I’ve heard this story too; I was told the enemy would see the clip jump up (not hear it). This was recognized as a vulnerability that the enemy could exploit…This story I heard was quickly followed by the anecdote that the Americans one-upped the matter. One would have a spare empty clip and give it a little toss up to make the enemy incorrectly think that he was out of ammo.
Back in the day, we used to carry one (5.56mm) magazine filled entirely with tracers, for communications purposes. You could use it to direct fire (“Concentrate your fire here” - fire some tracers - “and here” - fire some more) or to call for assistance (“We’re pinned down here, need some help” “Where are you?” “Firing tracers,” - fire burst into the air - “got it?” “Got it.”)
Still not uncommon. As a squad leader, I keep one mag full of tracers. I’m certainly not the only one.
Never with a belt, but many people do this with their magazines. For instance, one would load tracers every 4th round, and then maybe make the last 4-5 all tracers. One M4 with an empty magazine for 5-6 seconds isn’t going to give the enemy any kind of advantage, even if he knows exactly which one is out, and where exactly he is. There will be plenty of other weapon systems throwing lead his direction.
I don’t think they do, and I can’t imagine any reason why. It would mostly negate the reason for their existence.
Wikipedia disagrees. (though they don’t have a citation for this paragraph)
“Tracers can never be a totally reliable indicator of a gunner’s aim, since all tracer rounds have different aerodynamics and even weight from ordinary rounds. Over long ranges, the stream of tracer rounds and the stream of ordinary rounds will diverge significantly, due to a tracer bullet’s mass decreasing over time, because the tracer material in its base burns and vaporizes. Although advances in tracer design have diminished this problem, it cannot be completely eliminated.”
The changeover from brown to black footwear (and other leather items such as pistol holsters) occurred from 1956, with many brown items still in stock being dyed black. This more-or-less coincided with the end of racial segregation in the Army (which had begun to desegregate in 1948) and so the old conspicuously white army was seen as the ‘brown-shoe’ army.
Dark ignition tracers exist, which do not begin to trace until a certain distance from the gun. Air-to-air fighting, and later ground-to-air, was the real impetus behind the development of tracers.
Those were old Russian rounds, I believe.
Anyway, based on my limited machine gun experience, tracers aren’t very visible at all on a sunny day, but as it gets darker, they become far more visible. Also, without puffs of dust or something, tracers are a real aid to telling where your rounds are landing if you can see them.
Tracers follow a different path. They trained pilots in WW2 to compensate for the differences in flight path. On the ground the ranges are low enough that the differing ballistics don’t matter. In the air, OTOH…
Ive always wondered why tracers so often seemed to be missing the target in videos, now I finally know hopefully.
Otara
Actually, most bullets miss their target, tracer or not.
So true. Lots of waste. During Vietnam it was absurdly commonplace to see M16 magazines being emptied in the general direction of a target. While I haven’t fired an M16 for 4+ decades, I do believe “fully auto” is now limited to 3 round bursts.
As to why tracers have differing ballistics, would it be because of the hollow where the tracing flammables are packed? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the back end of the bullets are hollowed (or simply produced with a cavity in them) for the compound that burns.
That’s pretty much it. As the mass of the bullet burns off, the ballistics change.
They’re also very prone to ricochet (or maybe just the ricochets are more noticeable), likely due to their instability as the trace compound burns up.
I yield to folks who have real world experience in these things, but aren’t tracer rounds in the air only for two or three seconds?
Just how much tracer-chemical is going to burn in that short of a time?
I’m back to work next Monday where I could give you exact data for US Army rounds.
Another note: current dim tracers are made in most calibers due to the proliferation of night-vision devices. High rate of fire weapons like the 7.62mm mini-gun have standard/tracer ratios of 7/1, 9/1, and 15/1. The more standard ratios and tracers would blind everyone - gunners, fellow fighters, and pilots if in a helicopter mount.
I recently read that they’re testing new tracer rounds that have an LED on the back of the bullet. This would allow the person firing the gun to see the tracers, but greatly reduce their visibility to people in front of the bullets.
If these are deployed, it would presumably eliminate the problem at the crux of OP’s question.
The concept is very simple, but it’s pretty ingenious. I guess we can always count on humans to innovate when it comes to killing each other.
Do you have an online source for that by any chance? Not that I don’t believe you, but the technical challenges seem like they would be quite complex, and I would love to read about it.
Not sure how far it has been developed, but i did find a patent for it online; the patent holder is Raytheon (which is a pretty big US defense contractor), so I assume that it is an idea that has some merit:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7174835/description.html
Also found a page on tracers that references the patent, again nothing on whether there are any working prototypes:
I was in the Army from 2001-2005 and it was black boots the whole time at home and in the field. We only got the tan boots when we deployed to Iraq. It wasn’t until they switched to the ACU (pixelated) uniform that black boots were abandoned entirely. I know because they called me back from the IRR in 2007 and I was jealous of all those recruits in basic training and AIT who didn’t have to shine their boots or iron their uniforms. So I don’t know if 2006 counts as “shortly after Gulf One”, but by my estimates, that’s when the “black boot Army” (a term I’ve never heard until now) ended.