I restored a '55 TBird about ten years ago and found a couple of holes in strange places. Two on the bottom surface of the drivers door shell and one on the driver side inner fender well. The holes were round and the metal was splayed on the back like from a projectile, not cut like from a drill so I assumed bullet holes - although there was no evidence of any other damage on to any panels behind the holes and it would have been an odd shot to reach under the door. Thought it was interesting so actually left them as part of the car's history. Fast forward to today and I'm rebuilding a '63 F100 unibody. Oddly I find two holes up under the dash on the passenger kick panel area. Same type of penetrating hole but one is a smaller than the other. Same kind of situation there is no damage to any metal panels behind the hole. I have the truck completely stripped and it's all original with no signs of any panel repair or repaint. I can buy the bullet hole theory but they are not small holes and I wouldn't think a bullet would loose it's penetrating power after one layer of 18 ga. Could these have been a defect at the factory when they were built? F100
Holes in the bottom of the door could be drain holes punched by someone. The others might have been made during repairs, or used to pry against, or used to run wires into the cab, such as an antenna wire. Neat stuff, maybe they are bullet holes.
From your description & the locations, I suspect they are holes that were punched crudely. Way back in the day we did not have the tools we have today. The houses had limited electrical outlets to run extension cords, having a 100' extension cord probably was not common for the average person then. So when they needed a quick hole while working on the car in the drive way .... just grabbed a sharpened punch & a hammer & punched the hole instead of drilling it. I bought a old tool box from a estate sale. It has many nice punches that were used on a grinder to make sharp points just for this purpose.
Wasn't uncommon for assembly line workers to use a punched hole like a "one-time" Cleco for panels that were difficult to access the backside of after assembly. I've seen many holes like that in dashboards and firewalls and such. They become obvious when you're disassembling something and think you've gotten all the screws and bolts out
A punched hole was always better than a drilled hole if you needed to fasten something with a screw. It gave your screw more metal to hold on to. My guess is that they’re punched holes rather than bullet holes. I’ve seen bullet holes and made a few myself. Bullet holes tend to rip longer and have sharper shreds on the back side.
My 57 wagon has a few bullet holes in her, two in the floor and a few in the dash. All from the inside out. Even found one of the bullets in the car-muzzle loader type and probably 40 cal.
I agree, the old sheet metal definitely look like bullet holes, 45 acp at close range. I punched a lot of holes in my day for pulling and shaping metal, up to 1/2", and shot more bullets thru old cars than I can count. The most obvious difference to me was the surrounding metal. Beating a hole thru metal usually creates a low spot around the hole from repeated hammer blows slowly driving the bar thru the metal. Whereas bullet holes the metal is usually either flat around the hole because it enters so quickly or on heavier metal the distortion is directly around the hole and doesn't venture out say less than a 1/4" all the way around the bullet hole, it will be a real abrupt crater. ...
These look like they could be bullet holes. I have repaired a few, they normally don't go straight through, more angled, jagged, ripped, and violent looking. These could be.
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