In terms of tracer smoke, there is no doubt in my mind that certain .303 tracer rounds did emit smoke trails. The following is quite a well known picture of the RAF attacking an He111 formation. I've seen it as a film before but could only find this still image today.

Look closely and you'll see multiple parallel smoke trails produced by a bank of 303s belonging to a Spitfire or Hurricane. You can see more trails on the He111 itself where the rounds of another plane are finding the target.

While I agree that things like spirals and zig-zags are most likely artifacts created by camera wobble etc., the camera cannot create a smoke trail if it wasn't there.

If Oleg chooses to model a type that didn't emit smoke then that's fine by me. This is just intended to counter the old argument that .303 tracers never smoked.

Haven't thought of that, but I sure hope it's larger and to the East..I personal would like the Ansons to be able to fly patrols along the Dutch coast....and not forgetting the RAF Blenheims and possibly the ALA that made attacks in 1940 over Dutch soil trying to hold back the German forces..

Would there be a map for the Norway raids or just the BoB months...

Most rounds fired from rifled barrels will follow a tightly-spiralling trajectory.

An imbalance in the round will cause a wobble, much like a spinning top -- the technical word is precession. This wobble will mean the spin axis is not parallel to the direction of travel. Just as spin on a football causes it to swerve in mid-air, the interaction between the wobble, the spin and the airflow over the round will also cause swerve, only in a spiral pattern as the spin axis of the round is itself always shifting.

While modelling all this ballistically is probably not worth the effort, the spiral smoke-trails left by tracer rounds are real and would add a nice touch.

dduff

Duff, I agree, but the spiral is so small it's hardly noticeable.

As if you know? Are you a former BoB pilot? Did you ever see .303 tracer bullets fired from a plane in real life?

Man, the experts we have in here!

did Oleg? ;)

Ack! Not a bloody one of us was there! Some of us however have studied ballistics, either as amateur enthusiasts or as professionals or have practical experience in either of the two above categories. It seems that every one in the four groups that I've mentioned agree that Oleg (A man who falls under all four categories throughout his career) is pretty much spot on.

What the Hell is the argument?! If you don't know about a subject, just bloody well give the argument to the one who does like a damn adult and move on.

/rant off

Actually, I was.

This is a complicated situation... For most of us, the only experience with "real" WW2 tracers we have is from WW2 guncams...So the woobling and some "f/x" we used to see, are artefacts from old camera...:rolleyes:

And this is what many of us were "expecting " to see in a realistic sim...:confused:

But Oleg is reproducing what real pilots "saw" 65 years ago...ANd for some of us , it looks awkard...Reality does that sometimes ....

So few of us find it hard to accept that it wont be like they hoped it would....;)

Salute

Hypothesis:

The "tracer" part of the bullet burns inconsistently. One side burns in essence.

The bullet is spiraling like an American football.

So if only one side of the tracer is "burning", the effect would be the spiral smoke trails we see.

I dunno. Just a thought. I have never seen tracer smoke trails in real life and I am guessing it only occurs on some older ammo. I think the oldest tracer ammo I have fired was from Korea and it certainly was not in .303.

Splitter