Reply #18: Yes, and they were used against armored targets

[Vladimir]

which a civilian plane is not. A P47 could take out decently armored ground targets, of course a bolt action rifle cannot do this - but civilian planes are completely unarmored. If you hit the fuel tank directly, with an incindiary round, and without any mechanisms to stop the fuel from igniting, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to blow it up. In any case, even with a bolt action rifle you could get off more than one round before the plane was evacuated. Seeing as most of the rifles, whether bolt action or semi-automatic, come with 5 or 10 round clips, I really do not understand what you find so implausible about this.

On edit: when I say a bolt-action rifle cannot take out a decently armored ground target, it depends on the target of course. They are not called anti-material rifles for nothing - the whole point is to be able to take a sniper out through a wall.