The ``Pinocchio's nose'' effect

The long sleeve undershirt Chen wore on March 19 was much more elastic and resilient than his custom-made shirt. Therefore if impacted by the same round-nosed bullet, the threshold velocity for penetrating the undershirt is considerably higher than the threshold velocity for penetrating the shirt. Consequently whenever the undershirt is penetrated, the shirt must also be penetrated. The official evidence, that the undershirt was penetrated on exit, but the shirt was not, flies in the face of this fact.

Below is a short description of the setting of a part of the experiment conducted by Dr. Y's group, for reconstructing the damage pattern of the exit holes. A piece of the undershirt was placed 2 cm apart from a piece of the shirt. Recall that Chen's abdominal wound was located 3 cm below his navel and above his belt. So the exit hole on the undershirt was close to the belt. Consequently the shirt and the undershirt were not too loose in the area near the exit hole. The tensions of the fabrics used in the experiment were adjusted accordingly.

At the beginning of the experiment, it was noticed that either the bullet penetrated both layers of fabric, or it did not penetrate either one. The same pattern persisted for a while, as the impact velocity was adjusted to be closer and closer to the threshold velocity. When the impact velocity was very close to the threshold velocity, approximately 1-2 m/s less than the threshold velocity to be precise, a counter-intuitive pattern emerged. The bullet did not penetrate the undershirt, the first layer, but it penetrated the shirt, with a nose-like deformation⁵⁸ of the undershirt hanging over the hole on the shirt made by the projectile. The projectile itself sat inside the tip of the nose. More shots were fired, and the phenomenon was confirmed beyond any doubt.