armours.

To help appreciate what they really are, ask yourself why you don't see photographs of the two Tucson Meteorites.

Haidinger claimed to have included a photograph of Carleton-Tucson in The Carleton-Tucson and Ainsa-Tucson Meteorite Masses. But no obvious photograph of it survived into the digital version.

If that doesn't tell you the Carleton-Tucson meteorite was a very, very interesting chunk of exotic nickel-iron alloy, then note the intense examination it underwent in multiple laboratories. For a summary of the results, try pages 460 to 467 in Farrington's 1915 work: Catalogue of the Meteorites of North America.

Descriptions of its interior talk of curved strands of olivine meeting at nodes. And of thin strips of metals weaving through its nickel-iron alloy substrate. These descriptions go beyond hinting that the Carleton-Tucson nickel-iron alloy was artificial. They hint at very specific, very advanced technologies.

It also seems the more complex the internal structure of a meteorite, the more chance it disappeared into a lab, dragging any existing photographs behind it.

For example, try finding imagery of these hyper-flexible metal laminates.

From Nativitas Tlaxcala:

many of the component plates were separating and falling away. Several hundred grams, among which were some very beautiful plates, were obtained when cleaning off the main mass for preservation.

The straight edges of these plates were separated by the usual thin, glistening plates of Taenite which in this meteorite appear unusually thin. These thin elastic sheets of Taenite had in some cases been loosened by oxidation in the disintegrated outer crust referred to above. And from the fragments which had been preserved I was able to pick out a number of good-sized samples which were used for a careful study of this interesting component of iron meteorites. The thin elastic sheets are of a brassy lustre, quite flexible, and possess sufficient elasticity so that they may be rolled into a cylinder and when released return to their original form. It is quite difficult to break them by bending unless the included angle is reduced to zero. They also possess great tensil strength. By measuring nineteen of them their thickness was determined to average .034 mm. ranging from .02 mm. to .08 mm.

Or try finding imagery of these parts of the Coahuila Iron.

From Neue Meteoriten des Kaiserlich-königliche naturhistorischen Hofmuseums, [Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich-königliche Geologischen Reichsanstalt Kaiserlich-königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt], Aristedes Brezina, 1867, p288:

it also had two curious iron cylinders as inclusions in the remaining iron.

Those two iron cylinders do sound very curious.

In Coahuila's case, Brezina hinted where the public might find something similar.

From Neue Meteoriten des Kaiserlich-königliche naturhistorischen Hofmuseums, [Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich-königliche Geologischen Reichsanstalt Kaiserlich-königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt], Aristedes Brezina, 1867, p288:

the magnificent iron of Babbs Mill in the form of a flat-pressed cigar, a former inclusion in a huge iron block (analogous to the small iron cylinders in Coahuila iron)

You will not easily find good photographs of the unnatural artefact retrieved in 1876 at Babb's Mill, Tennessee.

Babb's Mill meteorite. Source: Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, p74

and:

Babb's Mill meteorite. Source: Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien Naturhistorisches Museum, p297

It's probably one of the stones so often missing from meteorites, Oliver Farrington suggested.

You can confirm for yourself whether the Babb's Mill meteorite is a stone or an artefact. Just read the descriptions that managed to escape its various lab tests:

1. Catalogue of the meteorites of North America, to January 1, 1909, pp 41-44
2. Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien Naturhistorisches Museum, p297 (you'll need German)

Or you can simply let the meteorite industry laugh at you.

From Meteorites; their structure, composition, and terrestrial relations, p74:

[Blake, who originally found it, thought] this meteorite was a residual nodule of an irregularly shaped mass from which the irregular portions had been thrown off by terrestrial weathering, but it seems quite as likely that the form was acquired in falling.

That's right. To explain the Babb's Mill Meteorite's bizarre structure, Farrington simply palmed off the public with a third version of air-resistance theory.

Air-sanding.

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