Thanks for the great answers. Very helpful.
Continuing the hijack of my own thread, let me ask - are the ballistics of tracer rounds the same as for the ball rounds? I assume they are, for if not you’d be wrong about where 80% of your shots are going. But, OTOH, I’d expect them to have different trajectories since a) ? more friction and b) dynamically changing weight of the round during its flight (i.e. decreases as flame “consumes” the round).
In aerial gunnery we were taught not to use tracers for aiming. You use them to get into the vicinity and then use the sight from there.
However, if you are using tracers to identify a target area for someone else you don’t care that most of the balls are not exactly on target. You can only see the tracers anyway.
Wow, I had no idea - thanks!
Was there a systematic error for the tracers? In other words, with experience did you get a general sense of how far off target, and at what degree off center, the tracers were? Or was it unpredictable?
i don’t know. Tracers are valuable to tell you if you are leading too much or too little. I never had to use this for real. And from what I’ve heard and read from WWII fighter pilots they didn’t either. The main trick was to sneak up behind, get close and let fly. Many who were shot down, maybe most, never saw their attacker.
a lovely example of tracers at night. Just Ignore the ddramatic intro and enjoy the vehicle shredding.
Just to clear up any misunderstanding, I don’t mean to pooh-pooh the use of tracer bullets. They provide excellent feedback for the correction of aim but the main tool is the sight.
Given time I’ll get the whole story out.
In aerial gunnery you only have 20-30 seconds of ammunition available so you can’t use much of it up trying to get on the target. That’s why the sight is so important.
David Simmons covered the aerial use of tracers. But on the ground, we have much more ammunition. Also, a machinegun is used to shoot large targets or a large area. If you’re engaging troops down range, you’re not necessarily trying to shoot each one individually like you would be with an M16. You’re spraying the area with lead. If they happen to be properly spaced out you still just walk rounds into him until he drops. You’ll know you hit him.
Or lets say you’re shooting at a bunker or another machinegun position. The tracers are accurate enough to let you know they’re hitting your target. Since, your target is the whole position, some may be low or high or left or right or some may miss. But they’re accurate enough. And you’ll suppress them long enough for people to get close enough to take more accurate shots with their smaller weapons.
So yea, you dont want to zero a weapon depending on the accuracy of a tracer. But when you’re firing 9-11 round bursts out of your machinegun, at least 1 or 2 should hit what you’re aiming at. Once you get the desired result (like people falling or sparks flying off a vehicle) you just hold what you got and fire another 9-11 rounds.