Quote:
Originally Posted by Sutts
I see quite a few comments on the dense smoke effect. Over the years I've watched hours of combat footage and tend to agree with Philip that grey or white smoke is most commonly seen when aircraft are going down. However, after a quick trawl of the web I've found a few original shots which back up the effects we're seeing in SOW.
What I don't fully agree with is that burning high octane fuel always produces billowing black smoke. I've seen countless images of torching bombers with absolutely no smoke at all (see images below). I think this may be due to:
a. Air speed - this creates a bellows effect and supplies enough oxygen to the fire to burn very cleanly. I think when bombers explode or spin and fall and large quantities of burning fuel is dumped into the air, the reduced speed creates a less efficient burn and the black smoke becomes more evident.
b. Other materials burning with the fuel. If rubberised fuel tanks or oil from ruptured tanks burns with the fuel then the smoke will be much darker.
I'm including lots of piccies below so you can form your own opinions. I've grouped them according to how dark the smoke is.
First The Dark Smoke: I think the 4th one is a particularly good match for what we've seen today.
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What you have to bear in mind from that 4th shot is that all the engines may be on fire (or if fuel had leaked across the whole wings surface then that may be on fire too) so this thick black smoke may just be all the smoke-trails merging together. It does show, though, that what Oleg has shown is not neccesarily wrong, but the size IMO is wrong. I mean, even the smoke in this shot is not as thick as the one in Oleg's shot, and that one only has one engine on fire!
It also shows the size of the flame.