Mythbusters Test Die Hard Stunt

Tidewater said:

Taking a brief moment from all the weightier stuff, Mythbusters tested whether a dude could tie a rope (or firehose) around himself, leap from a roof, and shoot out a window on a floor below before he crashed through it.
Bottom line, you can, with certain parameters (no more than two stories, and some form of braking mechanism to soften the whiplash).
The finished by having one of their guys actually do it, shooting a window with a pellet pistol and crashing through it.
Not a bad gig if you can get it.
Okay, back to the weightier matters.

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The Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-30 weighs half as much as the GAU-8 and has an even higher fire rate. Its thrust-to-weight ratio approaches 40, which means if you pointed one at the ground and fired, not only would it take off in a rapidly expanding spray of deadly metal fragments, but you would experience 40 gees of acceleration.

This is way too much. In fact, even when it was firmly mounted in an aircraft, the acceleration was a problem:

[T]he recoil … still had a tendency to inflict damage on the aircraft. The rate of fire was reduced to 4,000 rounds a minute but it didn't help much. Landing lights almost always broke after firing … Firing more than about 30 rounds in a burst was asking for trouble from overheating …

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Tidewater said:

If you watch an A-10 fire the gatling gun the aircraft's forward speed visible slows. A lot of mass going forward at a high speed. "An equal and opposite reaction" and all that.

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Tidewater said:

If you watch an A-10 fire the gatling gun the aircraft's forward speed visibly slows. A lot of mass going forward at a high speed. "An equal and opposite reaction" and all that.

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Tidewater said:

Looking at an A-10 from the front, you can see that they took the gun, put two wings on it, a couple of jet engines on it and a cockpit.

You can see that the front landing gear is offset to the starboard to make room for the gun.

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Tidewater said:

Looking at an A-10 from the front, you can see that they took the gun, put two wings on it, a couple of jet engines on it and a cockpit.

You can see that the front landing gear is offset to the starboard to make room for the gun.

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A first-hand account of the effectiveness of the bathtub against 57 mm rounds in a combat environment can be found here: Cradle of Aviation Museum (emphasis added):
Then we started inspecting the airplane. Later, they counted 378 holes in it. According to the frag lodged in the plane, we deduced that all four shells from a four-round clip of 57mm hit me. Two exploded and hit just behind the plane that got the tail feathers and the right engine, which had forty-five holes in it, it wasn't developing full power but was still running when I landed. The third round exploded underneath the right wing, which sustained the major part of the damage and cooked off the AIM-9. The fourth round probably exploded right in front up by the nose.

If it hadn't been for the titanium bathtub, I probably wouldn't be here. The right side below the cockpit had seventeen major holes in it and the bathtub had a lot of chinks in it. Think of that; seventeen major holes just below the cockpit and I didn't get a scratch! It has to be a rugged airplane to sustain that kind of damage. And five days later they had patched it with speed tape, changed the right flaps, aileron and speed brakes, and flew it back to Fahd. Then, after some work, they got it in shape and we flew it home.

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Tidewater said:

And Big Blue has been trying to kill it for a long time.

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