Bullets Deviating ?

[hobotango]

Hello. 
 

So I was looking at this footage of Capt. Walter L. Flagg strafing a German airfield and I noticed that some bullets would deviate a lot. It happens troughout the whole video but its very flagrant at the 40 sec mark.  Why is this, and would it ever be represented in game ?  Im just curious. 

 

 

 

[Ehret]

Faulty rounds or damaged guns, perhaps?

Edited March 11, 2019 by Ehret

[Gambit21]

Those are defective tracer rounds I think.

[40plus]

Does he shoot at horses @ the 1:20 mark? ☹️

[rowdyb00t]

24 minutes ago, pfrances said:

Does he shoot at horses @ the 1:20 mark? ☹️

Those were Hitlers horses. Probably Waffen SS

Edited March 11, 2019 by rowdyb00t

[kissklas]

16 minutes ago, rowdyb00t said:

Those were Hitlers horses. Probably Waffen SS

Oh yes! Big time war criminals they were! Behind that silly stare lay pure evil. A lot of horses escaped to Argentina in submarines and escaped trials after the war.

[RedKestrel]

1 hour ago, kissklas said:

Oh yes! Big time war criminals they were! Behind that silly stare lay pure evil. A lot of horses escaped to Argentina in submarines and escaped trials after the war.

A few of the worst offenders were eventually tracked down by the Moose-sad!

[Diggun]

1 hour ago, kissklas said:

Big time war criminals they were! 

This just ends up in a horrible ethical mess. Horses = innocent but horses also = biddable, so, if you leave them alive, who's to say the next truck of ammo they bring up front isn't going to kill people you care deeply about. 

 

Fortunately, in game as in real life, the targets are so small, and your TOT is so brief, that you can content yourself by saying (truthfully) that you were just aiming at the wagon, and dispersion and wobble takes care of the rest. 

[69th_chuter]

It looks like those are errant ricochets fired by an aircraft behind.

[Gambit21]

Definitely not.

[-SF-Disarray]

It is the tracer compound separating from the bullet. If you look carefully you can see that the stray marks are moving much more slowly then the other marks. The phosphorus compound used to track the rounds just fell off, the bullet itself probably continued to target.

[Gambit21]

4 minutes ago, Disarray said:

It is the tracer compound separating from the bullet. 

 

Yep

[Cpt_Cool]

23 hours ago, pfrances said:

Does he shoot at horses @ the 1:20 mark? ☹️

 

Crippling the Axis glue supply was critical for Allied victory. Just think if they got the bomb first.

[-SF-Disarray]

Despite WW2 being the start of modern mechanized warfare it was still only the start so horses were still widely used by militaries of various nations, including the German military,  to move things around and for delivering messages. That would make the animals legitimate targets.

[kissklas]

1 hour ago, Cpt_Cool said:

 

Crippling the Axis glue supply was critical for Allied victory. Just think if they got the bomb first.

The glue bomb? God forbid. We'd find ourselves in a sticky situation for sure.

[CrazyDuck]

If you take a look very carefully (read: slow the video down if needed) at the one at 0:44 you'll see it's going straight (like the rest of the bullets) for some time, and then it suddenly starts curving. It's obviously a case already described by guys above me - a faulty tracer, or in other words, the pyrotechnic composition separating from the rest of the bullet.

[69th_chuter]

So, we have bright, smoky and sometimes erratically traveling, obviously ricocheting API from 0:00 to 0:28.  Then we have the occasional, randomly inserted tracers failing 100% of the time entering the picture anywhere but near the line of fire (~25% down from top of frame) from 0:29 to 0:48 (note the difference, if any, between 0:27 and 0:29).  Then we're back to normal, with tracers showing up regularly near the end of the belts, from 0:48 on.

 

 

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Tracers follow a different trajectory as they lose mass unlike everything else in the belt. Many pilots complained about it during the war as they were not a good marker for anything but relatively close shooting and lousy for judging lead/convergence/impact on moderate to long distance shooting. They also give your enemy a visual clue if you initially miss.

[Pict]

14 hours ago, II/JG17_HerrMurf said:

Tracers follow a different trajectory as they lose mass unlike everything else in the belt. Many pilots complained about it during the war as they were not a good marker for anything but relatively close shooting and lousy for judging lead/convergence/impact on moderate to long distance shooting. They also give your enemy a visual clue if you initially miss.

 

Interesting.

 

I've read someplace that in some cases the belts had an increased tracer count towards the end, the idea being that it gave the pilot an indication that he was about to run out of ammo. That would also be of interest to the guy he was shooting at  

 

Anyone know if it was optional anywhere to have ammo belts without tracers? This would make a lot of sense for night-fighters, no?

[imaca]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that some US fighter units went tracer free late war and as a result had vastly improved kill ratios.

[CrazyDuck]

4 hours ago, Pict said:

Anyone know if it was optional anywhere to have ammo belts without tracers? This would make a lot of sense for night-fighters, no?

 

Yeah, night fihters flew without tracers for obvious reasons. Also, in IL-2 series if you pick ShVAK with pure AP belting, you'll get no tracers. At least on La-5/5FN you won't.

Edited March 15, 2019 by CrazyDuck

[Royal_Flight]

On 3/11/2019 at 11:15 PM, Diggun said:

This just ends up in a horrible ethical mess. Horses = innocent but horses also = biddable, so, if you leave them alive, who's to say the next truck of ammo they bring up front isn't going to kill people you care deeply about. 

 

There’s a war memorial for animals who served in war, in London. 

 

The inscription on it reads ‘They Had No Choice’. 

 

 

[seafireliv]

If the enemy uses it, and you can`t grab it for your side- You destroy it. It`ll happen again and again in every war where any animal is used.

 

It`s just the way it is, sadly.

[Heckpupper]

As the other guys said - the shiny part of the tracer is just a chemical compound strapped to the end of the projectile that burns when fired. Sometimes (or maybe even more often) the burning bit falls away from the projectile and goes it's own way. That doesn't mean that the actual projectile got curved (though it might have negatively impacted the ballistics of it), it's just a funny effect that happens with tracer rounds sometimes.

 

Also while on tracer topic, 1C can you guys make it so that tracer in game aren't 2 feet thick and moving at 20 feet per minute when observed from the distance, and give the germans proper green phosphorus based tracer?

[hobotango]

On 3/12/2019 at 12:21 PM, Disarray said:

It is the tracer compound separating from the bullet. If you look carefully you can see that the stray marks are moving much more slowly then the other marks. The phosphorus compound used to track the rounds just fell off, the bullet itself probably continued to target.

 

I had completely forgot about that post.

 

Thanks everyone for the answer, I appreciate

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

They look like tracer rounds doing the flip flop as too light and so on as mentioned above.

Also dont blame the person shooting the horse, 
blame the person who forced the horse to carry weapons and supplies  

 

[RedKestrel]

2 hours ago, =TBAS=Sschatten14 said:

Also dont blame the person shooting the horse, 
blame the person who forced the horse to carry weapons and supplies  

 

Choice 1: Shoot and kill the horse, who is innocent. Supplies do not arrive. Germans retreat or surrender to allied forces. 
Choice 2: Don't shoot the horse, supplies get through to German forces. Resistance continues for another few hours or days, during which many people are maimed or die (on both sides. some or most of whom are conscripts and did not want to be there any more than the horse did).

Sorry guys, I'm shooting the horse. 

[JonRedcorn]

On 3/18/2019 at 3:49 AM, 4./JG26_Onebad said:

As the other guys said - the shiny part of the tracer is just a chemical compound strapped to the end of the projectile that burns when fired. Sometimes (or maybe even more often) the burning bit falls away from the projectile and goes it's own way. That doesn't mean that the actual projectile got curved (though it might have negatively impacted the ballistics of it), it's just a funny effect that happens with tracer rounds sometimes.

 

Also while on tracer topic, 1C can you guys make it so that tracer in game aren't 2 feet thick and moving at 20 feet per minute when observed from the distance, and give the germans proper green phosphorus based tracer?

I'd very much like to see the tracers improved as well. If the Germans had green tracers we should have the proper color in game. Can't be more than a line of code dictating the coloring. Would also like to see them toned down a bit as well. Think they look much better in 1946. It was actually a shock to me how colorful the battles were, there's blue tracers from the canons, greens, reds, yellow.